Who is Lou Sciortino?

by Ottavio Cappellani

  “Cut to her. She’s running across this vast lobby, the lobby of the skyscraper, with her heels making, you know, a racket on the shiny marble floor, heading for the elevator. She’s devastated, body and soul. She’s got lips like a life preserver, a nose like a playground slide, and tits so big they look like they’re going to burst. In her soul she’s devastated by the things she saw in South America, the way the surgeon deceived her, how she was mistreated by the nurses, and apart from that, there was a massacre on the streets, they killed five innocent people right before her very eyes. So she can’t wait for the man she loves to take her in his arms and console her. And even though she’s devastated, she can’t resist giving herself the once-over in the elevator mirror, you can see how heartbreaking that is, she’s devastated by what she’s seen, but inside she’s still afraid the man she loves won’t like her.

  “Cut to the surgeon, brooding. He’s eaten up with anger because she rejected his advances and ran away. When they first arrived in South America, the surgeon was really a very pleasant person, and kind to the switchboard operators and the people working in the clinic, so kind that she thought, What a good man he is, but now, after she’s escaped, he changes, and loses his temper with the switchboard operators, he’s consumed with anger. I forgot to mention that while he’s operating on her, he’s got this sinister look in his eyes, and all the women in the audience, who can see how disappointed he is, are afraid he’ll kill her with the scalpel, or else scar her face, or put her nose where her mouth oughta be and vice versa. But it’s just a sinister look in his eyes: when he takes off the bandages and everything’s gone well, with everything in the right place, the women in the audience heave a sigh of relief … aaahhh. But there’s still this nagging doubt. Why did the surgeon have that sinister look in his eyes if he didn’t scar her? Could it be…? In the meantime, the movie continues, are you with me?”

  “Go on.”

  “Okay, so she’s in the elevator, and we cut to the surgeon, who’s brooding. And when he stops brooding, you know what he does? He sneers. That’s what the surgeon does: sneers.

  “Cut to the elevator. There’s this catchy music in the background, catchy, but calm and relaxing. So, la la la.

  “Cut to the surgeon, who’s sneering and looking at an X-ray. The camera tracks in and we see the surgeon’s got a remote in his hand.

  “Cut to the elevator door opening. The lovers’ eyes meet. They run to each other, fall into each other’s arms, and kiss. Then he looks in her eyes, notices how she’s changed, and says, like somebody who’s found himself back in the Garden of Eden, ‘Darling, I’ve always loved surprises.’

  “Cut to the wicked surgeon, sneering, and pressing the button on the remote control.

  “Cut to an exterior shot of the skyscraper, we see the top of the skyscraper explode.

  “Cut to the X-ray: the wicked surgeon has filled her tits with plastic explosive! The bastard.”

  “Your movie is shit!”

  “Spare me your fucking opinion, Lou! What are you, some cocksucker from The New Yorker? No. You’re just a good kid who’s going to build me a skyscraper. And you know why?”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m going to blow the top off for my picture, and then you’re going to sell what’s left to a different company. For peanuts, because after all it hasn’t got a top and there’s not a whole lot of market for topless buildings, then all you have to do is rebuild the top and get yourself some tenants, and on paper your first company’s lost money by underselling a skyscraper that was fine even when it didn’t have a top. Your money’s clean and I get to make my picture, Plastic Love … What do you think of the title?”

  “It’s a shit title,” you said. “But the idea isn’t bad…”

  * * *

  That was how the whole thing started.

  Insane as it was, your grandfather really liked that crackpot Trent’s idea. Movies, construction, and a great big fuck-you to the world!

  Things were going well … really well … until one day a bomb went off in the screenwriting department. Pieces of screenwriter everywhere: they didn’t know what hit them.

  To keep the Feds from nosing around, officially it was a fire. Those who’d heard the blast were politely told to keep it to themselves.

  Your grandfather hadn’t been expecting it. Now, he said, they had to find out which motherfuckers had done such an insulting thing, and come to an agreement.

  You said, “Are you telling me I gotta sit down with the people who stuck a bomb under my ass?”

