End of Manners Read Online Free Page B

London. It’s thirty pages long.” And then the laugh again.
    “And how about the assignment for
Gambero Rosso
?” I asked. “I was scheduled to shoot for them the first week of December. What are we going to do about the—”
    “I’ll take care of it. They’re my next phone call, in fact. They will find someone else, no problem, so don’t you worry about that.”
    He was brimming with enthusiasm, as if canceling that shoot was a personal victory. I heard paper rustling from his end. It pissed me off that he should be so efficient. He told me that the insurance required us to take a course.
    “Hostile environment training,” he said. “It’s the least they can expect, with what they’re covering.”
    “Which means?”
    “They teach you how to behave in situations of potential danger. It’s like going to school and taking classes about safety, first aid and stuff like that. There are only two companies in the world who provide this kind of training and they’re both based in England. People who have to go off to hot zones come here from all over the world. So we’ll fly you over, you’ll start the course on Monday, meanwhile we’ll take care of your visa and so forth and then you and Imo will leave together from Heathrow the following week. It works out very neatly like that.”
    I said nothing. He was beginning to get on my nerves with all that optimism and positive feeling about everything. My brief fantasy about the two of us in the south of France seemed to belong to another era of our relationship, eons away.
    “There’ll be about fifteen of you in the course. They’re holding it in the country, here, just outside London.”
    “What do you mean
in the country
?”
    Pierre cleared his throat.
    “Yes, they’re deporting you to a sort of mansion in Hampshire, in the middle of the English countryside. All the participants have to live there for the duration of the course. You’ll go to classes from eight till six. It’s going to be hard work.”
    There was a pause. I didn’t fill it.
    He chuckled. “Basically you’re going to boot camp.”
    My silence grew deeper. An absence of breath, more than a suspension of sound.
    “It’ll be fun, you’ll see. There’ll be a whole bunch of interesting people who work in interesting places. It’s an experience, Maria. In fact, you don’t realize how lucky you are. I’d be in it like a shot.”
    Sure he would. I heard the papers rattle again in the background.
             
    A couple of days later I met my father for lunch in a trattoria in his neighborhood, where they’ve known him for years and call him “Professore.” We sat at his usual table in the back, facing the faded Miró print and the old wooden cupboard. The table was covered with a sheet of paper and a quart of cheap white wine
della casa
had been placed between us. Naturally, my father had now printed more pages from the Internet about my survival course.
    “I did a search and in the end I found this group. They’re called ‘Defenders.’” He grinned. “It must be them, they’re the only ones who do this kind of thing. It’s like something out of James Bond!”
    The photos he downloaded looked pretty muddy in the smudgy black and white of his old printer. I could scarcely make out a group of people sheathed in bulletproof vests and helmets. Another picture showed a table covered with firearms of every kind: rifles, machine guns, grenades. A close-up showed a man in full camouflage gear, his face blackened like in the poster of
Platoon.
    “I don’t know about James Bond,” I said. “They look more like mercenaries to me.”
    “They’re
not
mercenaries. These are ex–British marines. It’s a totally different ball game,
mia cara.
”
    Domenico, the owner of the trattoria, came over in his apron and tried to tell us some very fresh scampi had just come in. But my father wasn’t ready to pay attention to food yet.
    “Look at this, Domenico,” he said, handing him