“Shit, yeah,” the man replied, finally looking up at her. His eyes were dark, the pupils barely distinguishable from the irises. “Like the contradiction I see in your face right now.”
Iris waited for him to go on. He didn’t.
“What contradiction?” she asked, at last, nervously. She was intrigued, though slightly perturbed by his disregard for the boundaries of their relationship. She had learned it was best for a woman in her position to keep her guard up at all times: cordiality was fine, as long as it remained professional. She constantly had to remind herself not to smile so much, not to act so interested in the people she met, not to get so personally involved in resolving their problems or satisfying their requests. Striking a balance was not an easy task when hospitality was your business, but it was absolutely necessary, especially when dealing with men, who were all too ready to mistake her kindness for an invitation to flirt, or worse. She had no intention of getting entangled in any banter that could open the floodgate to dangerous waters; once had been more than enough. All she wanted to know from this man was what he meant by his comment; she was curious, that was all.
“What do you mean?” she asked, again.
“I mean the smile. It doesn’t match.”
“Match what?” Iris asked.
“Maxie!” A short, bleached-blond woman in her twenties tottered over to them on stiletto heels, her well-padded hips jiggling as she wobbled along the irregular garden path. Iris wondered how this person, Rosina or Rosanna or something like that, who had been referred to in correspondence from RAI television as the “assistente di produzione,” could assist anyone, with her movements so hindered by those vertiginous heels and the short leather skirt that sheathed her hips, binding her thighs together. At least while she was standing, anyway.
“We got a wrap, Maxie? Can I tell the guys to pack it up?”
Though Iris was irritated by the interruption, she was relieved to hear the words; she couldn’t wait for the guys to pack it up. During the three days in which Massimiliano Vanesi had been filming at the Dimora Baia dell’Incanto, he had brought nothing but disruption to Iris and her hotel. Through some complex process of selection involving the Italian State Tourist Board, the State-owned, taxpayer-supported RAI Television, and a number of public and private sponsors, the Dimora was to be featured in one of a series of short videos promoting tourist destinations in each of Italy’s twenty regions. When the RAI logistics office had called Iris from Rome to set up the Portofino film shoot, they said there would be a small crew, and assured her that discretion was their highest priority: they would in no way be invasive or compromise the guests’ privacy. She had been hesitant to give her consent, but was convinced of the excellent marketing opportunity when she was told that in exchange for complimentary accommodations, the Dimora would be featured, at no cost to the hotel, in a video that would be seen by millions of viewers.
The hotel’s opening had gone well, but she knew that was just the beginning: novelty wore off quickly, competition was stiff, tourists were fickle, and it took time to build up a solid base of faithful clientele. She hoped the initiative would pay off in the long-term, but in the short-term its effects had only been the source of trouble. What had started out as a three-man crew ballooned into a three-ring circus with astonishing rapidity, and as all circuses Iris had ever seen, their antics made her want to cry rather than laugh. Within hours, the camera man Vanesi, the sound man and the director were joined by four others who tumbled out of a white van with a blue RAI logo, smoking and shouting in crass Roman accents into the cell phones pressed against their ears. Shiny aluminum cases of equipment were unloaded, spotlights mounted on tripods, thick black cables snaked along the pavement of the terrace, dining room and lounge. The crew in the van had lodgings in Rapallo, but came and went at all hours of the day and night, enjoying long breaks at the bar, guzzling espressos and drinks without paying or specifying to whose account they should be billed. The blond assistant, who signed her tabs with Vanesi’s name and room number, was an exception. According to the information Iris gleaned from the voci di corridoio, the reliable “corridor voices” of her staff, the young woman preferred to shed her skimpy garments in Vanesi’s room, rather than in her accommodations in Rapallo.
