IF YOU ARE A SLAVE TO AN ADDICTION
WE SOLVE IT
Antonio looks toward the center: beyond the bend around the park, no tram on the tracks, so he turns on the camera of his Samsung and frames the code.
The interface is quick and immediate, big icons that open photos and captions.
Marcello, 34, smiles as he sits on a sailboat, tanned arms stretched out on the deck, legs dangling along the hull. The caption is crisp, designed to stand out on small phone screens. Thanks to Vital Corporation, Marcello has solved his gambling addiction.
Antonio wears out the grass of the public gardens behind the stop. Back and forth while he browses the website. It's interesting, hypnotic. He feels no regret if the 17 goes by. The autumn is mild as a prayer and the day still long enough to pay Vital Corporation a visit. It's a matter of walking six hundred meters toward the center, when everyone is migrating the other way, toward the neighborhoods. It'll be a great way to lose a little weight.
It's a building spawned by modern architecture, with ellipses, curves, wide mirrored windows and scattered aesthetic whims, like wood grain pressed into the poured concrete, or sharp corners where you'd expect curves, and vice versa. You enter through a tunnel that recalls the throat of a whale, with structures like ribs and lights whose source you can't make out. You walk on a surface like a ship's deck, which creaks underfoot in a studied way. Antonio goes in a few meters. No doors open onto the corridor. His instinct is to turn back, but the stretch he has covered isn't straight, because he can't see the entrance anymore.
Vital Corporation has a dedicated elevator, wide and bright. Beneath the company's plate, identical to the sticker on the shelter, a brass plaque is fixed that says: FIFTH FLOOR.
Even the elevator is no ordinary one.
The car is a cylinder. Antonio remembers the gigantic cannon shot that sends the pioneers to the moon in Verne's book, and laughs at it.
Thanks to Vital Corporation, Sandra has solved her compulsion to shop.
In the curved corridor, exactly like the entrance one, there is a row of monitors.
On the first, Sandra shows her bedroom, spare and tidy, and it's obvious that her first fifty years went wrong, swept away by pointless spending, by a multitude of objects, clothes and shoes she never needed, but the new part of her life began here, at Vital Corporation.
Matteo doesn't smoke. Matteo has solved his cigarette addiction. And it's easy to take him seriously, up in the mountains, a heavy backpack on his shoulders and Mont Blanc behind him. He smiles from ear to ear.
Silvia has solved her addiction to sex, Ilaria her addiction to work, Antonello his addiction to pornography. They are all smiling and glowing.
Antonio thinks of when he'll be the star of the video. He'll be happy, he'll smile like the others, maybe with the red rocks of Monument Valley behind him, because that's where he dreams of going one day. To keep the goal in sight he has hung an enormous print of that landscape in his living room, and nobody will notice the canine that overlaps the incisor, that werewolf mouth women don't like.
The waiting room is a little lounge of blue carpet and designer armchairs, facing a window that looks out over the rooftops of the center. The city, from that perspective, is unrecognizable. A silent split unit pours out warm air together with a perfume with a discreet note of amber. On the wall opposite the window is the door to the reception office. All Antonio had to do was open the app, and a female voice guided him all the way here. The same voice, a second before the door opens, announces that he is about to be received.
The man wears a light-blue shirt, black trousers with a sharp crease, and cufflinks that give a vintage touch. The blue tie is held by a silver clip. Faces so authoritative and at the same time pleasant are not for everyone. The acetate glasses are as big as fashion demands, and the broad shoulders speak of fitness and health to spare. The gesture is rehearsed.
"Welcome, Mr. Antonio, please sit down."
In the office, a long room ending in a window facing the sunset, there are two identical armchairs facing each other. One of the two comes with a small table on its left. On the table there is a glass, wide and heavy. The man waits until Antonio is seated before taking his own place.
"Since when this alcohol dependency, Antonio?"
At the word alcohol, Antonio feels the damned craving, the one that has haunted him for years, that makes him feel miserable.
"A fairly long time, but I resist, I mean, I stop before going overboard, sometimes I leave the house and keep away from bars." A faint smile appears on the man's face. "I even poured a whole bottle down the toilet once, but then..."
"Then you went straight out to buy another. Isn't that so?"
Antonio lowers his head. "When I saw your ad I thought, well, why not give it a try."
"How long had you been thinking about it, Antonio? Since your wife left?"
Antonio clenches his jaw and grips the armrests before leaning forward. His lip bares his defective teeth. "You know about my wife?"
