Chapter 45 Michael
Michael
We leave the villa as if it were on fire and jump onto Elisa’s blue Vespa.
“Start the engine,” I urge, my helmet still unfastened.
“Damn it. I’m out of gas,” she grumbles.
“The Cinquecento! Let’s take that,” I suggest.
In less than a minute, we’re in the car, headed for the village.
“Who sells condoms at this hour?” I ask her.
“The cigarette vending machine outside the tobacco store. It has condoms too.”
“Oh. And you know this because you often find yourself scrambling for condoms in the middle of the night?” I ask with a hint of malice.
“Would that make you jealous, by chance?”
“It might,” I admit.
“Anyway, when the tobacconist decided to put condoms in the machine, the ultra-Catholic fringe of Belvedere had a fit, accusing him of encouraging promiscuity among the youth, transforming the village into Sodom and Gomorrah. No one talked about anything else for months.”
“Not much ever happens here, does it?”
“Believe it or not, no.”
“How did it end?”
“Let’s just say the tobacconist and the ultra-Catholics settled on a diplomatic solution.”
I push the engine of the little Cinquecento to its limits and beyond as I speed toward the parking lot in the square.
“Here they are,” Elisa says, pointing to the lit window on the vending machine.
I spot the label glued above the word Durex, which sports the image of a long-haired, bearded man sternly pointing his finger in our direction, with the caption “Jesus is watching you.”
“That’s the diplomatic solution I was referring to.”
“Very effective,” I note.
Elisa slips a twenty-euro bill into the machine, presses the corresponding button, and we wait.
“Shouldn’t they fall down into the hole?” I ask.
“Yeah,” she replies nervously.
“But they’re not.”
“No.” She presses the button again, then again and again, but the machine refuses to do its job. “It’s blocked, stupid thing!”
“Stop it, stop it, you’ll hurt yourself,” I say, restraining her from punching the vending machine. “Any other solutions?”
“We can ring the pharmacy.”
“Then what are we waiting for?”
The pharmacy has a back door with a little window, like the one prison guards use to check on prisoners in their cells, from which my pharmacist friend peers out.
“Good evening!” he greets us. “What can I get for you?”
“Condoms,” I reply quickly.
“Ah, so you’re all healed down there?”
“I’ve never been better, thanks. I’m in a bit of a rush, though.” I cut him short.
“So, condoms. I have these super-thin ones, they seem to be popular, people say you can barely feel them.”
“Perish the thought. Let’s not risk it,” Elisa intervenes.
“I have the performance ones, ultra-resistant, if you’re really going at it, or fruit flavored for the gourmands.”
“Look, normal ones are fine,” I explain.
“Tropical fruit?”
“No fruit.”
“Stimulants for her? Or a slowing agent for him?” he asks me with a conspiring wink.
“I don’t need to delay anything,” I declare with a surge of pride. “Just normal, my God! You don’t have anything normal?”
“Otherwise,” continues the pharmacist, ignoring me, “I have this assortment of forty: aloe, extra-lubricated, anatomical, anti-allergenic . . .”
“We’ll take it,” Elisa exclaims.
“Excellent choice, congratulations. I always recommend it to undecided shoppers. I’ll put it in a bag for you.”
“No, that’s fine,” Elisa stops him, desperate.
“Oh, that’ll be twenty-seven euros and forty-five cents.”
“Card,” I say, pressing my Visa through the little window.
“Actually . . .” he wavers, “we have a fifty-euro minimum for cards. You know how it is. Fees these days . . .”
“We’ll take them all,” I say.
“They expire, you realize,” he warns us.
“I think we’ll be okay. Now swipe my damned card, please.”
Victorious, with our loot in hand, we rush back to the car and drive off.
“The last time I saw this many condoms, I was twenty-three years old and on holiday in Ibiza with the university club.”
“I see, and who should be jealous now?” she teases me.
“In a few minutes, you’ll have proof you don’t have to be.” The car, however, begins to struggle, the engine croaks, then snorts once, twice, three times, and after a powerful jolt, smoke rises from the hood, and we come to a halt in the middle of the road.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Elisa murmurs.
“I think I pushed it a little too hard,” I observe, deflated. I try to start it again, but the engine doesn’t turn. “We can walk back,” I suggest.
“Two miles of hills? I hope you’re joking.”
“You’re right.”
We look into each other’s eyes, in silence, at the limits of our endurance, until Elisa jumps on top of me, throws down the backrest, and we find ourselves in a sort of semi-reclined position.
“You know what, Michael? Let’s go for it.
It’s you and me, here, now. I like you. I want you. I can’t wait a second longer.”
“I’m in.”
Where there’s a will, there’s a way, and somehow we manage to get undressed. Elisa hits the horn with her butt, then I unfold my leg and hit my knee somewhere on the dash.
“Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah . . .” a choir of children’s voices fills the car.
“Jesus really is watching over us!” I exclaim.
“You switched on the radio,” she replies. “It’s Radio Maria.”
“Nice to have a bit of music, but is there anything a bit more . . . stimulating?”
Elisa turns the knob, but to no avail. “The receiver won’t move. I think the connection’s fried.”
“Turn it off, then.”
“It won’t even turn off,” she whimpers, on the verge of a nervous breakdown.
“It doesn’t matter,” I say, unhooking her bra. “We can go to confession tomorrow.”
“Good point.”
We pick up where we left off, with even more enthusiasm, when the roar of an eighteen-thousand-decibel tri-tonal trumpet makes us both jump.
The beam of two powerful headlights illuminates the cockpit like daylight, Elisa covers herself, and I glimpse the nose of a tractor in the rearview mirror.
“You guys need a tow?” the driver shouts. “I have a hook.”
And that’s that. Another evening scuppered.