Five Urban Stories

by Thomas Dalcolle

  Sofia had pronounced the last mocking question with a lascivious yet creepy grin. The cards were face-up on the game table.

  “Ah, that’s it? Fulvia asked for your advice, and you told her everything! For the pleasure of tantalizing me, after getting rid of her?”

  “Never! We agreed to hold our story between the two of us, and I kept my word. I only made Fulvia reflect on how pointless a relationship was with a man who was only fooling someone for sex. Apparently, I convinced her. Well enough!” She laughed openly this time.

  “I will make you pay for this your way of mocking me,” I said in a pretended rabid voice, and I turned her to take her hard.

  It had become an open game and, pretending to be full of rage, I really felt angry against Sofia, pushing her to an absolutely new level of satisfaction.

  When she stopped gasping and shivering, she burst out with, “O-ho! Yes! I like you when you’re annoyed!”

  “Sure?”

  “Yes! I will make you suffer more often.”

  It’s been so that, recovering my breath, I realized for the first time that this sex-panther by my side had just shown the beginning of her concealed load of rewards. Looking well, she was so accountable but also so malicious and lustful that, maybe, I should have tried the real thing with her.

  But who could grant me that she wouldn’t turn out to be the typical cheater that similar women were—and are?

  Right then, her phone vibrated. It was on silent mode, and she accepted the call after a short hesitation.

  “Hello? Yes. But I’m sleeping now. I’ll call you back tomorrow morning,” and she hung up. Then she jumped from the bed.

  “I must wash. I think I will take a shower. Is the water warm?”

  “Do you think I am a barbarian? One who invites a lady to a place where she must use cold water? Don’t worry, and have your shower. I’ll reach you in a minute.”

  She’d made the mistake of leaving the bedroom so quickly. Her phone was still unblocked after the last call, and I could make a fast check on her—for the first time.

  The last call was from someone called Marco. I went straight to the messages’ registry, and I opened the ones with Marco’s name.

  They were dating.

  At the third attempt, I found conclusive evidence.

  It was a message from Sofia to that Marco. She said something like, “It’s been all too fast. It is wonderful how good it is, but you must give me more time.”

  I copied the phone number of Marco on my phone. I didn’t even know why.

  Then, I put her phone back.

  Yes, she was the ordinary cheater entertaining multiple relationships, and if she was cheating on me now, when our mutual enjoyment was still undeniable, for which reason would she stop, even if I pushed myself to decide to marry her? And, all considered, would she accept?

  I broke that thoughts' flow: there was no point to bother me with similar questions.

  After a while, a woman with Sofia’s habits feels trapped when she marries, and that makes things even worse.

  I reached her under the shower which was pleasantly warm, not too hot. We kissed, and we washed each other, and then we helped us drying our bodies and our short hair.

  When we went back to bed, we were as fresh and fragrant as blooming flowers; we clutched to one another and instantly fell in blissful sleep.

  In the morning, we woke up soon, just after sunrise, and we made love. After, we fell asleep again.

  At about nine, I prepared breakfast, and we had it together in the kitchen. Then, we lazily sailed towards Rome, getting in through its eastern suburbs that were almost empty and seemed oddly silent, still dozing off the first hours of Sunday morning.

  Sofia had her free day, but I had told her I had to finish a document by Monday morning, and I left her in the apartment.

  In the following weeks, Sofia lessened her requests gradually. Everything smoothly glided to the routine of a passionate couple. If that Marco or anybody else was still there, as I believed, Sofia didn’t make it notice, nor made me regret anything of her.

  Conversely, she showed steadily improving abilities in bed, and a surprising instinct in inflicting some controlled pain to intensify the discharge of pleasure. Something that her powerful and lean body allowed her, without effort.

  Her thighs were beautifully shaped but incredibly strong and clinched my waist in a breathtaking clasp to thrust me deeper inside her when she was about to come.

  Her well-cared-for nails raked my back and buttocks at the right moment of my last shots—heavenly!

  I’d have to be glad. But the truth was that I missed Fulvia again, in an almost unbearable way.

  And there were also logical reasons behind my regret. At that point, after enjoying my boyish revenge on Fulvia, what had I got with my foolish swing from one to the other of the two girlfriends?

  I’d sacked the younger, more genuine and passionate girl, who didn’t hide her wish to build a serious relationship with me.

  On the other side, I’d started a dating routine with a professional sex artist, one who fucked around with many, and one who wasn’t interested in a stable relationship.

  Sofia had acted to undermine my story with Fulvia, but without taking further steps with me, apart from using me as a living sex toy in her pleasure games.

  I tried calling Fulvia again.

  In the following days, only a few times, calling with covered name, I succeeded in catching her. But she was cold as ice, unshakable, and she didn’t want to see me. No matter where and how short our meeting would be, she always hung up.

  After that, nothing. She also avoided calls from a public telephone. As a last try, I went to wait for her on that lonely street. I knew she crossed by there to take the bus for work.

  Fulvia was working in a bar and fast-food place inside a large multiplex cinema. It was one of those places equipped with a powerful sound system and three-D effects, where you can choose between four or five different films every few days, part of a big entertainment and media company based in Rome.

