Trafika Europe 14 - Italian Piazza

A Perfect Idiot

twisting between one passageway and another. I also passed over a l ittle bridge as impressive as the Bridge of Sighs. When I spoke with the only two people who were perhaps waiting for me to cal l them, I was forty years old, a veteran of so many nights without sleep and so many fai lures as an employee and a husband. Mel i ’s number was on a scrap of paper, safe in a sock. Rosario’s, I knew by heart. My phone cal l with her wasn’t so interesting, I’d found in her a kind of mother and already I was sick of tel l ing her everything, I felt she fed off of my stories, it was almost as though I could see her with her ey es closed whi le I talked to her about Don Vito, about the portico under which we’d sl id l ike two bal lerinas on ice and, final ly, about the bar in which the guy with a lot of imagination made his employee feel embarrassed, even more so than when I, who admitted al l my sins, had looked down her cleavage. My conversation with Mel i has remained in my head, with al l its detai ls, and I’ l l transcribe it now. “I was waiting for your cal l ,” she said. “I would have l iked to cal l you but I didn’t know whether your wife. . . “ “I don’t have a wife anymore.” “Real ly?” “I only have to find a way to get my books back, if

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