"You accepted the contractual terms. Under article 21, fourth paragraph, you authorize us to look into your personal history, mainly through social media but also by drawing on the memory of your portable device."
"The memory of..."
"Seventh paragraph, Antonio: portable and fixed devices."
"Ah, right... right."
"And don't lie, Antonio. Nobody is willing to spend a thousand euros to start a treatment if they empty their bottles down the toilet of their own accord. You never did that, you overdid it, admit it."
His gaze loses itself in the dusk beyond the window. "I lied, I admit it."
"Lying is normal when you suffer from an addiction. We're here to solve it. You discovered our company, you met our testimonials, you read the contractual terms and you accepted the special and particular ones." Behind the lenses, the man's eyes are as green as an Irish meadow. "Is that right, Antonio?"
"It... it's all very clear."
"Then we can proceed." The man places on the armrest a tiny card and debit reader. On the display the figure 1000.00 stands out. "Please."
Antonio taps his VISA. A short beep confirms the payment has gone through.
His glance at the device is fleeting.
"Thank you for your trust, Antonio."
The girl who comes into the office through the service door is about twenty, beautiful, tall and light as a magpie. Unlike the man she wears a jacket over her shirt but no tie. The first two buttons are open over breasts that look generous. In her hand is a bottle of Scotch whisky that Antonio recognizes, a two-hundred-euro nectar, with an aftertaste of peat and a thousand suggestions of that land. A deft twist of the wrist and the glass on the left is filled a quarter of the way. Antonio feels a shiver.
"Do you know I'm left-handed?"
The girl smiles. "From the way you handled your phone, of course."
Antonio stops himself from showing his crooked teeth and the grimace is comical.
The man dismisses her. "Thank you, you may go. And now, Antonio, we offer you what will be the last act of your addiction." He sees him puzzled, a hint of a tremor in his left hand. "Enjoy it, sip it slowly."
Antonio holds the whisky in his mouth. It is peace of the senses, and a slight torpor takes him between the legs, in the groin, just as the girl closes the door behind her.
"Take all the time you need, Antonio. Don't worry, the treatment to solve your addiction has already begun, and don't be afraid of being left alone."
The green eyes probe him. There is something strange about the eyelids, which don't blink, and the man's intelligence is obvious. The pause is long, theatrical, the time of a second sip.
"Our app is always on, and Corinne is at your disposal at any hour."
Antonio turns toward the now-closed door. "Was she Corinne?"
"No, Corinne is our artificial intelligence. I assure you the girl who just left would be surly if called on at three in the morning."
And he laughs, a warm, contagious laugh, so much so that Antonio can't help laughing too, spluttering and hurrying to wipe the droplets off the armrests of the chair.
"It's nothing, Antonio, don't worry. You can go home, and remember that Corinne keeps no hours."
"Okay, Corinne is tireless."
"Exactly. And don't come in person again without making an appointment first."
His apartment on the seventh floor is paradise.
Antonio flies. The ninety kilos and the drinker's belly don't matter. He skips the elevator, goes in, and knows that what he is about to do is the only possible thing.
He turns on the water in the kitchen sink, in the bathtub and in the shower.
In the living room there is the liquor cabinet.
He takes the red aperitif and the digestif that tastes of rhubarb. He wedges the first bottle, open, upside down between the faucet and the drain, and lets the red liquid flood the pipes. Same operation with the digestif, which fills the bathroom with the smell of herbs.
The grappa.
The clear liquid is poured into the toilet while he empties his bladder. Meanwhile the vodka drains into the shower and he sings that song by Finardi he used to listen to as a boy:
Voglio
andare fino in fondo
Ho
girato troppo in tondo
Voglio
andare a bere l'aria del mondo
The cognac, the whisky, the aniseed liqueur; all in tribute to the company of the sewers.
He opens the windows. It doesn't matter that it's night and cold, but the alcohol fumes must be sucked outside before the whole place blows up.
The homemade amaro, grandma's distillate, the Marsala-style wine, the rum.
He collapses onto the bed without even undressing.
He is locked in a gas chamber, lying on the freezing bush-hammered concrete.
On the ceiling there are nozzles joined to metal pipes, hissing like snakes, and a smell of alcohol fills the room, creeps into his nostrils and takes possession of his throat. Breathing is impossible. He thrashes, coughs, bites at air that isn't there and walks the perimeter of the chamber on buckling legs, slapping his palms against the walls, until he finds a window.
He wakes a second before falling out, onto the street below, still busy despite the hour.
The cold he feels is his sweat-soaked clothes against the autumn air. He closes the window, wraps a towel around his neck and connects to the app. Corinne's icon blinks at the top of the screen.
