Mad About You

by Anna Premoli

  After waiting in vain without getting a response, I look up and find myself staring into two huge brown eyes full of panic. “Bertha, is something wrong?”

  He points out of the window again. “Do you reckon the wheel could actually come off?” he asks in a voice I’ve never heard before. He sounds terrified. I can’t work out if he’s joking.

  “Of course not. They’re just checking it out.” My answer doesn’t seem to reassure him much because he doesn’t stop scrutinizing the workmen for a second.

  “Will the bolts be tight enough? Do you have any idea of how powerful the impact of a plane’s wheels with the runway when it lands is?”

  I stare at him, trying not to burst out laughing in his face. “I haven’t got the foggiest,” I smirk. “Do I look like an aerospace engineer?”

  Seb would certainly have thought it was funny, but Ari, who neither replies nor seems offended doesn’t seem to. In fact, he doesn’t answer at all.

  “Bertha, are you feeling okay this morning?” I feel compelled to ask. Not that I’m really bothered whether he is or he isn’t – I have decided to be friendly but to remain very, very detached – but quite frankly, having him going half-crazy next to me is pretty annoying. Lavinia is the one who loves to surround herself with weirdos, not me. I find banality so very reassuring...

  When we met at the check-in desk I specifically tried not to notice him – it’s all part of my brilliant problem-avoidance plan – but now that I think about it, he is looking much paler than normal: Ari usually has that odiously healthy complexion, but this morning he’s looking greyish, tending to greenish. I am about to ask again when a voice precedes me.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. I would like to give you a very warm welcome aboard this flight from Milan to Amsterdam. Our journey will take about an hour and fifty minutes. As you can see from your windows, the weather in Milan is cloudy and I’m afraid that similar weather is awaiting us in Amsterdam. During the flight we may encounter some mild turbulence, so I would ask you to fasten your seat belts when the seat belt sign is on.”

  “Did he say turbulence?” asks Ari, his breathing starting to get ragged.

  “He also said mild. Jesus, Bertha, take it easy! You’re not going to tell me that a big strong man like you is afraid of flying, are you...?” If he doesn’t even respond to that bit of blatant provocation, I’ll really start worrying.

  “Errrrrrrrrr...” he mumbles.

  “ Errrrrrrrrr what? Errrrrrrrrr yes you’re terrified?”

  “Cabin crew, seats for takeoff,” the pilot’s voice orders.

  Ariberto closes his eyes and inhales. Never mind terrified, he looks like he’s about to wet himself.

  “Bertha, open your eyes a second and look at me: everything is under control, okay?”

  I can’t help it – I can’t be as bitchy as I usually am while he’s staring at me with that lost expression. He almost looks like a puppy. A huge puppy, of course, but even Great Danes have puppies. In life, after all, it’s all a question of proportions.

  The plane starts moving off along the runway, and he opens his eyes wide with terror.

  “What can I do to make you feel better?” I find myself asking. God, just imagine how much aggravation I would have saved myself if I’d been born without a heart...

  “Let me get off?” he says, almost begging me.

  “I’m sorry, Bertha, you’re only going to be getting off in Amsterdam,” I state the obvious.

  “Just as long as we actually get there...” he mutters grimly.

  Oooh, optimistic!

  “Don’t worry, we’ll get there. Haven’t you ever thought of doing one of those courses that airlines have for people like you, who are scared of flying?” I ask with my usual tact.

  “I’ve done one,” he replies tersely.

  A derisive laugh escapes my mouth before I can do anything about it. “Well I’m glad to see that it went so well...” Yes, I know, it was a mean thing to say – but that’s my nature. And after a few weeks of working with me, I reckon Ari knows it perfectly too.

  “Actually, it was really useful,” he says anxiously. “I couldn’t even get on a plane before.”

  “Well, now you can get on one but you’ve got another problem...” I feel compelled to point out. “I’m sorry but if you’re so terrified, why didn’t you talk to Iris about it and stay in Milan?”

