“Yes, strange.”
“Then it’s even stranger how, after you start to see them every single day, you start to bring them sweet little presents too.” Pollo felt the sharp slap of Step’s open hand on his neck. “Ouch!”
“Are you done? You’re like one of those pain-in-the-ass taxi drivers who never stop talking while they take you to your destination and then they ask you a bunch of questions. All you’re missing is a crackling radio, and you’d be identical.”
Pollo started driving cheerfully and then twisted his mouth into a strange grimace to turn his voice rasping and metallic in imitation of a taxi radio. “Ktchsss Piazza Jacini for Pollo Forty, Piazza Jacini for Pollo Forty,” he said, shouting at the top of his lungs.
Step gave him another smack on the neck but Pollo continued in the voice of the taxi radio. And so they kept going, laughing and shouting, zigzagging through the traffic with all the cars around them slamming on their brakes to avoid them.
They approached a real taxi. Pollo shouted into the driver’s window, “Piazza Jacini for Pollo Forty.” The cabbie almost had a heart attack, but he said nothing. As their motorcycle roared off, the taxi driver raised his hand, gesticulating at them and shaking his head. It was perfectly clear that this taxi driver’s idol could, at the very most, be Alberto Sordi, certainly never Robert De Niro.
“Piazza Jacini to Pollo Forty, arrived at destination!” Pollo’s motorcycle stopped, roaring, in front of the lowered electric arm in front of Babi’s apartment building.
Step waved hello to the doorman, who waved back and let them through. The motorcycle climbed the ramp. The doorman watched those two muscle-bound arrivals, vaguely perplexed.
Pollo turned to speak to Step. “Oh, then you’ve been here before. The doorman recognized you.”
“Stop here and wait for me.” Step hopped off the motorcycle.
Pollo revved the engine and switched it off. “Make it snappy. The thingy that tells you how much to pay is running…”
“The meter.”
“Whatever the fuck it’s called, that’s what it’s called. Get moving. Otherwise I’m leaving.”
Step picked up the poster and then went to the doorbell. He found the right surname and rang. A voice replied with a Sardinian accent, “Who is it?”
“I need to deliver a package for Babi.”
“Second floor.”
Step went upstairs. An overweight housekeeper with features as unmistakably Sardinian as her accent was standing in the doorway.
Step walked toward her. “Good morning. Here you are. I need to leave this for Babi.”
The housekeeper took the poster in her strong, healthy hands.
“Be careful, please. You’ll ruin it.”
A voice came from the far end of the apartment hallway. “Who is it, Rina?”
“A young man brought something for Babi.”
Raffaella appeared behind her. She came walking toward him, her eyes taking in the young man in the doorway with broad shoulders and short hair. That smile, she’d seen it before but she just couldn’t remember where.
“Buongiorno, signora. I’m Stefano Mancini. I brought this for Babi. It’s nothing, just a trifle. Would you mind seeing that she gets it when she returns home from school?”
Raffaella was still smiling. She hadn’t really focused yet. Then, all at once, she realized. Step noticed, too, when it happened.
Raffaella was no longer smiling. “You’re the one who assaulted Signor Accado.”
Step was surprised. “I didn’t think I’d become so famous.”
“In fact, you’re not famous. You’re just a miscreant, a thug. Do your folks know what happened?”
“Why, exactly what’s happened?”
“You’ve been reported to the police.”
“Oh, that’s no problem. I’m used to it.” He smiled. “And after all, I’m an orphan.”
Raffaella stood there awkwardly for a moment, suddenly embarrassed. She didn’t know whether to believe him. And she was right to doubt. “Well, in any case, I don’t want you around my daughter.”
“Actually, she’s the one who always turns up wherever I go. But I don’t mind, it doesn’t bother me. But promise me this, don’t yell at her, don’t scold her—she doesn’t deserve that. I can appreciate her motives.”
“Well, I can’t.” Raffaella looked him up and down, trying to intimidate him.