  Your grandfather looked at you like he didn’t understand. “Lou,” he said, “listen. You got a company that’s right for you, no? I mean absolutely right … Those write-offs of yours were genius … So, you made a whole lot of money, and now some suckass faggot comes up to you and says, ‘You know what we’re gonna do? We’re gonna share.’ What do you do? Do you say yes? You tell him he’s out of his fucking mind. Then I come and I say, ‘No, let’s go into business together and share.’ Do you understand what I’m saying to you?”

  You said nothing.

  “Lou, that bomb was a smart move for those guys.” He rubbed his foot—“Fucking feet are killing me!”—then said, “Listen, I’d like to see you become somebody people respect … like one of those guys … I don’t know, like those fucking La Brunas from Manhattan … before … before I go…”

  “Go where, Grandpa?”

  “Nowhere. Forget about it, eh? Say”—he looked up suddenly—“do you remember Sal Scali?”

  “Sal Scali? The amaretti guy? In Sicily?”

  “That’s right. He’s got a family, he understands. Go to Sicily for a while, stay with Sal Scali.”

  You opened your mouth to speak, but the conversation was over.

  “I don’t want them to hurt you,” the old man said. “Is that enough of a reason?”

  * * *

  It was enough of a reason. You arrived in Catania and were met by a Joe Pesci type who looked like he’d just stepped out of a Madison Avenue tailor’s: Sal Scali, a guy who really put on the dog.

  Pesci-Scali explained to you the genesis of the Scali Amaretti … how the Sicilians who emigrated to America were crazy about them, how at first they exported them in the form of cakes, how they put some dumb niggers on street corners to sell the cakes wrapped in foil, how the business grew (“Like a dick in front of Sharon Stone,” he said) and how, thanks to your grandfather, Scali’s Amaretti now had elegant headquarters in New York.

  He revealed to you his Big New Idea: to launch Scali’s Amaretti on the market packaged with little romantic mottoes. “You pick it up, you eat the amaretto, and then you read the motto to the one you love …

  “So now,” he whispered, “you’re going to be … what do you call it?… a copywriter, my American copywriter, for all of Sicily, fuck it, the whole continent. We tell our friends Sal Scali’s brought you over from America to write his mottoes, huh?”

  He winked at you, and you knew this wasn’t a man who inspired your respect …

  * * *

  But where the fuck are you now, Lou? Why is there a wad of wet cotton moving around in your head, right inside your brain? And that fucking light … like out-of-focus neon, like the lights in a Harlem stairwell? And this feeling of numbness in your hands? And this stench, like the smell in your uncle Alf’s house on the day of his funeral?

  * * *

  It’s dawn on an October day in Catania Civic Hospital. The young man has just opened his eyes, and can see his distorted reflection in the metal rail of his bed. He moves his feet to make sure he’s alive. A toothless old man with a bowl in his hand, wearing a coarse pair of pajamas, is looking at him and smiling.

  “What happened?” the young man grunts, in English, shaking himself out of his lethargy.

  “Eh?”

  “What happened?”

  The old man goes on smiling. “Minchia, that’s all we needed—inglese.”

  The young man switches t
o Sicilian. “You know,” he says in a weak voice, “I can speak Sicilian better than you.”

  The old man can’t stop smiling, he’s so happy. “Tea!” he says, pointing to the cup, with an expression in his eyes that suggests he’s never drunk tea at home.

  “How long have I been here?” the young man asks.

  The old man doesn’t answer. Why should I tell you? he seems to be thinking.

  The young man stares at him. The old man stares back and sips his tea.

  The young man shakes his head, then says, “I don’t know how long I’ve been in this hospital, but I do know one thing. I usually carry a gun, sometimes I put it in my shoulder holster, you know what that is, don’t you? The kind you put under your armpit, it keeps the gun nice and warm. But sometimes I carry it on my holster belt … you know, near the back, so the handle sits right in the hollow of the kidneys. That way you can wear a tight jacket and nobody sees you got a gun. Well, not exactly nobody, because if you got a trained eye you can tell. But you couldn’t tell, old man. Then there are ankle holsters, you know what I’m saying? Ankle holsters are for shit, they’re uncomfortable, you walk like you got a limp, you can’t cross your legs when you sit down, in other words, a waste of fucking money. You know something, old man? It’s doing me a lot of good, talking to you. You really need somebody to talk to once in a while … Anyway, like I said, I don’t know how I ended up here, I don’t know who took my clothes off, I don’t even know if I was dressed when they brought me here, but … listen carefully here … I usually pack a piece. Are you following me?”

