The door of that last apartment is slightly open. Maybe they left it like that by accident and nobody’s home, or maybe some cooperative citizen opened it and is waiting for us to arrive. I’m the nearest to it — clutching my MP5 like a pistol, my hand ready to give the door a shove — in my black combat fatigues and waterproof boots that keep sticking to the tile floor. Then, suddenly, something that hasn’t happened to me in a long time happens. I can’t stand the beret, and the wool ski mask is itching the hell out of my sweaty skin. My wet breath is slimy on my lips and I feel like I’m going to barf. It’s broiling today, though I’m used to the heat. Still, this time I can’t seem to go on. So I pull off the beret with one hand, then let out a sigh of relief, but fuck, the TV’s off now. I reach out again with the ski mask clenched between my fingers and push the door open.
I’m thinking I already have three life sentences. I’m thinking I’ll be better off if they kill me. I’m thinking: Now these asshole Rambos have me really fucked.
So I raise the barrel of the 356, and when the door opens, some guy’s big red face appears right there in the viewfinder. His eyes are bugging in surprise, his mouth’s hanging open, and a clump of sweaty hair is sticking straight up on one side of his head; it looks like he couldn’t even brush it back down if he wanted.
Split seconds. Three. One, to mentally superimpose the mug shot onto that face: It is Marcos. Two, to realize I’m a goner. Three, to take the first shot. But then there’s no need because he raises his arm, aiming the pistol at the ceiling, and keeps it like that until I grab it. Then the other guys rush in.
He keeps on staring at my head, even when we pull his hands behind his back to cuff him. He seems to be laughing. I put a hand up to my head and feel a stiff shank of hair that the beret pressed up at a weird angle. It sometimes looks like that in the morning if I’ve slept funny on the pillow. When I was little, my brother and I called it the arrow. I push it down with my hand but it springs back up.
“Hey, cop,” Marcos says as I grab him by the arm to escort him out. “That hair of yours there, it looks like it needs a cut.”
And he laughs, the jerk.
Remember Me with Kindness
by Maxim Jakubowski
Calcata
His budget flight landed in Fiumicino. It was a hot, humid summer day.
Even though he held a CEE passport, the uniformed border officer at immigration control looked up and actually asked him whether he was visiting Rome for business or pleasure. As inquisitive as an American airport official.
“Sentimental reasons,” he answered, and was then allowed through with no further comment.
Maybe the border guard had been bored or something, as he had never been asked any such question on the occasion of his previous, numerous visits.
He had only hand luggage so went straight through into the main terminal’s arrivals hall and made a beeline for the car rental desks. He had no need for anything fast or fancy in the way of transport, but he still had to convince the rental clerk that he actually prefered a car with a manual gear shift rather than an automatic. Habits die hard. After filling in the forms and signing on all the dotted lines, he was handed the keys to a dark blue Fiat and given the directions to the parking lot where it was kept.
He walked out into the midday sun and looked around. On his last time here, she’d been waiting, with her usual both wanton and joyfully innocent smile, wearing a white skirt and carrying a huge canvas bag embroidered with sunflowers, an accessory she’d bought six months earlier in Barcelona and which made her look like a schoolgirl rather than a full-grown woman.
He settled into the driver’s seat, keeping the door open for a few minutes to allow the heat to escape from the car’s interior before the air-conditioning kicked in, while his feet found the measure of the pedals, getting himself accustomed again to driving a car on the opposite side of the road and having the steering wheel on the left-hand side. It always took a little acclimation, however many times he had to rent cars abroad.
And finally, he drove off toward the city. Considering it was the main road connecting Rome to one of its major airports, there was something old-fashioned and narrow about this street which made him think of all the legions of Caesar and past emperors and despots who’d in all likelihood marched down these avenues upon returning from or departing for battle many years before. No modern highway this, more of a cobblestone alley in places, with twin ramparts of trees on either side and occasional low stone walls pouring with ivy, possibly erected long before even Mussolini.
It was as if the twenty-first century hadn’t yet broken here, despite the gleaming modern cars racing up and down the road, all splendidly oblivious to any speed limit. He was in no real hurry and, irritated by his leisurely pace, some of the other drivers honked at him repeatedly.
He’d found a room on the Internet in a small residential hotel close to Piazza Vittorio Emanuele II. It was a quiet side street and easy to park, even though he wasn’t sure if the parking space he had chosen was illegal or not. At any rate, he couldn’t be bothered about parking tickets and was confident the Fiat wouldn’t be towed away since it wasn’t blocking anyone, and many other local vehicles were lined up on the same side of the street. The hotel was situated on the fourth floor of a massive apartment building and suited him fine: a clean, spacious, if somewhat Spartan place, just a reception desk manned by a young student busy revising her journalism and publishing exams, she informed him, and a small breakfast salon at the other end of the corridor from his room. He didn’t require anything more. There were bars all across the city, and anyway he didn’t drink. Never had. More taste than principle, even if he found that it led to some people gossiping behind his back back in London, and he was often suspected of being an ex-alcoholic. Print the legend, he thought; it’s miles more glamorous than the truth.
He changed into a clean shirt and walked toward Via Cavour and Stazione Termini. Here, the package he had ordered was left, as promised, in the luggage locker he had been sent a key for the week before. The transaction had not proven cheap, but then again, money was now the least of his worries. The gun had been left at the bottom of a plastic Rinascente bag in which the seller had buried it, with no sense of irony, under a crumpled mess of seemingly used women’s silk lingerie. This was not the ideal place to check the weapon out, but it appeared in good shape, and should contain six bullets. He would not require more. He treated himself to an espresso at one of the station’s cafeterias and watched with melancholy how the two spoons of sugar drifted slowly toward the bottom of the small cup. Just the way espresso coffee should behave, he recalled her teaching him when they were still together. He sketched a wry smile for any curious onlookers. The coffee and sugar boost gave him a fresh sense of purpose, renewed his determination to see this all through.
He walked away from the bar and the busy train station and took the direction of the Campo dei Fiori, past the unescapable ancient monuments surrounded by wide-eyed tourists. Shortly after crossing the Piazza Vidoni, the Roman streets became quieter again, as if foreigners no longer ventured this far, beyond their self-circumscribed tourist enclave, and he made his way down Corso Vittorio Emanuele II until he reached the Feltrinelli bookshop. He walked upstairs and ordered his second espresso of the day and a panini and sat at the edge of the store’s balcony watching the customers mill below as they picked up random books and shopped at their leisure. She had once written to him, a long time ago, before they had even slept together and were still enjoying a mildly flirtatious stream of e-mail communications, that this was her favorite spot in all of Rome to waste time, meditate, observe others, casually do her homework. On his fateful initial visit here, this was also the first place she’d taken him and they had spent an hour here, nervously silent most of the time, knowing that a few hours later they would be in bed together for the first time. He remembered every single moment — the perfume she had worn, the heat radiating from her white skin as their knees brushed against each other and she contrived to make her cappuccino last forever as if scared to move on to the next, concrete and physical stage in their affair.