by Silvia Zucca
While Tio responds that it is the separation from the mother that creates individuality, I again hear the beep in the headset and prepare to take mental notes about what Davide will suggest for Marlin.
“Because for many people it would be difficult to determine the exact moment of conception, don’t you think? Astrologers are clever,” says Davide, in a more hesitant voice, as if he were testing the waters, given that a little while ago I hadn’t answered him.
I press the button to talk and argue. “Whose side are you on? Do I really have to tell her that?”
“Hell no! I was saying that to you. These horoscopes are all nonsense, right?”
“Nonsense or not, I find a certain correspondence between the characteristics of a sign and the characteristics of a person. Then, of course, we have different experiences. What sign are you? Let’s see!”
Except that I pressed the wrong button again and Marlin repeats the same thing.
“Oh god!”
“Um, I would be a Taurus,” says Andrea Magni in the studio.
“You did it again, didn’t you?” Davide chuckles into my earpiece. “You pressed the wrong button! Oh, Alice, you really are . . . the most fun that I’ve had in this place. You are special.”
Another beep and his voice again. “But don’t say that to Marlin, please.”
When I take off the headphones during the closing theme song, my ears are buzzing.
“Well done, well done everyone,” says the president, walking over to Davide. His eyes also seem tired, but he doesn’t draw back when the president puts a hand on his shoulder and takes him away to talk.
It is destiny that a mystery remains between this man and me, I tell myself.
Then there’s Alejandro. I mean, we have our problems, but we are a nice couple.
Tio is smoking a cigarette with Andrea Magni, and I hear them laughing amiably. They make a strange couple.
Ferruccio is fumbling with lamps and cables, and Alejandro has removed his shirt to reveal his chest glistening with sweat. The fifteen feet that more or less separate us seem to stretch out like in those nightmares where you can never reach your goal.
“Shall we go home together?” I say to Alejandro.
His shoulders sag. After a few seconds, he tells me, “No puedo, Aliz. Lo siento Otra ocasión, eh?”
“Is something wrong?” I hate my squeaky supplication, the pitch of my voice rising, like a naughty child or a fly banging against the glass to get out.
When he looks at me, Alejandro has a blank expression that I can only bounce against, without getting answers. “Bueno, Aliz. Let’s say I call you.”
His answer stuns me into silence. I head to the bathroom and rinse my face with cold water. When I look in the mirror, I have some kind of déjà vu.
Mara, the assistant from Mal d’Amore, her eyes, her hard and empty expression. Her disappointment.
That’s the question we’re all asking! What has become of Alejandro?
My phone is on the sink, and the still lit screen shows a glimpse of the last sentence that I read on the profile of his sign.
Strong sexuality. Psychological blocks in the sexual sphere. Multiple flirtations and lack of sincere attachment. Poor sexual interest.
Somehow, I make my way outside.
“Are you OK?” asks Davide, just behind me.
“I’m OK,” I repeat on autopilot, as if I were addressing the question to myself.
“Don’t worry about the show; everything went well. The president was very pleased. And even Marlin’s screwups . . . Well, it all gets viewers.”
The show, the share, Marlin, Tio, who’s gone without even saying goodbye, Alejandro who no longer has reason to. I feel empty.
“Want to talk about it?” he asks softly, hesitant. I look him in the eye and manage a shy smile.
“You always ask about everyone else, but you never talk about yourself,” I reply, and it almost seems like an accusation.
“As you can see, I’m not very interesting. There is nothing remarkable about my life, except for a large dog, a rented house, and constant moving.”
“How did you end up with such a big dog?”
Davide thinks for a moment, as if he can’t decide what to tell me. “It happened . . . on a job.”
“That’s it?”
“What?”
“That’s all you can tell me? I’d like you to tell me more about it.”
He raises his arm to look at his watch. “It’s past midnight, Alice. Perhaps another time OK? I’ll walk you to your car.”
“Don’t worry about it. I don’t have my car tonight. I’ll call a taxi.”
“Why don’t you have your car?”
“It’s past midnight, Davide. Maybe I’ll explain another time.”
“I’ll take you home then.”
“Why?” I growl with eyes filled with tears. I don’t know who I’m angrier at, Davide and the wall he keeps putting up, or Alejandro and the door he has just closed. In any case, I hate architectural barriers.
Davide, however, hasn’t stopped looking me up and down. “Because one should never leave a woman in trouble,” he finally says.
“I’m in trouble? I don’t think so.” I pull out my wallet and show him that I have more than seventy euros in cash. “I have enough for a taxi and probably enough to go back and forth three or four times between my house and here.”
He raises his hands. “I’d like to take you home, Alice. I would like to do it to thank you for tonight.”
When I don’t answer, he adds, “I would like to talk to you.”
By the time Davide’s car stops outside my house, I’ve learned that Flash belonged to his last employer. When the man died, his wife didn’t want to keep the dog.
“Rather than have Flash put down, I wanted to take him with me. What can I say, I was fond of him,” he explains, turning off the engine.
“What a horrible person.”
