The instant she opened the window the dog cowered back, shivering, haunches flinching. She held out the blanket and the dog slunk off, tail tucked tight away, ears back.
There was little out on the roof, a cardboard box of a kennel, an upturned water bowl, the dog’s chain and the pole it was attached to. Padlocked to itself the chain wrapped about the pole and the pole lodged into the stub of a vent that butted out of the roof. Unless she could lift the entire pole out of its socket she would not be able to release the dog. The idea wasn’t going to work. As the dog circled wide of her the pole jolted in its housing, and when the dog stopped tugging the chain slackened and the pole straightened up. Once the chain was slack Lila found that the pole could be twisted with ease. A small plastic wedge poked through the lip of the stub and kept the pole upright. With this removed the pole slid out of its housing, and as she hoisted it up the chain rode down and slipped free. Unaware, the dog lunged forward for the blanket and hurtled over the lintel into Rafí’s bedroom, the chain snaking after.
Money poked out of the empty socket.
A single twenty-euro note.
Lila laid the pole down and picked up the note in disbelief. Pulling out one note, another came with it, and with that note came another, and another. She sat down to look at the money, checking either side to make sure that it was real. She was not lucky. Never this lucky.
She reached into the hole and unthreaded more notes until she held in her hands more money than she could count. Deeper still the hole was stopped with a scrunched plastic bag. Lila knelt down and tugged out the bag then reached further into the pipe, finding another bag containing yet more money, tight rolls of ten-, twenty-, and fifty-euro notes. The pole itself was also stoppered with plastic, and still deeper were tucked more rolls of money. Gathering the notes together Lila stuffed her sleeves full, then left the plastic and the pole out on the roof.
Back in Rafí’s room the dog leapt onto the bed and turned first on the shirts, tugging them off their hangers and worrying them. Spoilt for options the dog began to nip and tear at the sheets, then the mattress, and wrenched out hanks of stuffing until it could squeeze its head into the holes. Done, the dog sat on the bed and looked back at the roof, the mattress now ragged, with hollowed-out pockets. Thick drifts of polyester, a fine white fibre, settled about the room.
Lila held the blanket up, ready to throw it over the dog’s head. She crept cautiously back through the window. The door was closed and the dog watched her edge slowly about the side of the room, her back to the wall, and he growled with rising threat. When she opened the door, just wide enough to squeeze through, the dog sprang to its feet and began to bark.
Safely in the stairwell she leaned her head against the door, and thanked the dog. It was impossible to know how much she had taken, as it was impossible to guess where the money had come from — in such a quantity — or why it was stored on the roof. The only certainty was that the money was either Rafí’s or belonged to one of his associates, and Rafí, the little shit, had done nothing, less than nothing, to earn it. What Lila had not earned she deserved.
* * *
Lila made her way directly to the Stazione Centrale. Dressed in Rafí’s shirt and trousers and a pair of plastic sandals — the toy panda clenched in her arms — she walked out the door taking a simple A to B route, off the pavement, between the bollards. She headed across the road, under the station awning into the darker concourse to the ticket booth to the first free window. She walked in a daze with a crisp fifty-euro note pinched ready in her fist. She’d tucked money into clothes, arms and pants, before remembering the toy. The toy panda, misshapen, stuffed with money (loose, scrunched, wadded, rolled and folded) appeared more forlorn than before. Heat bloomed from the blacktop. And in making that walk Lila understood that she was breaking something which could not be fixed. She would never be able to return, she would not see Rafí again, if she did, she was certain he would kill her.
Once at the booth she stood blinking, sunspots in her eyes, thinking ‘oh’ to herself, ‘oh’ at her alarm to be standing exactly where she intended, ‘oh’, to have completed the simple walk without interruption. To her left the police lounged in a glass-walled office. To her right the carabinieri loitered in pairs, some on motorized carts scooping through the terminal in predatory arcs. Youths, boys she recognized, hung about the automatic ticket machines and lazily scanned the station, the groups, the people waiting, the small queue forming behind her. Lila kept the toy clutched to her chest.
She looked square at the man behind the glass, his hair slicked back in one smooth hood, dwarfed by his computer and the broad desk on which he leaned. Feeling queasy with the heat, Lila kept her composure.
The teller leaned toward the glass.
‘Rome,’ she said. ‘No, Milan. No. Yes. Milan,’ then, to be certain, ‘Milan.’
He twisted his head to hear her. He tried Italian. English. French. Then returned to Italian.
‘Dove?’
‘Milano.’
‘Che giorno?’
‘Si.’
‘Oggi? Stamatina?’
Lila pushed the money through the tray before he asked, before the details were decided. It was an effort to stand still, to not shout at the people behind her that they needed to back off. She picked the first of every option.
‘InterCity—’
‘Si.’
‘Diretto?’
‘Si.’
The man looked at the money. ‘Eurostar?’
‘Si.’
‘Andata e ritorno?’
‘Si.’
‘Andata?’
‘Si.’
‘A che ora? Adesso?’
‘Adesso?’ with some exasperation.
‘Prima o secunda? Prima?’
‘Si. Prima.’
She held her breath as she watched him type.
‘Fifty-four euro.’
Lila leaned into the glass.
‘You need four more euro.’ The man held up the fifty-euro note and four fingers. Lila’s stomach tightened, she couldn’t see the problem until the man pointed at the price. Jittery at the realization that she would have to open the small pocket in the panda’s stomach in the middle of the station, Lila wasn’t sure what she should do.
The clerk twitched the fifty-euro note between his finger and thumb, and before her eyes the note divided into two.
The teller, equally surprised, saw that he now held two fifty-euro notes. ‘Together!’
‘Oh?’
‘Cento euro?’
‘Si…’
‘Cento.’ The clerk slipped the money away and drew out her change. After counting her notes and change he slid the ticket and the reservation stub into the tray then wiped his fingers on his cuffs.
Lila walked by the police and caught her reflection in the long smoky stretch of glass. She began to lose confidence, and doubted that she had properly thought through what she should do. A skinny ghost of the person who had arrived at the same station five months earlier, she doubted that she could manage without Rafí and Arianna.
With the ticket in her hand, Lila found the exit and stood facing the security cameras mounted over the automatic doors, defenceless in the station’s broad angular forecourt.