In a Heartbeat
Page 3
‘They made a third one?’
‘For some reason, yeah. Let me finish this analogy before I get lost. Terminator 3 got deleted and the old film comes through. But it’s ancient history. You have to … record it again … ’ She made the noise of a video in reverse: ‘Frrrrrrrr.’
‘Go to hell.’
She flung her hands in the air and then she knelt next to me. ‘How old do you think you are? Tell me, young man.’
I hesitated. ‘I have to calculate … ’
‘Come here and I’ll show you.’ She grabbed me by the arm. ‘C’mon, come.’ She pulled me through the corridor and stopped me in front of a mirror with a bronze frame, something else to steal if not for the fact that it was also mine.
In the halogen light she showed me what I had previously avoided. I looked at myself. I saw a fat guy dressed in gay pyjamas. I had not much hair, cut short, grey at the temples with a hint of a beard that was completely white. I had deep wrinkles on my forehead and bags under my eyes. I didn’t have the hoop earring in my right ear anymore. I’d worn it since I was seventeen, trying to look cool like Corto Maltese. The hole was scarred and closed. I rolled up the pyjama shirt. My stomach was soft and swollen with white bellybutton hair.
I was wrinkled, flabby and ugly.
Monica looked at me triumphantly. ‘I’ll tell you how old you are: forty. Whatever you were before you aren’t anymore, and you’ll never be again.’
I looked away. Touché again. That was a good one. Indeed it was.
*
It took me about half an hour to get her out of my sight. She kept walking around the sofa trying to call an ambulance on her mobile phone. In the end, I finally got her out. ‘We’re not going out anymore, until you get help,’ she said on the doormat.
‘Promises, promises.’ I slammed the door on her face and was finally alone in my new million-dollar house.
I collapsed.
Only God witnessed what happened next. It wasn’t a pretty scene. I rolled around on the floor slapping myself; I even drooled a little. The fear was unbearable. I was terrified of vanishing away, of melting into nothingness, of monsters outside my window ready to rip me into pieces.
This wasn’t my time or my body. At first I was in my world then, suddenly, I was in another. If this Advertising Executive came back, I would disappear and die and fade into memory. I actually felt like I was dying or rather having an out-of-body experience like a ghost. God please help me!
My breakdown finished.
I was still here.
I was still Santo Trafficante and drunk. I dragged myself around the house until I found the bedroom. It looked like it was straight out of The Seven Samurai, Japanese furniture and various tones of white. I fell onto the large futon. You’re in the future, man, I said to myself. Get used to it because you’ve got to be here for the rest of your life. Now I was calming down, and the booze helped. I was trying to put things into a new perspective. OK, I’m old and this was terrifying but it would have been a lot worse had I woken up young and dirt-poor in a shelter or in jail.
In the end, what regrets did I have? Certainly not my old apartment, and especially not my old man. The times that I went to see him, I always had to look out for a beating. He’d probably died while watching a game show.
The girls who came and went through my apartment didn’t deserve a second thought. Who knew where they were now? Probably fat with kids or maybe even dead. I wouldn’t go out looking for them, that’s for damn sure.
Anything else? The four or five guys that I blew lines with at Oreste’s bar late at night. My neighbour, with whom I exchanged issues of Spiderman. Magnum P.I. reruns. No way! My favourite football team, Inter Milan. Well, maybe …
All in all, there was little to miss and, on top of that, I was loaded! The Ad Exec had worked his ass off, and now I was here to enjoy the spoils.
How much did a high-end hooker cost anyway? I could get three and screw until I hurt myself. I could swim in champagne and sail the seven seas! If the Ad Exec’s money wasn’t enough, I could sell a few antiques and get back into the business. Even in the future world, I was sure that the same market was still there. I could hit the same hangouts until I found someone with the right face. Maybe even one of my old associates?