  I knew that she was on the night shift every first week of the month, and that she would leave home at about half-past seven to reach her working place by eight.

  I parked the car at the end of the street. I walked in the direction from where she had to come and hid behind a sharp curve in the gloom of the wintery evening.

  I perfectly knew that I was doing a foolish thing, and maybe even dangerous, but I had no choice.

  A few minutes after half-past seven, Fulvia appeared, walking at a good pace in my direction. I rejoiced she hadn’t got a ride from somebody.

  When she arrived too near to run away, I showed up, just saying, “Hi, Fulvia! Please, let me give you a lift.”

  She got scared and insulted me with an endless sequence of bad words, but I managed to calm her down. I explained that she hadn’t allowed me any other choice for seeing her and that I only wanted to take her to work and talk a little. I begged her to let me speak with her for a short time.

  To my surprise, she stopped my pleading with a sort of regal, condescending gesture of her hand and accepted my offer of a ride. But she also intimated that she didn’t want me to disturb her further with the plea for a date.

  It was better than nothing but, walking towards my car, I bothered myself thinking how incredible it was that she hadn’t yet found a substitute for me. I realized I had no time to waste. She was lovely and young, and soon somebody else could win her, after a relentless courting.

  I couldn’t give up; my feelings and my whole body were shouting it aloud. Now, near to her, I could feel my uncontrollable need to take her, not only to make love but to impregnate her. I wanted a child from her and to marry her.

  Since she had ordered me not to talk, as soon as she got in the car and closed the passenger door, I merely grabbed her breasts and kissed her long neck, inhaling her perfume eagerly, and then her cheeks and her lips, with no reluctance from her.

  “Oh, m
y love, I missed you all the time,” I gasped in a pause of the kiss-blast. “It’s absurd! We can’t stay apart, I will marry you this time, you must believe me …”

  She removed her chill mask and showed something like a somber smile.

  “You must stop fooling me. Why is it so important for you?”

  “What fooling! Now I know that I can’t stay without you, and I want you forever, my love!”

  I’d done it again! That night, I waited for her at the end of the working shift, and we went to my place.

  In the following days, I moved north for work. I had to stay in Milano during the weekend, to perfect the documents I had to discuss in a meeting with an important customer, on Monday morning.

  After that, I had planned to go back home.

  I mused on how to tell Sofia my decision. If she felt hurt, she could create great trouble, telling Fulvia everything about our secret dating during all those months; she could even spoil all our new plans.

  On Thursday I called her to fix a date on my first evening back home, but she’d turned off her phone. Then I called the Sofitel, and I learned that she had taken a short vacation, and would be back on next Monday.

  On Friday, at lunch break, I received an unexpected call from Sophia. She wasn’t using her phone, another odd thing.

  Nobody at the hotel reception could have informed her of my call because I hadn’t told my name. So, why was she calling me from some vacation place on a fixed line?

  “Hello, Franco. It’s Sofia. How are you? Am I disturbing you?”

  “I’m fine, and no problem, I’m having a break. What about you?”

  “I’m fine too, but I have nasty news.”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Somebody killed Fulvia last night,” she added in a calm voice, then she remained silent.

  “What? Are you fooling me? I don’t like this kind of joke!”

  The colleagues who were eating sandwiches at my table stared at me with concern.

  “I’m not joking,” Sofia replied. “The police found her body early this morning, in the bushes to the side of that dark, narrow street. You know which one.”

  “No! It’s impossible,” I uttered in the phone, leaving the bar and walking back and forth on the sidewalk like a psycho.

  “Oh, my God. How? Who killed her?”

  “The little I know is what I heard on the TV news this morning. It seems a car hit her from behind. You know, that damn street doesn’t have a sidewalk, and the public lights are few and dim. She was walking towards home; they reported her neck broke from the impact. Must have died without even noticing it.”

  “Oh, no! It's terrible! Fulvia, poor girl, I can’t believe it. I can’t believe it—”

  “Franco, I know how difficult it is. I’m bewildered, too, but try to keep your wits about you. We’ll need them.”

  I didn’t understand what she meant with that odd sentence. “What? We’ll need them? How?”

  “Try to reason, Franco. We’re both connected to Fulvia. Eventually, the police will call us. And…I think we’d better agree on what to say, to avoid contradictions and useless complications.”

  “What do you mean? Contradictions? I have nothing to hide! Last night I was here, hundreds of miles away, and I have plenty of witnesses.”

  “Try to understand what I mean! Sure, you were there! But, you know, it is always a case of homicide. I think it is better the police doesn’t know about our story. Only to avoid complications and being questioned only once. You never know what may pass in a police detective’s mind when it is about murder.”

  “So, what would you suggest?”

  “When are you coming back?”

  “On Monday evening.”

  “Okay. Don’t use your cellphone to call me, and I won’t, either. On Tuesday morning, I’ll call you at your studio, on the fixed line, and from a public telephone. We should meet on Tuesday evening to agree on our version. In case the police call one of us before then, say nothing about our story, and I will do the same. Nobody knows about us, and we risk nothing. We’ll just avoid worthless suspects and a lot of inconvenient questions. Do you agree?”

