It's complicated E-Book

Marcello Peluso

• Herausgeber: EuroEuroEditions
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Beschreibung

In the new Internet age. Luca, a thirty-year old man with a precarious professional and love life, decides to look for new stimuli in the virtual world of Internet chat. To distance himself from the disasters of his real world, which consists of uncertaincies and much tedium, our hero immerses himself in a virtual dimension where he finds friends who are strange but true. He gets to know people without being biases by their real world identity from health and from fleeting pleasures until, to save a virtual friend suffering from bulimia and in love with an alleged representative of a satanic cult, he will be dragged by a hacker friend into an extraordinary adventure, which leads him to discover the mysterious link that exists between magic circles, IP addresses, lunar phases and secret codes to decipher. The adventure will give him the chance to complete an internal journey through his fears and to see reality from different angles, finally concluding that the world has no set direction, only that which each of us decides to attribute to it.

Leseprobe

EUROEUROEDITIONS

Status relationship:

IT’S COMPLICATED

Marcello PelusoTranslation by Alison Cotton and Eve Proofreads

Marcello Peluso

Relationship status: It’s complicated.

2014© EuroEuroEditions

www.euroeuroeditions.com

ISBN 978-88-908441-2-6

Series: World Chats

E-book Versions: [1] March 2013 - [2] January 2014

Illustration: dreamstime.com

Translation by Alison Cotton and Eve Proofreads

Synopsis

In the new Internet age. Luca, a thirty-year old man with a precarious professional and love life, decides to look for new stimuli in the virtual world of Internet chat.

To distance himself from the disasters of his real world, which consists of uncertaincies and much tedium, our hero immerses himself in a virtual dimension where he finds friends who are strange but true. He gets to know people without being biases by their real world identity from health and from fleeting pleasures until, to save a virtual friend suffering from bulimia and in love with an alleged representative of a satanic cult, he will be dragged by a hacker friend into an extraordinary adventure, which leads him to discover the mysterious link that exists between magic circles, IP addresses, lunar phases and secret codes to decipher.

The adventure will give him the chance to complete an internal journey through his fears and to see reality from different angles, finally concluding that the world has no set direction, only that which each of us decides to attribute to it.

The Author: Marcello Peluso (Naples, Italy – 1975) is a journalist, writer and marketing analyst. He has worked as an author and radio speaker and has written for Italian and international newspapers and magazines.

His hobbies are photography, painting and good food. Above all he loves travelling and cultures of the world.

[www.marcellopeluso.com]

« Life is what happens to you when you’re busy making other plans»

(John Lennon)

Table of Contents

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

31

32

33

34

35

36

37

38

39

40

41

42

43

44

45

46

47

48

49

50

51

52

53

54

55

56

57

58

59

60

61

62

63

1

«...How times have changed! And if we continue to behave like this, only God knows where it will end! Before, it was so different, there was less corruption, less law-breaking, less delinquency! And the youth, ah, the youth of today? They just don’t give a damn, they have no respect for values! Values, you understand? What do they know about them? Once upon a time values were respected».

Luca turns the car radio off, skimming the set’s off-button. The display ceases to make columns of mini, illuminated squares leap in coloured stacks; as if their base has just gone missing, the last squares fall down, to the bottom of a rectangle, by now completely black.

He lifts his head. Before him a horizon of cars gets lost in the early January rain, which leads a hysterical dance on the glass, mocking the neurotic windscreen wiper which beats time. In the rearview mirror another horizon of cars pursues Luca, stationary in a traffic jam that seems to have no end. A river of people, resigned and enraged, invades the pavements, streaming between the cars. Someone runs between the smoking wrecks and the smog of the engines.

Luca lowers the window: «Excuse me, what’s happened?».

The skinny lady in her fifities, with a hat that crushes her blond hair , stops, distraught and exhausted: «Did you not hear the news this morning? It’s the public services’ ‘wild’strike».

«Again?» our guy replies, dumbfounded.

«Yes, of course! This time I really do not know what will become of us».

Luca’s “Thanks” is lost in the car fumes. The lady is already two cars down, while a Romany boy asks for money, removing his cap and rubbing the headlights with it.

He can expect to wait at least an hour in the traffic. The local police force, stationed in every corner of the city, tries to restore an already largely compromised order.

