Lethal Discoveries

by Erica Pensini

  I looked at the copper bell again and was about to ring it, when the lady came out, smiling

  “Avete scelto?”, she asked, standing at the counter with an ice-cream scoop in her hand

  I gave her a look that must have appeared blank, and which she mistook for a perplexed reaction to her question

  “Ah, you are American?”, she said with the thickest accent, half as a question half as a statement, intrigued by the novelty of two foreigners standing in her shop

  I nodded, pointing at two tastes, randomly, resisting the urge to run out of there as fast as I could. And it was then I remembered: the dream. The ice-cream shop, the satin glass, the flowers on the glass, the copper bell and the danger. Mori telling us to run. Jack there with me, running with me, the two of us lifted in the air. And then the light, Jack’s caring face close to mine. When my thoughts returned to the shop Jack had a cone in his hand, and had just finished paying.

  I wrapped my arm around his, dragging him to the door hastily, and heard myself say, “We have to run”

  “Arrivederci!”, said the ice-cream lady on our back, with a loud cheerful tone, waving goodbye as we were halfway out the door

  “Bye”, Jack said for me, as I dragged him out

  “Iris, are you sure of what you saw?”

  I shook my head no, and repeated, “We have to run”, the urge of my faint voice resounding in my panicking abdomen, in the beat of my heart and the softness in my arms, in my dizziness. The street blurred, its view flickered in patchy spots of black, intense light, black, intense light and black again, its darkness expanding in my view, large, larger and then complete.

  Chapter 65

  “Iris…Iris”, I heard Jack say from a distance

  “Iris”, I heard again, more distinctly this time, as Jack’s face appeared in a nebula of patchy dots of light and darkness

  “Are you ok?”, he asked again, worriedly, his features clear now

  “Yes”, I said and smiled, feeling strangely comfortable lying on the asphalt, my head resting on Jack’s hands, my head and body light

  “We’ll go back to the hotel now”, he said

  “No…”

  “What do you mean, no? Of course we are going back”

  “I’d still like to walk to Corso Como, have something to eat there…”

  “What? But you just got terribly scared and passed out, why do you want to keep walking around?”

  I felt like I had been living on the edge from a while now, losing control over everything, including my life. Just few days earlier I could have died and now each moment seemed like a bonus, intense and all but granted. I feared for my life and felt fearless at the same time, I wanted to see through what was happening and take it all in, let the lymph of these places penetrate me, not letting go a single moment I could have with Jack. Because, after all, no matter how careful I was, these moments could be taken from me anytime.

  “Because Corso Como is going to be a great spot, because we need food and because going to the hotel won’t make us any safer”, I said

  Jack pulled me up and said, “I’ve asked you already, but how sure are you that the woman you saw was the one who caused the accident?”

  Now I didn’t feel sure at all. I told Jack about the dreams at the hospital.

  “It felt like a deja-vu and the suggestion of the atmosphere might have played strange tricks on my mind”, I said, trying to sound as reassuring as I could

  “Ehm…”, Jack grumbled unconvinced but yielding nonetheless, pulling me up and unfolding the map he had left on the ground beside me to check our way.

  “We just have to keep heading straight”, he said

  We resumed our walk, leaving our melt cones behind. It was then I realized that few people had laid some perplexed gaze at me as I lay on the sidewalk, but nobody had stopped to ask if we needed a hand and the thought made me shiver. Would anyone help us if something worse than that happen?

  And yet after few steps the liveliness of the place sank in me again, and I went back to my hunt for novelties displayed in the shops’ windows, although not with the same carefree merriness that had animated me earlier.

  Every now and then someone passed with a cigarette between their lips, leaving a trail of smoke behind, pleasantly aromatic in the summer notes of the dimming day.

  Chapter 66

  In Corso Como a bar attracted my attention, probably because I was beginning to feel very hungry and the smell of toasted bread and food diffused from it, tempting and heart filling. There were tables outside, arranged under red tents, and it seemed just natural to make yourself comfortable on a chair.

