Finding the Thing Within by Coris/ciro Sceusa

know who were to be those four people. Yes, he had Barbara, his daughter, but no real family to speak of. She was already quite old, nearly twelve, and would spend time with him and her mother alternately. Anyway, Francesco had no desire to even think about settling down again. He liked younger girls, twenty to thirty-year-olds, and all the girls he had been with were in that range. Women, as is known, want to create a family, and straight away. Francesco didn’t share the same enthusiasm for such a project after the failure of his first attempt. He wanted to sleep around for as long as possible to avoid the risk of getting so emotionally involved again.
    It was all the fault of that fucking doctor who had told him thirteen years ago that due to an inflammation of his testicles, he would be sterile for a certain period. The first time he had sex with his girlfriend she became pregnant and so he did the correct thing and married her. His life with her was hell. His wife Giovanna, at the time a beautiful woman, had the character of a poisonous wasp.
    You had to be careful around her because if she stung, it was fatal. She was spoiled and presumptuous. In the early days everything was going well, but it very quickly turned sour. She would have a bitter savageness in their ever more frequent public quarrels. One Saturday evening Rosario was invited to go with them to a pizzeria, and as so often happened, he accepted. That evening started well, with kisses, sweet words and caresses, but quickly deteriorated inside the restaurant. Francesco made fun of her for some mistake she had made at work (back then they worked together selling encyclopaedias) and she said he had gone too far:
    “Stop it now or this pizza’s going in your face.” “No you won’t,” laughed Francesco calmly. “I said stop. You know I will!”
“I don’t think so.”
Giovanna wasn’t going to give him another chance
    and launched the pizza straight into his face, to the amazement of Rosario, who was also risking getting hit, being next to Francesco. He felt the eyes of the other people in the restaurant on them. Even Rosario wanted to crawl away with shame and Francesco, covered in tomato sauce and pieces of artichoke, got up and walked staunchly towards the toilets.
    Talking about marriage now sets him off into fits. His land in the country was beautiful and he cared for it lovingly. One day he planted a pear tree and another, when work permitted, a peach tree. As time went on he became ever more eager and Francesco was working there when Rosario came to visit.
“Hey, Francesco, FRANCESCO,” he called repeatedly but Francesco had no chance of hearing him over the sound of his trimmer. Rosario walked into the middle of a clearing near Francesco, so as to be seen. Francesco switched off the trimmer and walked over, smiling.
“Ciao, Rosario, what’re you doing here?”
“Not much, just came to see you.”
“Great. Nice day, you can give me a hand!” “Fine. What should I do?”
“That wood over there needs collected together and burned.”
“Ok.”
“Oh Ros, who was that guy in the car with you the other day? Up to naughty business, huh?”
“Well I was up for it, but then it wasn’t possible. Actually, come to think of it, we could have come up to your office.”
“You’re a dirty man...and you could have told the secretaries that you you’d come for a ‘closed-door' meeting!”
“I came to tell you about something.”
“What?”
“That afternoon, I had a date with a guy.”
“Yeah, I got that much.”
“No, I mean with another, straight after.”
“You don’t give up, do you? You old queer, and anyway…?
Rosario laughed and beamed like a child given candy “So then I met this fella and since then I’ve seen him again, we went to the sea together.”
“You really like him?”
“No…Yes!”
“Well, is it no or yes?”
“He’s charming and tall. He goes to gym a lot and he has a body to die for.”
“What’s the problem