Thank God it was over now. In those three days, Iris had been barraged with enough complaints from the hotel guests to last the rest of her career, which might well be short-lived, considering the incessant ranting of Signora Mangiagallo, who was as horrified at the behavior of such vulgar people, as if they had pulled down their pants and defecated on the cushions of the creamy white Alcantara sofas tastefully arranged in the lounge. In order to placate the owner, Iris had approached the director about letting her son and his boyfriend appear in a scene of the video. After nodding noncommittally, he answered his constantly ringing cell phone, and began ranting at whoever was on the other end of the line. Vanesi, overhearing the conversation, stepped in and told Iris he would take care of it, adding that the director was the last person she should talk to if she wanted to get anything done. Now, if only Romina or Rosita or whatever the heck her name was would get lost, Vanesi could finish what he had been saying to her about her smile, then leave.
“So, Maxie? Are we packing up?”
Vanesi eyed the blond, who had stepped between Iris and him and stood there with her arms crossed just below her bosom, artfully boosting her breasts up and out of her low-cut top with her clenched fists.
“What the fuck are you waiting for? We had a wrap an hour ago,” he said. “I told you I was shooting this segment on my own. It’s a personal thing, to thank the Direttrice here for her cooperation.”
“Va bene, va bene!” she said, looking offended. “I get it, OK? Next time try saying what you mean. For once.”
“Next time, try listening,” Vanesi said. “For once.”
The woman took a deep breath as if preparing to say something else, then apparently thought the better of it and employed the air in her lungs to thrust out her chest as she strutted away, hips jerking, heels clicking.
“Cretina,” Vanesi muttered. He turned to Iris and smiled. “Excuse me, you were saying?”
“I wasn’t saying anything. You were. Something about my smile? About it not matching?”
“Right,” he answered. “Not matching your eyes.”
“What do you mean?” she asked, a third time. Maybe the blond woman was right, maybe this man made a habit of not saying what he meant. “What about my eyes?”
“There’s sadness trapped inside.”
“How can you say that? You don’t even know me.”
“Right,” he said. “Forget I ever said anything.” He waved one of the guys over, gesturing for him to dismantle and pack away his equipment.
“Are you finished?” She could kick herself for letting him bait her.
“Yep, I’ll be checking out early tomorrow morning,” he said. “Mind if I ask you something?”
“By all means, Signor Vanesi,” Iris said, hoping her formal tone would stave off any other gratuitous personal considerations.
“How about having a drink together, so we can talk about your eyes and smile some more?” he asked. Now it was his smile that did not match his eyes; the former was engaging and playful, the latter probing and lascivious.
“I’m afraid that won’t be possible. It’s late, and I have to take my sad eyes home,” Iris said. “But it’s been a pleasure having you at the Dimora.” She extended her hand. Vanesi took it in his, and shook it slowly. His palm was warm and moist, his fingers long, though plump, more like those of a trumpet player than of a pianist. Iris turned and walked away.
She felt jittery as she backed her car out of its usual parking space, and kept looking in the rearview mirror to navigate clear of a palm tree she had effortlessly avoided for months. Each time she glimpsed the reflection of her eyes in the mirror, she looked away quickly, feeling like a peeping tom caught spying on herself. She threw the gearstick
into first, headed for the exit and coasted down the hill to the Via Aurelia, where she made a sharp left turn, while tugging on her uncooperative seat belt which had mysteriously become too short to buckle. The little car swerved as she fumbled with a series of buttons to open the windows and sunroof with a whirring noise, letting in a rush of fresh evening air. She rummaged through her oversize handbag for the cigarettes she had bought the previous week just in case she should feel the need for an occasional smoke, which she did. She fished one out of the half-empty, crushed pack, pushed in the cigarette lighter, turned on the CD player, pulled out the lighter, touched the glowing metal to the end of the wrinkled cigarette dangling from her mouth, and drew on it. Wisps of smoke leaked from tears in the paper.
BeeeEEEEeeeep! An oncoming car blared its horn as it passed Iris in a blur of metal, shouted insults and furious gesticulations. She veered sharply to the right, returning her car to its proper lane just in time to avoid being sideswiped. Cigarette clenched between her lips, she grasped the wheel tightly to stop her hands from shaking, cursing herself for being in such a goddamn rush to leave the hotel and Vanesi behind her that she couldn’t take a minute to compose herself and prepare for the ride home.