My eyes caught a portrait of Padre Pio. His image hung huge on the wall, blessing me with holes in his hands. To have him as a roommate was a bit too much for me, so I got up and took it down. It was so heavy that I almost did my back in lifting the frame.
I placed him in the living room.
When I finally stretched out, my thoughts began to chew over a new problem. What had happened to me? Since when had I become a Good Boy? If the Ad Exec was going to come back that was one thing, but if I was going be left in charge someone should at least tell me about it.
I didn’t have any idea who was still around the old haunts, but I decided that I’d pay a visit to the only person other than Max who at one time knew everything about me. That was Ines. Ines took care of our inventory, which was everything that we didn’t want to keep in the house. Her husband was doing twenty years for armed robbery, and she did what she could to get by. That meant turning tricks for the most part. I always saw her around in pink plastic outfits that barely covered her flab. Her house was always a mess. The floor was covered with scraps of food, dirty underwear and magazines which Ines used to read while waiting for clients, almost all of them retired men from the neighbourhood.
I hoped that she could tell me what the hell was going on.
Floating somewhere between terror and euphoria I fell asleep in my king-size bed. More or less at the same time a cop from forensics was investigating a corpse floating face down in a swimming pool. I couldn’t have known it at the time, but that dead guy would soon change my plans big time.
Day Two
1
A rhythmic vibration came from the nightstand and woke me up. I didn’t open my eyes immediately, and for a little while I asked myself why the sunlight was coming in from the wrong direction. Or rather why was there sunlight at all? My apartment on Viale Monza had a window that was practically glued to the building in front of it, so no light ever seeped in.
I opened my eyes, and the future world was still around me. I was still the Ad Exec stuck in the same place, but if it was just a bad dream, hell, I wasn’t complaining.
The vibration repeated again and again; I discovered that it was coming from my mobile phone. I had one and, from what Monica had said, so did everyone else. The Ad Exec must have left it there before going to La Scala. I took it in my hand and watched the words on the screen: Office became Missed Call. There was also the time, 10:25am. The office, what a laugh!
I dragged myself to the bathroom, where I was forced to look in the mirror again. I was disgusting. I should have covered every mirror in the house like an old film diva or maybe just gone on a diet. The thought made me hungry. When was the last time I had eaten, anyway?
The shower was a crystal cylinder positioned in the centre of the bathroom, and inside were more buttons and levers than in the control panel of an airplane. I got in and messed around with the controls until the pipes gurgled. Then I was whipped by a series of freezing jets from a hundred directions. Spitting, I pressed around some more, and the jets became a single one that came from above. In the end, I managed to adjust the temperature. A Body Shop liquid-soap dispenser read, Against Animal Testing. Wow, the Ad Exec really cared about animals! The guy lived in Graceland but cared about the details.
When I switched the water off I heard noises from the floor below. I put on a Missoni bathrobe and leant out onto the small balcony for a better look. There were two Chinese people, a man and a woman, banging things around with a vacuum cleaner and a broom. Servants as well? How appropriate!
They raised their heads, surprised to see me. I nodded nicely and went back to my bedroom looking for something to wear. The bamboo and paper wardrobe only contained blankets and cushions. I
was thinking about putting the gay pyjamas back on when I discovered that one of the mirrors was a sliding panel. Behind it was a walk-in wardrobe as big as my old studio apartment. I found underwear and socks in a dresser that went up in a zigzag like a snake as far as the ceiling. There was also a long motorised rack of suits. I pushed a button, and the suits began to roll by. They were all the same, all black then white, then the black section rolled by again. I stayed there watching them slide by; I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. I had become a real loser with old age, but luckily now I could put things straight.
I found a pair of ripped and worn jeans folded on a shelf; a part of me thought they had probably been made that way. They were probably already broken-in for those who wanted to avoid the work of doing it themselves. The brand was Marithé et François Girbaud. I put them on with a woolly jumper, no shirt.
