Page 37 of Two Chances With You

“Are you done with this thing about the third dan? You’re becoming repetitive,” Gin says.

“Me? You’re the one who’s pointed it out three times since we’ve met. And you’re so completely third dan that I had to deck a guy just to defend you.”

“Okay, Doubting Thomases. You asked for it.” Gin gets up from the table, takes a long circuit around my friends and looks at them each for a second. Then, without a second thought, she whips around, grabs Schello by his jacket with both her hands, hoists him onto her hip, and then bends forward suddenly. Perfectly, without hesitating.

Schello’s eyes bug out, and Gin bends her right leg and pushes upward, assisting herself with her shoulders. Schello flies away like a feather in the wind and is set down, on his back, directly on the silent couple’s table. Now they’ll have a better idea of what to talk about.

If for no other reason, Schello’s sudden landing is going to become a story to tell, verging on the urban legend.

Schello gets to his feet, moaning with pain. “Ouch, what the fuck was that?”

“A third dan or thereabouts,” Gin replies promptly.

Everyone laughs. “Hilarious.” “She’s too cool.” “Yeah, your girlfriend is really something.”

“I’m not his girlfriend!”

“Not yet,” I say.

We all laugh, and then Vit luckily weighs in. “Hey, that’s enough. Let me bring you a nice cool limoncello, come on. On the house.”

Then he puts his arm around Schello and leads him back to the group. “You guys haven’t changed a bit, have you? I’m happy to see you, no doubt about it. I don’t know why it is, Step, but when you’re around, the evening out is never dull. Come on, all of you sit down now. Shall I get you a table for twelve?”

“Maybe Step wants to continue his romantic dinner.”

I look at Gin. She throws her arms wide, helplessly. “We’ll just have to do that some other time, right, honey?”

No doubt about it, she can be funny. “Why, yes, dearest, we’ll do it next time. The next time your gas tank and your wallet are empty.”

They all sit down, making a tremendous ruckus, shoving chairs aside, laughing, fighting over seating. Then the dinner sails along. Rapid chatter to bring me up to speed on all the latest minor news stories. “Hey, this is one you don’t know, Giovanni broke up with Francesca. You’ll never guess what she did to him. She hooked up with his best friend Andrea.”

Guido Balestri takes up the narrative. “Oh, this piece of news is a bombshell. Alessandra Fellini finally put out! For Davide. Now they call him ‘Er Goccia.’ The Drop. And you know why, Step? It was four years of waiting, like Chinese water torture.”

I watch them as they eat. Nothing. Not a single change. They’re quite a show. They stuff their faces with the food as it arrives, as usual. They stab their forks into the air-dried, cooked pork lonza, the prosciutto, and the salami. They devour the cold cuts, talking spiritedly.

Then come the skewers bursting with savory meats and vegetables. Everyone grabs frantically to get theirs. They’re still piping hot and steaming with sausages, bell peppers, fresh off the grill, and they’re repurposed as aromatic swords for frantic fencing matches between Schello and Lucone. Hook joins in with the two swashbucklers and the battle is on. The sound of clashing metal fills the room, occasionally muffled by bits of roast meat. Schello lunges, and Lucone promptly parries.

And there, in the fray, a sausage goes flying. Gin catches it midair with her right hand, sharp reflexes, and then to make it even better, she bites off a piece.

“Wow! Did you see the speed? I’ll bet it reminded you of a movie, try to remember which…”

“It’s true, it did remind me of something, a scene from a movie, right, but what movie?”

“Let me help you. Here’s a hint. It’s the story of a prostitute, or actually, really, more than the story. It’s a fairy tale about a prostitute.”

“It’sPretty Woman.” She looks at me, raising an eyebrow.

Pretty Woman, of course, with Julia Roberts.

“Well, do you remember it, or not?”

I’m suddenly catapulted backward in time. Me and Babi, Hook and the Sicilian, all of us, who knows why or how, at the movies together. By intermission, Hook and the Sicilian had left. Then I could finally take Babi’s hand and hold it for the rest of the film while she fed me popcorn.

“Yes, I remember.”

But I don’t tell her the full story of my time watchingPretty Woman.

“Come on, the scene where the waiter catches the escargot that Vivian has let fly. That’s the name of the Julia Roberts character in the movie. She’s trying to get the escargot out of the shell, and it flies across the room.”

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