But she was unsuccessful. Step smiled. “I don’t know why it is, but mothers never like me. Well, signora, please excuse me, but now I really have to get going. I have a taxi downstairs waiting for me. It’s costing me an arm and a leg.”
Step turned around and started down the stairs. He leaped down the last few steps just in time to hear the door slam hard behind him. He turned and looked back up. How that lady resembled Babi. It was astonishing. Her eyes had the same shape and angle, and her face had the same geometry. But Babi was prettier. He hoped she was also less eager for a fight. No, the resemblance extended to that aspect as well. For a moment, he yearned to see her again.
Then Pollo leaned on his horn. “Oh, you want to get a move on? What the fuck are you doing, are you in some kind of trance?”
Step climbed on behind him. “Could you possibly be even worse at being a cabbie than everything else you do badly?”
“Screw you and your whole family. What were you up to?”
“I talked with her mother.” Suddenly a thought occurred to Step. He looked up. In fact, it was just as he expected. Raffaella was there, looking out the window. She recoiled suddenly, trying to get out of sight. But it was too late. Step had seen her.
He smiled up at her and waved. Raffaella didn’t respond in any way. She slammed the window shut as the motorcycle disappeared around the curve. Pollo came to a halt when he reached the gate arm. Step greeted the doorman. It was good to make friends with someone in that apartment building.
“So you talked to the mother? And what did she say to you?” Pollo asked.
“Oh, nothing. We had a little bit of a quarrel but actually she adores me.”
“Step, be careful.” Pollo took off.
“About what?”
“About everything! This is the classic story that goes sidewise.”
“Why?”
“You bring her gifts. You talk to her mother. You’ve never done these things. But what about Madda?”
“What does Madda have to do with it? That’s another story.”
“So wait, do you want to be exclusive with Babi?”
“Pollo…”
“What?”
“Did you hear that yesterday someone killed a guy right near where you live?”
“Seriously? I don’t know anything about it. How did it happen?”
“They cut his throat.” Step suddenly put his arm around Pollo’s neck and tightened it.
“It was a taxi driver, and he asked too many questions.”
Pollo tried to wriggle out of that grip but to no avail. So he decided to turn it into a joke and went back to making the crackling staticky voice on the radio. “Pollo Forty, message received. Ktchsss. Pollo Forty, message received.”
Chapter 10
Raffaella unrolled the poster. She recognized Stefano on a motorcycle with its front wheel in the air. What a brazen smirk that boy always seemed to have on his face.
But riding behind him was her daughter. Who had taken that photo? It was a little out of focus. On the top left someone had written on it by hand, with a felt-tip pen. No doubt, it had been that same boy. There were a few printed words: THE PHOTO OF THE FUGITIVES. What was that supposed to mean?
“Signora, it’s your husband on the telephone.”
Raffaella went into the other room. “Hello, Claudio?”
“Raffaella!” He seemed horrified. “Have you seen today’s Il Messaggero? In the local news section, there’s a photo of Babi…”
“No, I haven’t seen it. Let me go and get it right away.”
“Hello? Raffaell
a?” But his wife had already hung up. Claudio looked at the silent receiver. His wife never gave him the time to finish speaking.
Raffaella hurried down to the newsstand in front of the apartment building. She took a copy of Il Messaggero and paid for it. She opened the paper without even waiting for her change.
She turned to the local crime news. There it was, the same photo. She read the banner headline “The Pirates of the Road.” Her daughter. The roundup, the city traffic cops, the high-speed chase. The arrests. What did Babi have to do with all this?
The lines of print started to dance before Raffaella’s eyes. She felt she was about to faint. Then she took a deep breath. Little by little, she started to feel better. She took her change.
Seeing her look so pale, the news vendor expressed his concern. “Signora Gervasi, what is it? Are you feeling ill? Have you had some bad news?”
Raffaella turned away, shaking her head. “No, it’s nothing.”
She left the newsstand. What could she have told him? What would she say now to her girlfriends? To the other tenants? To the Accados? To the world?
