Chapter 35 Michael
Michael
I messed up big-time. Intergalactically big. I stare into space, walking around the grounds of the villa, extremely disappointed in myself for not realizing how much I’d messed up my life until it hit me in the face.
I wouldn’t have been able to be in a relationship with either of them: Sheila is too clingy and Danielle is too effusive.
But what I did to them reminded me too much of the worst person I’ve ever known in my life: my brother, George.
Snooty, profiteering, reckless George.
He would have behaved like this and been proud of it. I’m starting to disgust myself.
Plus, I think I’ve completely ruined my chances with Elisa.
I need to talk to Bingley, but he’s already gone. We barely had time to say goodbye.
As I walk, I hope in vain to run into Elisa.
I wander aimlessly with my gaze lowered until I see the darkened imprints of two small hands in the concrete walkway.
It was the summer of my tenth birthday, and the old count had had the crumbling walkways around the agricultural buildings rebuilt.
Elisa and I had waited for the workers to leave after they poured the concrete, and then we pressed our hands into it with all our strength.
It’s so poignant to see the imprints all these years later. This memory immediately unlocks another: I’m behind the old shed, one of the many outbuildings on the grounds, a place forgotten by adults but that Elisa and I, as children, used as a refuge.
I walk around it—it doesn’t seem anyone has kept it up in all these years—until I reach the wooden plank door.
I force the rusty bolt, which no longer glides, but when I manage to open it, it’s as if I’ve entered a portal in time.
Everything is as I remembered it.
Our bikes, the tires now deflated, are tossed in a corner; the out-of-tune guitar and the rickety drums from when we decided to start a band—a cover band of an Italian duo .
. . Jasmine . . . No! Jalisse! And we always sang the same song.
The faded tents from when we camped in the garden; our excavation kit from when we pretended to be archaeologists; a pile of old holiday notebooks, with homework we never finished.
And, in the middle of the shed, under a dust-covered tarp, there she is: Mauro’s battered yellow Cinquecento.
He’d gotten it from a scrap dealer, because it wouldn’t go even if you pushed it, and then stored it in the shed, waiting to find the time and money to get it back on the road.
Elisa and I would get in and pretend we were driving to imaginary destinations: One day it was Milan, another Madrid, then New York, then Honolulu, or the moon . . .
One summer, I decided I was going to be a mechanic, so I started dismantling it, with Elisa as my assistant. We had no idea what we were doing, but we lost entire afternoons that way.
I cover it up again, overwhelmed by the wave of nostalgia that catches me off guard and, combined with the humiliation of this morning’s scene, destroys me once and for all.
On Monday, just before eleven, I go to the village building department to get a copy of the municipal regulations and documents relating to the estate.
The sale is on hold for now, but in case Bingley still wants to get rid of it—Caroline certainly does—I need to get everything we need to present the investment to Bogdanovic.
In reality my heart’s no longer in the deal. I’m sad to think that the beautiful vineyard Elisa cultivates with so much passion will become a golf course for snooty billionaires.
However, I made a commitment, and I’m not the type to leave a job half finished.
Plus, now that I’m at odds with Elisa, why am I here if not to work?
When I enter the yellow building overlooking the town square and reach the office on the second floor, it seems I’m the only visitor.
“Good morning,” I greet the employee at the reception, a bony woman between fifty and sixty with a bright red bob, glasses pulled down over her hooked nose, and a bored look on her face.
“Wait your turn,” she says in a nasal voice.
“My turn?”
“If I haven’t called your number, it’s not your turn.”
“But it’s only me.” I feel like an idiot for pointing out the obvious.
“Rules are rules,” she decrees inflexibly.
“Take a number and wait.”
I go back to the entrance, take a number, and walk back in, waving it with a theatrical gesture.
The woman presses the button and announces: “Number one.”
I approach the window and throw my number into the bin.
“Good morning,” she greets me as if she hadn’t seen me two minutes ago. “How can I help you?”
“I’d like to meet with the inspector to ask him for some clarification regarding a property.”
“Mmm, a meeting with the municipal inspector, you say?”
“Yeah.” Aren’t I speaking Italian?
“Do you have an appointment?” she asks, looking at me over her rectangular glasses secured around her neck with a beaded chain.
“I don’t, actually.”
“You need an appointment,” she says.
