In a Heartbeat (17 page)

‘Riccardino told me that she’s a personal trainer at the gym you guys go to.’

At least now I knew where our affair began. Who knows if I had knocked her up in the sauna? The sandwich arrived and also twenty calls that I passed on to Monica. She was on the phone so long she practically became a part of it. I heard her switch easily from English to French, and she even spoke in German. I had my homework to finish.

Trade marketing: a marketing discipline that relates to increasing the demand at wholesaler, retailer, or distributor level rather than to the consumer.

I gave up. Project:
Ustoni.
Product:
Vitanova Salami,
salami for diabetics.
Oh, please, you’ve got to be kidding.
Line: Newfood Ustoni. Spot: 15’ and 30’. Programming: Rai and Mediaset from 20 December
^.
Status: (
status?
) Waiting for approval.

‘At what point are you?’ Monica said.

‘A good point.’

‘I don’t believe you.’

‘Signor Denti, the meeting is about to begin.’ Rina said.

I was about to ask where but a roar from the hallway stopped me. ‘Denti, move your ass!’

It was the corporate senior vice president, Bianchi, who looked exactly like his company photo. He appeared next to Rina, making her tremble with fear. He glared at me as he chewed on a spent Toscano cigar.

‘Where’s your tie? Where’s your jacket?’ Where do you think you are, a Moroccan souk?’

‘Signor Denti had an accident this morning,’ Rina said submissively.

‘Yeah, sure. An accident with his arse. So, are we going or what?’

I rushed into the hallway. Bianchi was leading a group of blue suits, my fellow directors; he, on the other hand, wore a light-coloured gabardine. I got in line. We walked in a V-formation. It was as if he emitted black lasers vaporising anyone who got in his way. The employees dived and hid in their cubicles, trembling or swooning in ecstasy. Bianchi had a wonderful thing to say to each of his victims:
Dirty bum! Move your arse! Haven’t I fired you yet?
Then he would laugh in a thunderous voice. The directors nodded all together, keeping up the pace. We all squeezed into the lift. Bianchi pointed his cigar at me.

‘I saw the Ustoni Project.’

‘Do you like it?’

‘It’s shit. I can’t wait to see you present it.’

I froze. ‘What do you mean present it?’

‘I’m not taking responsibility for this. It’s your damn problem. You’re the creative director, aren’t you?’ He winked at the marketing director, a guy about two metres tall with the face of a college kid. Lorenzo Girapaglia, according to the company website. He had eight degrees and was also a chess champion. ‘Or should I say that you were the creative director?’ He laughed so hard that the lift shook.

The door opened; he burst out. Girapaglia patted my shoulder (the bad one). ‘He’s in a good mood today, thank God.’

He was serious. Nice place.

We were underground. An arrow pointed to the Auditorium and the group headed in that direction. Bianchi’s strides sent off shock waves. A messenger disintegrated, and a guard vanished into thin air.

I was the last in line. I desperately searched though my notes. There was nothing about salami on Monica’s list. Oh, shit.

An agency employee opened a door for us. Bianchi gently touched her hair and she almost wept with gratitude. If he had that effect on people then I asked myself what Roveda must have been like when he was alive. He could probably levitate and throw fireballs.

The auditorium was a circular room with about a hundred seats set up like a cinema, the company logo rotating on the long projection screen. In the front row sat a fat ninety-year-old man wearing a felt hat. A woman in her fifties held his hand; her mini-skirt was so short that not even a hooker would’ve worn it. Another employee was pouring a glass of champagne.

‘My dear Signor Ustoni,’ Bianchi said, shaking his hand. ‘Signora.’ Ustoni nodded without speaking. The woman blew him a kiss with a mouth that looked like a chicken’s anus. The other directors followed suit, paying homage; I was last. Ustoni looked at me as if I were a speck of fly shit. The old witch gave me her hand with evident distaste. The suits took their places on the row behind them while Bianchi got onstage in front of a small podium. He tapped on the microphone.