  “What about having something to eat here?”, I said, approaching the tables

  Before Jack could answer a waiter approached up with a smile

  “Accomodatevi dove volete”, he said, with a broad gest indicating the tables and then pointing at a free one

  I looked at Jack and he nodded yes, so we sat there and looked at the menu, of which we couldn’t guess much because it was all in Italian. We spotted a couple next to us and looked at their dishes avidly.

  “We want to have what they are having”, we said when the waiter was back

  He nodded and scribbled on his notebook, then asked, “Drinks?”, accompanying the question with a gest of the thumb and the tipped head, although the question was clear enough

  “Just water”, I said

  “With gas?”, the waiter asked

  “Oh, just tap water”, I said and this seemed to confuse him a whole lot

  He repeated the question and at last I said, “No gas”, because I understood there was no way for me to communicate the idea of tap water to him

  We waited for the food and ate our meals not talking much, not thinking much, simply having a break from ourselves and letting the outer world fluctuate through us, the heat dampening our worries. When the bill came it felt somewhat like those times when as a kid the car came to a stop after a long trip and I had to get up, after laying on the backseat for hours, the lullaby of the breeze flowing through the window singing me to sleep.

  “Should we go?”, Jack asked, looking himself unwilling to go anywhere

  “I don’t want to but I suppose we must…”

  “Are we walking back to the hotel?”

  “There is one more thing I would like to see before that”, I said

  Jack arched his brows

  “Corso Como 10, remember the girl told us to go?”, I said

  “We don’t have to see everything today, you know?”

  “I know, but it’s so close and it’s not even 9, what are we going to at the hotel anyways?”

  “Have a rest after more than 48 hours we haven’t had a decent one?”, Jack said, but then he shrugged and shook his head and I laughed at his half amused, half desolate surrender.

  Chapter 67

  We walked to number 10 of the corso – the street – up to a place which was not a bar, not a museum, not a shop, not a residential area but rather all of these at once. There was a court, which was somehow mysterious, although I couldn’t exactly tell why it felt so. There were plants, plenty of them, arranged in large vases and crawling along the old walls, and a ramp of stairs climbed up somewhere, while a bar stood half hidden behind a bamboo mobile wall and abstract sculptures.

  “WOW, It was worth coming here!”, I exclaimed and Jack nodded, fascinated by the ambience, pausing his gaze on the stairs, following them up as far as his view could go

  “What do you think is up there?”, he asked, moving towards them

  “Let’s go and see!”, I exclaimed, humoring his renewed enthusiasm with my own hunger for discovery

  We found a small room with some black and white photographs, framed in simple black metal. They represented faces and run-down places, beaches and bridges, and although the subjects were somewhat ordinary there was something disturbing and fascinating at once about the way they had been captured, or maybe it was just the atmosphere of the pla
ce that made them seem so. Dim light filtered through the thin glass of an old window and spread like fine sand on the wall, plastered unevenly and with sparse cracks creeping along it.

  I went to the window and looked at the court from above. An elegant girl with high pumps and a pencil black dress walked out of the bar, swaying her hips and leaning on a guy’s arm, laughing languidly and tipping her head so that her curly locks fell sensuously backwards. Against the flirtatious flair of the girl’s curls lay the façades of the buildings surrounding the court, blossoming with flowers and flourishing with plants, which leaned from the banisters of small balconies like a kid’s unruly hair.

  “Let’s explore what else is here!”, said Jack, turning to me with an excited light in his eyes

  There was a bookshop around the corner of the hallway but it was closed, so we moved on till we found a terrace with a glass gazebo, under which sat a table with a mosaic top, crazy with multi-coloured patterns, harmonic in their chaotic essence. And there were statues, futuristic monsters and exotic species somewhat reminiscent of Gaudi’s art. I walked around, touching the objects, inhaling the smells twirling from the bar in the dusky warmth of the evening, listening to the voices and the giggles dancing at a distance, embracing the place with my eyes, all my senses soaked with what we were experiencing.

