Three-Card Monte Read Free

pension: for several years he’s owned and run a restaurant called the Boccaccio. The Boccaccio boasts brusque but polite service, an extensive cellar that ranges from France to New Zealand, and an exceptional cook, Otello Brondi, familiarly known as Tavolone because of the size of his hands.
    A lover of baroque music, classical literature, and women who are still breathing, Aldo is currently one of the three or four people alive able to express himself in grammatically correct Italian, absolutely devoid of Anglicisms and decidedly refined.
    Something of which his direct interlocutor is proudly incapable. This person’s name is Ampelio, he is eighty-three years old and is the grandfather of the barman. He has had a happy past as a stationmaster, labor organizer, and amateur cyclist, and now has a serene present of afternoons and evening, spent in the company of his elderly friends at his grandson’s bar. His grandson being the man wandering about with a laptop in his hands.
    â€œYou mean it’s like the Internet?”
    â€œIt
is
the Internet, but without wires. If you have a portable computer, you come to the bar and connect directly without needing any wires.”
    â€œRight, I’ve got it. You arrive at the bar and instead of talking to Ugo and Gino you connect to the Internet and see what’s happening in Australia. While you’re looking at what’s happening in Australia, a few feet away Ugo and Gino are talking about how well your girlfriend fucks. Do me a favor . . . ”
    â€œAmpelio, don’t talk crap. The Internet is a means to an end. It all depends on how you use it. You have access to billions of pieces of information. You know everything about everybody, things that are true and even things that are false. All at incredible speed and without leaving your own home.”
    â€œYou’re right, Aldo,” Del Tacca says. “You know everything about everybody as soon as it happens, even when nothing happens. And without leaving home. It’s just like your wife, Ampelio, but at least you can turn it off.”
    The third man who has spoken is known to the inhabitants of Pineta simply as “Del Tacca from the Town Hall.” This is so as not to confuse him with “Del Tacca from the New Harbor,” who lives next to the new harbor, “Del Tacca from the Streetcar,” who used to be a ticket collector on the streetcar, and “Del Tacca from the Service Station on the Avenue,” about whose activities it seems best to keep silent, let’s just say he isn’t a pump attendant. Del Tacca from the Town Hall is a short, fat man, almost broader than he is tall, who at first sight may seem a little aloof, but who in fact is as unpleasant as a piece of shit under your shoe. A virtue developed, along with his large proportion of adipose tissue, in the course of his years of so-called work at the town hall in Pineta: years of compulsory breakfasts, lost files, and semi-clandestine games of
tressette
while a line of people waits at a counter displaying a sign that says, “I’ll be right back.”
    In the meantime, the priest has closed the computer screen and sat down at the attractive girl’s table. The girl’s name is Tiziana and she’s been working at the Bar Lume for two or three years as a maid of all work. The aforementioned Bar Lume is owned by Massimo, who corresponds physically to both the priest and Ampelio’s grandson. In other words, the man who has sat down is called Massimo, and he’s the barman.
    Massimo lights a cigarette, looks at the sheet of paper Tiziana hands him, and frowns.
    â€œThat’s all.” It isn’t a question, it’s a statement. Rather a disconsolate one.
    â€œYes. That’s all.” Tiziana doesn’t add anything else. She would like to speak because she is a lively, good-natured girl, as well as an intelligent person. Being intelligent, she soon grasped the