‘Are we ready?’

The technician nodded and almost fell on his knees.

‘Great. As you may already know today is a sad day. Our friend Mariano Roveda is no longer with us.’ He continued to dwell on the good qualities of the deceased for ten minutes. ‘A great man, taken from us by a terrible act of cruelty.’ Bianchi spoke as if he were in front of a thousand people. Maybe the meeting was being televised? He explained how B&M was being honoured by Signor Ustoni’s company for the work that was in progress … an exciting relationship that has lasted a lifetime …

I wasn’t paying attention. I was trying to think of a way out of there even though I knew that I couldn’t leave. Bianchi sat down and everyone applauded as if he were a head of state. One by one, the other directors took the floor and spoke about the Salami Campaign, ‘the fall on the market’ and ‘strategic positioning’. Ustoni looked like he’d fallen asleep in the chair. I trembled. The stage was empty.

‘Denti, would you be so kind as to come up and illustrate the creative direction of the campaign?’ Bianchi said, smiling. He had more fangs than usual. He pointed to the stage. I didn’t move. All heads turned in my direction.

‘Denti?’ Bianchi’s smile got even bigger. ‘Is there a problem?’

I got up. The seat made a sound like duct tape being ripped from the surface. I had sweated so much that I had stuck to it. I dragged myself to the stage, tripping as I went up, hitting my elbow on the podium. Bianchi looked at me from the audience, smiling.

‘Good evening,’ I said.

‘Yeah, and good night.’ It was Ustoni waking up from his coma. ‘Can we see this presentation? I’m starting to get a blister on my arse!’

‘Darling,’ the woman said, caressing his hand.

I went with the flow. ‘You’re right. What are we here for, how about a round of applause for Signor Ustoni?’ I began to applaud and one by one the audience applauded. Bianchi was the last. ‘Nice move, loser,’ he whispered as I went back to my seat. ‘Lights, please.’

The technician went to the console. Darkness. The logo on the screen. Then the commercial began. Violin music, Ustoni on a chair in the middle of a meadow bathed in sunlight. He was dressed in white and wore a Panama hat. On either side of him were two tall, beautiful women in their underwear, a blonde and a brunette, each with a salami between her breasts.

Ustoni: ‘My salami’s delicious, my pigs eat the best,’ he mumbled. ‘Eat it, it’s good for you.’

Women: ‘Yum yum!’

The slogan was ‘Vitasana, a salami for everyone. From Ustoni.’

The voiceover spoke at a million miles an hour, ‘
without-additives-or-preservatives-ideal-for-low-sodium-diets-please-consult-the-warnings-and-instructions-before-consumption
.’

There was a pause. The B&M logo rotated again on the screen. Then the longer version of the commercial began, the same as before; the only difference was that this one began with a panorama of a pig farm where all the pigs wore red ribbons around their necks. Ustoni. Women. Narrator.

Darkness. Light. Silence in the room. Ustoni got up and leaned on his cane. ‘OK, now let’s go. I’ve got to take a leak.’

‘You’ll have to excuse him,’ his wife said.

‘Why? You should always tell it like it is,’ Bianchi said.

Ustoni farted.

*

I flew up the stairs feeling twenty years younger. I still had a pending murder trial, a kid on the way, an empty bank account, and a bullet in my shoulder but I had made it through. We were squished again in the lift; Bianchi seemed to have swollen up since the last time because we couldn’t all fit in. He gave a general look at the directors. ‘Did you see what happened? Do you understand now that special effects cost money and they don’t even matter? Our clients want simple and direct ideas.’ He slapped me on the back and for a moment his ego-glow wrapped around me. ‘Good job. I knew that it would work. Clean and linear.’

The others shrank in envy.

I was surprised to see my clean clothes wrapped in plastic at the cubicle. ‘Fresh from the cleaners,’ Rina said. ‘How was the meeting?’

‘Forget about it. Where’s Monica?’

