The checked Moon, Page 2

keys," Luca said, buttoning his shirt.

  "And when are you? We’ve been hanging out for three months, always as it suits you best. Not only you choose the days, you even count the hours."

  Luca opened his mouth, but Giada struck him dumb. "You watch the clock every ten minutes, which means you’re thinking about your wife, cause she’s the one who drowns you in questions if you’re late for dinner. You feel free to use me as you please, and always in this lousy car."

  Luca tried not to, but he couldn’t resist. He looked at his watch again. Luckily, Giada did not notice, she was looking out the window.

  "How many times have we done it in a bed?" she asked with a hint of sadness.

  Luca ignored the question. The night was about to devour every bit of daylight. He had to hurry. "Will you give me the keys?"

  "I asked you a question."

  "You think I don’t know? Never, we never did it in a bed, what can I do if you live with..."

  "I didn’t ask you to come to my house, neither I demand to come to yours. But you could make an effort and get a room. Any hotel. Anything is better than fucking once again in the middle of the countryside, even a filthy motel on a highway, at least I would have something to clean myself with."

  Luca was nervous and had trouble hiding it.

  Why is it so hard to pull something out of the hands of a woman?

  He had to get the keys back, and immediately take Giada back home. And also start to think of a good excuse for Alida.

  Are you really so sure you are going back to Alida?

  "It may seem silly, but won’t you like to have dinner in a nice place?" Giada asked, putting her resentment aside to resort to an almost childish, naive tone.

  Luca saw a crack and dived blind into it.

  "Of course, you know what? Tomorrow I’ll book at the Finestre, the restaurant of a friend of mine. Have you ever been there? They serve fish."

  "Fish sucks!" Giada snapped, immediately darkening again. With unexpected speed she opened the door, went around the car and, standing in front of the window, studied Luca as if he were a caged animal.

  "Come back in!" he shouted, tapping his elbow against the glass.

  Inspecting the car keys, Giada noticed there was another bunch dangling from the keychain.

  "I suppose you open your house with these," she said, showing them to Luca, who did not answer.

  "You think I don’t know where you live?" Giada asked with a smile, "Via Matano 14. Or is it 12?" she wondered. "Never mind, I’d recognize the gate. Green iron, in front of an elementary school. I followed you more than once, and I even sounded the horn when you didn’t go at a green light. You're an idiot, Luca."

  "Giada! Don’t you dare..."

  "Dare what? Have a chat with your wife? I’d find her bored in front of the TV. She would be pleased to talk to someone since her husband, so he says, is always busy at work. You can even keep these" she said, pulling the car keys out from the chain and letting them fall to the ground.

  "I won’t lock you inside your lousy Audi, to think about what an asshole you are, only because I don’t want to have you on my conscience. I’ll walk away to call a taxi, no fucking signal here." Giada vanished in the dusk, waving her phone.

  Luca opened the car door, picked up the keys and looked out the windshield.

  Still nothing, but it was a matter of minutes.

  How could he have been so stupid?

  For no reason in the world he should have been there.

  He elbowed the window once again, with the only result of multiplying the stars in the sky of Rome.

  June 15 – 21:18

  They could have found hundreds of fancier ways to refer to it, but they soberly called it the room.

  During the week, the room door stood firmly closed, and neither Alida nor Luca, when passing by it to go to the bathroom, seemed at all troubled by the fact that that place of blood was less than three steps from their bedroom.

  When Alida walked into the room, the rabbits looked at her standing still. She couldn’t read in their eyes if they were scared or calm, if they were tired of the usual food or wanted fresher water in their plastic tanks. She couldn’t even sense whether they were aware that soon many of them would no longer exist.

  Alida and Luca never bothered to refresh the floor and the walls, and the wear and tear of the place was unprecedented. Why restructuring the room if, when they locked themselves inside once a month, their senses were so altered that they would feel at ease even in the depths of a landfill?

  Only Alida set foot in it every once in a while. Just as long as needed to fill the tanks of the rabbits with water and food, make sure that none of them had died in the meantime.

  The room was completely bare.