Iris always looked forward to her to drive to and from work, a brief quarter of an hour in which she could savor a slice of solitude, as she cruised up and down the hills, suspended between the duties of work and the obligations of home. She much preferred the sense of freedom and convenience of the scooter as opposed to the confinement and bulk of automobiles, but had grown tired of Gregorio repeating that she was no longer a teenager, and that women her age didn’t drive Vespas in the dark or cold or rain. She had finally caved into his insistence and agreed to letting him buy her a car - as long as he didn’t expect her to drive a white station wagon, ever again.
Between shifting the peppy five-speed four-cylinder Fiat Seicento as she drove up and down the rolling coastal road, she used her right hand to free her hair from its ponytail, while her left managed the wheel and her cigarette. Her curly locks were sucked through the open top, and whipped madly about her face, its ends sticking to the gobs of lip gloss she had applied for the video Vanesi had shot of her. Embarrassment warmed her cheeks at the thought of such futile vanity.
There were advantages to driving a car, though, like it being slightly more difficult for a moment’s distraction to get you killed, and the opportunity to have a smoke in peace while listening to some music, without worrying about the noise bothering anyone. Singing in the car soothed her jangled nerves and freed her cluttered mind, chasing away thoughts of work as she drove home, and of home as she drove to work. She fast-forwarded to “Ruby Tuesday” but had replayed the old Stones CD so many times, and there were so many bumps and potholes in the road as she bounced along in her little car with its rudimentary suspensions, that it kept skipping. She ejected the CD and continued singing on her own.
Her voice rose with the chorus, lowered with the verses, disappearing under the sounds of the wind and the traffic. Mouthing the words she knew so well, she glanced at her face in the rearview mirror, looked back down at the road, looked back up at the mirror. What had the man seen in her eyes, anyway? From the very first phone call he had made to Iris to inform her of his requirements, Vanesi’s attitude had provoked conflicting reactions in her, and now that he was leaving, she still hadn’t figured out why.
“Che bella voce,” he had commented during their first conversation. “I’m curious. Where does that accent come from?”
“It’s American.” Everyone always asked her the same question.
“But you speak perfect Italian.”
“Thank you for saying so. I’ve been living here for a long time.” That was the answer she gave everyone.
“How did you end up on this side of the Atlantic?”
More of the usual cross-examination. There was no need to mention anything about a fairytale romance, or that a “long time” translated to a twenty-year-marriage, an unnecessary detail that would certainly lead the man to assume she was older and more boring than she would like to think. Not that there was any special reason for her to worry about what he thought, no more than she always worried about what anyone else thought.
“A series of reasons, I’d say,” was her reply. “You could call it fate, I guess.”
“Well, complimenti,” he had said. “I look forward to meeting you next week.”
“Thank you,” Iris had said. “It will be a pleasure. A presto.”
After hanging up the phone, she had jotted down some notes for the receptionist to type up for the housekeeping and restaurant staff, instructing them to offer whatever assistance Massimiliano Vanesi would require. As she mentally reviewed their conversation, she could hear his voice outlining his plans, dictating his list of requirements, telling her that his instructions superseded any she may or may not have received from the director. The blunt way in which he asked for things, his language and phone manner slaloming between authoritative, flirtatious and manipulative, combined with the inflection of his voice with its not-quite-Roman accent, had her responding with accommodating expressions like “nessun problema” and “assolutamente,” though with all the work she had to do, a film shoot on the hotel premises was a complication she could live without.
