The Complete Series

by Angela Scipioni

  “Shhh!” Iris whispered, but Max pushed harder, the banging of the bed frame growing louder and faster with each of his guttural grunts and groans. “Silvana will hear us!” she said.

  Max grabbed Iris by the hips and flipped her over onto her tummy. When he shoved himself inside her, the bed slammed against the wall, and Iris cried out in pain. Max howled, shuddered, and collapsed on top of her.

  “Well, good morning, Capo,” Max said to Iris as she stumbled into the kitchen. She wondered how long he and Silvana had been sitting on their stools chatting.

  “Rough night?” Silvana said, raising her eyebrows over the demitasse from which she sipped espresso.

  Iris blushed, recalling Max’s bedroom antics. She had crashed after their lovemaking, and slept better than she had in days, but this morning she felt a vague sense of lack rather than a sense of satisfaction. She was probably just suffering from emotional overload; she would probably bounce back after a cup of strong coffee.

  “Beautiful day, isn’t it?” Iris said.

  “It sure is,” Max said. “In fact, it’s so fucking beautiful that we hatched a great idea while you were sleeping.”

  “Can I have some coffee first?” Iris said, lifting the lid on the Bialetti. Empty. She unscrewed the coffee pot and dumped out the used grounds.

  “You know what I was telling you yesterday? About those people Silli introduced me to?” Max said.

  “At Mediaset?” Iris asked, refilling the bottom section of the coffee pot with water, then dropping in the filter basket.

  “Yeah - well, it would be a huge push for me if I got to know them better,” Max said. “There’s a few of them in particular I need to feel out - for my movie project.” She sniffed the aroma of the coffee as she spooned it into the basket, passed her index finger along the outer rim to clean it, then screwed on the top. She put the pot on the burner and turned on the flame, wondering who would spew it out first, Max or the coffee pot.

  “Silli texted them all, and we already got twelve answers,” Max said.

  “Really?” Iris said, looking up at him and smiling. “They’re interested in the project? That’s fantastic!” She had been hearing him talk about his film project for so long, she was beginning to have serious doubts it would ever get off the ground. But the few times she had tried to ask Max for more specific information about the status of things, he had brushed off her questions and accused her of not believing in him.

  “Well for now, at least we got them to come!” Max said.

  “Come where?” The hairs on her forearm tingled, sensing the danger before her brain did.

  “Here, that’s where. For a party! Tonight!”

  Iris looked at Max, then at Silvana, then at Max again. “You invited people over for a party here? Tonight?” Her head was throbbing; she hoped the coffee would start bubbling up soon.

  “All thanks to Silli,” Max said. “She’s goddamn amazing.” Silvana beamed.

  “How many people, Max?” Iris said, her voice flat. Trying to talk Max out of a plan once it was set in motion was like trying to scoop live eels into a bucket.

  “Oh, no big deal, I’d say about twenty, tops,” Max said, glancing at Silvana, who shrugged.

  “Most of them will probably bring someone, a girlfriend, a husband - whatever,” she said. “Maybe forty, maybe thirty. Maybe more, maybe less. These guys are unpredictable.” She laughed and shrugged, the way the lenient mother of a rambunctious boy would dismiss complaints of his tomfoolery in the classroom.

  “Iris knows what to do,” Max said to Silvana. “It’s not exactly our first party, and she did used to manage a hotel, you know.” Turning back to Iris, he said, “So Capo, here’s the plan. You take care of the food, since that’s one thing you’re good at it. Remember, this is not a dinner party. No one’s really coming to eat, so don’t go overboard like you always do. I’ll drop Silli off at her place, then I’ll go stock up on the booze.”

  Coffee gurgled on the stove, filling the kitchen with its rich aroma. Iris took a mug from the cupboard and poured herself the entire pot, feeling guilty, but only moderately so, for not offering any to the others. It was going to be a long day.