Luca turns the radio on again, while, snorting, he fiddles with the Magic Tree air freshener: «...and these strikers too! Once there was respect for the citizen, for the poor people working, workers like them, like us. But now, nothing! There is no respect for anything, not even for the poor devils who have to go to work in the morning! Where is it all going to end?».

Better to listen to a little music, he thinks, jumping frenetically from one station to another, intent on finding a song that can be the soundtrack to his precarious emotional state.

«Here we are! The paradox of the modern world,» moralises a monotone voice from the radio speakers, «ever faster cars that go ever more slowly, restrained between the asphalt and the smog, meat that protests its humanity! Where will it end, dear listeners? Eh? On to the next caller.

– Hello? It’s Maria, from Sesto San Giovanni.

- Madame Maria! Tell me...».

Luca switches the radio off again. The clock shows 8:32. He will surely find the right way to explain to Dr Tandini, the office manager, why he is late. He will understand, even if Luca is always the last of the team to arrive in the office.

The tension on the streets of Milan seems to rise as Luca manages to reach the traffic lights. Damn, it’s red. An artic with a trailer, coming from the right, blocks the whole crossroads when joining his car’s queue, while the light goes green. A wave of horns assails the first in the line.

«What do you want?» The man, thickset and dark-faced, leaves his car to shout in a hysterical voice his reasons to the horn-beepers, with his arm raised like the conductor of an orchestra. «Don’t you see there is no point going forwards? I can’t even go one metre!» Then he calms down and goes back to his car.

Luca’s small car travels another ten metres and enters the main junction. An impressive line of people walks quickly along the pavements, between the cars and through the rain. It looks like a pilgrimage to the holy place of work.It is already 9:19 when, having luckily parked just two steps from his workplace, Luca enters the door of the semi-vacant building which houses his company offices.

It’s only Ramazzi, the head of department, who shouts something from the end of the corridor.Luca tries to leap like a bolt of lightning to silently reach his own seat in the corner of the world, safe from the bosses where Tonino, his loyal colleague, is already sitting and busily working.

«What’s up with Ramazzi today?» starts Luca in a low voice, almost only gesticulating.

«The usual thing,» replies Tonino, as if recounting well-known events. «Remember that if he gets hold of whoever is moving his wooden owl around, he’ll cut their dick off with his own hands!».

«Oh, that wooden owl!» snorts Luca. «It’s as ugly as its owner! Have you ever seen an owl with the feet of an ostrich?».

«Actually no, to me it doesn’t even look like an owl».

«But whoever is doing it is truly a genius!» continues Luca. «Now not a day passes when the owl is not in a new position».

«But it’s also Ramazzi’s fault: if it bothers him that much he could put a chain on it, like on a moped».

They laugh.

«Anyway, Tonino, how are you?».

«So-so!» responds his colleague, shrugging his shoulders.

«Usual story with the wife?».

«Yes, look, at this point, I tell you, what can I do?» replies Tonino, ever more discouraged. Luca tries to find the words to lift his morale: «Come on, you’ll see it will all work out».

«Let’s hope so! I am losing patience and hope, I’m giving up and going back to Puglia...».

«You mustn’t, Tonino, you mustn’t». Luca interrupts him firmly. «Be strong! And this Sunday it’s the derby, right? Take her to the match with you, maybe you’ll enjoy yourselves».

«Not a chance,» he plunges back into despair. «She doesn’t want to hear about football! And even I hardly ever go; who wants to see Inter lose again?».

«Have faith, Tonino, faith.» He puts his hand on his colleague’s shoulder as a sign of solidarity.

«Bah, we’ll see! Anyway the big boss phoned this morning». Tonino updates Luca on the latest work news.

«Today at eight as well? But did he look out of the window? There’s a real mess in the street».

«Yes, but he called all the same» continues Tonino cynically.

«Him? In person?» replies Luca, as if surprised by this rare event.

«No, do you think he knows how to dial a number?» he smiles. «He made his flunkey call. He claims the customer was moaning about the work presented last week».

«The work on the condom brand?» now Luca frowns. «But if the customer only paid pennies - what was he expecting?».

«It’s the usual story, mate! The customer wants the work done yesterday, they pay us pennies and the people at the top still don’t get it».

Luca meanwhile, still with his coat on, turns on the PC, «So you told him to fuck off?».

