* * *
That night, a great many people slept poorly, some because they were at the hospital emergency room, others because of their nightmares. Among the latter was none other than Chicco Brandelli. He was going to have to face up to his father, exactly as Roberta had been forced to do that same evening with her parents. Babi was in bed, exhausted from the evening. She decided that the blame for everything belonged to that half-wit, that uncouth oaf, that wild animal, that filthy beast, that violent roughneck, that rude bumpkin, that arrogant, smirking idiot. Then, when she stopped to think it over more carefully, she realized that she didn’t even know his name.
Chapter 3
Step poured himself a beer and switched on the TV set. He turned it to channel 13. On Videomusic, an Aerosmith video, “Love in an Elevator,” was playing. Steven Tyler was getting a very warm welcome by an insanely hot babe. Tyler, with a voice ten times better than Mick Jagger’s, was showing the proper appreciation for the young woman.
Step thought about his father, sitting right across from him. Who could say if the old man appreciated her too?
His father picked up the remote control lying on the table and switched off the television. “We haven’t laid eyes on you for the past three weeks, and first thing you do is turn on the TV. Let’s talk, all right?”
Step took a drink of his beer. “Sure, why not? Let’s talk. What do you want to talk about?”
“I’d like to know what you’ve decided to do.”
“I don’t know.”
“What do you mean, you don’t know?”
“I mean that I still don’t know.”
The housekeeper came in with the pasta. She set the serving bowl down at the center of the table.
Step looked at the TV, switched off and silent now. He wondered if Steven Tyler had taken his signature backflip at the end of the video. Forty years old and look at the shape the guy was still in. An incredible physique. A force of nature. Step was going to be in even better shape than that when he was forty.
He looked at his father. Step tried to imagine him doing a backflip just a few years ago. Impossible.
His father passed him the serving bowl of pasta. It was seasoned with bread crumbs and anchovies. That was the kind of pasta he loved best, the kind his mother always made him. It didn’t have a special name. Just spaghetti with bread crumbs, period. Even if it had anchovies too.
Step served himself. He remembered all the times he’d eaten at that same table, in that dining room, with his brother Paolo and his mother too. Usually extra sauce or seasonings were brought to the table in a small porcelain bowl. Paolo and his father never wanted extra, so Step always ate it. His mother would flash him a smile and pour the rest of the bowlful onto his pasta.
He wondered if his father had made his favorite pasta intentionally. He decided not to bring it up. That day, the porcelain bowl wasn’t on the table. In fact, lots of other things weren’t there anymore either.
His father politely wiped his lips with his napkin. “How’d dinner turn out?”
“It was good. Thanks, Papà. It turned out great.”
And it hadn’t been bad, truth be told.
“The only thing is, can I have another beer?”
His father called the housekeeper. He waited for Step to take a drink before resuming the conversation.
“Not trying to be a pest here, but why don’t you enroll at the university?”
“I don’t know. I’m giving that some thought. And anyway, I’d have to decide what major.”
“You could study law, or business, like your brother. Once you’ve finished school, I could help you find a job.”
Step imagined himself dressed like his brother, in his office, with all those file folders. “I don’t know. It doesn’t appeal to me.”
“Why would you say such a thing? You were good at school. You shouldn’t have any difficulty with it. Your score at the final high school exam was a forty-two.”
Step drank another swig of beer. His grades would have been even better if it hadn’t been for all that craziness. After what happened, he’d never opened a book again.
“Papà, that’s not the problem. Maybe after this summer, but right now, I just don’t want to think about it.”
“What do you feel like doing now, huh? You’re always out starting trouble. You’re constantly on the street, and you get home at all hours. Paolo tells me about it.”
“What the hell does Paolo know about it? What did he say?”
“No, maybe he doesn’t know anything, but I do. Maybe it would have been better if you’d done a year of military service. At least you could have gotten your head on straight.”
“Yes, that’s the one thing I needed, a year in the army.”
“Well, if I managed to get you an exemption just so you could hang out on the street and get in brawls, then you’d have been better off in uniform.”
“Who told you I’m getting in brawls? Come on, Papà. You’re obsessed!”
“No, I’m scared. Do you remember what the lawyer said after the trial? ‘Your son needs to be careful. From this day on, any police complaint, any trouble of any kind, the judge’s decision automatically goes into effect.’”
“Of course I remember. You must have pounded it into my head at least twenty times. By the way, have you seen that lawyer since?”
“I saw him just the other week. I paid him the last installment on his fee.”
He said it grudgingly and emphatically, as if to point out how expensive it had been. When it came to these things, he was exactly the same as Paolo. They were always counting money down to the last penny. Step decided to ignore it. “Was he still wearing that blindingly ugly tie?”
“No, he’s managed to get himself another one that’s even uglier.” His father smiled. That’s how badly he wanted to cajole Step along.
“Oh, come on, that hardly seems possible. With all the money we’ve given him.” Step corrected himself. “Sorry, Papà, with all the money you’ve given him, he might be able to buy some decent ties.”
“As far as that goes, he could revamp his entire wardrobe.”
The housekeeper cleared away their dishes and returned with the main course. It was a steak, done rare. Luckily, that didn’t trigger any memories.