  “It’s one thing to recognize your weaknesses, it’s quite another to allow them to govern your life.”

  I stare at him in shock. It’s a very noble concept, except that he doesn’t look particularly happy about his decision to get on the plane.

  “Distract me,” he pleads in a faint voice. “And give me your hand.” So saying, he holds out his, which a moment before had been gripping the armrest with unprecedented enthusiasm.

  “What?” I exclaim, shifting away from him.

  “I feel better if I hold someone’s hand. It’s nothing personal,” he says, trying to play it down, “anyone’s hand will do.”

  I sit there for a moment staring at him and undecided about what to do. But the longer I look at him the greener he seems to become. The plane ‘s engines are at full power and we’re about the leave the ground.

  “Giada?” says Ari, with a note of panic in his voice.

  To hell with it! I grab his hand and hold it tight as the plane begins its ascent. Beside me, Ari closes his eyes and laid his head against the backrest. He is trying to breathe deeply but not quite managing, like a woman about to give birth. I think he might also be praying too. If I could only reach my phone, I could shoot a video of him that I could blackmail him for life with.

  “You’ll pay me back for this, you know. Your hand is so sweaty I almost can’t believe that I voluntarily agreed to hold it,” I complain. After a few minutes of his crushing it madly, Ari convinces himself to open one eye first and then another. He’s just as sweaty as before though. Just my luck.

  “We’re still here,” he murmurs in amazement, seemingly more to himself than to me.

  “So it seems. Right, now that this part is over, can I have my hand back?” I say as I try to free myself from his firm grip – but he won’t let go. With a sudden movement he brings our hands back to the armrest, as if to say ‘debate over.’

  “I thought I’d been clear: I’ll be scared the whole way, so I’ll let you go after we land in Amsterdam. If we land...” he adds in a mournful voice.

  I roll my eyes and shake my head. “You, sweetheart, are a few sandwiches short of a picnic.”

  “And you take things a little too lightly.”

  If only he knew how wrong he was...

  “I can’t see the point in getting myself into a state over things that I can’t control: if this tin can is destined to fall out of the sky, it’s destined to fall out of the sky, so I don’t see the point in getting stressed and wasting precious time. Are you going to stop crossing the road because they might run you over? Stop using your bike because you might fall off? I’m sorry to have to be the one to tell you, but life doesn’t work like that... You never know how it’s going to end, and that’s part of the fun.”

  His face looks a bit less tense as he listens to me, but it seems that I haven’t managed to convince him to let go. In fact, he intertwines his fingers with mine. “In case you haven’t realised, I’m not enjoying this at all...” he grumbles.

  I think it was supposed to be some kind of joke. “Oh, really?” I say mockingly. “I would never have realised if your face hadn’t been so green, honestly.”

  Just as Ari is starting to relax and squeeze my hand a bit less, the plane enters a patch of turbulence. Those damn clouds: it’ll be all their fault if I can’t feel my fingers anymore when I arrive in Holland. “Come on, let’s talk about something stupid. Or even something rude, if you want,” I say, offering to distract him.

  This seems to catch his attention immediately. He looks at me curiously, blinking several times with surpris
e. “Do I actually look so bad that you think we should talk about that?”

  I shrug my shoulders. “You’re a man. Doesn’t that always work on you? “

  “Oh yes,” he confirms with a half-smile. The first half-smile of the day.

  “Exactly. And we’re even going to Amsterdam. You know, the red light district...” I say with an allusive wink.

  “To be honest, no, I don’t know: I’ve only been to the Netherlands once, and I was with my parents. As you can imagine, the red light district was not exactly the first stop on the family tour.”

  “I don’t know why,” I laugh. “It’s so instructive.”

  “Let’s just say that my mother is a bit... worthy.”

  “Hah, so is mine. How shocking, Bertha, we’ve actually found something we have in common.”