  “Okay,” I said feeling drained. “I’ll wait for your call on Tuesday morning.”

  “Now, try to relax, and have a good day.”

  “Yes, thank you…and you too.”

  After that news, I passed some of the most horrible days I remembered having in my life. Even that call from Sofia, all those pointless precautions she’d suggested, was making me feel utterly uneasy.

  But that same evening, I had to change my mind. Sofia’s cautions weren’t pointless nor absurd at all.

  On the national news, there was a short item on the accident, and there was a hint that something in the case was unclear. They said the police were investigating in several directions. That jargon usually meant the police weren’t fully persuaded of the car accident.

  On Tuesday morning, I reached my studio early. I sat in front of the computer to read the online news about the case of Fulvia, but then I thought it was better to read a newspaper to avoid leaving a clue.

  "A clue of what?" I asked myself while reaching the nearest kiosk to buy a local newspaper.

  In fact, the whole situation, mainly the cautious behavior of Sofia, caused an irrational sense of guilt to build inside me.

  Back to the studio, I went through the local news. I learned that the body didn’t show the ordinary damage due to a car accident. The neck bone had been broken neatly, as it might happen because of a single blow, direct and localized.

  The many excoriations and the bruises usually present on a person hit by a car were absent.

  I sweated while summing up the situation. The ringing of the phone surprised me, making me jump on the office chair.

  It was Sofia, and she suggested to meet that evening at half-past eight, and then reach our usual place. She gave me an appointment in a definitely remote location, far from her apartment and from her hotel, at the border of a vast public park, the Caffarella Park, which is unattended, and a very lonely place.

  It was renowned as unsafe at night, but she said it was better than in a place where someone could see us together. Meeting at that lonely place was the best thing.

  “See you this evening and have a good day,” she said before hanging up.

  “Wait, a minute. May I ask you something?”

  I wanted to check if she had an alibi for the night of the accident, ask her where she was and who could confirm it.

  But she didn't allow me to ask anything. “Not now," she replied. "When we meet, you can ask me anything you want.” And she hung up.

  After that call, the phone rang again. It was the first of the many work calls that followed. The new project of Real Estate Financing in which I was engaged, was gaining momentum, and everything seemed to go in the right direction.

  A pity that I hadn’t any financial share in this new activity!

  I would receive high compensation when the final project was approved, on top of the generous monthly anticipations that I was already receiving, for the current expenditures. But that wasn't too bad; it was a safe condition, and in my present situation, I couldn’t afford any further financial risk.

  Working hard on this and on some other projects of the same type, I hoped to gradually recover, and then climb safely out of the cesspool where I had slipped.

  At seven o'clock, I closed the studio. It had been a busy day that hadn't allowed me time to think again about the last depressing facts and their weird developments.

  But when I got in the car to reach Sofia, and I drove towards the capital and the place of our meeting, I felt again that uneasiness lurking at the back of my mind.

  The situation wasn’t just weird; it was scaring the hell out of me.

  After the large toll station of Fiano Romano, I left the highway north of Rome, at Settebagni, I sped along the Raccordo, eastwards, running clockwise in its inner ring, and, finally, I entered the c
ity from South East, at the Appia exit.

  Driving along Via Appia Nuova toward the center, I was still perplexed as I analyzed the athletic body of Sofia, her swiftness and strength.

  I imagined her jumping and then moving in the air in slow motion, stretching her right leg completely to hit the neck of Fulvia with the heel. I heard the sharp snap of the bone breaking.

  At Colli Albani square, I turned left, and I reached the last part of Via Latina, where the city seemed to finish abruptly in an open, rural landscape.

  Driving along Via Latina, back towards Via Appia, you have on the left a dense urban fabric of streets and residential buildings, but on the right only open fields.

  There! It was barely more than a wildland, furrowed by narrow ground pathways which disappear among low green hills and bushy valleys. It was the vast park of the Caffarella, nearing with its south-occidental border the ancient relics of the Appia Antica road, paved with stout millenary stones.

  I parked at the junction of Via Latina with Via Bartoloni.

  At that point, there was an entrance to the park, near the so-called Cisterna del Ninfeo, a recently restored Roman ruin.

  From a simple opening in the low fence of burnished metal, three different pathways of reddish ground depart to disappear in different directions inside the park.

  It was night already, and I was on time, but Sofia wasn’t there. I waited for ten minutes inside the car, then I took the phone, and I called her.

  Her phone rang, but she didn't answer. Then a recorded voice asked me to leave a message, and I hung up.

  I wondered what else had happened. Another ten minutes passed slowly, then I got out, locked the car, and, with a great sense of doubt, I entered the park.

  My instinct told me to walk along the rightmost pathway, towards the Ninfeo ruins. Right then, I saw the shape of Sofia emerging from the park’s shadows, walking fast toward me.

  “You are twenty minutes late,” I said. “What happened? And why didn’t you answer my call?”

  “Nothing, calm down and let’s go to your car.”