Sharon Z. was a professional head hunter. She knew all the right places and was invited to all parties. She kept a binder in her electronic agenda of who was where looking for what. When she started she used to make hard copies of the job seekers' profiles. After a couple of years she stopped keeping track of the full details. Her clients were just names she would whisper or hinted in a cocktail party. Then she would arrange a meeting place, a bar, a spa or whatever, between the executive in search for a different position and the company's human resources offices. Somebody pulled the strings. She received cash.
She focused on unhappy executives, bored officers in charge, anxious managers looking for a change. She rapidly detected useful gossips and used information accordingly. Sometimes, as a reward for her works, she was invited to expensive cruises which she never took. She hated leaving Sidney. But when she got an invitation to Rome she did not refuse.
Mankind was busy in Piazza Navona. Pigeons flew everywhere. A gipsy kid played the accordion for the tourists sitting in the cafes. A sharp looking waiter tried to get rid of him, but he insisted on playing some broken Balkan melody again and again. Sharon sat near the kid and ordered an espresso. The man in the next table smiled at her. Oh, no, she thought, no more Latin lovers. `The great mistake of God was not to give man two lives: one to rehearse and one to act', he said, `can I buy you a drink?'.
Adso was a professional tourist gigolo. His main belongings were five suits and shirts, two pairs of shoes, plastic Ray Bans, a stolen Nokia and a blue bag with toiletries. He kept all of that under the stairs of the pension where he spent the unlucky nights he did not succeed in hooking up with a lonely foreigner. He was good in sneaking in expensive hotels. The last victim was Alionushka, a Russian literature teacher from Volgograd who also dealt with Kazakhstan carpets. She had a great time with Adso. He did not need to rob her like the others. She gave him 5.000 in cash before catching the taxi to the airport.
The pigeons were again in the ground. Adso and Sharon looked at each others' eyes and fell in some kind of catatonia. In the meantime, the accordionist managed to steal her purse with her passport, visa, cash, mobile phone, driving license and sleeping pills.
Adso offer her help. He spent a fourth of Alionushka's legacy that night with Sharon, from Trastevere to the Piazza del Popolo passing by a few shifty night clubs. They ended up totally wasted under a bench near the Villa Borghese. The Carabinieri woke them up honking at six in the morning.
Sharon made then a few phone calls from a cabin in the Via del Corso, rapidly booked flights and arranged a Japanese garden party near the bay for Tuesday night. She thought Adso would do well as Executive Director of Mayaka Koshi, the leading joint venture in Singapore's ball pen producers. Adso never showed up at the airport.
