His sentence hangs halfway in the air, but it’s too late, because I know what he meant anyway. “Like me. Of course.”
“Elisa, I don’t—”
“Let me guess. You didn’t mean to hurt me, right? How strange, you never want to hurt me and yet somehow you always manage it.” And I understand that now we really have nothing left to say to each other.
“Elisa,” he calls to me when I’m halfway out the door. “Wait.”
“For what, for you to offend me again?”
“This was the wrong way to deal with this,” he offers.
“You’re right; we shouldn’t have had to deal with it at all.” I’m so enraged that I’m trembling. “But it’s done. You know what, Michael?At first I was happy to see you again. I really would have gone for a pizza with you, just the two of us, but now I curse the day you came back here.”
And I go back to the annex, thinking that he and I have never been further apart from each other than in this moment.
15
Michael
I spend the night wavering between “What the hell does Elisa expect from me?” and “Maybe she has a slight point.”
I just have to lay it out for her as rationally as possible, given that her open resistance could put this entire operation at risk.
I shower, and as I’m pulling on a gray T-shirt and a pair of jeans I bought yesterday at the only clothing shop in Belvedere, Renato perches on my windowsill.
“You and I have a beef,” I threaten, pointing my finger at him.
“Kill me, Levante! Kill me if you love me!” he replies.
“Oh, shut your beak,” I mutter as I leave the room.
When I arrive at the annex to talk to Elisa, I find the door open with no one there, and no one answers when I shout.
I decide to proceed upstairs, even though there doesn’t seem to be a soul there either.
As I follow the corridor punctuated with doors, a fireball stops me short, nearly hitting my left temple. I bend down to pick up the unidentified flying object: a blue-and-yellow cardboard box.
I turn it over in my hands and ... Tampax? Did I almost get killed by a box of Tampax?!
A “Fuck you!” precedes the launch of a second box, the same as the first, which I dodge by ducking.
The flamethrower in question is Linda.
I approach the bathroom door and stick my arm inside. “I believe these are yours.”
“Keep them,” she growls angrily.
“I appreciate the thought, but I can’t use them,” I reply.
“Aaargh,” is all she manages to utter.
“Everything okay?” I ask more out of politeness than anything else.
“No,” she snorts.
“Um, okay ... I’ll ... I’ll just put them here,” I say, squinting my eyes closed and placing them on the vanity.
“Now get out of here,” she orders.