  The old man says nothing. He thinks the young man is delirious.

  “Now, it may be when they take you to the hospital and take your clothes off they also take your gun away, I don’t know, this is the first time I ever came into a hospital unconscious, and I don’t know the rules. But do you think there’s a remote possibility my clothes are in that dresser—you see that dresser?—my clothes and my gun? I doubt it, but what do you know? Are you sure? Of course you’re not. In other words: we don’t know. And that’s the point: neither of us knows. Now, here’s the deal. I get up, I open the dresser, and I see if my gun’s there. If my gun’s not there, I’ll have to be patient: I’ll go back to bed and find somebody else to ask. But if my gun is there, I swear on my honor I’ll take it and cap you in the knee if you don’t tell me right now when they brought me here. Is that a risk you want to take?”

  “Yesterday afternoon.”

  “Yesterday afternoon. Very good.”

  NICK IS ON HIS WAY HOME

  Nick is on his way home. His face and jacket are stained with blood, he walks quickly but cautiously, his pants falling down over his hips, the hem caught under the heels of his moccasins.

  He’s carrying a guitar case. He feels cold, and he’s just reached the street where he lives: a street of identical little villas off a busy highway. Across the highway, vacant lots, clumps of grass yellowed by the sun between dark masses of volcanic rock.

  The neighborhood isn’t downtown, it isn’t a residential area, and it isn’t a suburb: it’s all of these things, depending on how the street is lit. Right now there’s not much light, but there’s a huge billboard advertising a company that makes wedding dresses, and his neighbor Tony’s garden is all lit up for a party …

  Nick picks up speed. He’s limping. He must have sprained his ankle somewhere. He hopes nobody sees him. He walks even faster.

  Tony, who’s holding a huge steak impaled on a carving fork, sees him, and his face lights up. “Nick!” he shouts. “Nick! The barbecue!”

  Fucking barbecue!

  * * *

  Tony’s face is as smooth and shiny as a baby’s (“It’s a gift from the Lord,” he tells his customers. “It’s a curse,” says Uncle Sal, who thinks “a man should have a man’s face”). One day he started wearing silk shirts with huge collars, soft matching scarves, and pants too narrow even for somebody with a face like his. After a while, the reason became clear: he’d opened a hairdressing salon in the neighborhood, called Tony’s, a kind of catacomb furnished like an old-style bordello. (“It ought to be in San Berillo, with the hookers,” Uncle Sal remarked.) When he isn’t doing the neighborhood ladies’ hair, he’s throwing barbecues in his garden, weather permitting. Even in October, when the weather isn’t too good: he’s got at least four months of abstinence ahead of him and, minchia, he might as well put the garden to good use while he can.

  Tony liked Nick from the start.

  A few months earlier, he’d been worried about the house next door. It had stood vacant ever since the previous occupant, Signor Pulvirenti, left after the last of many arguments over the barbecues. Tony didn’t want to find himself with a new Signor Pulvirenti as a neighbor.

  The whole thing had come to a head one evening when, after the umpteenth disagreement, Signor Pulvirenti had taken aim with his garden hose and given the barbecue guests a shower. What Signor Pulvirenti didn’t know was that one of the guests was Uncle Sal, who that evening was wearing a bespoke suit with a thin light-blue pinstripe he’d just had delivered from Pavone, the Neapolitan he’s been using for years.

  * * *

  Uncle Sal likes to indulge a few “weaknesses,” as he says to his friends: made-to-measure suits, strange ideas (“brainwaves,” he calls them), and his niece Valentina, who’s at training college, or professional something-or-other institute like they call it these days, studying to be a designer. When the spray from Signor Pulvirenti’s hose scrambled the pinstripes on Uncle Sal’s new suit, the barbecue plunged into a somber silence.