Step looked at his father. There he sat, bent over his plate, slicing the meat. Untroubled. A long time ago, that terrible day, he’d been pacing in that same room.
* * *
“What do you mean, just because! Because you felt like it? Because in that case, I have a violent hooligan for a son, a guy who doesn’t think. You ruined that young man. Do you understand what you did? You could have killed him. Or don’t you even understand that?”
Step was sitting there, looking at the floor, saying nothing.
The lawyer broke in. “Signor Mancini, at this point, what’s done is done. There’s no point shouting at the boy. I believe that there are reasons for it, even if they’re not obvious.”
“All right, counselor. You tell me what we need to do now.”
“In order to construct a line of defense, in order to have an argument when we get to court, we need to find out what those reasons are.”
Step looked up. What was this guy saying? What did he know?
The lawyer looked at Step with an understanding expression. Then he leaned toward him. “Stefano, there must have been something behind this. Some trouble in the past. An argument. Something this young man said, something that made you…In other words, what triggered that outburst of rage?”
Step looked at the lawyer. He was wearing a horrible tie, adorned with gray diamonds against a shiny background. Then he turned to look at his mother. There she sat, in a corner of the living room. Elegant as ever. She was calmly smoking a cigarette. Step looked down again.
The lawyer continued to look at him, remaining silent for a moment. Then he turned to look at Step’s mother and smiled at her in a diplomatic manner. “Signora, have you ever heard
that your son had any contact with this young man? Had they ever had any disagreements?”
His mother remained silent for a few seconds and then replied in a firm, confident voice, “No, counselor. I don’t think so. I didn’t even know they knew each other.”
“Signora, Stefano is going to have to go to court. He’s been reported to the police. There’s going to be a judge, a trial, and a verdict. With the injury that young man suffered, it’s going to be serious. If we have nothing to offer in court, no evidence—I mean anything would do, the faintest shadow of a justification—then your son is going to be in real trouble. Very serious trouble.”
Step sat there, head hanging low. He looked down at his denim-clad knees. Then he shut his eyes. Oh God, Mamma, why don’t you say something? Why don’t you help me? I love you so much. I’m begging you, don’t leave me.
“I’m sorry, counselor. I don’t have anything to tell you. I don’t know anything.”
At his mother’s words, Step felt a stab of pain in his heart.
“Do you think that, if I had anything to say, if there was anything I could do for my son, I wouldn’t do it? Now, excuse me, I need to go.”
Step’s mother got to her feet. The lawyer watched as she left the room. Then he made one last appeal to Step. “Stefano, are you sure you don’t have anything to tell us?”
Step didn’t even reply. Without so much as a glance at him, Step went over to the window. He looked out at that top floor, right across the way. He thought about his mother. And at that moment, he hated her, just as he’d loved her so much in the past.
Then he shut his eyes. A tear rolled down his cheek. He couldn’t seem to choke it back, and he suffered like he’d never suffered before, on account of his mother, on account of what she hadn’t done that day, on account of what she had done.
Chapter 4
There were lots of young people lining the sides of the broad road with the steep uphill curve on the Via Olimpica in Rome. Young men whose hair looked like it had been dyed blond, all strikingly similar in appearance with American T-shirts and baseball caps and tan, muscular physiques, were pretending to be genuine surfers and health nuts as they struck statuesque poses and handed each other beers.
A short distance farther on, next to a convertible VW Beetle, another small group, much less ambitious in their beliefs, were hunched over, busily rolling a joint. A guy with long hair and a happily dazed look on his face had just burned his hand with a lighter. A young woman with a premature smile plastered on her face was rolling up a small piece of cardboard that featured a winking black bird. Precut joint filters that only a club like Le Cornacchie—literally “The Crows”—would hand out to its customers, encouraging them, as if there had been any need, to get high.
There they were, lining the road and watching the racers risking certain death on their motorcycles. Always them—only them—inept spectators in life as well.
Farther along, a few gentlemen out in search of a thrilling evening were clustered around a Jaguar. Near them, another couple of friends were watching an absurd procession in amusement. Scooters popping wheelies, motorcycles roaring past at blinding speed, and screeching brakes, guttural exclamations. Young men riding past, standing on their foot pegs, craning their necks to see if there was anyone they knew, and others waving to friends. Some of the luckier ones were focusing on a new girlfriend.
Babi rode up the gentle slope with her little souped-up Vespa. When she got there, she was speechless. The panorama that stretched out before her was incredible. All kinds of different horns were honking, some deep, others shrill, in a deranged symphony. Roaring engines called out to each other in corresponding dull rumbles. Headlights glared, colored in different hues by indelible felt-tip pens, navy blue, yellow, or red, contrary to the rules of the road and, for that reason, even nicer to look at, lighting up the road as if it were one huge discotheque.
She proceeded slowly, descending the slope with her engine revving gently. There were a few Nissan four-wheel-drive jeeps with their doors wide open, blaring music toward the sky. Girls crammed into jeans that were too tight danced sensually, the owners of that small patch of space. Bad boys, young but utterly convincing, were smoking cigarettes, like models in a commercial, except that nobody was paying them to be there.