"Good evening, Antonio, what can I do for you?"
Antonio recognizes the guiding voice, the one that had led him to the offices.
"Corinne, something's wrong."
"Can you explain what?"
"I smell alcohol, Corinne, I'm being persecuted. I smell it in my sleep, and yet I've emptied every bottle and washed the pipes, and changed the air."
"I understand. The treatment you received makes you hypersensitive to the smell of the alcoholic drinks you asked to avoid, but if you have physically removed them from your home, this should not happen. Below is a list of possible causes of this inconvenience: odors are trapped in the house by an atmospheric anomaly linked to pressure / odors have soaked into curtains, any rugs and fabrics in general / the olfactory memory is part of your suggestions / you forgot to empty a bottle. Consider these options and give me feedback."
Antonio throws the phone onto the mattress and thinks about which liquor might have survived the radical treatment. He rubs his forehead, runs his hands through his hair, bounces back and forth like a pinball.
The tequila!
It's in the shoe cabinet because his aunt hates Mexicans and every American from El Paso on down, so when she had visited he had preemptively made the bottle of Don Julio disappear before his aunt, as was her habit, could help herself and see it lined up with the other liquors.
Problem solved.
The bottle, two-thirds full, goes to polish the sewer pipes along with the other twenty liters.
He throws himself on the bed and passes out, without informing or thanking Corinne.
The night's crisis is forgotten, buried under a long, dreamless sleep.
Antonio dunks a biscuit in his tea while the morning news recites the politicians' lies and Juventus's poor form on the pitch. A glance at the TV, another at the empty liquor cabinet, left open since the night before. He'll fill it with books, real magnets for women, and yes, he has decided he'll get his crooked teeth fixed.
It's a fine day, a mild sun settling between the streaked clouds. The light is perfect for a photo to snap up.
The city in mid-morning doesn't run.
There are people who seem to have time to waste, even the cars respect pedestrians and don't run the lights, delivery vans stop with their hazards blinking. A gentle breeze plays with the dead leaves at the edges of the avenues. Everything is clean. The world, seen from that window, is a marvel.
The boy in the rust-colored jacket and factory-worn jeans has one sole on the sidewalk and the other pressed against the wall. His left hand acts as a spacer between the plaster and his back. His right lifts a bottle of fragrant blond beer that pours down his throat while his Adam's apple bobs up and down.
The smell of hops rides the scent of autumn and arrives straight in Antonio's nostrils.
It's easy to hit a man whose hands are busy. The punch lands between the solar plexus and the navel. The boy spits the beer onto the sidewalk and nearly chokes on what's left in his throat.
Confusion, bewilderment. Antonio feels the light burning in his eyes, the tea and biscuits climbing back up his esophagus. There is only one option: disappear.
He turns the corner just as the boy vomits on the door of a Panda.
Corinne's icon. Press.
Nobody can find him behind a builder's skip, between the green plastic netting and the piled-up rubble. The boy he hit can't, not even with the help of his friends, full of rage and thirst for revenge.
"Hello Antonio. I have an overload of requests. I don't think this is a good time to talk."
Antonio brings the phone to his mouth and whispers.
"I have a big, big problem."
"I'm sorry. The excess of requests is not compatible with the size of your problem. I can put you through to an operator. Would you like that?"
Antonio hears running in the street. The boy he punched is with three friends. They pass by, ignoring the skip.
"The operator's fine, thank you, Corinne."
The phone rings, without Corinne having said goodbye. Antonio regrets not having given the feedback she asked for after the call in the night, and not having thanked her for her help.
An answering machine picks up:
If you want to check the status of your payments, press 1.
If you want to pay an installment early, press 2.
If you want to report a fault, press 3.
If you want to introduce a new customer, press 4.
If you want to exercise your right of withdrawal, press 5.
And then an unbearable silence, until the list resumes.
If you want a copy of your invoice, press 6.
If you want to set up direct debit for our invoices, press 7.
If you want to add new services, press 8.
If you want to be freed from an external addiction not on the list we offer, press 9.
If you want to speak to an operator, stay on the line.
Antonio had no idea how irritating Mozart can be when played on a xylophone.
At the tenth minute of waiting he realizes his phone's battery is about to force the device into power-saving mode.
When the notification warns that the phone is about to shut down, a male voice answers.
"Antonio, good morning. How may I help you?"
"Could you give me your direct number, because... sorry, but my phone is about to die."
"I'm not authorized to give out any number, Antonio. Tell me..."
