Free Three Light-Years: A Novel by Andrea Canobbio

get the door open even though she’s slamming it rather persistently against a Dumpster. He gets back in the car, shifts into reverse, makes sure the door is clear so Cecilia can get out, then moves forward again, gets out, and locks the car. During all these maneuvers neither of them comments or jokes or smiles even for a second; they’re serious and focused as if they were about to rob the café instead of getting something to drink.
    This time they don’t drink mineral water. Cecilia orders a Campari and, although he doesn’t particularly like the taste of Campari, Viberti has one, too. They’re sitting at a table in the back of the room, facing the wall. Viberti, leaning forward, strokes the inside of Cecilia’s thigh as she spreads her legs and slides toward him on the chair, looking at him languidly, her eyelids half-lowered and her lips parted. She is the picture of a woman who wants to fuck, Viberti thinks, he must have seen it in some film, then immediately corrects himself: no, not a picture, it’s she herself, she’s the woman who wants to fuck, in the flesh, and it’s him she wants to fuck. Can it be? It seems so, but it’s still strange. They stammer words of little importance and almost no meaning: “How did it dawn on you,” “I don’t know what’s the matter with me,” “All of a sudden like that.”
    They drink the Campari quickly—as soon as they set their glasses down on the table they pick them back up to take another sip, they toss them down in five minutes. Their thoughts are very confused, not so much about what they want but about how to get it. They get back in the car. They come out on one of the streets bordering the hospital, they end up in a traffic circle, they make two complete turns around it, with no comment, not a smile, not even when the tires screech during too sharp a turn. Like with all spare parts, it’s not worth trying too hard to save money on tires, better to replace them at regular intervals, every year and a half, every two, every three years, depending on how much you use the car; there’s nothing worse than having to change a tire yourself, and it’s impossible to know when they’re worn through, you can’t trust the tire guys, obviously, just decide for yourself how long they’ll last and then don’t worry about it. Viberti then turns onto a bridge, crosses the river, and drives into a wooded area surrounding a school. Antonio lives not too far away, the neighborhood is familiar to him, and around the corner Viberti knows a dead-end street lined with plane trees, fairly quiet and secluded, where they can talk. Where they can calmly decide where to go to do what they want to do. They should go farther away from the hospital to make sure no one sees them, but what the hell, Viberti thinks, if she’s not worried about it why should he be worried? Besides, they’re only stopping to talk, that is, essentially to decide what to do and where to go, that is, Viberti is essentially going to try to persuade Cecilia to go straight to his house to have sex, even though getting into his building without running the risk of being seen by Giulia will be a whole other story, but they’ll face one problem at a time. But as soon as the Passat is safely parked on the dead-end street, deserted at that hour as it always is, as soon as the engine is turned off, the windows lowered to let in the cool air of late afternoon, as soon as they find themselves close and alone, seemingly alone, safe from prying eyes and unwelcome encounters, Cecilia and Viberti don’t start talking.
    Without a word they cling to each other and kiss each other and suck each other’s lips and bite and touch, pressing and rubbing, they undo buttons and loosen belts and slip their hands under shirts and into jeans. Viberti grabs a breast and squeezes the erect nipple between his thumb and forefinger, Cecilia pulls out his dick and whips her hand up and down, scratching his stomach with her nails,