The Flamethrowers

Two weeks later, Reno is back in New York City. She has been staying with Gloria and Stanley Kastle. She attends a gallery opening for John Dogg, a new and popular artist on the scene, who is now dating Nadine. Reno replaces Burdmoore in the Kastle household. They keep her in the guest bedroom and hang her photographs of the salt flats above the shelf where Burdmoore’s sculptures had been displayed. Even though Reno knows that the Kastles will remain loyal friends to Sandro, she lets them make her their new adoptee. Sandro contacts Reno and asks her to come home to him; he blames Talia for being messed-up and confused. Reno returns to Sandro’s apartment to pack her things, where she also finds the repaired Moto Valera. Ronnie tells Reno about the one-day performance Gloria put on while Reno was in Italy. It was called Alone, and in it, Gloria stood in a small booth with an opening showing her pelvis. Ronnie put his hand into the opening and fingered Gloria until she came. Gloria declares to Reno that the performance was really about the fourth wall, and that if a man did put his hand in the opening, it was the man who forced sexuality onto the performance, not her. Even so, Gloria breaks down sobbing and confesses to Reno and to her husband Stanley that she believes she’s in love with Ronnie.

Reno asks Ronnie about Thurman when they run into each other at John Dogg’s opening. He tells her that Thurman’s wife died, but otherwise he doesn’t seem to acknowledge the night they first met. Still, Reno can feel his attention on her throughout the evening. Giddle shows up too, but she’s no longer with Burdmoore.

Reno finds Nadine shinier and happier with John Dogg than when she had Thurman’s gun between her legs. Reno appreciates their relationship for what it is, not for how they got to where they are. At the afterparty, John Dogg performs with his band called Hookers and Children. Reno stays on the sidelines, watching the dancing and thinking back to Gianni. Reno observes the social interactions of the party. In watching Nadine, she realizes that Giddle lied about being a prostitute. In watching Ronnie talk to John Dogg, she realizes how creatively evasive he is. She sees that John Dogg, a talented man and not an idiot despite how he seems, committed the ultimate sin, one that Reno always avoided: showing the world how badly he wanted it.

When Reno is ready to leave, she goes out to her Moto Valera, but it won’t turn on. Ronnie comes out behind her, and when she hears him she realizes it’s what she wanted the whole time. He helps her rewire the motorcycle, and when it works, she drives Ronnie home. He invites her up to his loft. She asks him why he never just tells the truth about his brother: that he feels bad about how his life turned out. Reno tells her that the best tools for surviving the human condition are irony and dissimulation. He admits to her that his brother died recently, in a car crash. Ronnie says that Reno is too young for Sandro, but that he suspects she’ll be the same when she’s older. He tells her he likes her, but Reno can tell that the implication is that he can’t love her. In her bed at the Kastles’ alone, Reno realizes that she put herself on Ronnie’s layaway.

Later, Helen tells Reno that Roberto has been kidnapped by the Red Brigades for their own vigilante trial of his crimes against his workers. A man was arrested, and Reno worries that if it’s Gianni—and surely it is, since he knows the ins and outs of Roberto’s schedule—her name will be involved. Reno learns from Italian newspapers that the Red Brigade agreed to return Roberto in exchange for eight Red Brigade militants who had been arrested. Although they publish a statement from Roberto in support of this, the newspaper also published a quote from his mother negating the idea that Roberto would negotiate with terrorists. Reno tries to assuage her guilt over driving Gianni’s getaway car.

Gloria prepares for a party for Ronnie, who is opening a new show. Gloria tells Reno that Roberto has been killed, and when Sandro doesn’t answer her calls she tries to go to his apartment, but no one answers the door. Gloria tells her that Sandro will come to the opening. The show Ronnie puts on is called Match Your Mood, a collection of photographs of beaten-up women. He uses the photos he took of Talia and her friends beating themselves at the diner. Sandro arrives holding hands with a girl who is so young, Reno is sure she must be a friend’s daughter. Then, Reno recognizes her as the young blonde from the photo in Ronnie’s apartment. She tries to leave, but Ronnie stops her. He asks her to be his date for the night and assures her that Sandro won’t come to the post-show dinner. At the dinner, Ronnie makes a speech that’s really a story, but he uses snippets of his night with Reno in the story, disguised as something else. Only Reno knows that he’s really talking to her. Later, Reno asks him to explain the story and what he was trying to say to her. Ronnie tells her that he was genuinely just trying to tell an entertaining story, and that the relationship he knows she wants from him is destined to fail, like all relationships. He confirms that Sandro had been sleeping with other women while he was with Reno, but he surprised Reno by including Giddle as one of the women. 

A list of possible titles for Ronnie’s hypothetical memoir reveal a silly foray into Ronnie’s mind. Some of the titles are poignant, some are vulgar. These titles highlight how unreliable Ronnie’s narrative is. 

Reno is now alone again, but a different type of alone than when she first moved to New York. She has loved and lost. She goes back to the pornography movie theater in Times Square to reckon with the issue of performance versus reality. The movie is cut short by a power outage, so Reno aimlessly wanders the city on her motorcycle, observing and participating only in her observations of the other city people walking, shouting, burning, and protesting. She hears news of riots in the city and of Chemical Banks burning, and she sees the connection between Broadmoor and Gianni.

A new Rome was founded on April 21, 1937, post-World War I and on the cusp of World War II, two years before Sandro was born. As a child, Sandro sees the bombings of movie theaters and wonders why his city is under attack. After the war ends, Italian films become more realistic. Sandro learns the hypocrisy of morality at an early age because of these films, which try to capture a new culture in Italy without acknowledging the human follies of regular, real people. He plays with toy soldiers, and his favorite are the flamethrowers. He likes their tanks, though his father tells him the equipment Sandro so appreciates would be the flamethrowers’ downfall in a real war. As a child, Sandro could sense that his father had a deeper connection with his older brother Roberto, and also that his father was cruel to his mother. Sandro didn’t like his mother very much either, so they never grew close. Adult Sandro thinks deeply about the issue of the soul, and how humans navigate and try to destroy their souls.

Sandro is on his way back to Italy. He promised his mother he would stay with her for at least six months to help her deal with the grief of losing her first and favorite son. When he brought the young blonde girl with him as his own buffer to Roberto’s funeral, his mother told him to stop abusing women. He thinks back about the day he drove to the factory with Talia. He wanted a break from his too-young American girlfriend who needed him for so much direction. Talia, on the other hand, was assertive, deeply wild, and unimpressed by him. She didn’t need him to make decisions for her or help her see the world. Sandro hadn’t meant to ruin his relationship with Reno. He realizes that, like his father, he chooses younger women because of the things he can’t stand about himself.

That day that Reno had gone into Gianni’s bedroom, he asks her if she can accompany him to the Alps and if she can ski. He tells her to bring her passport, even though she doesn’t realize at the time that she would need to leave quickly. A man comes over to show Gianni and Durruti some ski paths. Skiing equipment is sent over, then Reno and Gianni leave in the white Fiat without Durruti. Reno deposits Gianni at a tram, then drives into France. She parks the Fiat where she’s supposed to and waits for Gianni at a café. She waits and waits, well past the time Gianni was meant to show up.