  Jack had sat at the table, laying back on the chair, a tired and satisfied expression on his face. I sat too, and ran my finger along the smooth mosaic fragments composing the table’s surface. Jack’s smiling eyes had just met mine when I heard a male voice at my back.

  “Hello Iris, I have been looking forward to meeting you”, the voice said

  Chapter 68

  A chill ran through my spine. I turned around and saw a small man, bold, skinny and with unpretentious clothing. Pants held up high on his waist with a belt buckled to the last hole, a checkerboard button up.

  I found myself relaxing, perhaps out of exhaustion, because I had been so tense in the last while that my worn fibers could not be tensed anymore, or perhaps because it was impossible to conceive that a man like this could be dangerous.

  “Why are you looking for me?”, I asked calmly

  “I am here to warn you against making a move that could harm you and others”, the man replied in a monotone voice

  “What are you referring to?”

  “I suggest that we discuss this in a more private place”, he said calmly

  “There’s nobody except us here”, said Jack, who had been silent up to that moment

  The stranger looked at him, turning his head slightly but abruptly, a hint of displease crossing his face, rapidly dominated

  “We should not be seen talking together”, he insisted

  “By whom?”, I asked

  “By the person disguised as a cleaning lady, for instance”

  So it was true, I had not been hallucinating after all

  “Is she in this city now?”, I asked, although I knew the answer

  “Yes”, he said, marking the answer slowly

  At once I felt faint and impotent, tired of fighting and running and trying to understand

  “Who is she? What does she want of me?”

  “There is information I cannot give you. For your own protection and mine”

  “Why should I trust you if you don’t give me any detail?”, I replied, abruptly, almost angrily

  “I will give you as many details as I can safely provide, but not here”

  “Where do you want to go?”, I asked, giving in

  “The only places we can accept to go to with you are public places, so we might as well stay where we are”, interrupted Jack

  The man didn’t turn this time, and replied, looking at me instead, “I want to go to a very public place, where we can be hidden by the crowd”

  I nodded and asked, “Where?”

  “There’s a dance club not too far from here”, he said, reaching towards the map that we had laid on the table and pointing at a spot. “Walk in front of me, I will follow and make sure nobody else is doing the same. Do not turn as you walk. If there is anybody else I will accelerate my pace, pass you and take a side street. If this happens you will know something is wrong”

  “And what should we do in that case?”, I said, feeling my heart rush

  “Nothing, just keep walking as if you haven’t noticed anything and head back to your hotel. For now they just want to check your moves and lead you to the moves they want you to take. They will not harm you before they succeed”

  I wondered which moves, but before I could ask the man said, “You can start going now”

  “What is your name?”, I said, hesitating to leave the patio

  “Call me Ronny”

  I looked one last time at this stranger who had an insignificant appearance and called himself Ronny. Then I embraced the place with a circular gaze, wondering what situation I was driving myself and Jack into and if we would ever see this spot again. A wave of sadness rose within me, but before it could reach my eyes and make them go teary Jack reached for my hand and took it, his torso protectively touching my back.

  “Let’s go”, he said, so I turned and walked my way back along the hallway we had crossed just moments earlier, when we were still tingling with a mirthful feeling of curiosity.

  Chapter 69

  We slid along the streets, furtively looking around to capture any suspicious presence, anxiously following the path Ronny had traced on the map for us to follow.

  “Why are we going with this stranger in an unknown place?”, I said, half talking to myself

  “At least the place is full of people”, Jack said

  “What if we just run back to the hotel?”

  “I don’t think there would be any use in doing this. The guy found us already, and he will catch up with us again”

  I nodded, feeling like a pawn moved along a checkerboard by the hand of a ruthless player. The realization that, no matter what I did, I had almost no control over what was happening oddly relieved me.

