Chapter 46 Elisa
Elisa
“There’s something romantic going on between you and Michael, isn’t there?” Mamma asks me the following morning over coffee in the annex kitchen.
Romantic is the last word I’d use to describe it at the moment, but who am I to parse words? “Let’s say it’s a friendship with room to evolve,” I reply vaguely. If I confirmed her suspicions with a clear and direct yes, she’d start sending out wedding invitations today.
Something else I won’t tell her: Michael and I have a high-voltage rendezvous planned tonight, since Giada is taking Linda to Florence to see some pop star I’ve never heard of, and Mamma and Donatella will be busy at their burraco tournament.
“How wonderful! Between Giada and Charles and now you and Michael, I’ll be the envy of the entire village! You’re about to become two very wealthy ladies! You even more so than Giada!”
“Your imagination is getting ahead of you.” I stop her immediately. I get up and take the folder with all the estate’s accounts. “Being a wife is the last thing on my mind. If all goes well, I’ll be getting a loan soon.”
I was counting on Carletto coming back so I could talk to him in person, but now I’ll have to do it by phone, in which case I need to get my facts straight.
I may not be a Russian tycoon swimming in gold, but I will offer him what Le Giuggiole is worth, and if our friendship means anything to him, maybe he’ll consider the idea.
Mamma mumbles something incomprehensible but which reveals her disapproval of my decision, and I—completely immune to her judgment as I have been since the day I was born—head out.
I have an appointment with the bank director in twenty minutes, but I’m early, so I sit down and observe the people crowding the branch—the only one in the town, obviously.
On the opposite side of the room, sitting on one of the chairs, I’m surprised to notice Donatella, dressed in her tailored suit, fanning herself with a fan.
“If I’d known you were coming, I’d have given you a lift,” I say, going to sit next to her.
“Every now and then, I like to take a taxi just to pretend I’m going somewhere interesting,” she replies, always in that affected tone of hers. “Tell me, treasure, is today the big loan day?” she asks.
“How did you know?”
“I didn’t. I can read,” she replies, gesturing to the folder resting on my knees, with the word loan written across it in big letters.
“Ah, the thrill of debt. I still remember when I was twenty-one and broke and hitchhiking across the United States. I never knew where I’d end up the next day, who I might talk to, what I was going to eat .
. . if I even had enough money in my pocket to eat.
In the seventies, you could be whoever you wanted and the next day be someone completely different. ”
“Honestly, I can’t picture you hitchhiking coast to coast,” I say, trying to summon the image.
“Oh, I’ve done a lot of things in my life that you couldn’t imagine. But there’s a time for everything. Certainly the girl who hung out at Studio 54 with Andy Warhol and Truman Capote couldn’t have imagined that she would start studying stock market investments dressed in Chanel.”
“Do you play the stock market?”
“Oh no. When my last husband died, he left me some shares. I just manage them. I have to speak with an adviser today about where to move a million that’s barely yielded anything for a year.”
“H-how much?” I must have misheard.
“A million.”
“Euros?”
“No, pizzas. Of course, euros, treasure,” she confirms nonchalantly.
“But, Donatella, if you’re a millionaire, why do you work as a maid? I mean . . . you could have maids!”
“Rich people’s lives are so boring. I need to do something; otherwise, I get depressed. And it keeps me busy enough that I can complain about the stress. Complaining is so liberating, don’t you think?”
“I’d like to try.”
“I envy your loan. It’s going to push you to wake up in the morning and use your head to find a way to pay it off. It’s very stimulating.”
“You know, Donatella, you always make me see things from a different perspective.”
“Helmut used to tell me that too,” she sighs nostalgically.
“One of your husbands?”
“No, joy. Helmut Newton. I was his muse.”
I blink in disbelief. “The nude photographer?”
“He liked how the shadows danced on my skin. It wasn’t a sexual relationship, mind you.
He was always very professional with me.
Oh, they’re calling me, hon. I’ll wait for you when I’m done so we can go back together.
