Free Don't Move by Margaret Mazzantini, John Cullen Page B

of every relationship. She’d toss away the peel and dig into the most succulent part of the fruit. She had performed an autopsy on every marriage in our acquaintance. Thanks to her, I knew that all our friends were unhappy.
    At the moment, however, they seemed quite content. They were eating, drinking, looking at one another’s spouses. Evidently, their unhappiness was nimble enough to evaporate after a few glasses of
prosecco
and drift away, past the edge of the roof garden, down to the sea below, over Lodolo’s motor-boat with its gleaming white fenders, and out into the black water. No, I didn’t feel that I was surrounded by souls in pain.
    Manlio was talking to Elsa, and only now and then did he shoot a quick glance at his Swiss wife. Martine moved her head in little jerks, following the movements of her eyes, which protruded too much and opened too wide. She was tiny, thin, and wrinkled: a tortoise, wearing a necklace of brilliant stones. She drank. She wasn’t drinking now, because Manlio was there, keeping an eye on her. But she drank when she was alone and Manlio was performing his operations. Uterine prolapses, deliveries, D and C’s, egg implants and extractions—all carried out, preferably, in private clinics. Manlio was very fond of Martine; he’d been taking her around with him for twenty years, like a jack-in-the-box. It really seemed as though he’d bought her in a toy store. All his friends said, practically in chorus, “What does he see in her?” I, for my part, saw nothing special in him. Martine kept an excellent house, she could cook
gigot d’agneau
and
pasta all’amatriciana
with equal skill, and she had no opinions. You’d pig out to your heart’s content and then forget to thank her; you don’t thank a jack-in-the-box. Naturally, Manlio cheated on her. “Naturally” was what Elsa said. “Such a brilliant, red-blooded man, stuck with that anorexic alcoholic.” I looked over at Martine past the crowd of faces between us, and I thought, Yes, if she were my wife, I’d gladly cheat on her with Elsa. Naturally. Elsa was so desirable, with her beautiful thick hair, her firm flesh, that slightly imprecise smile, those nipples sticking out there like an invitation. She was acting a little too giddy with Manlio this evening. He was her gynecologist. He gave her her Pap tests; he’d put in her IUD. Had she forgotten that? He certainly hadn’t. His cigar was clamped between his teeth, and his eyes burned like two embers. The jack-in-the-box bobbed up between them, inhaling the smoke from her menthol cigarette.
    I went to get another glass of wine, and in passing, I brushed against Elsa’s red satin. Manlio raised his glass to me in what was supposed to be a gesture of mutual understanding.
    Do what you must, Manlio. And get stuffed while you’re at
it. You wear tailor-made shirts with monogrammed pockets, but
there’s that protruding belly underneath. You sure have managed
to grow yourself a spare tire since we were at the university together.And what do you want? Do you want to screw my wife,
fatso?
    Manlio was my best friend. Was and is, as you know. My heart has saddled me with a lifelong affection for him, though I couldn’t tell you the reason why.
    Now, Raffaella was in full party mode, moving her broad hips inside her heavily embroidered Turkish caftan. Standing next to her was Lodolo, the host; with his narcotized stare and his rumpled shirt, he looked like some poor houseguest. Livia was far gone; her hair covering her face, her arms in the air, she was shaking her ethnic jewelry, totally focused on Adele, who was wearing a tight lobster-colored sheath dress and swaying by herself, twitching her head and shoulders back and forth like a high school student at her first dance. Their husbands, standing a little off to the side and embroiled in one of their formidable political discussions, ignored them. Livia’s Giuliano, tall and prematurely gray, was bending over Adele’s