We’re off to a bad start. “So, could I make an appointment, please?”
“Mmm, let’s see.” She takes an agenda out of the desk drawer and flips through it. “The inspector is free today at eleven, eleven thirty, or twelve. What time works for you?”
It’s eleven right now. I don’t understand if she’s the confused one or if I am. “Eleven is great.”
“Who should I say is requesting the meeting?”
“Michael D’Arcy.”
“How do you spell it?”
“Is it important? The meeting is now.”
“Will you spell it for me, please?” she insists.
I snort, rolling my eyes. “M-i-c-h-a-e-l D-a-r-c-y. Okay? Can I go?”
“Where?” she asks me, as if she’s just had a reset.
“To meet the inspector.”
“They aren’t here yet.”
“But it’s eleven,” I point out.
She turns to the clock hanging on the wall behind her. “Mmm, I think it’s ten fifty-seven.”
“Are you joking?”
“Please take a seat and wait for the inspector to call you.”
I sit on a faded and threadbare armchair with my head in my hands, dazed by the secretary, who has disappeared. “Michael D’Arcy,” a voice calls me from behind an opaque glass door covered with yellowed papers. The nameplate says “Surveyor Rubina Gentile.”
“Good morning, surveyor,” I say as I enter, petrified.
At the desk is the secretary from before.
“Um . . . are you . . . ?”
“Surveyor Rubina Gentile. How can I help you?”
“But . . .” I’m so confused I think I must have hit my head.
“Go on. I don’t have much time. I have more meetings after this,” she says angrily.
“I’d like to request a copy of the current urban planning regulations and all the building documentation for Le Giuggiole.”
“Did you request access to the documents?”
And how would I do that? “No.”
“To obtain a copy of public documents, you have to fill out the request form.”
“And where do I find this form?” I ask, exhausted.
From a binder, she takes a typed sheet of paper that’s practically illegible thanks to the number of times it’s been photocopied. “Here. Fill in the property data.”
“Do you have a pen, please?”
“Blue or black?”
“It doesn’t matter! Blue, please.”
I fill in all the requested information and hand it to the surveyor. “Here you are.”
“It has to be stamped by the secretary.”
“Um, but aren’t you also the secretary?”
“Documents are stamped by the secretary, not by the inspectors. And anyway it’s not complete.”
“What do you mean? I filled everything out.”
“You need to pay the two-euro stamp duty.”
I breathe in and out calmly. So it’s true what they say about Italian bureaucracy! “Okay, I’ll go get it and come back,” I say, getting up with the cursed paper in my hands.
“Be quick. The appointment ends at eleven thirty,” she warns me.
I fly down to the tobacco store, which also sells stamp duties, where I wait patiently while half a dozen grandparents buy their scratch cards, one plays the lottery, and another tops up their phone. I buy my coveted stamp duty and return to my tormentor at the secretary’s station.
“Done! Is it okay now?”
She doesn’t say anything to me and sticks a sign on the counter that says: “Coffee break. Service will resume at 11:20.” Then she looks at me, stirring something that looks like anything but coffee. Peat? Tar?
“Are you joking?”
But she doesn’t bat an eye.
Stay calm, Michael. Calm. I pace back and forth in front of the counter, shooting her dirty looks to which she remains impervious.
Once the five minutes have passed, with the precision of an atomic clock, she removes the sign and reopens the window. “How can I help you?”
This must be Inception. “I am registering a request for access to building documents,” I repeat, exhausted.
“We don’t accept hand-delivered requests.”
“Then how should they be delivered? By carrier pigeon?”
“By fax.”
“Fax?” I’ve never been this bewildered. “Who the heck still has a fax machine?”
“If you don’t have a fax machine, you can use the one at the tobacco store.”
“Wait a minute, let me get this straight: I’m here, right in front of you, with this original form I filled out by hand, and you expect me to go back downstairs to have it faxed?”
She scribbles something on a Post-it and hands it to me. “That’s the number.”
I slap my palm down on the countertop with a crack that echoes down the stairs and then set off on my pilgrimage.
Sending the fax is harder than expected because the line is busy, and I’m starting to think that maybe it’s a sign that I should forget about the sale entirely.
When I return for the third time, victorious, the secretary-surveyor is on the phone.
“Did it go through?” I ask breathlessly.