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acted fast, who would see you? And who would ever suspect that such a respectable citizen as Danilo Aprea could have robbed a bank?
    With the loot he would make Teresa’s dream come true. The dream of opening a lingerie boutique. Danilo was sure that if he gave her a shop his wife would come back to him, and then he would find the strength to go to Alcoholics Anonymous and dry out.
14
    After Cristiano’s departure Rino Zena had gone back to sleep, and when he had woken up again the whistling in his ears, as if by magic, had vanished, along with the band of pain round his head. It had been replaced by a ravenous hunger.
    He lay in bed and imagined a dish of chargrilled sausages accompanied by plenty of bread.
    His cock was hard and his balls were as full as hard-boiled eggs.
    How long is it since I last had a fuck?
    It had been at least two weeks. But when he had a headache screwing was the last thing on his mind.
    This evening I’ll go out on the town , he said to himself, struggling to get up from the mattress and going into the bathroom naked, with his pecker sticking out in front of him like the bowsprit of a schooner.
    In the course of his life Rino had encountered difficulties of many kinds, but these did not include finding a woman to fuck or someone to pick a fight with.
    And recently he had found a couple of bars where skinheads, punks and all the local freaks hung out. A bunch of rich kids who showed off riding round on Harley-Davidsons worth thirty thousandeuros. Rino despised them, but their womenfolk swarmed over him like flies on a dog turd.
    All the girls followed the same career pattern: most started out as shaven-headed anorexics who tattooed swastikas and Celtic crosses on their bums and for a while played at being bad girls and slept around. They would fuck up their brains with cut shit, then get sent off to some American clinic to detox, have their tattoos lasered off, marry a rich businessman and end up driving around in a Mercedes wearing a miniskirt and a bouclé jacket.
    But Rino took advantage of the transitional phase and of their undiscriminating desire for sex and intense experience. He would put his mark on them, then kick them out next morning with their pussies on fire and a few bruises. And most of the slags came back for more.
    Stupid cows!
    He plunged into the ice-cold shower, shaved his skull and then put on a tiny vest, his trousers and his boots.
    He went down the stairs into the lounge, a room of about thirty square metres. On one side of it was the front door, on the other side a hall leading to the kitchen, a toilet and a broom cupboard.
    The floor was covered with reddish linoleum which rode up against the red-brick and concrete walls. On one side of the room was a table draped with a green-and-white checked plastic tablecloth, and two benches. On the other the television area. Two blue plastic crates with an old Saba colour TV on top. To change channels without getting up the Zenas used a broomstick, ramming it against the big channel buttons. Opposite the TV were a sofa bed with a filthy cover and three white folding chairs with plastic threads. There was also an orange-coloured iron bench with a barbell loaded with weights. Lastly, in one corner, next to a big box full of newspapers and a pile of firewood, there stood a cast-iron stove. A ventilator fan on a stick served in winter to spread the warmth of the stove and in summer to stir the sultry air.
    Danilo and Quattro Formaggi would soon be arriving.
    I can do some work on my biceps , Rino said to himself. But he abandoned the idea. His tummy was rumbling and his cock was still erect.
    He turned on the TV and started wanking as he watched a blonde bitch with a pendant as big as the medallion of a turkey round herneck helping a fat man prepare some fillets of wild mullet in a sauce of raspberry, chestnut and sage.
    With his pecker in his hand, Rino gave a gesture of disgust. That pansy crap they were cooking had made