Something Great and Beautiful

by Enrico Pellegrini

  “Drugs?” said Chloé. She rolled the sleeves of my shirt up to her elbows and pointed one by one at the scars, which remained visible on her arms. “You mean antibiotics.”

  Now the rage seemed to have flown from my face into hers, and a tear cut her cheek. “You thought I was an addict? You thought I shot up? Yes, I shot up with antibiotics. You want to know why?”

  In the air freshened by the storm the moment of truth had come. I looked deep into her eyes, which I couldn’t understand, for which I had gotten rich and sold myself, those eyes I had pursued to the ends of earth, and which were still fleeing to some downtown party.

  “My mother called off my thirteenth birthday party because I had a headache. In October I was pulled out of my first year of high school. It was not just headache. My neck and knees were swollen like watermelons and when I woke up one morning, my headache was so strong that my jaws were moving by themselves. So we started with the doctor game. We saw doctors and doctors, but they couldn’t understand. We tried treatment after treatment, but they didn’t work. Each time we saw a new doctor, he would prescribe another course of antibiotics, another dose of drugs.”

  Chloé lowered her forehead as though it was all her fault. “By the end the nurse couldn’t find a good vein on my arm.”

  Near the five stars above the park, another star appeared. Now they formed a lion. And at each word she spoke, the lion seemed to take a step into the middle of the sky.

  She spoke quickly. “I remember the sound of the mattress every time the nurse turned my body to the side so that I wouldn’t get cheloids on my heels. It seemed that my mattress was made of cobs. If you only knew what it is like to be in bed at thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen…to see your mother sitting there, and your friends speaking quietly in your room because they don’t want you to know what you’re missing, who they’re seeing tonight, where they’re going on holiday. I was always in the same bed I was the day before, the month before, the year before. By the time they finally isolated the bacterium, my parents’ insurance had long since run out. I had a variant of Lyme, which, back then, was not known at all.”

  “Lyme disease?” I asked. I didn’t know much about it either. “So, that’s why you finished high school in one year and university in two?”

  “Yes, when I was back on my feet. And that’s why I was in India as a journalist to try to make some extra money, and the Mickey Mouse crimes like dognap-ping to pay for the law school. After six years of private clinics, my parents were broke. I’m still sending money home now. And that’s why I never went to parties, and I can’t dance, and I don’t drink.” She was choking back her tears. “And why—”

  “But how long were you in bed?” I asked.

  Now her beautiful green eyes, rimmed by a bit of makeup, were neither happy nor sad. They looked like two fish underwater at Pozzetto beach.

  “From thirteen to nineteen.”

  caressed the scars in the hollow of her arm, her best years forever taken, and pulled down her shirtsleeves.

  At that moment I understood why I had chased her to the ends of the earth. After I kicked off my shoes on the terrace, I ejected my light gabardine suit and tied my tie to a deck chair.

  “Why are you stripping?”

  “I want to be even,” I said, wearing only my monogrammed shirt. I threw my boxers—crunched in a ball—as far as I could, and climbed onto the railing.

  “What are you doing? Are you crazy?”

  Chloé ran to the railing and grabbed my arm.

  Ten, nine, eight, I started counting, just like when I dove down from very high up to reach the Christ of the Abyss. Fuck, I’m up high now, I thought, looking at Essex House, the proud flags of the Plaza Hotel, the dark and luminous teeth of the great city of desires that had welcomed me. Five, four…I was still in time. Three, two…Not to go for her. But I dove. On her bruises, in her petroleum-green eyes, between her lips.

  CHLOÉ VERDI

  May 4, 2009, New York City

  s this a love story, Ms. Verdi, or a Ponzi scheme?” asked the prosecutor.

  ROSSO FIORENTINO

  September—October 2008, New York City

  rimrose’s funeral took place on a clear September morning, at Don Otto’s, who now lived on a forty-acre estate near East Hampton. We were all in the garden, dressed in black suits, accessorized with long, burgundy-colored neckties, and only Marie Alice was missing. The baker slowly emptied out the pot and put the flower to rest in the shade of a large oak. Now the petals, no longer strong and purple, had a soft pink color. They were almost transparent.