«Yes, but the chief says we are being bought by the English company and we can’t allow ourselves such blunders».

«He should visit the customers instead of having company dinners by himself!» Now Luca is really furious. «Then he comes to us to tell us how it has gone! The customers are bloodsuckers: the more you give them, the more they want».

«Yes, but this time I know he’s really in a foul mood. He threatened fire and brimstone» retorts Tonino with his usual fake British aplomb.

«He wants our heads? Easy. Let’s resign!».

«Yes and then how do you pay the rent? I have a family to support too!».

Tonino immerses himself in his electronic paperwork, while Luca calmly takes off his coat, adjusts his tie and sets his mobile on the desk with meticulous care.A glance at the clock: 9:45. He is perfectly late.

Our guy sits down, seems uncertain. He rests his head on his hands, while he stares at the gloomy corridor which seems to call to him with sinister laments, infernal cries and raucous voices.

2

His left hand supports his head, tilting due to the unbearable weight of thoughts and tedium, while his cheek is deformed by his palm, and his eyes, half-closed, stare at the blank 19” monitor that reflects, misshapen, Luca’s face and soul.

His right hand turns the mouse on the mat, in a completely deliberate whirling motion. Both the pointer on the screen and Luca’s dark eyes turn in synchrony with the mouse. Every so often his eyelids close, the boredom takes over and his body seems paralysed, waiting for who knows what imponderable event or for which extra-terrestrial being to come and remove him from this tedious situation and inertia. From time to time, bored, he looks at his mobile as if he hopes that from there, at least from there, he can receive a jolt to shake up his monotonous existence.

Nothing. No message. No missed calls. No-one looking for him, not even to subject him to some market research. On the mobile’s display the telephone operator’s name seems to watch him and judge him continuously. The man’s reflections get lost in the deeper tedium. At times he is surprised he is still able to think. Probably the desire for something new had pushed him to change his mobile barely six months after buying the previous one. Probably the need to satisfy his repressed instincts in another way.

In this way, tediously, the last few years of his existence have passed by, from when he first set foot in this office on the second floor of via Spartaco. A precarious job in a market research company, a horrendous euphemism for his unvarying days spent identifying purchasing targets, income groups and age groups, with the possibility of moonlighting, at the call centre of the same company, by performing evening interviews during which he collects more insults than results. No great surprises for years now. Every day he trades his ten, sometimes twelve, hours of life for a monthly salary of one thousand Euros, the weekend always free, the weeks that pass pulling him to successive holidays and dreaming of a completely different life.

On the threshold of thirty years, Luca Genoni finds himself in a work situation that is still precarious, with an uncertain future and nothing definite on the personal front either, propelled with force into that market segment that he targets with the Anglo-Saxon term “single”, “age: 25-35 years”, “Work: precarious”, “Status of love-life: complicated relationship”. Some months ago, then, he entered that state of half-wandering freedom characterised by a sense of fear of being wrong and anguish over definitive things. He perceives everything as a source of anxiety: the rent contract seems to him unacceptable blackmail by the landlady; work is a prison where his ankles and wrists are chained up; at the start of every potential love affair a paranoid claustrophobia starts to assail him, making him identify in each partner the constant danger that his life could settle into an apathetic state of romantic stagnation.

Even Milan has become for him the usual greyish atmosphere, consisting of rain and smog, car horns and the stench of fried food, given that his apartment is right over a Chinese restaurant, bang in the middle of the Paolo Sarpi zone, Milan’s Chinatown inhabited mainly by Chinese immigrants.

As an antidote to the boredom and stress he tried to attend some courses financed by the council. Having failed with yoga and shao tze tung, after rejecting the techniques of progressive relaxation and not believing in biofeedback, he soon stumbled across a course that promised immediate results and sudden release from stress. Twice a week, for 230 Euros for three months, the course entailed him going to a gym where he was allowed to destroy vases, glasses, plates and porcelain in order to get rid of his stress and boredom, so promised the advertising leaflet stuck to a lamp post.

Number enrolled on the course ‘Crash’: six. Him; a hysterical housewife; a manager by now devastated by cocaine; a bank employee who knows all the names of antidepressants; a couple trying in some way to reduce the number of violent arguments they have, and an arrogant student enrolled by his parents to prevent him from systematically destroying their lounge. Luca promised himself he would never go back there.