  On the other side of the hedge, oblivious to everything, Signor Pulvirenti had continued shouting.

  Dripping wet, Uncle Sal had merely opened his arms wide and smiled, like a Pope saying, No, I won’t absolve you this time, God’s will be done.

  Articulating his words clearly, he’d said, “Wet new clothes, lucky new clothes,” and left the barbecue. Out on the sidewalk, his driver, head carefully bowed, had opened the door of the black Mercedes.

  The following day Uncle Sal had paid a visit to the party in question, and that very afternoon the party in question had moved out. When Tony discovered that the house had a new tenant, he decided to be a good neighbor and make the first overtures.

  He found out that the newcomer hailed from Porto Empedocle, that he was studying at the Faculty of Agriculture, and that his name was Nick. One evening he knocked at his door and asked him The Big Question: “Nick, do you have anything against … barbecues? You know … the smoke, the smell … Do they—what’s the word kids use these days?—you know, do they bug you?”

  Nick stared at Tony’s yellow shirt, orange scarf, and baby face. “Not at all.”

  When Tony got back home, he said to his wife, “He’s a good kid, polite … and real good-looking!”

  That was the evening Valentina, who’d come to see her cousin Tony, started to take an interest in Nick, an interest she’d never taken in anyone before.

  It was also the evening Nick became a regular guest at Tony’s barbecues.

  * * *

  “Nick, Nick!” Tony shouts again. “Come on over!”

  Nick hopes the guests won’t notice anything. He turns his head, counting on the fact that the lighting is in his favor, and says, walking faster, “Is that a barbecue? Gosh, I can’t, Tony … I have to run home and make a call.”

  Tony stands there, with the carving fork in his hand, disappointed.

  Disappointed and worried.

  This is the first time Nick has turned down his invitation.

  Really, the first time.

  It’s not like him.

  Uncle Sal looks at Nick, looks at Tony, and nods with a serious expression.

  When Uncle Sal nods, it’s obvious he isn’t thinking nice thoughts.

  “That kid’s too polite … I told you” (though he never had). Then he delivers his verdict. “He’s a snob.”

  Meaningless words, a simple opinion, almost a clic
hé between relatives. But to Uncle Sal, snob has a particular meaning. Snob means lack of respect, contempt for tradition … a brazen, conscious arrogance, a sin of pride that nobody, not even the Agnus Dei, can take away from the world. To Uncle Sal, snob means the Opposite: the Opposite of everything that’s worth living and dying for. In other words, the Opposite of the Family.

  Valentina turns pale, and Tony stammers something incomprehensible.

  For a brief moment, Uncle Sal hesitates, like there’s a small doubt eating away at the edifice of his thoughts; then the anger returns, more concentrated than ever.

  “A SNOB,” he says again.

  * * *

  Nick reaches his front door.

  “Fuck,” he says, “fuckfuckfuck.” Getting his keys out is a problem, it’s not easy to slip his hands in the pockets of his pants, because his hands are also covered with blood. Then he says, “Fuck,” again, takes the plunge, and slips his dirty hands in his pockets.

  The lock yields abruptly.

  Nick hurls himself inside and slams the door behind him. Without even turning on the light, he starts to undress, hopping with one leg still in his pants, gets to the washing machine, and throws everything in.

  Then he frantically turns the temperature control.

  * * *

  Via Etnea cuts the city like a whiplash, leading straight up to the volcano. On the right as you climb, about halfway up, there’s a dark back alley that links Via Etnea with Piazza Carlo Alberto. In the morning, the piazza is lively, full of merchants with their stalls. In the evening, though, it’s empty and deserted, lit only by a pink, ghostly light. A few hundred yards farther down, there are pubs, nightlife, but it doesn’t reach this far. A few students going home drunk, now and then. A few sudden shouts that echo and immediately die, nothing more. In the alley, the electric lights shine back from the wet sidewalks and the rivulets left by the October storm. It’s the time of year when people are happy to start wearing wool sweaters in the evening.