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satin dress, and Sal’s three sisters: Tony and Rosy’s widowed mother, Agata; Carmela, who’s unmarried; and Rosaria, the mother of Alessia, Mindy, Cinzia, and Valentina, a widow but not beyond the shadow of a doubt, in the sense that her husband disappeared and his body has never been found. On the rare occasions when she talks about the missing man, Lullo Caruso, Rosaria never fails to say, “The big fat bastard!” A comment that arouses the legitimate suspicion that Sal Scali was in some way involved in Lullo’s disappearance.
    Then there are all the half relatives, relatives through marriage, the children of cousins who emigrated, nephews of dead uncles, husbands of cousins of brothers, grandmothers of somebody, grandmothers in black with shawls, arranged at random around the barbecue like the spots on a Dalmatian … And, last but not least, Alessia, Mindy, Cinzia, and Valentina Caruso.
    Tony’s younger sister, Rosy (about fifteen or twenty years younger, you’d say, if you knew Tony’s exact age), is sitting on a wicker couch that she says is killing her stockings. She looks around anxiously.
    â€œ Minchia ,” she says to Cinzia, “let’s hope Steve doesn’t stop by.”
    â€œWhy didn’t you invite him?” Cinzia asks, trying to balance a huge plate of meat on her lap.
    â€œWhat are you, stupid? Steve was supposed to be going to the opening of a pub this evening and, because of this asshole barbecue, I had to tell him I had the flu. Do you think I could have told him, ‘No, I can’t come because I gotta go to a barbecue given by my hairdresser brother’?”
    Cinzia shakes her head in sympathy.
    â€œAnd you know how well he took it. ‘What,’ he says, ‘you gotta get the flu tonight of all nights? You want me to show up with some dog and make us both look like a couple of losers?’”
    â€œSo what did you say?”
    â€œWhat did I say? What did I say? I slammed down the phone! Sure, the flu was a lie, but excuse me, did he know it was a lie? He tells me off because I got the flu? Asshole!”
    Cinzia is trying to cut the meat into smaller pieces.
    â€œHow can you eat that crap?” Rosy says. “It’s all … hacked to pieces!” She laughs. “It looks like the fly on Steve’s pants.”
    Cinzia lifts her knife and fork from the plate.
    â€œSteve cuts his jeans with scissors. Here!” Rosy says, putting her hands between her legs. “Then when he puts them on, he staples them!”
    Cinzia says nothing.
    Rosy sighs. “ Minchia  … let’s just hope he doesn’t happen to drop by!”
    *   *   *
    The black Mercedes is parked in front of Tony’s garden. Tuccio, his eyes still on the wheel, says to Nuccio, “We’re going to get out now and go to the fucking barbecue, and you keep your mouth shut. Got it? I’ll do the talking. Let me do the talking. Make like you’re not here. Got it?”
    â€œFuuuuuck, what a fucking kaboom!”
    â€œI said shut up!”
    *   *   *
    â€œDo you realize what bullshit that is? I don’t envy anybody’s penis! What I’ve got is clearly an Oedipus complex!”
    In Tony’s kitchen, Alessia, who’s studying psychology, is telling Mindy she’s the living refutation of psychoanalysis and all that bullshit about men and the Oedipus complex, because she’s the one who wants to kill her father!
    â€œAle, you haven’t even got a father,” Mindy says.
    â€œSo what? Makes no difference … I’d like to kill Uncle Sal!”
    â€œIt isn’t nice to kill anybody,” Mindy says.
    â€œIn my head, Mindy, don’t you get it? Only in my head…”
    Mindy is dressed in one of those dresses her mother makes her from a pattern. She looks like a figurine cut out of one of those fashion magazines that