  When we reached the spot Ronny described it all seemed so unreal I could have been in a movie. Seen from the outside the nightclub had an underground feeling it to it, half-hidden as it was, with the neon lights on the charcoal coloured façade half lit-half blinking and the black paint peeling off it. And yet when I stepped inside the ambience was almost cozy, with the music kept at a reasonable volume and the vintage flavour of the crimson furniture. A waitress sat us at a table, and we plunged into the cushioned chair, distractedly leafing through the drink menu while scanning the room for Ronny.

  Ten minutes elapsed and I was becoming impatient. Jack’s face looked strained from the long day and I felt my own strength running low. I wondered if something had happened or if this was a sort of trap, but I was too tired to think, so I sipped my drink slowly, closing my eyes every now and then. And my eyes where closed when I heard the chair next to mine being moved, and when I opened them Ronny was there. We hadn’t been standing so close before, and now I realized he had a faint smell of perspiration concealed by a man’s fragrance, with pungent notes I did not like.

  Jack nodded to acknowledge his presence, and I said, “I wasn’t sure you’d come anymore”

  “I had to be careful”, he replied

  “So what is it that you wanted to tell us?”, asked Jack when the waitress came along with a kinky smile.

  “Scotch and water, with no ice”, said Ronny without looking at the menu. He had a light accent when speaking either English or Italian, and I wondered where he was from.

  When the waitress was gone he paused, observing us for a moment, then said, “You should not go see Mori tomorrow”

  “Why? And how do you know we’ll be seeing Mori tomorrow?”, I asked

  “I have my ways to know things”, Ronny replied calmly, and paused again

  “So why are you telling us not to see Mori tomorrow?”, I insisted

  “You gave your trust away too soon in the past, haven’t you?
”

  I didn’t reply, but after a moment Ronny continued without waiting for my answer

  “And what have you achieved?”

  Another pause.

  “You tell me since you have your ways to know things”, I said, too worn out for self-control and hating this game of rhetorical questions

  “You let your polymer fall in the hands of the wrong people, who are now using it in ways you cannot control”, he concluded, with the same monotonous voice he had since he spoke the first sentence on the patio

  “In which ways are they using it? And who is doing this? Who is the cleaning lady?”, I asked, the adrenaline suddenly rushing through my veins and roughening my voice

  “It is not safe for me to tell you the details, you are too shaken to be trusted”

  “Mori can help me understand what is happening”

  “Or maybe he can start using the polymer for his purposes. You cannot be sure. Right?”

  I was at a loss and didn’t know what to say anymore, when Jack spoke.

  “What would Mori do with our polymer?”

  “Use it for his purposes, as I said”

  “Which are?”, Jack urged him, calmly but relentlessly

  “I cannot reveal information, but trust me, I am well informed”

  “No doubt you are, but we aren’t. So fill us in with what will happen if we go see Mori and neglect your good advises”

  “I am not sure”, Ronny said

  Jack bugged his eyes, slightly tipping his head

  “I thought you just said you are well informed”, Jack replied ironically

  “What do you mean you are not sure?”, I asked, unable to decide if Ronny was menacing us with his calmest tone

  “I mean that I am not able to predict now what will be the consequences of handing your polymer to Mori”

  “You mean he can misuse it”, I said

  “For instance”

  I felt he wouldn’t go much further than that. I wanted to go back to the hotel, wash myself, sleep.

  “Will you come after us if we give the polymer to Mori?”, Jack asked

  “I want to prevent you from doing it, rather than come after you after the damage is made”

  “So you will sequester us before we speak to him again”, I said

  “I am not a criminal”, Ronny said, looking at me for a long while. I held his gaze, and for a moment I felt he would be true to his words and would not harm us. He must have perceived the breach in my defenses because he said, “I am here to prevent the worst from happening. Ponder what has already happened and take the right decision”