evening.’
How many of them are there?
The voice nearest-by answered: ‘You have to admit that our Ciba is the best at this sort of thing!’
‘It's Gianni! The managing director!’ Ciba explained, in a whisper.
‘Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God,’ she said. ‘What if they see us?’
‘Shush. Don't say anything.’ Fabrizio raised his head. Gianni's silhouette stretched upwards from behind the hydrangea bush. Ciba lowered down again. ‘He's having a piss. He can't see us. He'll go away now.’
But the managing director, who suffered from prostate trouble, kept shaking his thing in the hope of further downfalls.
‘Not bad, that idea of the story of the fire! Total crap, but effective nevertheless. We should call on him more often for this sort of thing, he's magnetic.’
Fabrizio smiled, satisfied, and looked at Alice, who huffed, amused. What more could he want? He was snogging a sort of intellectual, mixed-race model, and at the same time he was being complimented with high praise from the king of his publishing house.
He touched Alice's clitoris. She shivered and sighed in his ear. ‘Gently . . . gently . . . Otherwise I'll start screaaaaahhhh-ming . . .’
His dick had become a block of steel.
‘Now, getting down to business . . . How far is Ciba into his new novel?’
‘It's hard to understand . . . From what little I've read . . .’ Pennacchini was speechless. It often happened that he would stop talking, as if someone had unplugged him.
‘What, Pennacchini? What have you read?’
‘I feel . . . Well, it's unfocused . . . More . . . How can I explain it . . .? Like a series of clumsy attempts rather than an actual story . . .’
Fabrizio, who was working at undoing his belt, came stock-still. ‘
It's crap, I get it. Like his last one, what was it . . .? Nestor's Dream. I'm not at all satisfied . . . And it's only selling so-so. From someone who has sold a million and a half copies, I expected, frankly speaking, a lot more. With all that advertising we bought for him. Have you seen the quarterly returns? If it weren't for The Lion's Den . . .’
Alice, with a masterly sleight of hand, had finally freed his erection and began masturbating him.
‘We need to discuss the contract for his next book. His agent is out of her mind. She demanded too high a sum. Before we sign, we have to think things through properly. We can't be strangled by someone who sells as much as Adele Raffo, at the end of the day, but she gets exactly half as much as him.’
Ciba thought he would faint. That son of a bitch was comparing him to an obese nun who wrote recipe books! And what was this story about renegotiating the contract? Pennacchini was nothing but a big fat fake . . . He had told Fabrizio that Nestor's Dream was a necessary book, the novel of his coming-of-age.
Alice, in the meantime, all fired up, wasn't listening and continued to massage him with a precise anti-clockwise movement of the wrist. However, to her great surprise, this wasn't getting the desired result in the least. His dick was literally shrivelling up in her hand. She looked at him, embarrassed. The writer was floored. ‘What's happening? Is he coming here?’
‘Please . . . Just a moment. Be quiet for just a moment.’
Alice heard a broken note in Fabrizio's voice. She dropped his flaccid appendage and started listening.
‘Anyway, he's not going anywhere! Where could he go? No other publishing house is prepared to give him as much as we do. Not even half. Who does he think he is? Grisham? And what's more, I've heard that his show hasn't been confirmed for next year either. If they shut it down, Ciba will sink like a rock. We have to get him to lower his crest. In fact, next week, Achille, I want to meet with Modica and Malagò so we can work out how to proceed . . . He hasn't got another book in him. He's washed up.’ A moment of silence. ‘Ahhh!! I've finished. I'd been holding it in since the plane.’ Then the sound of footsteps on the gravel.
Ciba was floating half off the ground, unable to react. Then he plummeted down, into the mud of planet earth, or better, onto the woman whose vagina he had his middle finger immersed in. A woman whom, what's more, he had only just met. And who worked in the same field as him. A stranger. A potential spy.
He picked himself up, red in the face and with the expression of a psychopath.
She covered her chest with her blouse and made an undefinable face.
Pity! She feels pity for me! Fabrizio realised. He pulled his finger out and cleaned it off on his jacket. What the devil was he doing? Had he gone crazy? He had thrown himself like a horny teenager onto a stranger while his publishing house was plotting against him.
I must respond to this outrage.
There was only one person in the world who could help him. His agent. Margherita Levin Gritti.
‘Sorry, I've gotta go!’ he said distractedly, while he stuffed his mollusc into his trousers and ran away.
She didn't move, not knowing what to think. Then she began buttoning up her blouse.
15
The leader of the Wilde Beasts of Abaddon had finally found the idea. He needed to meet with his adepts immediately and fill them in on the situation. It didn't matter that it was past ten o'clock. They were all at Silvietta's house watching a film.
With the lights off, he went into the broom cupboard. Well hidden behind the detergents and shoes, rammed into a plastic supermarket bag, were the uniforms of the Beasts. He had designed them himself, and then had them sewn by a Chinese tailor from Capranica. They were simple black cotton tunics (not like the showy ones of the Children of the Apocalypse, in gold and purple) with a pointed hood. As for shoes, after reconsidering many times, he had opted for black espadrilles.
Saverio went back into the living room and, trying not to make any noise, took the Durendal out of its box, and from the mantelpiece the car keys. He grabbed an umbrella and the bottle of Jägermeister, and was just about to lower the handle of the front door when the hall light came on, illuminating the Zanzibar collection.
Serena was standing in the doorway of the living room in her night gown.
‘Where are you going?’
Saverio hunched forward, lowered his head and tried, unsuccessfully, to hide the sword behind his back. ‘I'm going out for a moment . . .’
‘Where?’
‘I'm going to the shop to see a thing . . .’
Serena was confused. ‘With the sword?’
‘Yes . . .’ He had to come up with some crap quickly. ‘You see . . . There's this piece of furniture . . . It's a living-room piece that could hold it perfectly, and I wanted to check whether it fits. I'll go and come back straight away. It'll only take me a second. You go to sleep.’
‘And
