Free For All the Gold in the World by Massimo Carlotto, Antony Shugaar Page A

I’m afraid that it would be a mistake to dig any deeper.”
    She wasn’t wrong about that, and I hurried over to the bar. The bartender was slow. To make the drink, he had to look up ingredients and portions in a manual that had definitely seen better days.
    He caught the perplexed look on my face and tried his best to justify himself. “Everyone always asks for the same few things. Then along comes a customer who orders a Singapore Sling, the kind of refined specialties you’d learn at bartender’s school, and I’ve always had to work, I’ve never had time for any of that bullshit.”
    â€œIt’s already the second one you’ve made tonight, maybe you’ll start to get the hang of it.”
    He smiled, putting a mouthful of nicotine-stained teeth on display. It occurred to me that he was a rare bird; it used to be easier to run into smokers who didn’t care what their mouths looked like.
    That thought made me miss the bartender’s retort, but I didn’t bother to ask him to repeat it. I had better things to do.
    â€œDo you know how to kiss?” Cora asked me after a long sip. “Like, really kiss, I mean.”
    â€œI’m a first-rate kisser. Anywhere you care to point me.”
    â€œYou seem to think quite a lot of yourself, kid.”
    We didn’t waste time cautiously exploring each other’s bodies. Our tongues intertwined passionately, urgently. I licked her nipples very slowly, almost as if I meant to drive her to distraction, before grabbing her and lifting her onto the makeup table. My hand made its way under her skirt; it was exactly what I’d been yearning to do since the first time I saw her. She pushed my shoulders down and I found myself on my knees, my face buried between her thighs.
    I took it nice and easy as if time was all ours and no one else’s. Making love on that rickety makeup table was no simple task, but when the piano player knocked on the door to tell us that the concert was beginning, we were embracing, exhausted and happy.
    â€œMy dress is all rumpled,” Cora laughed.
    â€œNo one’s going to notice.”
    â€œNow get out of here, I have to try to fix my makeup.”
    Instead, I stayed for a while and watched her. I couldn’t break away from her. Jazz woman. A complete mess, frightened, fragile, but she got up every morning and tackled a tough job, in a place where pain was always king, and its dominion went unchallenged.
    â€œI like you,” I said as I left her dressing room.
    She looked at me in the mirror and smiled.
    Â 
    Cinzia Donato got back in touch just as the weather turned. She called midafternoon as the overstressed windshield wipers of my Å koda Felicia struggled nobly against a violent downpour.
    She arranged to meet me at a house in Castelgomberto, just outside of Vicenza, at 7:45 P.M. on the dot. The madam had always been a stickler for punctuality.
    I sighed. It had been a little more than twenty-four hours and I was already standing up my new girlfriend.
    She was at work and I couldn’t call her. I wrote her a text in which the word “sorry” appeared three separate times.
    I turned around and, since I was definitely running early, I left the highway and drove to a multiplex. I had no idea which movie to watch so, basing my decision more or less on the showtimes, I chose a movie by an Italian director. A famous, multiple award-winning director. I’d always been deeply grateful to the auteur school of filmmaking, which had put me in touch with aspects of life I knew nothing about. I often left the theater shaken, sometimes filled with wonder. The movies fed me with stories of the civilian world, as we referred to it, and helped me to understand ordinary people. But I felt no envy. Their world was still one I didn’t like. Unlike Max the Memory, I’d never cherished the dream of changing it. I preferred to live on its outskirts.
    That afternoon I