I arrive in Parma at 10.20 and park the Maserati on the yellow lines in the street behind the Law Faculty. I hurry to the entrance and when I enter the class on Political Economics the lesson is already underway and the professor is explaining something, pointing with a stick to a chart he has drawn on the blackboard. I find a place in the back row near a girl with glasses who passes me her notes and I say 'hello' in a low voice. She looks at me and says, "You look awful... What did you get up to yesterday evening?"
"Leave it," I answer, realising that I haven't got the faintest idea what I did yesterday evening, even though images keep flashing before me of a club and a girl at the Orbita sticking a cigarette in her cunt, but it's all confused and flickering, the order of things is all wrong and I swear that I'll give up ecstasy and alcohol, or at least ecstasy and alcohol together.
I borrow a handbag mirror from the girl in glasses and observe the bags under my eyes and the broken veins in the corners of my eyelids and from this I deduce that I must have puked during the night. I am really too pale and I absolutely must go to the Tropical Center and have a trifacial or, better, a sun shower. I give the mirror back to the girl and try to understand, at least part of the hieroglyphics that the professor has scribbled on the board... soon I fall asleep.
The girl in glasses wakes me up at the end of the lesson and puts a notepad full of notes in front of me. I yawn and ask her, "Why do you do all this for me?"
"When I find out, I'll let you know."
"I think I'll go and get a coffee. Where will you be?"
"In the library."
I slide out of the row of seats and slip out of the classroom and go to the bar. I have coffee and smoke near the photocopier. I wait until it's my turn with my classmate's notes under my arm, but when it's my turn I realise there is no more credit on my photocopy card and so I go down to the machine to get another, but I only have a fifty euro note and it won't take anything so big. So I go to the bar for change and I go back and buy a card, then I go back to the top floor and queue again until I can finally photocopy the notes. Then I go down to the basement, enter the library and give the notepad back to the girl in glasses and, when I get to the lesson on Civil Law I am twenty minutes late.
YOU ARE READING
LAST CUBA LIBRE
General FictionIf you're looking for a gripping read, look no further than "Last Cuba Libre". Meet Jessica, who's a bit of a slag. Claudio, who rocks designer threads and snorts lots of cocaine. Then there's Tony, cruising in his Porsche, leaving a trail of broken...