Downshifting to second gear to climb the final few kilometers of the winding road home, she told herself she had every reason to be relieved that the shoot was over. Gone would be Massimiliano Vanesi and his crew. Gone would be the rude shouts shattering the silence of the refined atmosphere Iris had worked so hard to create, and with them the stinking cigarette butts that filled every available ashtray, and stood half-buried in the soil of the potted plants. Gone would be her struggles with bellhops and maids, receptionists and waiters, who instead of doing their jobs strutted about in the hope of being spotted and asked to appear in the film. Gone would be the thrill in her bones and the buzz in the air as she witnessed the spaces she inhabited daily being transformed into sets for a film that would be seen by millions of people, if she could believe what the people at RAI said.
“Pronto,” Iris said, punching a button to activate the speakerphone.
“How many?” cackled the raspy voice at the other end of the line. Iris was struck by the permutations of negativity the woman could compress into three syllables. Signora Mangiagallo could probably hold a chunk of Parmesan in her hand and watch the cheese flurry down to her plate of spaghetti, grated to perfection, by merely talking to it.
“Buongiorno, Signora,” Iris answered, determined to maintain a courteous attitude toward the owner. Beatrix had warned her that the woman had never had a pleasant character, and was sometimes downright ornery, but she was confident that Iris, being so even-tempered and diplomatic, would know exactly how to deal with it. Iris had been brought up to respect the elderly, and in fact had actually enjoyed being around her grandparents and other old people as a child, but now she wondered whether age alone was a quality worthy of respect. For what reason should a person who had been selfish and mean his or her whole life suddenly merit deferential treatment?
From the bedroom window of her villa located in the park above the hotel, SignoraMangiagallo could see Iris arrive, and invariably phoned her before she could settle in at her desk. She pressed Iris for information and statistics she did not know how to interpret, screamed complaints in her ear about the staff member she had targeted for persecution that day, and drilled her as to the whereabouts of her grown son, as if Iris were his nanny. Reaching for the stack of papers already awaiting her attention, Iris could picture the woman up in her villa being served breakfast in bed, a night’s worth of spittle caked at the perennially downturned corners of her thin-lipped mouth. As Iris rifled through the papers, her attention was caught by the bold black handwriting sprawled across a sheet of hotel stationery. No doubt another complaint by a guest who had been disturbed by the crew, she thought, tossing the sheet aside to be dealt with later. First sh
e had to get the Signora off her back; then, get a cup of coffee. She began sifting hurriedly through the stack, searching for the previous day’s production statistics. The night auditor had standing instructions to leave the printout on her desk before going off duty, but for the second time that week, it was not there. She flipped the switch on her computer so she could retrieve the data directly from the property management system, then drummed her fingers impatiently on her desk as she waited for it to boot up.
Iris was in no mood for the shrew this morning; she had dozed only fitfully, her sleep having been interrupted by a series of disturbing dreams. She had awoken to the sound of the phone jangling, and the voice of Isabella reminding her that she was upstairs waiting for her injection of vitamin B12 to remedy the lethargy she had been experiencing of late. Isabella did not think it proper to bare her backside to her son, even if he was a doctor, and Cinzia had proven to be too heavy-handed for the job; using an orange for practice, Gregorio had taught Iris how to give the injection, leaving her with a new skill and a distasteful association between a fruit she loved and the shriveled buttocks of her mother-in-law.
Iris blinked her bleary eyes at the computer screen, logged in, selected the desired option from the main menu, then typed in the previous day’s date.
“Twenty-five, Signora,” Iris reported.
“Is that all? Twenty-five?” Signora Mangiagallo shrieked into the phone.
“That’s quite good for a Thursday night,” Iris replied, tapping into another function on the computer as she spoke.
“We have twenty-four double rooms, so if everyone is doing their job, in particular the manager, we should have forty-eight guests, correct?” Signora Mangiagallo said.
“But we had sixteen rooms occupied, and each was charged the full maximum rate for a suite. We are pulling in an excellent average daily rate.” Iris was weary of trying to explain that obtaining the same production by having fewer beds occupied at a higher rate was actually preferable to having more beds occupied at a lower rate. “The week after Easter rush is always a little slow, Signora.”
The Complete Series Page 94