While I was putting on a pair of shiny orange Nikes with Star Trek-like soles I heard someone in my room. I looked, and the man was making up the bed.
‘Good morning, sir.’
‘Hello.’
‘No job today?’
He was speaking in English. His Chinese accent made him hard to understand either way. Did he say job?
‘I’m on holiday.’
‘Oh, did I disturb you?’
‘No, no please carry on.’
I went down to the kitchen. The Chinese woman was cleaning the sink. I guessed that she only spoke Chinese, and I gestured that I was hungry. She smiled and took some ceramic containers and then placed a cup of black broth and semi-transparent biscuits in front of me. It smelled wrong. I called her over with a snap of my fingers.
‘Coffee, cof-fee, understand?’ She looked at me strangely and said something in gibberish.
‘No like?’
‘No like. It sucks.’
‘No tea?’
‘No, I want real coffee, please.’
The Chinese guy came into the kitchen with my mobile phone in his hand.
‘Telephone, sir.’
He passed it to me. The screen read Monica. I took it and found that it flipped open like a Star Trek toy telephone but was a tenth the size. The female voice began to bleat out. I took a deep breath and put it to my ear.
‘Saint?’ Monica spoke in a low voice, but she sounded better than I would’ve imagined. The reception was clear without the background whirring of normal landline phones. Perhaps those had got better, too.
‘What do you want?’
She lowered her voice even more. Her voice was weird, as if she had just stopped crying.
‘How are you?’
‘I’m sitting at the table trying to convince this Chinese woman to make me a decent cup of coffee.’
‘She’s Filipino,’ she said in a tired tone. ‘Her name’s Maria, and her husband is Rosario.’ She paused. ‘Are you cured yet?’
‘I’ll call you when it happens.’
She began to sob. What a drag.
‘Please, Saint. You have to come to the office. It’s important.’
I tasted a cracker. It tasted like cardboard. I read the box: Kamut and spelt wafers.
‘Saint?’
Oh yeah. ‘Yes.’
‘So, are you coming?’
‘No way.’
‘Saint, please.’ She sobbed again. ‘Something terrible has happened. I don’t know how to tell you but—’
‘That’s it, don’t tell me anything. It’s your damn problem, so go screw yourself or kill yourself, and find another boyfriend while you’re at it. I don’t care; I just want you out of my life!’
I hung up the phone, feeling liberated. Maria poured me another cup and looked at me apprehensively. I tasted real coffee. Good girl. I finished it and had her make me another one and despite the flavour, I wolfed down half a box of wafers.
The only thing missing was a cigarette. That would be taken care of with a trip to the first café in sight.
The coat Monica had brought back was still on a chair in the living room where she had left it. I went through the pockets to see if the house keys were there. They were. Monica couldn’t come by and ambush me. Just to be damn sure I would change the locks. I took my leather wallet from the jacket I had worn the night before. I saw that it had a metal ‘V’ sewn onto it. As it wasn’t my initial I assumed that it was the designer’s logo. I seemed to feel out of place without a label; I was lucky not to find one tattooed on my arse.
Inside the wallet, I discovered the famous credit cards that the police had spoken about with my name written on them. I looked at the expiry date on the grey one, the legendary Platinum Card: 2008. It shocked me. I remembered the TV series Space: 1999, which had seemed like a lifetime away. Now I had even passed that year.
I also had a Beagle & Manetti magnetic card with my face printed on it. The headquarters were in Piazza Missori 8. I also had a pass to the Downtown gym. Judging by the size of my belly I didn’t go there very much.
When I put the cards away a receipt fell onto the bar: Espresso 0.80. Zero point eighty, what the heck? Hmm. I understood when I took out the cash. It looked like Monopoly money. Euros?
I went looking for the Filipino. He was cleaning the ashes from the fireplace. I waved a note in his face. ‘Is this money?’
He looked at me, confused.
‘Money?’
‘Yes.’