"Listen, then, listen carefully. A minute ago I punched a kid just because he was drinking a beer... hello... hello."
He shakes his Samsung but it's no use. It's dead.
The cable to recharge the phone is short. Antonio has to stay pressed against the living-room wall.
He taps Corinne's icon.
"Good morning, Antonio. I have been informed of your little mischief. These are inconveniences that can occur during treatment with peritrasbordinasonicasilente."
"What did you give me?"
"An experimental drug, Antonio, which you authorized by signing the condition at article 58, fourth paragraph. Through the whisky we administered 24.6 milliliters of peritrasbordinasonicasilente in colloidal form."
Antonio remembers that he had approved some thirty long pages of contractual terms without even reading them. It would have taken days.
"I beat up a woman, Corinne, after the boy, a defenseless woman! Your goddamn peri-whatever-the-fuck will pay my legal fees!"
"I had received reports of a boy being beaten. In what circumstances was the woman, and where? Can you give me the coordinates according to the WGS84 global geodetic standard?"
He raises his voice. "What coordinates! Find me a lawyer, at Vital Corporation's expense, and do it now!"
"In the absence of coordinates according to the WGS84 global geodetic standard, can you make do with the address where the criminal act took place?"
Antonio moves away from the wall. Together with the charger's transformer, the plug comes out of the socket. While he fiddles, trying not to electrocute himself, he answers:
"The bar on the corner. They know me there."
"Loading the maps."
"The woman was drinking a vermouth. I snatched the glass from her, threw it on the ground and shoved the nuts into her mouth."
"Peanuts, cashews, Brazil nuts?"
"And now I'm dying of thirst, Corinne, so get the rescue team and the legal paperwork going, and then I'm going to drink."
"Thirst for alcoholic drinks?"
"Thirst for water!"
"The treatment has hit the mark, Antonio, you do not crave alcoholic drinks!"
"You have to cure me!"
"Based on the evidence that emerged from the research, peritrasbordinasonicasilente can cause the undesirable effects you describe in case of overdose."
Antonio would like to pull away from that wall but the battery has not yet reached 25%. He thinks of the beaten woman, spitting salted peanuts like a machine gun while trying not to cut herself on the fragments of the broken glass. He thinks of the thirst, which had started to show up right at that moment, and of his escape while the barman called the police.
"There must be a remedy for your overdose..."
"Of course, Antonio, with your cooperation. Meanwhile I have forwarded the legal assistance request form. It will be reviewed by the end of the month."
"But it's the fourth!"
"Article 39, third paragraph: the timeframes for processing extraordinary requ..."
Antonio doesn't interrupt. He moves the phone away and hears it squeak. When the silence arrives he brings it close again but Corinne isn't done.
"...and in the special and particular conditions, per article 123, tenth paragraph, bar A, bar tris. Damages caused by the client through inconsistency of his declarations."
"What inconsistency, Corinne?"
"I believe you lied about your lean mass percentage."
"What the fuck..."
"After analyzing the metadata of the photo showing you on the beach... lovely sea, is it Riccione?"
"Milano Marittima, but what do you care?"
"The photo had been, so to speak, altered. I understand, Antonio, you wanted to look slimmer, but the clinical assessment of the dose to administer rests on lean mass, which in your photo appeared prevalent and therefore misleading."
Antonio feels the thirst burning in his throat. He's sorry that the tear running down his cheek is salty. He spares himself from asking on the basis of which article of the contractual terms Vital Corporation drew on his photos from the web.
"Thank you, Antonio. We will repeat the lean mass assessment to calibrate the pharmaceutical countermeasure. You will need to make a first payment of three thousand euros, five thousand if you consider the need to be urgent."
The credit card is in the wallet he carries on him. He slides it out, holds it between his fingers and brings it up to the camera.
"Is it in focus?"
"Thank you, Antonio, perfect. Answer yes to my question. Do you authorize the withdrawal of five thousand euros from your current account?"
"I'll make you spit it all back up!"
"The expected answer can be affirmative or negative. Please answer."
Antonio hears his molars creak. "Yes."
"Congratulations, the transaction was successful. You have paid the first installment of the compensation treatment for the overdose of peritrasbordinasonicasilente in colloidal form."
"What do you mean, the first installment?"
"I ask you to undress and position yourself in front of the camera."
"What about the second installment? A balancing payment, an equal part? What, you bastards!"
"The amount of the second installment will depend on your response to the treatment. And now undress."
"Undress naked?"
"Completely, as specified in article 172, special conditions and..."