“You’re wrong. She’s not cruel. It’s just that Flash always scared her.”
I still don’t find it right that one can kill an animal so indiscriminately, but I stay quiet and am happy that Flash has found another master. “I’m pleased that it’s a story with a happy ending.”
“You love that. Stories with happy endings, I mean. Your romantic movies.”
I shrug. “Life is something else, though. A happy ending is never guaranteed.”
Davide takes my hand and his fingers tighten around mine. “No. The happy ending is never guaranteed.”
“Love is always much more complicated than in the movies. In the movies, it’s usually clear from the beginning who the protagonist is going to end up with. There are no doubts, just some misunderstandings.”
“And there are no betrayals.” Davide sighs, returning to stare at the wheel. “Have you ever cheated, Alice?”
The question comes sharp as an arrow. I ask myself if perhaps he’s trying to gauge my moral integrity. “No, never.”
He nods, and for a couple of seconds all we do is look at each other, the light of the streetlamp drawing the outlines of our faces against the darkness.
There is a world of questions, of invisible words, that makes the space between us so dense that we cannot cross it. His body eases toward me, like an astronaut in space, until his face is so close to me it seems almost unreal.
“Good night, Alice,” he whispers, before planting a kiss on my cheek.
17
* * *
No Country for Old Libras
Being dumped is certainly not the end of the world. This is hardly my first time, and I’ve survived it before. On closer examination, this insignificant fling with Alejandro doesn’t even merit consideration.
All too often, those who have been dumped have the tendency to hide, lower our eyes, deem ourselves unworthy of a kind word from anyone. But who said that we are plague-stricken people with no dignity? It’s those horrible heartbreakers, the love tourists, the sentimental discount professionals, who
should be ashamed.
So instead, this time, I have decided to be a phoenix and rise, reborn from my ashes. You just wait and see.
When I walk through the door of Mi-A-Mi Network, teetering like a tightrope walker on my high heels, I do it in the most conspicuous way possible, waving and kissing everyone I meet, with a radiant smile.
However, when I arrive at my desk, I think I literally turn white as a ghost. This time there is not just one yellow rose, but an entire luxuriant bouquet.
“Who sent these?” I shout, grabbing the card.
Just one sentence again: I miss you. And no signature.
Oh no. This time I’m going to say no to the rose maniac and yes to an Alice who is not won over by easy compliments. I take the entire bouquet and dump it in the trash.
Now I feel good. I am a new woman, free and lighthearted.
“Oh,” says Enrico approaching me. “Hi, Alice. Davide came by looking for you earlier.”
Forgetting about the thorns, I stick my hands in the trash to retrieve the bouquet of roses and lay them carefully on my desk, only to stare at them, puzzled.
Well, it’s useless to keep denying it. I like the man. A lot.
Outside his office, I quickly catch my breath.
“Hi, Davide. Enrico told me that you wanted to see me.”
He gets up from the desk. “Alice,” he says, his eyes dancing close to a smile. “Hi . . . You look good.”
“Thank you. And thank you for . . . well, for everything. For calling me, for bringing me home the other day. For caring. And, for telling me . . . Anyway, I hope that Flash is OK.” Oh my god, Alice, stop this verbal diarrhea immediately!
After all that, he just mutters, “Yes.”
Couldn’t he make just a little more of an effort? I mean, I know I am awkward, but he’s not so perfect himself.
I gather the courage to break the tension. Davide seems so indecisive—anxious, really—so I ask, “Is this about the audience for our show?”
“Yes . . . I mean, no. The ratings were pretty good. I would say that our experiment was a home run.”
“Really?” Our experiment . . . We look at each other and I notice his expression change slowly. His smile fades, and his eyes cloud over with a distance that I would like to fill by taking a few steps forward. But it’s as if both of us are frozen.
“Anything else?” I manage to ask him, my hand pausing for a second on the doorknob.
Please, Davide, speak. Tell me something. Stop me.
He sighs and bites his lip as he moves around the desk to be closer to me.
“There is something else I wanted to talk to you about.”
When he takes my hand, his is cold; his pulse is racing, and mine soon catches up.
“Yes,” I whisper. I could lose myself in his eyes.
“Alice . . . I owe you an apology.”
The violins stop playing; the birds stop chirping and instead get tangled in my hair. All of a sudden, I’ve lost the fairy-tale feeling and I don’t understand what’s happening. Or why he feels the need to apologize.
“Is this about work?” I ask, terrified that he’s about to tell me that I’ve just earned an indefinite holiday.
He shakes his head. I step back slowly, finding my back against the door, my hand in his and my heart threatening to burst through my ears.
“I wanted to . . . I have to ask your forgiveness for my behavior. I need to tell you something. I mean, I think that I’ve behaved badly toward you . . . You are a beautiful woman, you’re kind and intelligent. Who wouldn’t be attracted to you?”
What the hell are you talking about, Davide? I think, but in reality, I’m not capable of moving more than an eyelid.
