while he was kissing her. There was a sweetish, slightly off-putting that somewhat turned her stomach but at the same time gave her tingles up her spine: that dampness that met hers, the slippery tongue that groped around and clumsily cuddled itself around hers. Then Sal let go of her, taking a step back. Emi remained with her eyes riveted upon him, visibly thrilled.
‘What was that?’ she babbled.
Sal broke out in laughter. ‘Are you afraid?’
His question was mistimed and turned a key in the girl’s interior mechanism. Emi’s expression suddenly changed and she cast a nasty glance toward him, ready to fight, then rushed upon him and thrust him away, ‘Oh, dear. You love to show off, don’t you?’
Sal made a wry face. Then he swung around and started off down the street, heading back to the apartment building. Emi stared for a few seconds in his direction, astonished.
‘Sal… Sal, where are you going?’
The air was full of little floating fluff balls, chasing each other on the pavement. Across the street, an old lady was carrying two overflowing shopping bags. She would take two or three steps, then stop, put the bags down, heave a noisy sigh and start again. When she lifted the weight, her face muscles strained in a funny grimace. Although she had started halfheartedly on Sal’s trail, Emi shuffled her feet and had time to study the old woman from a distance, watching her as she crossed the street in front of Emi. The woman had just put the bags down again and was adjusting the silk-spotted coloured scarf on her crown.
‘Do you need any help?’
The old woman gave Emi a long stare. The girl repeated the question, shouting in a high-pitched voice: ‘Missus, do you want me to help you?’
Sal had already reached the corner, but was halted by Emi’s voice chiming in the air. She had stopped across the street from the hag, pointing to her bags. Then, after the hag seemed to have answered, Emi started again, coming his way. When she got near, she put on a dismissive face.
‘Who was that?’
‘I don’t know; how would I know?’
‘Well, I saw you speaking to her…’
‘I speak to a lot of people!’
Emi started ahead, with Sal following her like a good dog.
‘Are you upset?’
Sal’s voice trickled toward her ears, surrounding her, and Emi felt the need to get revenge.
‘Look, if you don’t feel like it, we don’t have to see each other every day. Only don’t have me wait, okay? I hate it!’
He threw her a distressful look. He thought she was unfair, and all of a sudden all the expectation and pleasure of seeing her was gone. He noticed that her features had become sharper and felt that nothing was the same: he could no longer tell her what he had found in Harry’s basement. He knew that the woman in the cellar had to remain his secret, and this made him extremely sad. Yet immediately he started to search his mind for an excuse to leave as soon as possible. Emi the girl was extinguished inside him like a flame over which a very weak draught had blown.
With the tip of her shoe, Emi was now prodding a fluff ball that had gathered at the corner of the street. It looked like candy floss without the stick, and this thought cheered her up.
‘Listen, Sal, doesn’t this fluff look like candy floss? If we stuck a stick inside, we could give it to Toma to eat. Wouldn’t that be cool?’
Sal became even more distraught. ‘That seems to me like the stupidest idea I ever heard.’
Emi giggled; she took his anger as spite. ‘Why? I would like to know why, exactly, you find it stupid.’
‘Because Toma would never eat fluff instead of candy floss. Because Toma doesn’t even like candy floss! And because Toma,’ Sal added, almost shouting, ‘is not a moron!’
No sooner had he finished uttering his last word than he swung around and started walking back home – although actually he wasn’t walking toward home. It just so happened that Emi had given him a good idea as to whom he could confide in about the woman in the basement. Even if he decided not to tell him everything, then at least he could intimate, through a parable, that the woman existed and that he had discovered her on that torrid and rainy afternoon. He was ready to share his discovery with a trustworthy person, with someone who deserved it.
He could still feel Emi behind him, thrusting daggers straight into the back of his head, but now that he had escaped, he didn’t mind much. He could bleed at leisure, with the arrows still in his back, until he reached Toma and could forget about her in the rush of conversation. Toma was a true friend, the most honest of all; he was like a boy version of Emi, without her airs and her whims. Sal was relieved. Now that he knew which way to go, the day had recovered its meaning.
A soft breeze had started to move the hot air around a bit. He didn’t want to look back, because he feared he might change his mind and turn around. Yet as he advanced, the thought of Emi, stranded in the middle of the road with tear-filled eyes weakened his determination and slowed his steps. After a few seconds, Sal stopped and looked straight ahead at the street that joined the boulevard. He could hear the faint sound of the joggling trams, dragging in the heat. Suddenly, he didn’t feel like braving their thundering noise, or facing the dust and the squalor; he didn’t feel like waiting for almost three minutes for the traffic light to turn green; he didn’t feel like going to Toma’s anymore. He realised that Toma would insist to be shown the corpse, would want to see it. Toma wouldn’t be satisfied with his simple account of the story; he would go on his own exploratory survey, even if Sal refused to go with him. And maybe, in the end, Toma would discover something absolutely dreadful: that the woman wasn’t even dead, or that she didn’t even really exist because, apart from having seen her and touched her, what other evidence did he have – how could he prove to anyone that it wasn’t just another fancy of his?
Sal turned his head. The street was empty. A few fluff clouds still drifted to and fro.
‘Hey!’
He gave a start. From behind him, Harry had popped up out of nowhere, dressed in shorts and wearing a yellow T-shirt resembling that of the national football team. He had the number 10 printed on his back as a tribute to the great player and, as always when he was wearing this T-shirt, Harry had an overconfident attitude and strutted like a turkey cock.
‘What are you doing here, man?’
Sal looked him up and down.
‘Nothing. Where are you going?’
‘To the playing field, for the game.’
Sal brooded a bit. ‘I’ve been looking for you.’
‘Really? When?’
‘Half an hour ago, or so.’
Harry sniffed. ‘Impossible.’
‘How is that?’
‘If you had looked for me half an hour ago, you would have found me. I was at home all day.’
‘Hm. I lingered for a while in your building – it had started to rain. I thought you were at