‘She’s at lunch, in the cafeteria.’

There’s also a cafeteria; who knows if Ustoni’s salami is being served there?
Yum!
I put on my jacket and my phone vibrated in my trouser pocket. The number wasn’t in the address book because the name didn’t appear. I wasn’t going to answer but then I decided to respond anyway. It was Mirko Bastoni. He said that his colleague was available to defend me and would meet me whenever I wanted to in his office. I accepted and he told me how to get there.

‘The name is Avvocato Trevi,’ he added. ‘A friend of Salima’s. That way it’s all in the family.’

‘What do you mean by that?’ It was a touchy subject.

‘It’s just a figure of speech. Take care.’

I put on my jacket and said goodbye to Rina, who tried to give me a list of new messages. It seemed like things were starting to go well. A lucky day. I felt this way for about ten minutes, until somebody tried to take my head off.

2

Normally in Milan people mind their own business; this is what I love about the city. You could be eaten by a crocodile whilst strolling around Piazza del Duomo, and no one would even notice. That’s because everyone’s got their heads down grumbling and worrying about mortgages, taxes, or their husbands or wives who are constantly annoying them. There’s just one exception: old women. Wherever you live there is always an old woman spying on you through the peephole when you stumble in drunk or knocking on your wall when you’re screwing too loudly or sending letters to the administration complaining that you hang out with strange people. Shutters were created specifically for their use. That way their malignant stares can spy on others undisturbed as they slide from one window to the next in their slippers. They have their emergency numbers written in huge figures above the telephone, rape alarms, and infrared binoculars.

My old neighbour was a retired schoolteacher who missed not having students to slap around. One night, I found her going through my rubbish with a flashlight to see if I was shooting up. She began to take my rubbish inside her house to examine the contents until one day the city authorities came and took her away. It took a van to empty her apartment. Rats ran up and down the stairs while the neighbours fainted from the sight. The concierge said, ‘I thought that there was a strange smell coming from somewhere … ’

I never thought that I would ever have to thank an old woman like that. But there was an old hag who used to stand next to the crossroads a few yards from B&M with her little shopping trolley and blue-rinsed hair, cursing at the Moroccan squeegee men. I didn’t notice her at first when I got out. I was too busy thinking about what I was going to tell the lawyer – actually what I was
not
going to tell the lawyer. Stopping at the curb, I was waiting for the light to turn green like a good pedestrian before I took a step. It was at that moment that the old hag screamed, ‘Look out!’ and grabbed my sleeve.

My first instinct was to push her under a car. My second instinct, the right one, was to turn around and follow her wild eyes. There was a motorcycle on the pavement zigzagging between people, aiming for me. I jumped out of the way and tripped on the curb, falling against the base of the pedestrian traffic light. It hurt like hell! I was already in pain as it was. The motorcycle brushed me; I heard a
clang
near my head as I fell. The motor opened up and he sped away, disappearing into the traffic amongst screeching brakes, honking horns and people yelling. Something metallic fell on my shoulder and clanged on the pavement. ‘Did you see that?’ the old woman said. ‘He was trying to kill you!’

I tried to remember the rider’s shape whilst rubbing my shoulder (it was always the bad one, dammit). He was wearing full riding gear with a full-face helmet so he could have been anyone, young or old, a man or even a woman. The problem with leather riding gear is that sometimes you can’t tell what’s underneath it, especially if it’s all black. Did he try to run me over on purpose? I couldn’t exclude the possibility that it was some arsehole in a rush to get to work. When I got up I saw something reflecting on the pavement and I remembered the look and the sound of the object that had clanged during the near collision. I picked it up and I ruled out the arsehole-on-his-way-to-work theory. It was a meat cleaver of the kind used to split beef bones. On the pole you could see a mark just about where my neck was. He’d just missed me.

The woman screamed again. ‘Someone call the police!’

I put the blade in my coat pocket. ‘Why?’

‘The man on the motorbike … ’