Chapter 14 Elisa
Elisa
I actually wouldn’t have minded joining Michael for a pizza, but as Mamma always says, if I hit a wall with my head, it would be the wall that cracks, so I refused to compromise: penance first. I set him up on three dates with the Cozzis and only after he’s atoned for his sins will I grant friendship benefits.
For Giada and me, the Cozzis were a real problem in high school: a cohort of snobs and bigots that showed blatant contempt for us.
In truth, they harbored a poorly concealed envy toward Giada: There wasn’t a boy in school who wouldn’t have thrown himself at her feet.
While toward me they were downright disrespectful—though I was the one stupid enough to get myself pregnant at sixteen.
Those three managed to embody a true living punishment.
I’m sure that in London Michael is surrounded by hordes of Kate Middleton clones—beautiful, tall, pure, and light—but as long as he stays here, he’ll have to deal with Belvedere, and Belvedere doesn’t overlook a single man under forty. There’s a toll to be paid.
These memories, however, don’t have any power over me when I’m off in my peaceful little corner: like now, in the annex’s garden, reading Kinsella’s latest novel—which I went to pick up in Florence especially, just so I could have a signed, limited-release edition—lying in the hammock stretched between two olive trees, equipped with a miner-style headlamp and a bowl of watermelon cubes resting on my stomach.
Giada is out and about with Carletto, Linda is studying in the library, and Mamma is watching a rerun of Il Ciclone with Donatella.
So I have a moment of total peace that I intend to savor until the last second.
If my exhaustion doesn’t catch up with me first, I might even be able to finish this book in one night.
It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve fallen asleep in the hammock with a book on my face.
Tf-tf-ft-tf-tf-tf.
A flutter tickles my head.
Tf-tf-ft-tf-tf-tf.
“Renato, are you still awake? Go to your birdhouse. Be a good boy,” I order, as the parrot pirouettes happily on top of me.
“Golf in Chianti,” he croaks. “Golf in Chianti.”
Huh? “Renato? What are you saying?”
“Golf in Chianti,” he repeats. Then I understand him. “Golf in Chianti.”
“Renato, come here,” I say, holding out my right arm as a perch. “Say it again.”
“Sergei Bogdanovic.”
“No, the first thing you said.”
“Sergei Bogdanovic, Sergei Bogdanovic,” he croaks again with conviction before flying off.
What on earth was that?
“Golf in Chianti and Sergei Bogdanovic,” I repeat, while feeling a little stupid for listening to a parrot with multiple personalities.
“Golf in Chianti and Sergei Bogdanovic . . . Bogdanovic . . . Bogdanovic,” I muse.
“Bogdanovic!” That’s why it sounds so familiar; it was the name Michael said this morning on our roof during his call.
I leave Kinsella in the hammock together with the watermelon and go up to the attic, which, despite the open skylight, is still boiling from the day’s heat. I intercept the network signal and type the words Bogdanovic and golf in the search bar.
Two million results. Not bad. But the first one tells me all I need to know.
This Sergei Bogdanovic is not a golf champion but a Russian billionaire who built his immense fortune in the early nineties by dealing in the oil import-export business.
After he moved from Moscow to London, the tycoon extended his interests to the world of sport, in particular golf, of which he is a great enthusiast and proud owner of an international circuit of exclusive clubs called Green Star.
The circuit website lists all his golf clubs: Scotland, the Emirates, Singapore, Florida, California, South Africa, Beijing, but there is nothing in Italy and definitely not in Chianti.
I go back to the search results and see the media mostly reports on the parties on his stratospheric yacht in Monte Carlo, complete with superstars landing by helicopter.
The Nastasya, baptized with his wife’s name, comes up immediately in an image search.
I click on his wife’s birthday photoshoot and feast my eyes on the parade of glamorous guests toasting on the bridge of the megayacht.
While I think about the sidereal distance that divides my world from the one I’m observing, my gaze falls on one of the many photos in which Bogdanovic is shaking hands with guests.
There’s one man I recognize, not because he’s a celebrity but because he’s . . . Michael!
A strange suspicion is creeping up in my chest, so I continue to scan the results.
On the Saxton second, how dare you eavesdrop on a private conversation?”
“I couldn’t care less about your precious conversations. It’s Renato who evidently heard you talking about it. He just landed on my head, croaking, ‘Golf in Chianti’ and ‘Bogdanovic, Bogdanovic.’ I may not be an Oxford graduate, but I know how to process information.”
“Ah, Renato,” he comments with the tone of someone who has been caught in the act.
“You better watch what you say when he’s around; he repeats everything he hears. So?”
Michael sighs, rubs his face darkened by the shadow of evening stubble, and nods. “That’s right.”
The confirmation stuns me. I don’t know why I was hoping for a no, but I was holding on to the faint hope that I was wrong. “Who are you?” I ask, looking at him in horror.
“I don’t understand the issue. It’s business, not personal.”
“Not personal? Of course for you it’s not personal, for you it’s business. But for me, my life will be ruined. For me and for my whole family,” I say.
“Forgive me, but your life is not my responsibility, nor is it Bingley’s.” Michael stands up, angry. “He has no clue what to do with the estate, and I, his best friend, intend to help him make the decision that most benefits him. That’s my job; report me!”
“And it seemed appropriate to do it behind our backs? When would you have told us? After the sale went through? Good morning, the estate has been sold, and tomorrow the vineyards will be razed to the ground to make way for a golf course for fat billionaires? Would you please gather your rags and leave the premises?”
“Did you come to talk or to be dramatic? Because in the second case, I’m not interested,” he replies, starting to leave.
“Hey, listen up, Michael. Just because you come here from London dressed as an heir to the throne and waving credit cards around doesn’t mean your time is worth more than mine. In fact, as far as I’m concerned, you have a lot to learn about the value of time.”
“Maybe, but I don’t owe you any explanations,” he cuts me off coldly. “Are you quite finished? I’m here to do my job and to do it well.”
“What if Carlo changed his mind about selling? Maybe he’d like to stay, now that he’s seeing Giada.”
“Then great! But what if Giada has no intention of staying stuck in this godforsaken hellhole, like . . .”
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.