It was going to be hard to wait for the school day to end.
* * *
The voice on the intercom said, “Signor Mancini, it’s your father on line one.”
“Thanks, signorina!” Paolo pushed the button marked L1. “Hello, Papà.”
“Have you seen today’s Il Messaggero?”
“Yes, I have the photo of Step right in front of me.”
“Have you read the article?”
“I read it.”
“What do you think?”
“Well, there’s not that much to think. I think that, sooner or later, this is going to go in a bad direction.”
“Yes, I think the same thing. What can we do?”
“There isn’t much to be done, if you ask me.”
“When you get home, would you speak to your brother, please?”
“Yes, I’ll speak to him. For all the good it will do. But if it makes you happy, I promise I’ll do it.”
“Thanks, Paolo.” His father hung up the telephone. Happy. What’s supposed to make me happy? Certainly not an article like this one about one of my sons. He picked up the newspaper in both hands. He looked at the photo. God, how handsome he is. He takes after his mother completely.
And a faint smile appeared on his weary face, incapable of erasing that age-old stab of pain. And for a moment, he told himself the truth. He finally realized what could have made him happy.
* * *
Pallina pulled a pack of Camel Lights out of her purse. She took one out and stuck it in her mouth. She looked inside the cigarette pack. It would take three more before she got to the one turned upside down, the last cigarette, the one you could make a wish on. Almost always for the man of your dreams.
Then she started rummaging around in the purse. Finally, she found her lighter and lit her cigarette.
Babi watched her. “Hey, didn’t you say that you were going to quit smoking?”
“Yes, I said I was. I’ll quit on Monday.”
“But wasn’t it supposed to be last Monday?”
“That’s right. I quit on Monday but then I started again yesterday.”
Babi shook her head and walked down the last few steps. Then she looked around, and she saw her mother’s car parked on the other side of the street. “What are you doing, Pallina? Are you riding with us?”
“No, I’m waiting for Pollo. He said that he’d come by and pick me up. He might be coming with Step. Why don’t you stay here and wait with me? Come on, tell your mother that you’re coming over to my house for dinner.”
Babi stood in silence for a moment. She hadn’t thought about Step since that morning. Too many things had happened. She thought about how they’d said good night yesterday. How he’d said that she was full of contradictions. Just crazy. She wasn’t inconsistent, and she didn’t want to be.
“Thanks, Pallina, but I’m going home. Plus, like I’ve already told you, I don’t have any real desire to see Step. So don’t keep on with that refrain, or you and I really will have to fight about it.”
“As you wish. All right then. See you at five o’clock at Parnaso—” Babi tried to answer back, but Pallina was too fast for her. “Yes, with my Vespa.”
Babi smiled at her.
Pallina watched her walk away. Who knows why she was playing so hard to get. That was her business. Maybe it was a plan, she thought. Well, in any case, she liked Babi just the way she was.
Plus, she liked anyone who could put Signora Giacci in her place like that. She decided that it was time to start spreading the word a little. She walked over to a group of younger girls who were in ninth grade. “Did you hear about what a fool Signora Giacci made of herself?”
“No, what happened?”
“She was about to flunk Silvia Festa, a girl in my class. She’d gotten confused and given another girl’s grade to Festa.”
“Do you swear it’s true?”
“I do, but luckily Babi noticed.”
“Wait, which Babi? You mean Babi Gervasi?”
“The very same.”
A girl with Il Messaggero in her hands glanced over at the other girls with a curious look on her face. Some of them nodded at her. The girl worked up her nerve. “Listen, Pallina, but isn’t this her?”
Pallina tore the newspaper out of her hands. She read the article rapidly. The other girl, still intimidated, went on. “We’d heard that the two of you went to the races, but we didn’t believe it. But instead, it turns out it’s true.”
Oh, it’s true, and then some, Pallina thought to herself, as true as this article. She folded up the newspaper and glanced toward Babi. By now, she’d almost reached her mother’s car. Pallina shouted at the top of her lungs but the traffic noise drowned out her voice. By this point, there was nothing more to be done.