  Cooking was one of the few things for which Max complimented Iris, and he was right about one thing: She was good at it. Years in the hospitality business had taught her whether fish came before meat in a menu, which wines to serve with each, and all kinds of other useful information. But the joy of cooking for a crowd stemmed from the times when there was only one course to chose from, when appetites needed no goading, and no matter how many people crowded around the table, there was always enough food for one more. She recalled the fun she and Lily used to have in the kitchen, getting dinner started for their mother when she first stepped out of her domestic domain and into the working world. But from the day their mother stepped away altogether, cooking became a daily chore for the girls, and Lily soon lost all interest.

  Cooking never bothered Iris, though, even when it was a duty. She remembered the last time she had prepared a meal for a large group of people, not very many days ago. It had been at Violet’s house, after Auntie Rosa’s funeral, when she had pulled out the biggest pot in the pantry and cooked up some pasta for the entire Capotosti clan. While the brothers drank beer and talked in the back yard, the sisters all pitched in to help. Jasmine and Violet, Marguerite and Iris chatted and sipped wine as they shared tasks and tears and laughter, secrets and truths and anecdotes. Lily had been unusually silent, though, drinking diet Coke as she chopped celery for the salad. Their mother, who had sat in a back pew at the funeral and hugged Iris afterwards, had gone home with her soft-spoken husband, possibly no longer capable of coping with so many Capotostis in one place.

  The family reunion had filled Iris with such joy, that if it hadn’t been a funeral, it would have been a fabulous party. The contrast between then and now saddened her as she cooked for the unspecified number of strangers who would soon invade her home. Today there were no peals of laughter or comments from people about how good the food smelled punctuating the sounds of her slicing and dicing. Her vision blurred by welling tears (she blamed the onions on the cutting board), Iris misdirected the knife, and chopped off a chunk of skin from her middle finger instead.

  “Shit!” she cried, sticking her finger under a stream of cold water, watching her blood swirl down the drain with an odd sense of loss and detachment. She wrapped a paper towel around her finger and went to get a bandage from the medicine cabinet.

  As she was leaving the bathroom, she noticed Max’s backpack sitting on top of the washing machine. Between Silli and the party, she had not yet had the opportunity to discuss travel plans with Max, but knowing he was not likely to give her much advance notice about their departure date, she thought it wise to get a head start on preparations and throw his clothes in the washer before getting back to her cooking. Dumping the soiled garments onto the floor, she wrinkled her nose at the ripe bouquet of odors and began frisking the items with pockets, where she discovered wads of used tissues, handfuls of sand, a small collection of seashells she assumed were for her, and various crumpled receipts and notes, which she set aside for him. While patting down his favorite khaki shorts, she came across a small, rectangular object she immediately identified as a mobile phone. Shaking her head and tsking her tongue at his absentmindedness, she removed the phone from the pocket, cringing to think how upset Max would have been if she had run it through the wash. She started the machine and returned to the kitchen, where she set the phone and the other salvaged items on the counter, and resumed her race against the clock with the added handicap of a bandaged finger. She was interrupted by the ringing of her home phone.

  “Pronto?” Iris said, picking up the cordless.

  “It’s me, Capo!” Max said. It made her happy to hear him in such high spirits. But she would be curious to know how much of his cheerfulness could be attributed to their reunion, how much to the prospect of a party which might also lea
d to new business, and how much to the presence of a one-woman fan club by the name of Silli. It was probably a three-way split. “I just wanted to check whether you were already home from the market,” he continued. “But since you picked up, I guess that answers my question. Do you need anything else while I’m out?”

  “No, thanks. I found everything I needed at the market, and I’m already cooking,” Iris said, cradling the phone on her shoulder as she stirred the cubed eggplant frying in one skillet, and the onions, celery, tomatoes and capers in the other. Caponata always went over well, and it was a convenient dish to prepare in advance. “Are you with Silvana?”

