Three-Card Monte Read Online Free Page A

girl.”
    â€œReally?” Romualdo bent again over the crib, incredulous. “Dammit, poor little thing.”
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    Getting back to the present day, even the other customers laugh, which is surprising, given that they know the story because Ampelio must have told it fifty times. Tiziana, who doesn’t know the story, smiles, because she has understood that the storm has passed. With the same smile, she goes to Rimediotti, who in spite of everything is still grumbling, while the chinotto drips relentlessly from his effervescent hair. Flattering him with the very same smile, she lowers his head slightly, and dries his tuft. The old man, who, due to the position of his head, suddenly finds himself faced directly with Tiziana’s chest, thanks her and turns red.
    In short, now the storm has given way to a sense of calm, the climate is one of fraternal camaraderie, and thanks to Massimo’s memory Ampelio now feels inclined to rake over the past and to start telling the thousands of stories he has about the days when he and the other doughty pensioners were young, or even earlier. Since the only thing that could stop Ampelio when he has decided to tell a story that goes back to the times of his remote youth would be military intervention by NATO, and given that our elderly hero is a narrator of undisputed talent, even if with a somewhat limited repertoire, the remaining bystanders happily get ready to listen to him.
    Del Tacca, with a glass entirely of amaro in front of him, listens to Ampelio without looking up and chuckles to himself. Rimediotti and Aldo listen standing up, nodding sagely whenever Ampelio introduces a character from the past, to show that they remember him and that he really was a fine man. Tiziana listens with great amusement to the tall stories of this ribald old man whose memory is scandalously immune from the effects of age and hardened arteries. Every now and again, she glares at Massimo, who is still pretending to be working as a barman, cutting, pouring, washing, and moving things about, in order not to give his grandfather satisfaction, even though, in reality, he too is listening.
    After a while, Ampelio starts to talk about the time he and Aldo worked in Pisa and, as a joke, replaced the menus displayed outside the tourist restaurants near Piazza dei Miracoli with other homemade menus, which featured unlikely dishes such as carpaccio of camel’s ass and hair soup. Massimo, who has heard the story umpteen times, takes a tray and goes outside to take the glasses emptied by the two girls who conquered the table under the elm.
    He finds them in a state of great agitation.
    The girl with the big eyes and her friend are clicking frantically and opening all the files on the desktop, in search of something they can’t find. The girl with the big eyes has despair written all over her face and is about to have an attack of hysteria, while her friend sits huddled with a touching expression very similar to that of a lost puppy. Shyly she asks the other girl, “Are you sure it isn’t there anymore?”
    â€œWell, I can’t find it. Look . . . How the hell . . . How is it possible . . . It was here! It was here! Oh, my God . . . ”
    â€œIf you’ll allow me,” Massimo says, taking the laptop from the girl’s hands and quickly placing it on one of the tables near the tamarisks. The two girls are looking at him with stunned expressions.
    â€œDon’t worry, there’s no signal there. I couldn’t help seeing the screen. Some of the files have been corrupted. Have you opened a window in a browser?”
    â€œY . . . yes,” replies the buxom friend, because the girl with the big eyes is still looking at Massimo as if he was a talking rabbit. “I opened a window because I wanted to show her a place in Barcelona, and after a while . . . I don’t know, after a while . . . ”
    â€œAfter a while,