Temporary Perfections Read Online Free PDF Page A

looked back at him with a friendly but quizzical smile that morphed into a grimace. From the street outside, I heard a clash of sheet metal, and figured that there’d been a fender bender. Fornelli went on.
    “They have a daughter, their older child, and a son who’s younger, sixteen years old. His name is Nicola, and he goes to the science high school. Their daughter, Manuela, is twenty-two, and she’s at the university in Rome—the LUISS .”
    He paused, as if to catch his breath and gather his strength.
    “Manuela disappeared six months ago.”
    I don’t know why I blinked my eyes shut at those words, but when, in the darkness behind my eyelids, I saw globes of blinding light, I opened them again immediately.
    “Disappeared? What do you mean, disappeared?”
    Truly a brilliant question, I thought to myself a second later.
What do you mean, disappeared?
Maybe he meant during a magician’s stage show. You’re really at your best tonight, Guerrieri.
    The father looked at me. There was an indescribable expression on his face; a few facial muscles twitched, as if he were about to speak, but he said nothing. I had the distinct impression that he was simply unable to speak. As I looked at him, the words of an old song by Francesco De Gregori floated into my mind:
“Do you by any chance know a girl from Rome whose face looks like a collapsing dam
?” The face of Signore Ferraro, furniture salesman and desperate father, looked like a collapsing dam.
    It was the wife who finally spoke.
    “Manuela disappeared in September. She’d spent the weekend with friends who have a group of
trulli
in the countryside between Cisternino and Ostuni. On Sunday afternoon, a young woman gave her a ride to the train station in Ostuni. No one’s heard from her or seen her since.”
    I nodded. I didn’t know what to say. I ought to have expressed my sympathy, my understanding, but what do you say to two parents grieving over the disappearance of their daughter? Oh, I’m so sorry to hear that, but don’t get too upset, this sort of thing happens. You’ll see, before you know it, your daughter will show up, life will go on as before, and this will all seem like a bad dream.
    A bad dream? I thought to myself that if a grownup has been missing for a long time—and six months is
definitely
a long time—either something bad has happened, or he or she has run away. Sure, it’s possible she’s lost her memory, maybe she’s wandering around confused and eventually will be found and brought home. Sometimes that happens to the elderly. Manuela, though, was not elderly. But why were they meeting with a lawyer? What did I have to do with this? Why had they come to see me? I wondered when I’d be able to ask that question without seeming callous.
    “I imagine the police, or the Carabinieri, have questioned her friend, right?”
    “Of course. The Carabinieri handled the investigation. We have copies of all the documents. I’ll bring them to your office,” Fornelli said.
    Why would he need to bring me copies of the documents? I shifted in my chair the way I do when I don’t understand what’s going on and I feel uncomfortable.
    “Anyway, here’s the story in brief. Manuela didn’t have acar; she went to the
trulli
with a group of friends. She was supposed to come home Sunday afternoon, but she hadn’t managed to find anyone who was coming back directly to Bari, so she accepted a ride to the station in Ostuni so she could take the train.”
    “Do we know whether she got on a train?”
    “We think so, but we don’t know for sure. We do know she bought a ticket.”
    “How do you know she bought a ticket?”
    “The Carabinieri talked to the ticket clerk. They showed him her photograph, and he remembered selling Manuela a ticket.”
    That’s unusual, I thought to myself. Ticket clerks, like anyone else who works with the public, barely glance at their customers. They hardly see their faces, and if they do they forget them immediately.