  The walls, as well as deep grooves as if someone had ripped them open with a chisel, bore splashes of dried blood, coming not only from the devoured rabbits, but also from the wounds Alida and Luca caused themselves to soothe their torment.

  The places in which the plaster was dirtier were those from which, at three feet from the ground, strong chains stuck out from the walls, facing each other. Each ended with a metal collar, padded with rubber to avoid chafing, and their length had been calculated so that they couldn’t be more than twenty-five inches apart.

  The flooring was covered in PVC like that of a hospital ward, and the armoured door could be further locked with heavier hinges and latches. The power sockets were rendered useless by iron plates. In the corners of the ceiling, a couple of grids that could easily be mistaken for air ducts, were actually speakers connected to the stereo in the hall.

  In addition to rabbits, Alida loved music too.

  A lamp shielded by a plastic protection hung from the centre of the ceiling, the only part of the room where the original white paint was intact, except for some sporadic spots.

  Alida made her way through the rabbits and spotted it between the food and the water tank. She bent down and picked it with the tenderness of a young doctor helping a baby to come into the world for the first time. It was not the first time she had had the feeling that that rabbit possessed something special. What made it different from the others was not the single black spot on his head, but a kind of dormant form of intelligence that was visible in the background of its pupils, dark as chocolate pralines.

  How much time had it spent in the room? Two months? Alida had lost track of time. Incredible how it could always survive. Either, having learned from the carnage its companions faced, he kept at a safe distance throughout the whole night, or it was just Alida who, subconsciously, spared him, feeling that strange attraction.

  She gently stroked it and approached the window, protected by heavy iron grating. Beyond the bars, less and less cars went by slowly, but none entered the building gates.

  She took out the phone and called Luca once again.

  His phone was off.

  June 15 – 21:44

  Giada hated the place where Luca had decided to withdraw. It was the opposite side of Rome, and it made her feel dirty, cheap. Less than a mile away, on Via Flaminia, prostitutes of all ages fought against cold in winter and mosquitoes in summer every night of the year.

  Night had fallen, and Rome from a distance looked like an expanse of broken glass on a sea of oil.

  She stopped under a streetlight. The side of the road overlooked the fields and was bordered by the typical pine trees of that area, those that grow more curved by the wind the closer you get to the sea. There had been a landslide in a tract of land, creating a rift that dropped on a dark field sprinkled with electricity pylons.

  Giada looked back to Via di Torre Annunziatella, perhaps one of the longest dead-end streets in the capital. Who ends up there by mistake cannot imagine that within two miles they will be forced to reverse, unless they want to reach Via di Grottarossa walking through the fields.

  Except for a couple of houses with small gardens, some cars parked in front of the driveways, and the pylons that rose spectrally,
there was nothing around Giada. She took a step and nearly pierced her foot on a nail protruding from a wooden board. When she kicked it to the middle of the road, the street light wavered, then turned completely off.

  She did not care.

  She was thinking of her threat that had made Luca go pale. She had lied. It was clear that she would not leave that way. Besides, what taxi could she ever take with less than ten euro in her purse? She had wanted to scare him just so he understood that it was time to play less and turn their fucking into something more concrete. If he believed in the two of them.

  Otherwise it was better to end it there, once and for all.

  Anyway, the story about going to tell everything to his wife had worked great. The expression on Luca’s face had been a blast, and elbowing the window must have hurt as hell. What a moron!

  She decided to make him a prank. Something to ease the situation, like suddenly pop in from the car window. She stifled a laugh at the thought of him jumping, slamming his head on the roof.

  Suddenly, out of her purse came the ringtone she had associated to Luca.

  He wanted to ask her to go back.

  What a loser!

  He hadn’t even bothered to get out of the car and look for her.

  He can wait, the jerk, Giada thought, lighting a Merit while Luca watched with irritation his flat phone. Alida’s calls had drained the battery.

  He started the car, manoeuvred and slowly went down Via di Torre Annunziatella, jolting over the swelling made by the roots of the pines, pushing to get out of the asphalt that imprisoned them.

  He saw