  “Here you go, Primrose…,” said Don Otto, tossing another handful of earth on top of the stem, and a big, fat tear danced in the corner of his eye.

  On the very same evening the baker had knelt on the white sand at Sag Harbor and proposed to Marie Alice, the gardener had said, “This flower’s sick,” as though it knew that Don Otto’s heart had room for just one.

  As a sign of mourning, after Primrose’s funeral, the wedding preparations were put on hold for a few days. Then they resumed more frantically than ever before, growing more complicated than a restructuring of Focaccia House.

  At first the bride and groom thought of holding the reception at La Cervara in Italy, where some elegant weddings took place in the nearby fourteenth-century abbey, but it was too complicated. Then they discussed getting married at Marie Alice’s house in Queens, but the garden was too small for dancing. So they started visiting some hotels downtown and found a free Saturday at the Puck Building on 295 Lafayette Street.

  “I don’t know,” said Marie Alice, leafing through the thirty-two-page HP inkjet glossy brochure. “I don’t want to be married someplace where thirty couples get married every year.”

  So they stopped talking about where and started discussing the rest, hoping that by discussing the rest they would resolve where: Shall we do a buffet or a seated dinner? Assigned seating, or just a sit-down without assigned seats? And how are the ushers greeting the bridal party outside the church? No, they’re not throwing rice, it chokes the pigeons! Right, and what should the ushers wear? Can you believe that all the churches in Manhattan are booked through October?

  One Friday evening in early September, when they were about to give up forever on the idea of getting married, they found themselves sharing nachos at the Frying Pan, at Pier 66 Maritime in Chelsea. The glorious ship that had once served during the American Civil War was now demoted to a nightclub. The plastic tables had been beautified with pots of violets that looked just like Primrose’s city cousins.

  “Should we have candlelight?” asked Don Otto looking down anxiously, as he did when he was kneading and there were thirty pans to bake before dawn.

  “Candlelight is a major enterprise!” snorted Marie Alice. Then she drew the baker to her and kissed him on the mouth. “Okay, okay, we can have candles.”

  The Frying Pan was the chosen venue.

  hen the bride and groom left the St. Demetrios Cathedral in Astoria, Queens, it was a warm, clear October day. Handel’s Ave Maria poured softly out of the central nave into the street, and outside the ushers blew soap bubbles instead of throwing rice. Sachin and Federico followed Marie Alice, each holding a corner of the longest veil. Federico, the now sixteen-year-old painter, had come all the way from Italy for the occasion; with his curly blond hair he looked just like an angel flown down from the golden altar. Then the newlyweds jumped into the limousine and we all drove to the Frying Pan to the honking of horns.

  Because they hadn’t agreed on the dress code, the invitation said chic, but not in jeans, but nobody knew what that meant, which created some level of chaos. It looked like a costume party rather than a wedding. The guests wore everything from tuxedoes to cutaway morning jackets as if it were a British wedding, to white ties and tails as if it were an Austrian wedding, to a Battle of Berezina Russian military uniform (Buvlov
ski), and there was one orange-popsicle-colored attire and matching top hat (Sachin, given the importance of the color orange in Hinduism). Other guests—the more elegant ones, like Franz—showed up in white linen suits.

  Given that there was no seating chart, at around six o’clock everyone sat at a table of their own choice. Don Otto and Marie Alice had reached an honest, yet not entirely practical, compromise: a nonassigned sit-down dinner with a small buffet for the cheeses. Some seating worked well (Franz next to David Jeffrey, given their randomly discovered common passion for imperialism and shared view that the United States should take over Canada); some seating worked better (Chloé’s old Chicago roomy Juncal to the left of Buvlovski) than others (Lucien Verger to the right of Buvlovski). Cesar the publisher and Miranda and Anna Carlevaro, whom Sachin had insisted on inviting from Italy, were a bit pissed because they all ended up at the same table, and therefore weren’t able to meet anyone. Miranda was talking about quitting the publishing world and starting a business competing with Focaccia House (she discussed the pros and cons of farinata, a type of Italian pancake made with chickpea flour).