  “No, I’m picking her up in a few minutes because she wants to see where I buy the candles and torches. Why?”

  “I was just wondering where you’re calling me from.”

  “What are you talking about? From my phone, no?”

  The vegetables were starting to stick; she grabbed the olive oil to add some, but the bottle slipped from her hand and crashed to the floor.

  “Oh, no!” she cried.

  “What’s going on?” Max said.

  “Nothing, I’m just making a big mess. I have to go. I guess you’d better pick up some olive oil. Ciao.”

  “Sure, Capo. Ciao.”

  Iris tossed the phone onto the table, spread paper towels over the oily floor, and was about to combine the contents of the two skillets before they burned, when from the corner of her eye she saw a light flashing on the counter. By the time she finished what she was doing, the flashing had stopped. By the time she wiped off her hands, it had started again. She glanced at the silently flashing cell phone, and saw the name “PonzaLor” on the display. She stared at the device for a moment, trying to decide whether or not to answer. If Max had his phone with him, and she had found this one in his pocket, it must belong to someone else, and maybe that person had lost it. Something about the name flashing on the display was familiar, though; it had something to do with the system Max used when storing his contacts’ numbers, according to location. In this case, it would mean that the caller was in some way connected with his work in Ponza, while “Lor” would be an abbreviation of that person’s name. Which in turn would mean that this caller – perhaps a man named Lorenzo, for example - was looking for Max, not for the device. When the flashing stopped again, the screen updated the tally: 6 missed calls, 12 new messages.

  It was possible that this was a work phone the production people had provided Max as a fringe benefit, and if so, maybe she should let him know someone was trying desperately to get in touch with him. Or maybe she should check what this person wanted, to save him the time and bother. Or maybe she was just giving herself an excuse to pry.

  Growing up with a total lack of privacy had made Iris appreciate it as a sacrosanct right. She always respected Max’s privacy, but there had been some instances of his behavior in the past – the enigmatic expressions and truncated conversations when she walked into a room, the sudden solo trips to Rome to “check on things” - that made her vaguely uncomfortable, but which she did not question out of fear of being considered jealous or old-fashioned. Whether prompted by a surge of female intuition, or a sarcastic remark of Lily’s, or an eye-roll of Bea’s, or a whisper of Auntie Rosa’s, Iris’s index finger began pressing keys on the cell phone. All six missed calls were from “PonzaLor,” as were all the unread messages. The information was not enough to satisfy her curiosity, but more than enough to arouse her suspicions. All she needed was to read one message, then she could forget about it and get back to her cooking before she burned everything. Of course, she would then have to cancel the message if she didn’t want Max to know it had been tampered with, but she had to do what she had to do. She would cross that bridge when she came to it. She tapped on the most recent message:

  Max!! Why aren’t you answering my calls??

  The message certainly couldn’t be considered compromising. All it confirmed was that this phone Iris knew nothing about did indeed belong to Max. Maybe PonzaLor was some guy connected with his assignment. She’d have to read another one to be sure.

  When are you coming back to finish what you started?

  That made sense. Max had rushed off when he got the OK for the Mediaset meeting, and he must have left some unfinished business. She felt reassured. Sort of. But maybe she should read another.

  The moon we shared that night has vanished. But not the memory of what happened.

  What moon? What memory? What happened? Iris held her breath, her fingertip poised over the next message.

  The thought of you with another woman is driving me insane.

  Her racing heart throbbed, her rushing blood pounded in her ears together with the sizzling, bubbling, and boiling sounds of the vegetables screaming for attention. She turned to the stove, switched off all the burners and, weak-kneed and shaking, leaned against the refrigerator for support, realizing that she, Iris, was the other woman. Her back slid down the cold steel door, her feet slipping and sliding in olive oil until she found herself on the floor. She sat there, curled into a ball, tears rolling down her cheeks, spasms gripping her gut, as with trembling fingers she searched the phone’s memory for evidence that this Ponza woman was delusional, that she was misinterpreting Max’s harmless flirtation, that it was all a big mistake.

