Free The Dismal Science by Peter Mountford Page B

to focus on the tasks.
    For example:
    The garage had been overtaken with huge empty cardboard boxes and blocks of Styrofoam from his buying blitz at Williams-Sonoma and from maybe a dozen other large and less large objects he’d bought over the years. Those boxes and their ice-floe-sized hunks of Styrofoam never fit into his garbage can. Life was sieve-like with trash: sooner or later, all that was left was the oversized flotsam. Vincenzo had ceded the garage to clutter long enough ago that he felt sure that Cristina had a hand in letting it happen. So he could haul that to the dump, or maybe some of it could go to Goodwill. That was one thing. The attic, likewise, had two decades of things that they had notwanted to think about. Who had time for those things? Well, he did, now.
    Then there were the gutters, which needed cleaning: he’d seen a huge tropical epiphyte sprouting in his rear gutter at the end of the summer. The asphalt on his walkway was cracking and countless eager weeds and mosses were only making matters worse. The sink in the basement, the one beside the washer, drained slowly enough that whenever he ran a load the water filled the basin nearly to the rim; he was still paying a gym membership at a gym he hadn’t set foot in for two years. And this was only the local clutter—he really needed to figure out what he was going to do with his house in Italy, which was probably completely overrun with ivy and mold and God knows what else by now. The mortar was disintegrating inside the chimney there, had been since they bought it. And there’d been termites—someone had seen termites a year ago.
    This list was perilous: once you started to populate it, dozens of uninvited deeds popped up. He needed to get a new career going, for example. Yes, he would not merely tend the garden for his remaining decades. And there were other things, too. Like women. He could start dating women.
    His phone rang—strange at that hour, so he picked up. “Hello?”
    â€œVincenzo D’Orsi?”
    â€œYes, this is Vincenzo.”
    â€œGood morning, I’m Matthew Hastings with the Financial Times , and I was wondering if you have a minute to talk.”
    â€œI don’t think so. How did you get my phone number?”
    â€œYou’re listed.”
    Vincenzo groaned.
    â€œIt’d just be a minute of your time.” When Vincenzo didn’t speak, the reporter said, “For what it’s worth, it’s really not that hard to find someone’s phone number.” He was trying to nudge things along with his jaunty attitude.
    Vincenzo sat down at the island in the kitchen. It was raining outside now, lightly pattering on the deck, dribbling down the window. The fence out back was collapsing into the neighbor’s garden and needed to be repaired. It’d been that way for a year, another thing he could fix.
    â€œAm I the first to call?” the reporter said.
    â€œYes.” It hadn’t occurred to him yet that other journalists would call. But, of course they would. He grunted involuntarily.
    â€œCan you talk?”
    â€œOh—” he said and then sighed. He wasn’t used to dealing with journalists. “I think so.”
    â€œWas this the first time Mr. Hamilton tried to pressure you over a country?”
    â€œOh,” he said again, caught off guard by the directness. The question was simple enough on one level, but also impossible to answer without being controversial in one way or another. “I would rather not answer this right now.”
    â€œReally?” He sounded surprised. “Why? You don’t work there anymore, do you?”
    â€œNo, I think I—” Vincenzo hadn’t officially resigned yet, he also hadn’t officially been fired, so he did still work there, legally speaking. “Let me—can you call me back in a couple hours?” he said.
    â€œShould I give you my number?”
    â€œNo, just call