Free I Hadn't Understood (9781609458980) by Diego De Silva Page A

I fully grasp how indelicate I’ve been, and in the full flush of embarrassment I clamp my mouth shut. My response to his dilemma was to reel out the standard phrase for cases in which a friend comes to you to confide that his girlfriend has dumped him. How I came up with it, I really couldn’t say.
    A reciprocal silence ensues that makes me yearn for station identification or a word from our sponsors.
    â€œUm, no, of course not,” Espedito hastens to retract, “it must just be that I’m worn out lately. I’ve been working too hard, I eat out practically every day, I’ve been
drinking
”
—
he says it in italics—“I haven’t been getting enough sleep, and then I have to see Valentina at least three times a week . . . ”
    Valentina, as we were just mentioning, is Espe’s girlfriend. Sells perfumes, twenty-nine years old, definitely on the vulgar side. I know her both because she’s in and out of the office fairly frequently, and because I’ve had to help cover up their misdeeds more than once. And on one of those occasions, of this I’m certain, Teresa saw through my evasions, because she called me on my cell phone and asked if I could put her husband on the line, since that asshole had told her that he’d be with me but hadn’t bothered to advise me of the fact. Whereupon I had no idea what to say and I simply improvised a sudden and fictional loss of cell phone reception, and just the thought of that embarrassing charade brings a wave of shame, as if I were the one who was screwing the expert in perfumes.
    â€œYou see the way it is?” he goes on, making a show of wanting my approval.
    I stretch my neck the way you do to show how completely pointless it would be to add any further commentary, since he’s just said it all. And with a certain sense of relief I realize that if your goal is to rid yourself of the annoying and persistent buzz of someone who wants to bore you to death with his private life, all you need to do is feed back his version of the facts in the exact same dramaturgical terms in which he first presented them.
    â€œThe fact is,” Espedito resumes the charge, disabusing me of my naïve hopes, “I function perfectly with Valentina”—and here he illustrates with a hand gesture, like he’s shifting an imaginary gear stick into third—“even when I eat badly. Even when I don’t get much sleep. Even when I drink a little too much. It’s with Teresa that I can’t get it up.”
    I give up.
    â€œDon’t fixate about it,” I toss out. “These things happen sometimes.”
    A disheartened expression spreads over his face; he twirls thumb, index, and middle finger of his right hand.
    â€œThree months. I haven’t been able to do a thing for the past three months.”
    I don’t know what to tell him. Personally, I’ve never had to put up “detour” or “out of order” signs up on the approaches to my underground parking garage, as it were, or if so, never any longer than you might expect, say, a head cold to last. I could recommend he take the magic pill, but I’m pretty sure he’s already thought of that. For an ideological southern Italian male like him, taking Viagra puts you in the same category as a Mafia stool pigeon.
    â€œIt can’t go on like this, you understand? I just think about it all the time. And the more I think about it, the more it doesn’t work.”
    He draws a line across his forehead with the tip of his index finger.
    â€œWhat am I going to do with Teresa? How’m I going to hold on to Teresa? I’m worried, Vincè,” he whines.
    Look at that, he’s even calling me by my first name. Should I be flattered by this mark of extreme familiarity? Should I be touched at the sight of the state he’s in? Should I walk over next to him, hesitate for a moment, put my hand on his shoulder, and