  Iris quickly reviewed her options and decided she should do nothing, at least not for now. She abhorred melodrama, and it was too late to call the party off without creating a scene. She would pull herself together, keep a close eye on Max, then confront him tomorrow, when they would finally be alone. There still might be a logical explanation; after all, there was no trace of any sent calls or text messages from that phone. Iris had taken too many risks, made too many sacrifices, caused too much pain, invested too much of herself in their relationship to throw it all away over a misunderstanding. She hid the phone in a cupboard, then went to the bathroom and splashed cold water on her face. A pair of frightened red eyes blinked back at her from the mirror, as she patted her splotched face with a towel then opened the medicine cabinet and took out her box of little blue pills. She popped one out and put it in her mouth, bending and tipping her head under the faucet to gulp the water that dribbled down her cheek and chin, then went back to the kitchen to clean up the mess on the floor, and finish preparing for the party.

  Out on the terrace, Silvana giggled and sputtered, waving a hand theatrically in front of her face, while Max fanned the charcoal he was attempting to ignite in the grill. He had bought both on a whim while out shopping with Silvana, after they had been struck with the brilliant idea that barbecued pork ribs would be a fun addition to whatever Iris had planned. The living room and kitchen were filling with smoke, and Iris had already spotted a few of their neighbors leaning out from their balconies to see where it was coming from. Although Iris knew she could do a better job negotiating with both the neighbors and the grill, she was determined to let Max deal with it. She wanted no part of his porkfest, and besides, every American woman knew that grill duty fell to the man of the house. As for her duties as hostess, Iris had managed to fix everything on time, including her appearance. Cooking always calmed her nerves, and with the help of another pill or two, her internal organs seemed to be under control again. Congratulating herself on her composure, she poured herself a glass of the wine Max and Silvana were already drinking, just as the first guests rang the bell.

  Throughout the course of the evening, no one - not even Max, who was busy entertaining the new circle of friends gathered around his half-charred, half-raw pile of pork - seemed to notice Iris’s silence as she slipped in and out of the kitchen setting out trays of food on the buffet table while making sure bottles were uncorked, glasses filled, soiled dishes cleared. No one seemed to expect that she would participate in the animated conversations revolving around television programs and personalities, soccer players and politicians, love affairs and upcoming vacations.

  Despite not giving a damn about any of the peo
ple milling around the buffet and heaping their plates with the food she had prepared, it gave Iris a certain satisfaction to watch the expressions on their faces as they gorged themselves. Sometimes it was interesting to step back and observe from a distance; it helped you see things you wouldn’t notice close up. Take Max, for example. She wouldn’t call his style of flirtation harmless; lascivious would be a more accurate adjective. And the crude jokes he exchanged with the men were idiotic and vulgar. As the alcohol flowed, the voices around her grew louder, the behavior more deplorable. Though she herself could not eat a thing, she gripped her wineglass tight all night. It reassured her - and also prevented her from being mistaken for hired help.

  She tried to remember a comment Lily had made that day at her house, something about looking at people through a window or something. That was sort of how she felt now, as she watched Max and his buddies. Sort of detached, like she wasn’t really there, like she was on the outside looking in. But that wasn’t quite what Lily had said. It was hard to remember now, what with all the talking, and the music, and the wine.

  Iris detested getting up to a mess in the morning, but Max held the view that cleaning up was a downer after a good party. In the end, they each always did as they liked. Iris squeezed one more glass into the dishwasher, and started the machine, not caring whether it disturbed anyone’s sleep. She glanced over at Silvana, sprawled on her back and snoring, having conked out before she could change out of her clothes or pull open the sofa bed. Max had still not satisfied his desire to play with fire, and was amusing himself by the grill, having rustled up enough embers to ignite the used paper napkins and any other burnable waste.