Babi stuck her head in the car, pushing the seat forward to get in back. “Ciao, Mamma.” She leaned forward to give her mother a kiss. An open hand slapped her right in the face. “Ouch!” Babi fell back, flat on her butt, onto the rear seat. She rubbed her stinging cheek, and as a red patch appeared on it, a sullen scowl spread over her face.
Daniela got in the car. “Hey, have you seen this cool thing? Babi’s in the newspaper…”
She looked around. The heavy silence. Raffaella’s expression. Babi’s hand massaging her stinging cheek. It was all clear in a flash.
“Let’s forget I ever mentioned it,” Daniela said.
They waited, arguing, for Daniela’s friend Giovanna to arrive, and as usual, she was late. In the meantime, Raffaella was shouting like a madwoman. At last, Babi understood the whole story, and she tried to explain. Daniela testified in her favor but Raffaella got even more upset and angry. Pallina became the lead defendant. Even though she was found guilty out of hand, she could not face prosecution because she wasn’t there. Daniela, who was within reach and available to have her face slapped, decided it would be wise to say nothing.
Babi was grounded. But not before she got a glimpse of Il Messaggero. When she saw the photo, she smiled because she really looked good in that shot. However, she decided to keep her opinion to herself.
At last, Giovanna arrived with her usual “Sorry I’m late” and got in back. Daniela pushed the front seat back in place and got in, and the car pulled away. The rest of the trip unfolded in utter silence. Giovanna decided that this situation was too tense. That said, the sisters had really overdone it this time.
In the end, Giovanna managed to work up the nerve to speak. “Well, at least today I wasn’t very late, was I?”
Daniela burst out laughing. Babi controlled herself for a minute or two, and then she let loose too. Even Raffaella smiled.
Chapter 11
The old black leather purse was clamped tight under Signora Giacci’s arm. A cloth jacket, mustard yellow. Short, drab hair that looked as weary as her gait. The dark brown opaque stockings made her look a few ye
ars older than she actually was, and the worn loafers with low heels and beat-up toes were making her feet ache. But that hurt was nothing like what she felt inside. Her heart must have been wearing shoes two sizes too tight.
Signora Giacci opened the glass door of her apartment building. The hinges squealed but that didn’t surprise her. She stopped in front of the elevator and pushed the button. A red light lit up faintly. Signora Giacci looked at the glass fronts of the letter boxes built into the wall. Some of them were unmarked. One of the little doors didn’t even have a glass pane and hung off-kilter, missing one of the two screws, imparting a sense of chaos and disorder and neglect, as did the apartment of Nicolodi, the owner. Is it people’s possessions that grow to resemble their owners, or is it the owners who grow to resemble their property?
Signora Giacci wouldn’t have known how to answer that question. Maybe the blame belonged to both owners and possessions. She stepped into the elevator and reminded herself to tell Nicolodi to fix that mailbox.
The elevator started up. There was graffiti carved into the wood. It was especially easy to read the name of some past love. Higher up, the symbol of a political party was perfectly etched by an optimistic sculptor. Down below, on the right, a male sex organ had turned out slightly inaccurate, at least to the best of her recollection.
When she reached the third floor, she opened the elevator’s metal grate. She reached into her purse for a bunch of keys and inserted the longest key in the middle lock. She heard a sound behind the door. It was him, her beloved, her one and only. Her reason for living.
She opened the door with a shy smile. “Pepito!”
A little dog came running toward her, barking as he came. Signora Giacci leaned down. “How are you, sweetheart?” The dog leaped into her arms, tail wagging. He started eagerly licking her. “Pepito, you can’t imagine what they did to your mamma today.”
Signora Giacci shut the door behind her, set down her purse on a cold marble table, and took off her jacket. “A silly girl dared to upbraid me in front of everyone in the class, can you imagine…You should have heard the tone she took with me.”
One Step to You Page 10
