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is laughing up his sleeve, he knows it from the voice Turrisi uses as he says, “ Gangs: The New Aristocracy .”
    “ Gangs: The New Aristocracy ,” he repeats, barely concealing his disgust as he relays the title of the book into the handheld’s voice recorder.
    Betty nods happily. A kind of luminescence lights up her face.
    “As I was saying,” continues Turrisi, polishing his mustache with the corner of his napkin, “this British historian draws interesting parallels between the family as we know it in the Mafia sense, and the nobility. Contracts, rituals, formality, even the state marriages that bind together highborn European families. It’s a fascinating window on the upper classes through the centuries.”
    “It certainly sounds worthy of consideration,” says Betty.
    What kind of fucking language is this? And how would she know?
    “Carmine, did you hear that?”
    Wow, she’s even talking to me, politely now, making me part of the discussion. It sure wasn’t Wanda who taught her these table manners. And it sure wasn’t her father, either.

    “Yes, I did. Very interesting.”
    Turrisi nods, while, with no regard for Carmine’s reply, Betty’s attention is once again riveted on Turrisi as she asks, “Is there any truth to what I’ve heard that Soho can be dangerous?”
    Is there any truth?
    “Only after a certain hour of the night, and never if you’re with me.”
    Betty smiles, lowering her eyes.
    I can’t stand this, I’m getting up, I’m going to drown myself in the lobster tank, and don’t rescue me.
    “Certainly, if it were possible, that would be nice … but I don’t think my father …”
    Your father would walk up Via di San Giuliano on his knees if it meant getting you off his ass.
    Betty gives him a kick under the table. “Oh, yes, her father is, um … an old-fashioned guy.”
    There he goes again, laughing up his sleeve.
    “But I know your respected father very well …”
    Her respected father. Who? Turi Pirrotta, known in his youth as Riddu the Cement-Mixer because when he got off work at the building site he would drive down to the bar in his cement-mixer and could never find a place to park?
    “ … and, I must say, I approve of his approach. I would of course never dream of asking you to come to London. I merely wanted to show how much pleasure the thought gives me. While manners and good form prevent us, as well they should, from behaving in inappropriate ways, there is nothing to stop the mind from pursuing beautiful thoughts, especially when they are based on good intentions.”
    All right . Not bad .
    “You would never dream of it?”
    There it was, that little pinch of maliciousness calculated to operate subliminally on the male gender.

    “Ah …” Turrisi conveniently changes the subject, having achieved what seemed to him at that moment the maximum victory that decency, queen of the occasion, could concede.
    Don’t make me say something vulgar.
    In the car, after lunch, Carmine, deflated, puzzled, outraged, and curious, asks, “So what are you up to?”
    “Me? Nothing.”
    “Okay, explain.”
    “What?”
    “The whole performance.”
    “Performance?”

CHAPTER NINE
    O Sometimes Insufferable Pomposity!
    O sometimes insufferable pomposity! thinks Cagnotto, whose soul has opened up and taken flight. The whirlpools of a thousand wishes stir in him: conversations, disagreements, ripostes, attractions, and repulsions. Contests, concerts, deceptions, subterfuges, mirages. Dictates, contradictions, hypotheses, theses, and antitheses (syntheses are a bit scarce). Plots, subplots, surprises, illusions, dismay. Oh, how he had misjudged the sincere love of a young man just taking his first steps on life’s path.
    Oh, how desire and will have been subverted by foul cynicism.
    Wasn’t Bobo perhaps right?
    From the depths of his instinct, Bobo had understood and articulated all that Cagnotto had concealed from himself.
    Were his instincts pure? No, sir.
    Were his