The Church of Lost Souls 24

Maria knew of a place that was close by so she shut up shop and we headed down there.

‘So what’s been going on apart from all this..stuff?’ asked Sofia. ‘Where’s the gorgeous Maria?’

I did my best to sound upbeat but the idea that I was being framed for a terrible crime continued to gnaw, taking my voice up an octave as I waded through words like they were quicksand. Thankfully we arrived at the place in no time.

I’d never noticed this pokey little pub before. It was set in a slender sliver of frontage covered in browned glass windows in keeping with the traditional Irish drinking establishment.

I needed to get high somehow but just the thought of smoking dope made me feel paranoid. I reckoned a drink would help me forget everything that had happened.

‘Ooh look, it’s happy hour,’ said Maria, but I knew it would take longer than that to make me even vaguely happy.

I got the first round in. Maria had a whiskey sour, Sofia had the same and Paolo and I had a Guinness which went down so well and quickly we ordered another and then another just before the bell went for happy hour to end.

In that time I found out that all was going swimmingly for my intrepid trio and I was glad. They hadn’t been implicated to the bones and they’d done the right thing. I thought about what Mum said on the phone about being good and realized I’d done nothing wrong, just as I’d promised.

Questioning my own mind I’d actually started thinking I was guilty in some way but as the drink flowed into my blood so did the worry of my own sorry predicament ebb away.

I asked Paolo why he hadn’t gone to Switzerland and he looked at Maria with a smile. Then he relayed how she’d asked him to help with a stock-check at the joke shop on Saturday morning. Because of the recent closure more checks had been put in place by the authorities and everything had to be brought up to date pronto. Distributors needed paying too.

When Maria started talking about the shop she mentioned the name Pietro (the owner) and I felt a shiver run up my spine.

Anyway, Pietro had agreed that Paolo could work on an informal basis for a maximum of a week. If they hadn’t cracked it by then Maria would have to work overtime voluntarily, although Paolo insisted he’d stay on until it was completed. Pietro was a pain in the neck but he had a soft side, Paolo said, and he was remorseful for lying to him about me on his first visit.

We still couldn’t work out why Pietro had accused me of murdering Maria. His excuse was that he was all over the place when the authorities closed the shop down and he needed someone to blame, so he chose me.

I wondered whether it might be a good idea to talk to Pietro. If the woman who disappeared wasn’t joke shop Maria, that might explain it. Wacky coincidences happened. If joke shop Maria’s surname wasn’t Fontanelle, I’d let it go and move on. Maybe Pietro was a bit crazy, or just a sad compulsive liar.

When I looked at the beautiful Sofia sat there in front of me I wondered what on earth I was doing with Maria.

‘So you’re not staying at the Pezzentelle,’ I said.

‘Maria said I could stay at hers for the week. It’s an amazing place,’ she said.

Maria overheard us. ‘You can come and stay too, James. There’s plenty of room.’

I looked at Sofia momentarily. ‘I’m really not sure,’ I replied to Maria, the effects of the beer heightened by the proposition, ‘but thank you for the offer.’

‘It’s an open one,’ she said.

Maria and I talked for a while. She’d come over to Rome with her father, who had worked at the American Embassy until his death two years ago. Her mother was also dead. She and her brother still lived at the family house but he was away on business in India. When I said I was sorry to hear about her loss, she wasn’t bothered.

‘They were assholes,’ she said, and we laughed with a little discretionary caution.

Probably because I was on their patch I was constantly on the lookout for the two idiots and Sofia noticed my anxiety.

‘Are you OK, James?’ she asked.

‘Yeah, I’m fine,’ I lied, ‘but you know those two Italian idiots from before? Have you seen them around at all?’

‘You don’t want to worry about them. They’re just a pair of rich bums that hang out with the hairdresser opposite,’ said Maria.

‘Why do you ask?’ said Sofia.

‘They kept calling us Pezzentelle, remember?’ I said, looking to Paolo for his agreement. ‘Why would they call us that?’

‘It means hobo or loser to those guys. They hate the Pezzentelle because they weren’t buried properly. It’s an old religious class thing,’ she said.

‘Yeah but why would they call us pezzentelle?’ I asked. ‘We’re not even Italian.’

‘It also has racist connotations,’ said Maria. ‘Romans can’t stand Neapolitans and vice versa. It’s always been the same.’

‘So they’re just bigots,’ said Sofia.

‘Racist thugs, that’s all they are,’ said Maria.

With the aid of a long pull on my beer I told them about the homeless chap that morning, how I’d shouted down and found the two idiots staring up at me at the window.

‘It was definitely them. They shouted Pezzentelle at me.’

‘Oh Christ, so they know where you live,’ said Maria. ‘That could be tricky.’

‘Yeah,’ I said.

Paolo beamed a cheeky wry smile for us all to enjoy. ‘Can James stay the night with us tonight? It looks like he could do with some company, and the lovely Maria’s not back till tomorrow, right?’

I think I was on the verge of crying at that time but not knowing how to I just sat there saying nothing, playing around with my nigh empty glass on the table.

Sofia took one of my hands from the glass and placed it inside hers. ‘Just tonight, hey? Tomorrow’s another day.’

I looked at her with an awfully resigned smile.

‘Turn off your mind, relax and float downstream,’ sang Paolo in a rich, lengthy baritone. ‘It is not dying’

‘It is not dying!’ they sang together.

‘Lay down all thoughts, surrender to the void,’ he continued.

‘It is shining, it is shining!’ came the chorus. Sofia gave me a shoulder cuddle.

‘OK,’ I said, ‘Maria, can I stay at yours tonight, please?’

‘Mais biensur, monsieur,’ she replied, rolling out a hand to me in jest.

I realized I’d been very wrong about her. I’d been so het up waiting for Maria to turn up at the taverna I must have lazily jumped to conclusions regarding the whole fiasco with the old man. I’d lumped her with him and presumed she was part of the plot that thickened further still.

We were in a jovial state and the drinks were empty so Maria suggested we go to a different bar. From there we’d go back to hers, get something to eat and carry on the party. She seemed in very good spirits.

The next bar was a young Italian place full of people talking as if they were about to have a hernia, gesticulating with theatrical emphasis as the alcohol bled into them. It was rowdy place, too, and I didn’t want to be there, still worried that the idiots would suddenly appear out of nowhere and chant Pezzentelle at me.

Not being accustomed to drinking I started to feel unsteady and tired so I ordered a bottle of fizzy water at the bar for myself and three beers for the gang.

While I was waiting to be served I looked over at them and they seemed to be locked together in conversation. Maria’s eyes looked over at me, but also through me, and there was no smile when I raised one to her.

How far I was from trusting anyone fully. How low had I sunk in their truest estimations? How much more of this ridiculous fiasco could I bear without going potty?

Walking over with the drinks, the girls smiled conspiratorially at me as they took theirs.