  “I’m sorry to have to be the one to point out the obvious, but there are actually quite a few things we have in common, Ms. Spikes: we are students at the same university, we don’t like losing, we like tennis. And now we also work for the same company.”

  That’s definitely too many things.

  “Details, details... When it comes to the important things, we’re completely different.”

  “Oh of course – I mean, your future profession is neither here or there,” he comments sarcastically, raising his eyebrows.

  “Bertha, don’t start being a pain in the neck, please! I almost preferred you when you were terrified.”

  “I’m sure you did, what with that cutting tongue of yours...” he says reproachfully.

  I know he didn’t mean anything by it, but he just said a dangerous word. Tongue. He should know better than to mention compromising body parts while he’s holding my hand. He should avoid reminding me of that famous evening when his tongue was wrapped around mine. It was only for a few seconds, true, but I still remember it vividly. The basic problem is that I’ve had too few tongues in my mouth for his to just be one that I can quickly forget. I didn’t go around kissing a lot of people before I got together with Fil and I certainly never did it afterwards. In spite of the not exactly idyllic state of my relationship, I’m the faithful type. Who knows how many girls a guy like Ariberto Castelli has kissed in his life. Tens? Hundreds? He probably doesn’t even remember the names of them all.

  A strange silence falls between us. It is not entirely unpleasant, but it is fraught with a cumbersome tension that I would rather wasn’t there. Even my masochism has its limits.

  “What were we talking about?” he asks, staring at me.

  “We were talking about the red light area,” I say, opening my mouth before I switch my brain on. If I’d stopped to think about it, I would have realized that mentioning the red light area is not exactly the best way to avoid thinking about that kiss. My mother often reminds me that I should count to ten before speaking, and as much as I hate to admit she’s right, this time I should have followed her advice and changed the subject with my usual skill.

  When I eventually find the courage to meet his eyes, they are full of a worrying sensuality. I hope the reason has to deal with the half-naked women in the windows in Amsterdam, because I don’t want anything to do with these intense expressions of his.

  “Yes, the red light district... What do you say, shall we go together?” he proposes.

  “Bertha, in case you haven’t noticed, I’m not the best friend you having pissing contests or go for red-light districts in search of prey with.”

  Ari bursts out laughing. “I had noticed it, believe me. But you seem like someone who doesn’t hold back in the face of a challenge. And this is a challenge. Come on, don’t you want to go home and tell your friends that you’ve been living dangerously?” My expression mustn’t be entirely convinced, because Ari starts pleading his cause. “What? Are you going to tell me that you have no problem sticking pins through parts of your body that no one in their right mind would touch but you’re scared of a harmless walk through Amsterdam’s red light district?!”

  “Okay, here’s what we’ll do: if you promise not to start crying while we’re landing, I might evaluate the possibility of coming with you,” I say, like the perfect bitch I am. Someone more sensitive wouldn’t have made fun of his phobias, but I’ve never had much interest in winning the Compassionate Woman of the Year award. Quite the contrary, in fact.

  Out of the blue, Ari bursts out laughing a second time. “I don’t know if I can actually promise that...” he confesses with amusement, and then carries on laughing at himself.

  “If there’s even a single tear, it’s game over!” I snap, trying to hide the fact that I am a bit surprised by his ability not to take himself seriously. That’s a rare commodity in these dark times when everyone is beautiful, extremely cool, and incapable of a bit of healthy self-criticism.

  I’ll never confess it, obviously, but these days spent working together have made me realize that Ari actually has a sense of humour rather similar to mine. I hope it’s just a mere coincidence, because me and Mister-Perfect- Shirts must remain in our own separate worlds.

  *

  The meeting proceeds at full speed and is over fairly quickly. Iris and Marco seem satisfied with our presentation and the research work we have done on the tax rulings – otherwise known as the art of paying as little in taxes as possible by moving your registered office. The topic is clearly a controversial one, but who am I to pass judgment while the European Union allows each country to attract all the companies it wants with absurd benefits?