‘No lira?’
‘No, mister.’
‘Since when? No, forget about it. How much is it worth? How much?’
He laughed. I tried again. From what I understood one euro was worth about two thousand lira. I had two fifty-euro notes and one hundred as well as some smaller notes. At one time I could have lived for a month on that! Nowadays, who knows?
In the inside pocket of my overcoat I found a chequebook, a gold inlay Mont Blanc fountain pen, and a ruined ID card. It wasn’t my old ID card, but in the small photo I still looked like a young fun-loving guy. The car keys with the Porsche insignia were on the table in the living room. I imagined the ride, sleek with leather seats, and couldn’t wait to get myself in it. The mobile phone vibrated again. Another Missed Call. I didn’t bother to check who it was, and I slipped it in my pocket.
Now it was time to fit the pieces together.
2
I went down into the building’s underground garage in search of my new wheels. I couldn’t find them. There were at least thirty identical closed garages, and none of them had a name on the doors. I pressed the remote on the key chain hoping to hear the alarm, but nothing beeped. I’d have tried the lock on every garage, but too many people were passing by. I gave up and went back to the ground floor.
The doorman was an old skeleton with a hat like the kind that taxi drivers used to wear in the fifties. He sat in a booth decorated with stickers; he waved a bony hand as I walked past. He didn’t lift his eyes from the newspaper he was reading. If he thought that he was going to get a Christmas tip from me, he was going to have to wait a while.
I jumped on a tram that stopped right in front of my building, convinced that it was the best way to get a better feel for my surroundings. I sat by the window and watched. The new Milan was a lot busier, dirtier and smellier than the old one. I had already noticed this a little the night before during my excursion, but it hadn’t been that important considering the state of mind that I was in. Now I looked at things more carefully.
It felt like New York City.
A sea of Africans and Chinese people gushed from every corner. The windows were full of flashy and expensive things, and the buildings were covered with advertising. The adverts were filled with models who looked like sad heroin addicts. The broken, rusted cars that ran around the streets in my time had been replaced by egg-shaped toys. There were black and white two-seaters, four-wheeled motorcycles, silver electric scooters and motor scooters shaped like cockroaches along with huge multi-coloured plastic trams. The one that I got on had doors that opened with a bright orange button. Very convenient but very slow.
He seemed annoyed at me.
Maybe I knew the guy and made him feel bad because I hadn’t got off and given him a hug. There had to be a whole load of people that the Ad Exec knew. I had a feeling that I’d been called an arsehole often.
The tram came to the end of the line behind the Duomo. It was covered in scaffolding with statues that popped out everywhere. Piazza del Duomo, however, looked like a Christmas manger. There were Christmas trees, fake reindeer and even an ice rink in the shape of a frozen lake where children glided around to the sound of waltz music. The monument of Vittorio Emanuele on horseback was covered in pigeon shit and surrounded by giant television monitors. I stared blankly as a video-game commercial burst onto the screen. It was light years away from the Atari games that I used to play. Technology had taken a giant leap forward. Hello, Obi-Wan Kenobi!
I came across a group of Japanese tourists taking pictures with miniature cameras, pressing themselves around a souvenir stand full of postcards and various knick-knacks. I pushed through and bought a wool cap with I Love Milano written across it, plus a pair of wrap-around sunglasses. I put them on and looked at myself in the mirror that the guy waved in front of me. I wasn’t really unrecognisable, but they would do. I made a mess with the money like one of those old people who make you curse if they’re in the queue in front of you. I used the large, heavy coins to buy a pack of cigarettes from a vending machine. It spat out a pack with the words ‘Smoke Kills’. The taste, however, was the same. Thank God!
I got to a line of spotless taxis and slipped into one that looked like something out of the future. The old taxis were nowhere near as aerodynamic and flexible. The bright numbers on the meter were reflected on the rear-view mirror so the passenger could see them. Another improvement.