Frame-Up (37 page)

"Thank you, sir. I would hate having to visit him in prison. Maybe I
can now convince him to get treatment."

"That would be highly desirable, Miss Walker. Have a good day."

Carlo emerges from the guest bedroom just as I disconnect and takes
a shower. By the time he has done his toilet, I have lunch on the table, a
dish of fresh ravioli in a pesto sauce. In spite of having slept twelve
hours, he still looks hung over. Maybe lack of shaving contributes to his
haggard looks.

Halfway through the meal he utters the first words. "Will I have to go
to jail?"

"You’ve come very close to it. No, they will put you on probation. If
you do not re-offend for a year, they’ll wipe all charges."

He continues eating in silence. "Ceci, will you forgive me for tricking
you?"

"Yes, Carlo, I will. I care very much for you, but you also must know
that if you ever get into trouble again I won’t be there to rescue you. From
now on you’ll have to bear the consequences of your actions. I talked to
dad." His face freezes into a mask. "Don’t react like that. He is your
father, whether you like it or not. I know he cares for you, and he has
offered to support you if you are willing to get help for your addiction and
go into therapy."

"He hasn’t shown any interest in me ever since mother took us to
Montagnola. The only thing I ever got from him was money."

"That’s not the whole story. He tried to keep in touch with us, but
mother prevented it. I only found out when I returned to London that he
offered to have us with him every summer. She refused. She didn’t even
ask us if we wanted to go."

"Why did he leave us in the first place, if he cared for us," Carlo
sneers.

"Their marriage had broken apart long before the divorce. You were
too young to remember —"

"Oh, I remember their fights. How often did I hold the hands over my
ears not to hear them! And it was often over me!"

"Carlo, listen, listen carefully. First, the marriage between our parents
was on the rocks within a few months after they settled in London.
Mother was too young when they married; she had illusions about
married life; she had no friends here and was homesick from the very
beginning. Second, once they got into a pattern of fighting, what they
were fighting about was irrelevant. It just provided the material to have
a go at each other. So, father accused mother of spoiling you, and she
accused him of being too stern with you. But it wasn’t really about you.
It was about them. Mother blamed dad for everything, for being
homesick, for feeling miserable, for losing her friends, for the weather.
She was severely depressed, refused to seek professional help, and finally
couldn’t cope any longer."

"Yes, and then he traded her in for a younger model."

"Once you get to know Lucy, you will see how wrong you are. Lucy
is not as good-looking as Mamma. She is no beauty and just a few years
younger than mother, but she has her head and her heart in the right place.
I’ve come to like her very much. She made dad happy, while mother only
made him miserable. I love mother, but I also see her for what she is.
Third, even if during the last year of their marriage, they often fought
about you, that doesn’t mean that dad left mother over you. You carry no
blame. I mentioned to dad that you seemed to blame yourself. He was
shocked that you would think that."

"And two years ago he told me to go to hell, that he washes his hands
off me."

"Yes and you also know why he reacted like that. For over a year you
pretended to be enrolled at university. You can’t blame him for being
badly hurt by your deception. But he is willing to hold out a hand to you
if you are willing to take it."

"He’ll just try to force me into the mold of a lawyer, like he did
before."

"No he won’t, nor would I let him. Carlo, think about it. You can’t
continue going through life like you did these last four years. You’ll be
in the morgue before you’re thirty, another case of overdose, or beaten to
death in jail by another convict."

"Oh, sis, do you have to make it sound so gruesome?"

"Carlo, you are my brother. I love you and I beg you, face reality …
and that reminds me. One aspect of that reality is that until the police lift
the conditions they imposed on you, you are to live here with me, you are
not to leave London, and you are not to get drugs. If you leave the
apartment without me, you are to tell me where you go, when you will be
back, and be back by that time. If you violate any of these conditions,
even your charm won’t help you anymore. They’ll revoke bail and take
you into custody."

"And what am I supposed to do all day?"

"I’ll find things for you. Where is your guitar?"

"I sold it."

"You exchanged my special present for a single high?" I sound
indignant even to myself.

"Just make me feel guilty." Then he adds with a grin: "It was three,
actually."

"All right, I’ll rent you another. You can compose a ballade about the
misery of coming off drugs. That should keep you busy for a while. And
there are all my CDs, several Italian films on DVDs you haven’t watched
yet, TV. There’s my laptop. You can surf the net to your heart’s content,
and I got two or three dozen books you haven’t read."

He moans, gets up, grabs the laptop from the little table in the living
room, and disappears in the spare bedroom.

I call the hotel and let them know that I won’t need the room any
longer and give them my credit card number. They agree to hold the
sports bag for me.

Monday, 3:20 p.m.

I answer the entrance door intercom, vaguely hoping it is Silvio. The
voice that speaks is Emilia’s. "I want to talk to you," she announces,
giving me the familiar ‘
tu
’.

"About what?"

"About my husband. Let me in."

For a moment I’m tempted to refuse. I don’t really want to face that
woman and get abused by her. Then I think better of it. It may be useful
to sound her out. If Silvio and I have any future together, it’s better to be
on civil terms with her. She is the mother of his child.