“The other night when I drove you home, there was a moment . . . I almost lost control. That wouldn’t be fair; you didn’t want that. You were in pieces. And I . . . well . . . I wanted to apologize in case I gave you, you know, the wrong impression. We work together and there are other reasons . . . So, I’m sorry. So sorry.”
When I close the door behind me, there is just a faint click, but to me it sounds like an eight-story building just exploded.
I head toward the stairs.
Just then, Cristina comes out of her office. “Excuse me,” she says, rubbing her prominent belly. “Have you spoken with Carlo recently?”
“No,” I reply, half turning around. I have as much desire to speak with her as I do to take a hammer to my finger.
“Oh . . . I thought you two told each other everything.”
That used to be true, but Cristina and the baby have changed everything. I wonder why. After all, it’s not Carlo’s fault if he has rebuilt his life before I have. I’m really just envious because he has something that I don’t.
When I return to my desk, the yellow roses are still there, only the buds are a little floppier than before, echoing my mood.
“You’re becoming very popular,” Tio says as he approaches. “What are you sulking about?”
“Sure, Cosmopolitan wants to interview me as one of the ten most abandoned women on the planet,” I say to Tio, trying to smile.
“If you’re referring to the cowboy in the tight shirt, you should consider yourself lucky. He wasn’t the guy for you. When will you listen to me?”
“And where is the guy for me, Tio? Where is it written that he actually exists?” I sit down and slam my head on the desk a couple of times, before letting out a deep sigh. I don’t want to tell him about Davide. It seems too complicated to explain, and above all I don’t want to hear him tell me, yet again, that I’ve got the wrong person, that he’s not the man for me.
“Hey,” says Tio, patting me on the shoulder. “It’s true, you are a little unlucky in love, but . . .”
“A little?” I ask with a groan, lifting my head slightly, before crashing back onto the desk. “A little is like saying that the atomic bomb had a few victims.”
Tio, however, is not discouraged by my complaints. “But the last word still hasn’t been spoken. So far, we haven’t really taken this seriously. What happens when the going gets tough?”
“Let me guess . . . You choose something simpler?”
“Wrong! The tough get going.”
18
* * *
Some Like It Taurus
Standing in front of my desk, Tio keeps staring at me suspiciously, then he reaches into his shoulder bag and pulls out a scroll that he unravels in front of me, and I have the impression that we are preparing to do battle.
“And what the hell is this?” I ask him, staring at the convoluted patterns, lines, and symbols in different colors.
“This, my dear,” he says with all the emphasis of an actor playing the role of Merlin, “is your natal chart.”
“My what?”
“Remember when you gave me your date, time, and place of birth, and all of that? Well, I’ve drawn your astrological chart.” At the sight of my puzzled, blinking eyes, he sighs. “Jeez, this is a reproduction of your birth chart; how the stars aligned at the precise day and hour you took your first breath.”
“Wow,” I murmur.
“The three key elements to understanding a natal chart are houses, signs, and planets. There are twelve houses in astrology, each one representing an area of life: money, love, communication, creativity, health, death, friends . . . Don’t sniff at this, go with me.”
“It’s complicated,” I reply, scratching my temple.
“And life isn’t?”
I snort and go back to staring at the map.
He continues: “From here, we start to see which houses the planets are positioned in at the moment of birth. When a house contains more than one planet, for example, it is emphasized. And if the planet is located in the sign that governs it, its influence is even stronger.”
“Um, let’s see,” I say, trying to focus. “Which is my house of love?”
“Love is in the seventh house. It’s called the House of Marriage and Partnership,” he tells me, t
apping his finger on the chart.
I stare at the paper. Then at him. Then at the paper again. And back at him. “Are you kidding?”
“Why?”
“It’s empty,” I reply, crossing my arms over my chest. “What happened to the planets? Why is there not even one inside there?”
Tio shrugs. “Well, it can happen. It’s not extremely”—he gives me a half smile—“serious.”
“Of course, it’s not ‘extremely’ serious. My house of love is as empty as a black hole in outer space, but that’s just fine. Nothing to worry about!” I raise my hands, exasperated.
“Calm down, really, it’s not a terrible thing. Not having planets in your House of Marriage doesn’t mean that you’ll never have love. You have a lot in your career house. And you have Venus near your Ascendant. It means that you are a fascinating person and even diplomatic, with an aptitude for the arts. It could mean a bit of confusion and even disappointment in terms of love, but we have to be optimistic.”
I whine. I knew there was something fundamentally wrong with my love life, and now it turns out I have confused planets and my astrological chart looks like it was painted by Picasso.
Tio puts his arm around my shoulders to console me. “We should never be discouraged. You are a beautiful, kind, and intelligent woman. There is absolutely no reason why you shouldn’t find someone. Except that, like I said, you always choose the wrong men—perhaps because they are charming and mysterious, which is only natural, given your astrological chart. Consider someone else, someone who seems the opposite, perhaps.”
I sigh and sink into his arms.
He gives me a kiss on the forehead, whispering in my ear, “You really are stubborn, who knows when you’ll catch on.”
“Sorry to interrupt you,” says a voice behind him.
As Tio quickly moves away, I see Andrea Magni at my desk.
