Excerpt

1.

Milan – January 2013.

The sky hung low over the city, bloated and sodden like a rag wiped over a filthy floor. The appointment was in two hours and I didn't have anything better to do, so I drove around for a while. With the massive housing complexes under construction, the working at a standstill for years due to the infiltration of the 'ndrangheta or because the money had run out – it all looked like the ruins of an alien society without a hint of good taste that fled the planet right before the apocalypse. Black water dripped on dead trees planted beyond the fences and barbed wire, brown puddles connected in gurgling trickles, trade union banners on the grey walls of closed-down factories bellowed in the bitter breeze; chimneypots belched out black smoke on a coral reef of satellite dishes, the pretty red-tile roofs of the old Milan were ravaged by the infestation of new and unsold attic rooms, the walls resembling asbestos painted dung.

I passed San Vittore and headed for the Darsena, the old dock, which had grown so dry and stinking it resembled a titanic toilet dumped in a field, abandoned railways glittered along the banks, while the evening shadows were closing in along Via Washington and Corso Vercelli, seeping in between the buildings as the setting sun beckoned the night life to kick in, the roads in the early sunset were filling with cars and I got caught in the middle, mobile phones rang and rang, laughter burst out but I couldn't hear what had triggered it, the red circles of cigarettes being smoked in the passenger compartments drew odd figures, the fluorescent neon lights of the clubs along the Navigli flickered on like Christmas lights, the air smelt of rust and wet asphalt and the electricity of the trams' sparkling cables, the rain pattered away on the windshield.

It was still Milan – to hell with it – it was Milan in a storm and I had got lost in it again, like a senseless old habit you just can't shake off.