” And without waiting for my response, she flits into the financial advisory cubicle.
The director examines my request, scratching his chin. He and my father knew each other, so I hope he spares me some leniency in his memory.
“It’s a pretty substantial sum,” he observes.
“If it wasn’t, I wouldn’t be here.”
“You’d be running the company?” he asks with a hint of skepticism.
“I’ve already been running it for several years now.” I point to the papers in front of him. “Those figures are the result of my management.”
“I see.”
“So . . . ?”
“It’s unlikely the bank will approve you. Not impossible, but difficult.”
“But you are the bank.”
“For a loan this big, I have to go through the central office. Even if the business plan is convincing, we’ll need something more concrete than that.”
“More concrete than that?” I ask, terrified.
“Let’s be clear, Elisa, no one lends money to people who don’t have money.
You need some sort of collateral. But you don’t have any, you don’t own properties, you don’t have an income, and so you can’t close the deal.
” He shakes his head, as if to let me know he’s serious.
“Are you sure your father would have wanted you to get into this mess?”
“It’s not a mess, and he lived for that vineyard. He would be proud as ever if it were mine.”
“I would like to say yes, but . . .”
“Don’t beat around the bush, please.”
“Okay. Your business proposal is beautiful, but beauty isn’t everything. It’s not a no; it’s a maybe.”
“And what does this ‘maybe’ depend on?”
“I need to see customer purchase orders. If we can track the buyers of your products, we can prove the company is solvent.”
Okay, the good news is there’s a chance they can approve the loan. The bad news . . . now, where can I find some orders?
I leave the director’s office in a worse mood than when I left home, but I’m not at rock bottom.
I join Donatella, who I hope will cheer me up with one of her maxims, but I see that she’s busy chatting with a village employee.
Rubina Gentile is someone who feels important only because she works in high places, as she likes to say.
“Have you met the new owner yet?” she asks me haughtily, over her glasses.
“Charles Bingley and his sister came in mid-August. They were the talk of the town,” I say.
“I’m not talking about the Bingleys. I’m talking about the guy who’s turning it into a golf course.”
Wait, how does Gentile know about the golf course? “Nobody wants to build a golf course on Le Giuggiole,” I reply, feigning ignorance to see what she knows.
“Yes, they do. Mr. D’Arcy came to the town hall three weeks ago to ask for copies of all the property documents and to find out about renovations. He also wanted zoning codes for the golf thing.”
“Three weeks ago?” I ask in a small voice. We’d agreed that he would leave the sale alone for at least a month. He promised me.
“Late August,” she confirms. “Arrogant guy, very impatient. Now I must go. I’m changing my account because my fees are too high.”
Donatella and I get into the car and set off for home, even though I’m in a daze.
How could he?! Michael stabbed me in the back. This isn’t what we agreed to.
“Hon, change gears. Are you trying to make it home in second gear?”
“I’m out of my mind,” I blurt out.
“I can tell.”
“Michael promised he’d suspend negotiations with the Russian for a month and slow down the Bingleys’ rush to sell, and I was counting on that time to get a loan so I could buy it myself, but instead he was working behind my back!
” I shout. I feel betrayed in the worst possible way.
“Evidently business matters more to him than anything: more than promises, more than trust, even . . .” but the words “more than me” remain stuck in my throat.
Donatella doesn’t even try to soften her take. “Well, I’m not surprised Michael pushed his friend to sell and cut ties. One night, I brought them drinks in the billiard room and heard him firmly discouraging Charles from dating Giada.”
“Are you kidding me?” I ask, hoping I’ve misunderstood.
“I don’t like repeating what I’ve overheard out of context, especially since they were speaking English, but from what I understood, he was convinced your sister was only interested in Charles for the money and was warning him, suggesting he distance himself.”
“So not only did Michael negotiate with the Russian behind my back, he also got between Giada and Charles?!” I have the nauseating suspicion that meddling in their relationship was Michael’s way of getting Charles to sell the property to his client.