  Tax law never gets boring. Even at the EU level it’s somewhat ambiguous: what on one hand is unlawful state aid, on the other is merely part of the way things are. And as you learn pretty quickly in this field, it’s all a matter of points of view. Or of knowing how to argue your position with cunning.

  Our client, an Italian company that has recently transferred its offices to the Netherlands, seems very interested in the possibility of monetizing the shares it’s had in its portfolio for a long time. This is the famous multiple vote, one of the latest devilries of corporate finance. If I was aiming at stability of corporate control, I’d think about the power of a rule like that too.

  “Well done, guys,” says Iris. “You did a good job. Tomorrow we’ll continue with the rules on intra-group transfers before we catch the return flight, but for the moment you have earned yourselves an evening off. Go out to dinner, have a walk around Amsterdam. In short, enjoy yourselves,” she says, probably feeling very magnanimous.

  Ari and I don’t give her the chance to change her mind, and we set off on foot towards the hotel.

  “So, are you ready for an evening that’s a bit...” he says, raising his eyebrows suggestively.

  “Where do you want to go?” I ask, pretending not to remember.

  “Giada!” he cries offended. “We had an agreement!”

  “And you had promised that you wouldn’t cry during the landing...”

  “I didn’t! I just... verbalised my anguish.”

  “Bertha, you started praying out loud for the wheels to hold up! Do you remember that?”

  “The agreement spoke about tears, it said nothing about praying,” he replies sheepishly. Yes, I’d be sheepish in his place too. “The important thing is that I didn’t end up actually sobbing.”

  “I know, I was quite surprised. I mean, the landing wasn’t even that good...” I remember with a laugh. The wind was making the plane sway to the right and left as we came down towards the runway. Milan’s climate is like the Caribbean compared to the weather in Holland.

  “Can we not talk about planes for at least one evening?” he pleads sufferingly. “How about going to get something to eat? Terror always makes me hungry...”

  Typical – these young men who have just grown out of adolescence are always hungry.

  “First I need a shower. And so do you,” I say. The palm of his hand was sufficient proof of the power anxiety has over your sweat glands, so not only does he need a wash, he needs a very thorough one.

 
; “Are you saying that I smell?” he exclaims, sounding offended.

  “Not really smell... It’s more that you...”

  He stands in front of me and blocks my way.

  “Come on, what were you going to say?”

  I burst out laughing. “Damn it, I can’t think of another word for it!”

  “Because there isn’t another way to say smell, you fool, so if you really think I do, that’s the word you’re going to have to use.”

  “Let’s put it this way: we both smell. Let’s take a shower and then go and eat.”

  Ari shakes his head but then he smiles at me.

  “And you know what awaits you after dinner!”

  “I could always slip in the shower and bang my head. Just think, all of a sudden I wouldn’t remember anything about the promise I made you...”

  “And I could knock down the door of your room – which is next-door to mine, I am sorry to have to remind you – and drag you out,” he threatens.

  That image shouldn’t be sexy, should it?

  “Errr, less of the caveman business, please.”

  “But I thought you women liked it!”

  Some women actually do, but I’ve never been one of them. I’ve always been the kind of person who does the dragging, not the person who gets dragged. Not to mention that me being a feminist means I don’t find men showing off their brute strength much of a turn on.

  “You, Bertha, still have a lot to learn about women...”.

  Ari gives me a profoundly amused look. “I’ve never claimed different,” he laughs. “But for now let’s forget about difficult stuff like learning about women and go and eat.”

  “Do you know, when you try you actually sometimes manage to come out with something intelligent?”

  “Shocked, eh?”

  “Deeply.”

  “I like pulling the rug out from under you,” he says with an intense smile that sets my head spinning. Smiles usually have so little effect on me, but this guy is turning out to be a very dangerous exception...