Richard House - The Kills

Cecco was gone. Disappeared as soon as he’d received the money. The deal, arranged by Rafí, was simple: Cecco goes along to make sure the men pay first, after which he does as he pleases, just as long as the money reaches Rafí by the end of play. Lila became used to Cecco watching from a doorway, stairwell, or window (stealthy enough to keep out of plain sight and always a little sulky when she returned). Cecco, Arianna said, was a picture. She couldn’t work out if he was dumb or not, and supposing he was an idiot, just how deep it ran through him: if you offered the boy too many choices he simply sat down, confused, head shaking, and he only washed when Rafí reminded him. Who could guess what Cecco wanted, coming back each night with pizza, aranchini, some days a bottle of wine, and other days pills? And who could guess what his business with Rafí actually involved, he just hung around without purpose, almost as if he loved him?

Lila headed down the wrong flight of stairs to a sudden view of the Albergo dei Poveri, a building so monumentally solid that she paused when she knew she had no time to pause. How in four months had she not noticed this? Finding herself at a secured gate she threw the bear and jacket first, then climbed over, eyes fixed on the long red roof of a building that could be a prison, or a barrack, or maybe a workhouse. Three flights down the air reeked of petrol. Everything about the day scorched and hard except the view of distant hills; Capodimonte, Vomero, and there, Vesuvius, the tip of it seen through fumes, blunt, jellied green.

She squeezed the bear as she picked it up and found a pocket stitched into the back, a pouch large enough to fit four fingers up to the second knuckle. She could feel the seam inside, the stitches beginning to loosen.

* * *

Lila avoided the traders grouped in the lobby at the Hotel Stromboli. Nigerians, Kenyans, sweaty men twice her height with blankets folded into sacks filled with belts, handbags, sandals, goods they sold on the streets. Quietly up the last of the stairs she paused to take off her shoes and slowly unzip her skirt. She stepped barefoot into the room, into the heat, breath held, toes testing for the edge of the mattress that took up most of the floor. In the late afternoons she preferred to lie beside Arianna, who was softer, less agitated, easier company than Rafí.

The salesman had worn two condoms, insisted on the detail, then was brief and rough, and she could feel him stuck to her guts and hated the idea that the man stayed with her and how it was getting harder to leave everything in place. Rafí told a good story about how she was stolen from her family, how she was naive, maybe even a bit simple, and while no one seriously believed this there wasn’t a man who didn’t find pleasure in the notion.

Arianna slept with her back to the window, a blade of sunlight across her shoulder. Lila shuffled out of her clothes then sat carefully on the edge of the mattress and waited for her eyes to become used to the dark. She set the panda against the wall then curled beside her friend and settled down as if slipping into water. She held her breath, slowly exhaled, attempted to empty her mind. As soon as she relaxed Rafí’s dog began to bark, he sounded close, as if from a neighbouring room. Two floors below, tethered by a chain to an upright pole, Rafí kept a skinny white bull mastiff on an open rooftop. The creature slept outdoors without proper shelter or shade, it loped from one flat of cardboard to another to stay cool, ate whatever was thrown at it, and barked in pitiful, chuffing coughs. Scabbed and hairless, the animal stank.

Arianna slowly woke and reached blindly behind her, tap-tapping Lila’s hip. ‘You’re back already. Oh? Cecco didn’t wait?’

Lila’s chin nuzzled Arianna’s shoulder. Her arm crossed under her breasts, and she thought for a moment that she could smell Rafí’s aftershave, a smell not locked to the skin but hovering above, separate.

‘He wants us to go to the Fazzini.’ Arianna yawned into the pillow and gave a sour chuckle. ‘Tonight. I don’t know though?’

There were whole days when Lila wouldn’t speak. Not one word.

* * *

They began to prepare for the evening at nine o’clock. Arianna gathered clothes and make-up onto their shared mattress, along with what remained of Rafí’s favours — crushed pills, halved tabs in foil and brittle plastic packs, treats from his associates at the hospital: for this, at least, he was useful. Arianna made no bones about it, these gifts were the only reasons she would tolerate him. For Lila the matter was entirely transparent. She knew three people in Naples: Arianna, Rafí, and Cecco. Between the four of them they knew only the district pinched between the Stazione Centrale, the Hotel Stromboli, and via Carbonara. While they could name the hotels alongside the marina they had little idea what lay inland.

Lila sat still as Arianna brushed her hair. She squeezed the panda between her thighs, teased its fur, and plucked stuffing from its pocket. Arianna worked herself into a sulk and asked why they should go tonight, what was so important about the Fazzini? Why did they always have to do what Rafí told them?

Lila looked up because the question made no sense.

‘He has this man he wants us to meet,’ Arianna scoffed. ‘We can find men by ourselves. We can look after ourselves. We should never have come here.’ By here Arianna meant Naples.

Lila sorted through the make-up. Rafí had his uses, even Arianna had to admit, and it wasn’t like they had any choice. Rafí, in his scattershot way, provided clothes and food, arranged this room at the Stromboli and made sure they were secure and they had something to sleep on. Rafí found business for them, ensured the men paid, he picked out new names and refigured their histories so the whole mess of Spain was forgotten. It was Rafí’s idea that Lila and Arianna should work together as sisters, and he bought them small gold pendants, an A for Arianna, an L for Lila.

In private they thought him ridiculous. To his face they were sulkily obedient. Arianna had forgotten how difficult life was before Rafí, how the traders harassed them for sex and money, and she was forgetting the trouble they’d had from other women, from the police, how easy it was now they didn’t have to hustle for business: you couldn’t work the city on your own.

Still, while he made business easier, he couldn’t make it any more pleasant. Preoccupied by the salesman Lila imagined him checking out of the hotel, the toys secure in their suitcase, a phone nudged between his shoulder and ear; the man talking and walking to his car and speaking with his wife, his girlfriend, his mother, or perhaps a daughter who might be close to Lila’s age. She couldn’t understand why this especially bothered her.

Arianna brushed Lila’s hair in measured sweeps. All in all Rafí demanded too much of their attention. She dropped the brush and drew Lila’s hair back through her hands. ‘I’m serious,’ she said. ‘We don’t need him. And what about the dog? I hate that dog. Every day, bark, bark, bark, bark, bark.’

Lila found the lipstick she wanted. She held up the mirror, stretched her mouth to a smile, then drew a finger across her lips.

Arianna, now standing, said that Lila looked like the panda. Adorable.

As Lila drew the lipstick across her lower lip she had the idea that the salesman was polluting the toys, showing them something of the world before he handed them over to families and children who would take them into their homes, their beds.

* * *