  “I always wondered about Tajikistan’s economy,” said Buvlovski at some point during the main course, sitting stiffly in his great-grandfather’s Battle of Berezina Russian military uniform. “Who are your clients?”

  “Farmers,” said Juncal, who was displaying the most vibrant tan of the party.

  “Farmers? So what can your hourly rate possibly be?”

  “Goat milk yogurt, solyanka, and lemon cake.” Juncal nodded. “But on weekends we also get to smoke free pot in the mountains.”

  Lucien Verger raised his index in question mode. “May I squeeze in an idea?”

  “Please pay no attention, Mr. Buvlovksi,” said Marie Alice, elbowing Verger, who had seated himself next to her. “For sixteen years he’s been saying he wants to change his job.”

  “Well, it’s been six months that I’ve wanted to change my job too!” said Buvlovski laughing.

  “Trust me, Dimitri, my new idea is a clean business,” repeated Lucien Verger, drying his long white nose. “Porn has disappointed me.”

  They all wanted to change jobs, except for Cesar, who promised he would die as a publisher.

  As the sun was setting and the skyscrapers’ reflection in the ocean faded, I continued watching for Chloé. She said she might be arriving late, I reassured myself. After Chloé had finished her leave and returned to SL&B, they’d been working her hard. We had been dating a couple of nights, but the mornings after she turned down my invitations to have coffee together at Via Quadrono. Were we going out? Or was it just sex? In New York it seemed easier to sleep with a girl than to have breakfast with her.

  At the end of dinner, silence descended over the Frying Pan. A jukebox, which had been placed on the boat’s stern, began to play “The Blue Danube.” Don Otto, with his round eyes sharpened, stood before Marie Alice, who had orange blossoms in her red hair and a tremulous smile. After looking at each other for a moment as though they were meeting for the first time, they started dancing a waltz; slowly and a bit stiffly at first, trying to remember the steps, then more quickly. Now they were going fast, feeling more carefree and confident, and the waltz increasingly resembled a tango. No one had ever seen Don Otto so wild, especially when he picked up Marie Alice and held her in the air, and she so demure and happy.

  I walked somewhere quiet, near the bow of the boat, to take a work-related call (the banks urgently wanted to discuss refinancing). The water was gently breaking against the hull. The wood on the deck squeaked. I was not alone. A white linen suit, which looked just perfect under the moonlight, had followed me. Why was Franz here? He was holding a cool glass of champagne. He waited patiently while I finished my call.

  “Good to see you,” I said after hanging up.

  “Well, the truth is that I crashed the wedding,” Franz said, reaching out and resting the cold champagne glass on my cheek for a moment.

  “I’m sure you were on the list,” I said, embarrassed. “You’re the master of parties. You’re always invited. Do you still party?”

  “Of course.” Franz smiled. “Working for you guys is just a hobby. And you, did you finish your novel? Remember I gave you a pen in the hospital, on your nineteenth birthday, after the crash?”

  The master of parties opened his silver cigarette case and lit himself a Belomorkanal, one of those Russian cigarettes we used to smoke together at times. Exhaling a familiar-smelling plume, he looked sideways at me.

  “Well, we could write a book about this story together,” Franz added. “At least no one has died this time. We’re merely crushing the world’s economy.”

  I couldn’t understand. Was he saying that we were not doing a good job, or was he just envious? Or did he want me to feel guilty?

  Suddenly, through his cigarette’s alabaster-colored smoke I could see the amber hair of Marinella, whom we both had loved, whom I had taken from Franz, and then from the world, with a wrong turn.

  “Will you do the same with Chloé?” he asked, as if he could read my mind. I noticed his pained smile; he had lost his invincibility. Maybe he was still hurting because HWBC had fired him, or because Chloé had dumped him, or maybe because he was now working for me, and we had traded places, and for the first time he was losing and I was winning. He stared at me with dark sad eyes and, by doing so, turned the knife in the wound that all the worldly success possible could never heal.

