Read Online The Crossroads by Niccolò Ammaniti - Free Book Online

Would you please tell me what your father’s favourite dish is?’
    â€˜Whose father do you mean?’ Danilo put his mouth right up against the speaker. ‘Mine? My father was very fond of rabbit stew.’
    Rino was puzzled. ‘Can a computer really understand what we’re saying?’
    Danilo shrugged: ‘That’s the new technology for you …’
    Rino cleared his throat: ‘Hello, can you hear me?’
    â€˜Loud and clear. Your father’s favourite dish, please?’ the voice went on unperturbed.
    Danilo cocked his head on one side and then resumed his conversation with the dashboard: ‘Look, who are you? Are you the car computer?’
    â€˜I am an employee of Sicurcar, the car’s satellite-linked securitysystem. If you don’t give me the right answer I shall be forced to transmit your position to the nearest police station.’
    The three were speechless for a moment, then Quattro Formaggi said: ‘You mean you’re human?’
    â€˜This is the last time I shall ask you. Your father’s favourite dish?’
    They exchanged glances and all three of them shrugged.
    â€˜You try,’ Rino whispered to Quattro Formaggi.
    â€˜I haven’t got a father. He must mean yours.’
    Rino had a stab: ‘Risotto with mushrooms.’
    â€˜I’m sorry? Please speak clearly.’
    â€˜Ri-sot-to with mush-rooms.’
    â€˜That is the wrong answer. I’m sorry.’
    â€˜Wait … Wait … The father … is he the owner of the Bottegone dello Sport?’ Rino hazarded.
    The voice did not reply.
    Quattro Formaggi leaped out of the four-by-four. ‘He said he was going to call the police. Let’s get out of here!’
    So the three men, running in the darkness, abandoned the Grand Cherokee, climbed into the Ducato and fled.
    About a kilometre down the highway they passed a police car coming in the opposite direction.
    A few days later they found a rusty old tractor and decided to get it back into working order. That at least wouldn’t talk.
20
    Quattro Formaggi and Danilo had nearly reached Rino’s house when they passed a beige Scarabeo with two girls aboard coming in the opposite direction.
    Danilo didn’t notice, but Quattro Formaggi felt in his heart a sharp, stabbing pain, which for an instant took his breath away.
    Ramona .
    The little blonde on the front seat was just like Ramona, the heroine of Ramona’s Big Lips , a pornographic video which Quattro Formaggi had found in a rubbish bin.
    Ramona lived in America and hitch-hiked. She got picked up bylots of men who fucked her in their cars or in the desert or in motels, and she was always kind and would screw as many as three or four men at the same time. Then she met a black motorcyclist who fucked her and beat her up, but Ramona was saved by the sheriff, who took her to jail, and there too all the prisoners fucked her. On her release she met Bob the lumberjack, who had a family that lived in the woods, and there she was given a very warm welcome: they gave her turkey for dinner and then, with his wife and son, they fucked in the kitchen and then on a boat in the middle of a lake, and they all lived happily ever after. Or at least Quattro Formaggi thought they did, because after the orgy on the boat the film ended.
    Quattro Formaggi had seen that film so many times he knew all the dialogue by heart. And there was one part that was his particular favourite: where Ramona went into the woods with Bob the lumberjack and she smiled and took his cock in her hand and started stroking it …
    That little blonde on the scooter was so much like Ramona that perhaps it was actually her. Even though Ramona was American and had far bigger tits.
    He would see her riding around the village with her friend. And often he would end up following her. He was very good at spying on her without being noticed. He would watch her and then he would have dirty thoughts.
    Why