Trafika Europe 14 - Italian Piazza

A Perfect Idiot

From the top floor, with one hand gripping the Leica and the strap wound around his wrist, Ciepiela observed Morel ’s nervous gait and asked himself how he would find the box. ● Mi lan, Segrate zone. Mel i. How had they found her? Why was it her they chose? Morel had been watching her for a whi le already. He had noticed Mel i and a certain feature of hers, one morning in Cannes, whi le he was sitting at a l ittle table in the boulangerie where she worked. He’d observed her wel l , pretending to drink a coffee flavored with his premeditations, and the rest we already know—the train trip, the chance encounter, the appointment in Piazzetta Brera. Mel i had thought these coincidences, but in this story coincidences were singularly absent. With the attack on the deceased Bapinu Bando, perhaps the only one to be unaware, the normal equi l ibrium of his l ife had been disrupted. Mel i had felt almost forced to go away, to leave the systems of security she’d constructed for herself with much effort in a mi l ieu that she’d already fled when fed up at the angry age of fifteen, and that she was now abandoning a second time, pushed on the one side by a desire to have new experiences, as

153