Electrico W by Herve Le Tellier Read Free Book Online Page A

you.”
    “Yes.”
    “You’ve got someone here, haven’t you? A woman? Your sleepless nights …”
    He was smiling, and I smiled too because I was so surprised by his question. Antonio had invented a mistress for me, a woman to fill my thoughts.
    “Yes …,” I replied, without thinking. And perhaps to tone down the lie, I added, “If you like.”
    “If I like?”
    A lie. Quickly. Describe a woman, a meeting, strike the right note, watch the pauses, no hesitation about circumstances, places, times, no tripping up over words, or just the right amount. Talk about Irene too. Say enough for him to know, before he finds out, from her. I won a few seconds with a long draft of bitter beer.
    “It’s someone I met in Italy, three years ago, during that Mafia bombing in Parma, you remember. She’s a painter … Well, she doesn’t make a living from it, her real job is restoring works of art. Paintings. From the nineteenth century. She’s Portuguese, she has a small apartment in Alfama, she spends two or three months a year there, in the summer. When I decided to come to Lisbon, I asked if I could rent it from her. She said that wouldn’t be possible because she’d be there herself. When I arrived here she was at the airport waiting for me, and that was it.”
    I smiled again. So did Antonio.
    “And what is this
bellissima signora
called?”
    “L—Lena. Lena Palmer.”
    I was so unprepared for the question that I forged a stupid name, one so close to my own that I could anticipate Antonio’s comment.
    “Yes, I know, it’s weird: I met a girl called Palmer in Parma and, worse, my name’s Balmer, it’s a sort of mirror image, and if I marry her she’ll have a ridiculous name. But that’s not her name, it’s her husband’s. Don’t worry, her morals are safe, she’s in the process of a divorce.”
    “Because of you …”
    Go ahead, make fun of me, Antonio … Your sarcasm proved you were buying my story. I was sure you could already picture her, my Lena Palmer, far better than I could because I was busy trying to take on board each new lie. Lena Palmer. Actually, that Palmer was quite useful, there was no danger of forgetting it and giving myself away.
    “Because of her husband, mostly because of him. A banker, or rather the financial director for a large industrial group, I never really grasped what he did. She married him, I don’t know, ten years ago when she was just twenty and he was thirty-three, it couldn’t work. Well … not because of the age difference, after all the man’s nearly the same age as me. But twenty’s too young to get married, wouldn’t you say?”
    “Whereas now …,” he ventured with a hearty laugh, baring his teeth.
    “No, no, Antonio,” I said with a smile. “Don’t go imagining things. We haven’t seen each other since Parma, you know … She’s not sure what she wants with me, no more than I am … But you see, something happened, it was nothing really, but it makes me think this relationship could work: I didn’t know she’d be at the airport, we’d agreed to meet a couple of hours later, at the Café Brasileira. In the crowds waiting at Arrivals, there was this really beautiful woman, unique in that mass of people, and my eyes were drawn to her, instant attraction. It was only a fraction of a second later that I recognized her as Lena, when she smiled at me and waved, delighted by my astonishment.”
    Antonio shook his head with a scornful laugh: “I don’t know what you found so astonishing. You’re lucky to think the woman you love is pretty.”
    “I don’t know how to explain it, I really don’t. She didn’t even have to be pretty …”
    Even though I had created my Lena, I didn’t feel like sharing any intimate details with Antonio, who didn’t understand. I didn’t mean physical attraction, or that possessive vanity that takes hold of some men who are proud of their partner’s good looks. I wanted to pinpoint the moment just