"All right, level 7." I release the entrance door and then wait at the
apartment door. She enters without offering her hand in greeting in the
Italian way and strides past me into the living room, looking around,
taking in the room and its decor, like a prospective buyer. "Not bad," she
comments, "you have expensive taste. Do you fuck my husband on this
sofa or in bed?"

I’m not going to take her bait. Instead, I remain strictly polite. "Please,
Emilia, take a seat. May I offer you a drink? Coffee, fruit juice, San
Pellegrino?"

She chooses one of the soft chairs and replies: "A glass of red will do."

I hesitate a moment. Should I ignore her impertinence and give in?
Yes.
There is a started bottle of red in the kitchen. I go there, fill a glass
three quarters for her and mineral water for myself.

She takes the glass without saying thanks and tastes it. "It’s all right,"
she murmurs, as if to herself.

"So, you want to talk to me about Silvio," I say to get her started.

"Yes. He is my husband and you’re trying to steal him. You won’t get
him. I won’t agree to a divorce, so you better cut your losses now."

There is no point arguing with her. So I come right to the point. "How
much money do you want to agree to a divorce right away, rather than
fight it for a year and lose in the end?"

Her stunned face reveals that she hasn’t expected such a response.

Then a sly smile crosses her face. "So you offer to buy him from me?
Silvio will be furious when he hears that. He is a very proud man, easily
offended. In fact, you just handed me the means to cool his ardor for
you."

"Silvio and I have already talked about paying you off."

Again, she is thrown by the answer. It takes her a moment to recover.
"Half a million euros. Is he worth that much to you?"

"He’s worth more than that to me, but you’re hardly in a position to
ask even for a small fraction of that. No, the reason to offer you money
is to avoid the aggravation and hassle of a contested divorce. So rather
than give the money to a lawyer, we thought to offer it to you, and the
sum we have in mind is no more than twenty thousand Euros. Even that
is generous."

She responds with a loud laugh. "Do you take me for a sucker?"

"No, I think that you will see reason. You see, Emilia, you have no
case. You abandoned a marriage, stayed away for four years, and
abandoned your child. No judge will refuse to grant Silvio a divorce on
those grounds. Silvio doesn’t even have to provide evidence that you have
been in one or more adulterous relationship."

"So has Silvio. He fucked you and I don’t know how many other
women before."

"You’ve no proof of that, whereas Silvio has witnesses that you lodged
with a man in the same room."

"I will claim my daughter. Courts always award custody of children to
the mother. Silvio won’t be willing to give her up." There is a vicious grin
on her face.

"Again, you have no case. You abandoned your daughter, not just for
a few days, but for four years. You never tried to make contact with her.
Maybe twenty years ago mothers tended to get custody, but no more.
Nowadays, no judge will grant you custody. So, you either take the offer
for twenty thousand Euros now, or you will lose in court later and get
nothing. Do you have the funds to hire a divorce lawyer? … No. Even a
hopeless one will cost you ten thousand."

She is screwing her face into a grimace, eyeing me full of hatred. "You
are a real bitch, aren’t you?" She gets up. "You will regret this, I swear.
I’ll make you pay."

"Are you threatening me? In case you haven’t noticed, our conversation is being recorded word for word." A lie, but she will hardly be able
to figure it out. The stereo was playing before she came and I only turned
off the volume. The lights are still on and the ones registering the sound
frequencies are flickering.

"You bitch," she screams, spitting in my face, and then rushes to the
door.

"Emilia, think about the offer."

Her answer is to slam the apartment door. I go into the bathroom and
wash my face. Then I drink the mineral water and pour the half-full glass
of wine down the sink. I call Silvio again. It is crucial that he hears about
Emilia’s visit from me in all its detail before she manages to give him a
distorted account. I cannot tell from his responses whether he is pleased
or displeased about my money offer to her. It upsets me.

"Silvio, would you have preferred that I hadn’t done this?"

"No, it’s all right."

"You don’t sound convinced. Tell me the truth. I need to know."

"No, this may be the only way to get her to agree. It’s just that I can’t
even afford twenty thousand. It would mean that my dream of soon being
able to open my own restaurant would be pushed back by at least another
year. Twenty thousand is roughly what I manage to put away in a year."

"Is that the only concern?"

"Yes, why?"

"Now that the Sanvino affair is over, I can easily lend you a hundred
thousand Euros or more to get started. I may even want to become your
business partner, lending my business experience, even being the barista
for a while, if need be. I’ve done it before."

"Ceci, are you serious? You’re not just saying that to appease me, are
you?"

"No, Silvio. I won’t pick up my career as a stockbroker again. Two
years were more than enough. I want to get into something else, and
running a restaurant, maybe even a small hotel, sounds just great. Later
on, I may want to branch out part-time into something intellectually more
challenging." He remains silent for a moment. In my mind I see the smile
lighting up his face. "Are you smiling, Silvio?"

"Yes, how did you know?"

"I just saw it in my mind. But to come back to the offer to Emilia, stick
to the amount. She has no case."

Tuesday, 11
^th
November, 7:20
a.m.

"Ceci, let me sleep. Don’t be cruel."