Andrea Bocelli
SI'

Mike (obviously a fictitious name) is tall and thin, you wouldn't guess he's 75, but at least 10 years younger. He has a dozen meters to cover between the stairs and his room, but he can't understand a word if it's said in a sentence, even if very slowly. He's not blind, in fact, his peculiarity is that he focuses only on what he's holding in his hands, any object at waist height.

Like neurodivergent individuals with similar conditions (he has 5-6 definitive ones that could kill a horse...), he has no sense of time and space, whether it's Sunday afternoon or Tuesday night, it's all the same. He's in such a state that he's one of the rare residents who doesn't even ask every night before he falls asleep if he'll go home tomorrow.

All my colleagues are happy when they see me. Not for my beauty and likability (which are seriously lacking...) but because they know that Mike will be mine all night. He practically listens to no woman, he has a wife who visits him from time to time, and she makes my blood run cold every time. Ice-cold eyes, severe gaze, as if the blame for all this is also mine.

Yes, his room is dirty, and he has smelled of shit for two days, still wearing the clothes from my last shift two nights ago. I changed him alone, but it took an hour and three attempts, I even got kicked in the side, and he tried to twist my wrist when, with my usual trick, I swiftly moved his right hand from the trousers to the shirt so I could pull down his trousers while in his left hand he had his and my best friend, a cookie.

Between his room and the TV room there's a bathroom open to everyone, during my shift there are always 3-4 cookies on the little window above the sink. It’s also my test for new colleagues, to see if they are stupid or mean, or both or neither. We're not allowed to drink or eat outside of breaks, nor in unsuitable places, so anywhere other than tables and dining rooms. Sometimes someone comes to ask me why there are cookies in the bathroom. Let's say about 40% of new recruits (turnover is very high, the work is too stressful and there's too much responsibility) goes to the manager to tell him that I eat cookies in the bathroom whenever I want. The manager records everything and then explains how things are.

Those cookies are for Mike. If he moves towards the rooms, I grab one quickly, break it, give him half in his hand, and as soon as he eats it, I show him that I have the other half, and he follows that cookie with me. Only this way can he be moved where I want 80% of the time. He, muttering under his breath incomprehensible phonemes as usual, as soon as he bites the first piece of cookie, he slowly starts to walk. Then, just turning him in the right direction at the first step requires three Hail Marys, four Our Fathers, and about twenty sonnets in rhyme with adorable companion quadrupeds that are also tasty on the palate...

Oh, here we are in front of his door. If left alone to walk, he often gets the floor wrong and, for mysterious reasons, he knows his room is down there at the end of the corridor, absolutely twin. If he enters the "right room but on the wrong floor" he finds a sweet almost centenarian who becomes of such a mood to kill everyone with just two lines of temperature above normal, maybe from a trivial bronchial infection. "Ugly useless foreign idiot, don't ever say OK again, OK is American, ALLRIGHT is British! Got it, you and that stupid black bitch with your same shirt on? What is a black woman doing in my room?? I don't want slaves in my home!! Get out!!"

So let's consider the "correct room" hypothesis. He immediately recognizes the window, but stops to listen if there's music coming from behind the corner, where the bed is. He has a nice collection of classical CDs, even a nice double of Bo Diddley with his guitar on display. Problem with the CDs: they each last an hour. And then what? He certainly doesn't know how to turn his stereo on or off... I always go with Classic FM, at just the right volume so that he's seated while he tries to bite or swallow anything he finds (Christmas is the most stressful period for a ridiculous reason: gifts of all kinds arrive, and invariably there are things like plastic soldiers, toy cars with detachable wheels, even dominoes or checkers with lovely pieces to swallow joyfully. I curse two nights out of three while I gather and deliver the clever objects to the manager's desk. The peak was when during a regular night check, when I thought he was in deep sleep, I found him peacefully standing while trying to disassemble one of those classic yellow Bic disposable razors with his teeth. In the bathroom, I found 15 more in a brand-new package obviously brought by his wife without informing us or asking for an opinion.

And I had seen a couple of months ago the video I link at the end of the page. Twenty minutes later, I look at myself in the mirror and I'm still red-hot in the face.

But what do I find on the nightstand?

New: the new Bocelli CD.

Great, Mike isn't in a bad mood, he even holds my eye contact when I ask if he wants to go to bed. As usual, from a complete sentence, he subtracts up to just a single key word, so "bed?", very slowly.

No, he moves to the chair. I prepare some cookies on the table so he can see them at any time. Fine, let's press play on the CD. I look at the booklet and see familiar names like Caterina Caselli heading the operation, and various samples like the first track with a fragment of Bach if I'm not mistaken, as an intro. Ah great, Mike seems to make a half-smile, almost always with his eyes closed.

Even Bocelli's singing seems appreciated, better to ignore the lyrics... Then with track 3 the problems start, the pieces begin to lose quality almost to falling, and Mike starts getting up from the chair and wandering around as usual, sometimes talking to the floor, sometimes to objects. Listening almost turns into irritation for him until the third-last track, he scratches his head and crotch more and more often, wants to leave the room, and I'm almost out of tricks to keep him in the room. The last two tracks save my night. They make him doze off, and I almost manage to change him completely. And by myself when it would take three to wash him. He barely tries a "fucking bastard!" when I manage to take off his pants, which must have a ton of crap in the diaper. With that reassuring look of his like a mad Charles Manson... I honestly can't understand who, how, when, and why anyone would buy such a record in 2019. Pavarotti and Ludovico Einaudi could and can do anything in the UK given their fame and esteem, I believe even Bocelli today but I don't think it's much tied to his recent past.

I return to Classic FM and place a cookie on the blanket. Under the bed, there's always a real porn magazine, in cases of excessive itchiness, before he gropes breasts of colleagues or starts kissing hands of roommates too close to the "little triangle that excites us".