  “You think I did it on purpose?” I asked. “You think I killed Marinella on purpose?”

  “You don’t do things on purpose, Rosso,” he said. “In your world all things happen by accident, like the empire you built.”

  Franz offered me a Belomorkanal.

  “No thanks,” I said.

  “Look, it’s not enough to quit smoking,” Franz said, lighting a cigarette for me anyway. “It’s not enough to make money.”

  round nine o’clock the cake was served: a forty-seven-layer whipped cream cake in the form of the skyscraper on Sixth Avenue in which Focaccia House had its headquarters.

  How could she be so late?

  “And what is that girl’s name over there?” asked Marie Alice. “She looks like a princess.”

  “I don’t know,” said Don Otto. “She must be a friend of Federico’s.”

  “You’ve invited so many people, you don’t even know who’s here!” The bride laughed.

  “Virginia. I didn’t invite her,” said Federico, startling.

  And there she was, at the entrance of the deck wearing a necklace of semiprecious stones, as if she had somehow been invoked by our discussion of Marinella. Every time I saw her, I was reminded of how much she and her sister Marinella looked alike; her neck’s white line, her grace, her hair, which spread about her shoulders like snakes of gold. She could have been seventeen or eighteen years old by now and she wore a white organza dress.

  “I’m in New York with family, visiting. We saw the wedding announcement; it was all over the papers.” She smiled. “But I didn’t know if you would be here.”

  “Here, from the bride,” said Federico, holding out a plate of cake.

  The sixteen-year-old painter had made a beeline across the deck when he recognized Virginia. Federico was so nervous he kept adjusting his hearing aid, which kept on whistling, as ever.

  Virginia accepted the plate out of politeness. “Thank you, but my cousin is waiting downstairs. We have tickets for Mary Poppins.”

  “Do you still go to Portofino?” asked Federico, holding his breath.

  “And do you still paint?” Virginia smiled, looking at him. “You know I still have your painting in my bedroom.”

  She may as well have written the word “painting” on the sixteen-year-old painter’s stomach. Summoning the courage, Federico rested his hands on her smooth hips.

  “And did you save your
dad?”

  “Not yet!” said Virginia, laughing. “But he likes your painting too.” The young girl put down the plate with the cake, so that she could slip her arms around Federico’s neck. “Maybe we can save him together.”

  Seeing that there was nowhere else to go, the painter kissed her.

  When I went back to the deck everybody was dancing. Verger was dancing with Miranda, asking her how you become a publisher, Juncal was teaching Buvlovski to stay loose on his feet, Sachin was talking to Cesar about his writer’s block, and Franz was waltzing to a song by the Throwing Muses. All tanned, in a white linen suit, he was once again the master of this spectacle. Don Otto and Marie Alice were dancing like two people in love.

  “Don’t they look like Premi and Kamu?” a voice whispered in my ear. I jumped. I remembered a night graced by the Maestro many weddings ago. I turned around.

  Chloé wore a simple green cotton dress with a splash of yellow that matched her eyes, which were beautiful and a bit cold. She held a big file under her arm.

  “Sorry, I was stuck in the office,” she said.

  “Until now?”

  “Actually, I’ve been here for a while, looking for you.”

  “Do you want to dance?” I hesitated. I took the big folder from her hands and put it somewhere safe.

  I felt the hesitation of when two lovers who have been chasing one another finally get together, and the obstacles have been overcome, the oceans crossed, the mountains climbed, and the only obstacle left is whether the two lovers will be capable of loving each other. In Italy she didn’t want to dance. Here in New York I discovered why. Will she dance with me now?

  “Dancing. I hope you won’t go dancing in Rome! I heard you guys are opening in Italy,” said Lucien Verger with his usual bad timing, handing me a glass of champagne. “To the newlyweds!” He poured some of his champagne into Chloé’s half-full glass and then raised his in a toast. “Aren’t you guys expanding too much?”