Babi continued rolling along. Every yard of forward progress was greeted by a different piece of music. Different cars, different tastes of their various owners. Rock music by the German band the Scorpions and, directly after it, the latest piece by Phil Collins. From a bright yellow Golden Eagle with a ragtop, there was no mistaking the voice of Madonna.
In front of that car, a young woman all in black, with a skimpy top and a stretch skirt very similar to the attire of that singer, was hanging off her boyfriend’s neck. The young man smiled at her. The young woman smiled back. She craned her neck in search of a kiss. He leaned down, complying with her request. He touched her short, soft, blond hair with a slight permanent designed to make her more closely resemble the famous singer. Their tongues started up in a frenzied byplay, taking turns burrowing into the other’s mouth.
Babi looked ahead on her left, where the fence surrounding the villa had been ripped open. There was a group of guys. They were on a slight rise. Some of them were seated while others stood around talking.
There, in that small open space, was one of those stands in a trailer that sold cold drinks and hot sandwiches. It was doing a booming business. Babi continued in that direction. Far away in the distance, motorcycles arrived, competitors and rubberneckers for that strange event. Babi looked around, distracted. She bumped into a guy with a buzz cut, wearing a black leather jacket and a single earring in his right ear, who seemed to be in a tremendous hurry.
“Watch where you’re going, okay?”
Babi apologized. At a certain point, she saw Gloria, the Accados’ daughter. There she was, sitting on the ground, on a jean jacket. Nearby was Dario, her boyfriend.
Babi walked over to them. “Ciao, Gloria.”
The young woman turned to look at her. “Ciao, how are you doing?”
“Fine, thanks.”
“Have you met Dario?” Gloria asked.
“Yes, we’ve seen each other around.”
They traded smiles, trying to remember where and when.
“Listen, I’m so sorry about what happened to your father,” Babi said.
“Oh, really? Well, I don’t give a damn. Serves him right. Maybe getting beat up will teach him to mind his own business, for once. He’s always meddling. He always wants to have his say.”
Dario lit a cigarette. “I agree. In fact, why don’t you give Step my thanks? Although if I was the one who’d headbutted him, it would have been a bad situation for me.” Dario burst out laughing.
Gloria took a drag and then glanced at Babi with a smile. “So, what, are you dating Step?”
“Me? What, are you crazy? I’ve got to go, take care. I need to find Pallina.”
Babi kept on walking. Finally, she saw one of Step’s friends. He was sitting on a powerful motorcycle, chatting cheerfully with a young woman whom he held tightly between his legs. The young woman was wearing a navy-blue baseball cap with a visor and the NY logo in front. Her black hair, tied in a ponytail, stuck out the back of the cap, through the space above the strap. She was wearing a jacket with patent leather white sleeves, like the typical American cheerleader. Her Camomilla double belt, a pair of dark blue leggings, and a pair of Superga shoes in the same shade made her look a bit more Italian.
That lunatic who kept laughing and twisting her head around to kiss him every so often was her best friend Pallina! She’d finally found her. Babi walked over to her.
Pallina saw her coming. “Hey, ciao, what a surprise!” She ran straight over and threw her arms around her. “I’m so happy that you came.”
“Not me. In fact, I can’t wait to get out of here!”
“Then what are you doing here? Didn’t you say that only idiots go to
the races?”
“In fact, you’re definitely an idiot. I came to tell you that your mother called my house to check up on you.”
“No! What did you tell her?”
“That you were asleep and couldn’t come to the phone,” Babi said.
“And she believed you?”
“Yes.”
Pallina whistled. “That’s lucky!”
“Yes, but she said that tomorrow morning she’s going to come by and pick you up early because you’re going to have to get some blood work done, so you’ll be missing our first class.”
Pallina leaped for joy. “Yahooo!” Her enthusiasm soon waned, however, the minute she remembered their weekly schedule. “Couldn’t she have made it Friday, when I have Italian?”
“Well, whatever, she’s coming by to pick you up at seven so make sure you get back early, okay?”
Pallina locked arms with Babi and dragged her over and introduced her to Pollo.
“What time are you guys going to be done here?” Babi asked.
Pollo smiled at Babi, who greeted him with some reserve.
“Early, at the very latest, two o’clock, and this will all be done. Then we can go get a nice hot pizza, right?” Pollo asked.
Pallina looked at her girlfriend eagerly. “Come on, don’t worry. Won’t you come get a pizza with us?”
“Pizza? No, I’m tired, and I want to go home,” Babi said.
“Don’t be such a pain in the neck!” Pallina said.
Pollo smiled and lit a cigarette. “Come on, Step will be there too. He’ll be happy to see you.”
“Yes, but I’m going home. Pallina, try to get in early. I don’t want to get in trouble with your mother on your account.”
Babi looked at Pallina, shook her head, and then turned away. She noticed a plaque nearby on the ground, right on the edge of the road. In the center, there was a photograph of a young man, and next to that picture was a circle, half in black and half in white, with two dots of the opposite color in the two different halves. The duality of life. That same life the young man no longer possessed.
One Step to You Page 4
