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dressing gown, crossed his legs (with a bit of difficulty), and read the article about the party hosted by his daughter’s best friend.
    A party at the Panasia Beach in Taormina, with even a guy who was famous on television among the guests, it seemed. There was a half-page photo of Anna Pizzone, there was a photo of a watermelon cut like a starfish, and there was not even one little photo of Betty.
    A catastrophe, to say the least.
    “Frigging fucking water heaters,” Betty screamed again, in reference to the company selling and installing boilers owned by Anna Pizzone’s father, a company that, by buying regular advertising space in La Voce della Sicilia , guaranteed the daughter a suitable social profile.
    Pirrotta nodded, folding the newspaper carefully (he had yet to read it and look at the shape it was in), took off his glasses, and speaking to no one in particular said, “What was that car that you liked?”
    Betty raised her head from the toilet, shoved it back inside, coughed up for good measure the last stream of vomit, got up coolly, flushed the toilet while she wiped her mouth with her forearm, and said, “Wait, I have the brochure.”

    They went to the kitchen and while the Filipina maid prepared their coffee Turi Pirrotta read the dealer’s brochure.
     
     
    “Yeah, that’s right, the Mercedes with the TV,” says Betty.
    Pirrotta recalls that when she was little, after the fainting fits (Betty, pubescent, used to pass out when she wanted something), his daughter would look at him with big eyes all red from crying and afford him that paternal joy that at least repays some of the sacrifices you make for a family. Now Betty has become more pragmatic, like her mother, and despite the rivulets of mascara has a shark’s expression stamped on her face.
    Pirrotta, who has also grown pragmatic, to get her to stop throwing her guts up, and above all to get her off his ass, goes into his study, makes a couple of calls, and gets an assurance that the Mercedes will be delivered right away. “I don’t give a fuck about the papers, just tell the dealer to send it to me as is.”
    Brand-new, flaming red, shining, the Mercedes is parked this morning on the gravel in front of Villa Wanda’s neoclassical entrance. In the center of the gravel is a full-scale reproduction of Liotru, the elephant that is Catania’s symbol, the only difference being that here the water flows out of the trunk.
    Betty Pirrotta stares at the car with a contempt alloyed with hatred.
    It is not the expression her father would have expected in the face of such a present. But only Betty could know how much pain and suffering that automobile had cost her. It was inhuman to have had to suffer that much for a lump of steel; it was unjust to have had to spill so many tears, to have forgone the pleasures that life could offer for such a long time, just for that thing there.
    With the heels of her Manolo Blahnik sandals sinking into the gravel (a pain in the ass, this gravel, how many broken heels had she
left in the fucking gravel, which her mother had insisted upon because she’d seen it some-fucking-where), Betty advances determined and injured toward the Mercedes.
    You can see she’s had enough from the way her Prada bag is twitching, with the same hard, dry blows they use to beat fresh octopus to death against the volcanic rocks at Acitrezza.
    “Not in front! Behind, behind!” Carmine, known as Mina among friends, yells at her. Carmine, Betty’s “lady’s companion” (“It’s cool to have a gay guy as a lady’s companion,” says Betty, “they have them in America, don’t you watch the sitcoms?”) is racing down the white steps at the front of Villa Wanda.
    Carmine is wearing an orange suit of raw silk with sinuous orange embroidery, pointy black shoes, and a shirt with a Chinese collar.
    Betty halts with her hand on the car door.
    She looks defiantly at Carmine.
    What the hell’s the matter with this faggot, wonders Betty, that