"I've bought all the presents, Nic," Peroni moaned, those piggy eyes
twinkling back at him, the scarred face full of guilt and pain. "How the
hell do I get them to Siena now with this shitty weather everywhere?
What are they going to think of me, on top of everything else?"
"Phone them. They know what it's like here. They'll understand."
"They will?" Peroni snapped. "What the fuck do you know about kids,
huh?"
Costa took his hand off Peroni's huge, hunched shoulder, shrugged and
said nothing. Peroni had two children: a girl of thirteen, a boy of
eleven. He never seemed to be able to think of them as anything but
helpless infants. It was one of the traits Costa admired in his partner.
To the world he looked like a bruised, scarred thug, the last man anyone
would want to meet on a dark night. And it was all an act. Underneath,
Peroni was just a straightforward, honest, old-fashioned family man, one
who'd stepped out of line once and paid the heaviest price.
"Oh, crap." Peroni sighed. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean it. I don't want to
lash out at you. I don't even want to lash out at Mauro over there."
"That's good to know," Costa replied, then added, "if there's anything
I can do . . ."
"Such as what?" Peroni asked.
"It's an expression, Gianni. It's a way a friend has of saying, ‘No, I
haven't the first idea how I can help, and the truth is I probably can't
do a thing. But if I could, I would.' Understand?"
A low, croaking snort of semi-amusement escaped Peroni's throat. "OK,
OK. I am contrite. I repent my sins." His scarred face screwed up with
distaste aimed, it seemed to Costa, somewhere deep inside himself. "Some
more than others."
Then he shot a vicious look at Sandri, huddled over the Nikons. "I want
that film, though. I'm not having my pecker pasted all over the notice
board for everyone to see. They told the guy he could follow us around
and take pictures. They didn't say he could walk straight after us into
the pisser."
"Mauro swears there's really nothing there. People wouldn't even see it
was you. And maybe it's a good picture, Gianni. Think of it."
The battered face wrinkled sceptically. "It's a picture of a man taking
a piss. Not the Mona Lisa."
Costa had tried to talk art to Peroni before. It hadn't worked. Peroni
was irretrievably romantic at heart, still stuck on the idea of beauty.
Truth came somewhere far behind. And it occurred to Costa too that maybe
there was more to the big man's misery than the genuine distress he felt
at being separated from his kids. There was also the matter of the
relationship Peroni had struck up with Teresa Lupo, the pathologist
working at the police morgue. It was meant to be a secret, but secrets
never really stayed hidden for long inside the Questura. Peroni was
dating the likeable, wayward Teresa and it was common knowledge. When
Costa found out, a couple of weeks before, he had thought long and hard
about it and had come to the conclusion that the two might, just, make a
good couple. If Peroni could swallow his guilt. If Teresa could keep her
life straight for long enough to make things work once the initial flush
of mad enthusiasm that came with any affair subsided into the routine of
everyday existence.
Fearless, gripping, at once darkly funny and tender, spanning three continents and numerous lives, Americanah is a richly told story set in today's globalized world.
The story of an American family, middle class in middle America, ordinary in every way but one. But that exception is the beating heart of this extraordinary novel.
The most mature work yet from an incomparable storyteller, TransAtlantic is a profound meditation on identity and history in a wide world that grows somehow smaller and more wondrous with...
From the first page, I was drawn in by the lyrical writing of the author and mesmerized as the narrator, eight year old Raami, remembered the years...
read more
Trite but true, all good things must come to an end. I so wanted to keep reading the wonderful prose, the settings that let one think they are part...
read more
A magical book, an enchanted house, a cast of characters who previously lived there but remain on the walls in photographs to be talked to whenever...
read more
Kenn Nesbitt is new Children's Poet Laureate(Jun 12 2013) Kenn Nesbitt has been named the new Children's Poet Laureate: Consultant in Children's Poetry to the Poetry Foundation, which noted that the two-year position...
Full Story