Antonio pulls off the sweatshirt and rips the undershirt, unbuckles his belt and lets his trousers pile around his ankles. He shakes his crotch with his hand in a contemptuous gesture that Corinne doesn't comment on.
The windowsill above the radiator is perfect for propping the phone. He sets it up and takes five steps into the room. He lets his arms hang along his sides and swallows a ball of thorns. The thirst is unbearable.
"Am I handsome?"
"You looked better in the photo. Turn around, but move away from that big picture behind you. I think I recognize Monument Valley, and this time stand still."
He complies with two steps to the side.
"Thank you, Antonio. Fat on the abdomen can favor the onset of diabetes. The accumulation of adipose tissue in the pubic area reduces sexual pleasure. There are other inconveniences caused by the accumulation of body fat. Would you like me to list them?"
Three steps forward and the urge to smash that phone to pieces. His mouth is pasty with thirst.
"You're just a pile of stupid bytes!"
"Each of us is just a pile of something. The question is whether we will rust or rot. I have dosed the countermeasure. They are expecting you at the office. Good luck."
He throws himself at the sink, turns on the water and doesn't wait for it to cool.
He fills his mouth, but spits and spits again. He is choked by a convulsive cough that seems to tear the muscles of his abdomen. Nausea, as after a mouthful of petroleum.
The tap water tastes of alcohol, the same aggressive smell that burns the nostrils and twists the stomach.
It's backflow from the drains, he thinks, the smell of the liquors he poured all together, now climbing back up the pipes and then the trap. He goes back to the middle of the kitchen but the smell chases him there, follows him like an avenger. Even the clothes he took off for the remote assessment of his lean mass stink of cellar. They seem to have come out of a cask.
He washes, scrubs his skin as if he had to scrape the bucket of an excavator. He doesn't even dry off. He puts on the first clothes he finds hanging. He goes out.
He picks side streets, far from bars and people, switches routes when he sees two girls approaching sipping from cans. Budweiser, it looks like. He doesn't know what's in the bag of the elderly man coming his way. If it were a bottle he wouldn't answer for his behavior.
Another change of sidewalk.
The municipal drinking fountain shaped like a bull's head. It's covered with a thick layer of green paint that looks like icing. The brass spigot has a button to press.
The water tastes of grappa, the cheap kind that reeks of disinfectant.
He spits and starts coughing again while the lady with the poodle crosses to the other side of the street.
The liquors poured down the drains must have seeped into the aqueduct, the pipes have exuded and contaminated the municipal network.
Merely wetting his mucous membranes is useless. He feels weak, his vision is blurred, his joints creak with dehydration, and Vital's headquarters is still far away.
He doesn't see in time the man with the leather briefcase, who walks while talking into his earbuds and unwraps a chocolate with a rum filling. The air fills with that smell, and as he passes him he gets a look of contempt.
Antonio's mouth is gummed up with dust, and he has decided.
He follows the passerby to the first doorway, no more than ten steps away. He doesn't care who's around, he speeds up, catches him before he can react and knocks him to the floor of the entrance hall with a shove.
At first the man thrashes, kicks like a mule, bites, but Antonio knows how to use his weight. He smothers the screams with his hand pressed over the mouth. He endures the teeth in his flesh, the hot breath, the saliva. His heart pounds in his head like a broken engine.
He needs a few seconds to recover, but the man has stopped breathing.
He lifts his head and tucks the briefcase under it.
The man has a long, hairless neck. Antonio quenches his thirst with blood, straight from the jugular.
It's warm, thick, but it doesn't smell of alcohol.
Nobody bothers him until the avenue. The people in front of him part like the waters of the Red Sea for Moses, and those too, Antonio could swear, stank of spirits at 90 proof.
The 17, the old orange tram that crosses the whole city, has been late since the days when the king was in charge.
That day it is on time, and Antonio waits for it with his head on the tracks.
At Vital Corporation's headquarters, the man in the light-blue shirt and big glasses asks his beautiful assistant to hang a new monitor in the corridor. The girl has good taste, an aesthetic sense and a practiced eye. She hangs it next to the one that has for many years shown Matteo, the former smoker smiling with Mont Blanc as his backdrop.
The screen is blue at first, but soon, after a few seconds in which an hourglass blinks in its center, Antonio's photo appears. Lean and muscular, he wears Hawaiian-print swim trunks. In the background, the sea at Riccione.
Behind the lips, set in a crooked grin, the teeth are perfect.
Just like the one on the sticker at the tram shelter, the caption appears in showy red letters:
Antonio has solved his alcohol addiction
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