Page 21 of Two Chances With You

“Well…” He smiles at me, super enthusiastic. “I’ve found you a job.”

I do my best to fake it. “Thanks.” I smile. I should be an actor. “Mind if I ask what kind of job?”

“Oh, of course. How silly of me. Well, I thought, seeing that you’ve spent time in New York and you took a computer graphics course and a course in photography, right?”

Oh, this is promising. He’s not even sure what it is that his son went to New York to do. And to think that he was the one paying for the school every month. “Yes, that’s right.”

“Well, the ideal thing would be for me to find you a job that had something to do with what you studied. And I found it! They’ll take you on for a television program, in charge of computer graphics and pictures!”

He says it in a tone of voice that seems like an Italian translation of an American Oscars announcement: “And the winner is…”Me?

“Well, of course, you’d be the assistant, that is the person who works alongside the person who actually does all the graphic design on the computer and processes and edits all the various images, I think.”

So I’m not the winner. I’m just a runner-up.

“Thanks, Papà. It seems like a really great thing.”

“Or something of the sort. I really don’t know how to explain it exactly.”

Approximate and unclear. Close to the truth, or something of the sort. My father. I mean, did he ever really understand what happened with Mamma? I doubt it. Sometimes I wonder what part of him I have inside me.

The intercom buzzes. “Ah, that must be for me.” He hastily gets to his feet, faintly embarrassed. Well, of course, who else could it be for?

Papà comes back but he doesn’t sit down. He stands there, moving his hands nervously. “You know, I don’t quite know how to put this, but there’s a person I’d like to introduce you to. It’s a strange thing to say to your son, but let’s say it, man to man, okay? It’s a woman.” He laughs to take the edge off.

I’m not interested in making this any harder for him than it has to be. “Certainly, Papà, there’s no problem at all. We’re both men.”

I sit there in silence. He stands there looking at me. I don’t know what else to say. I can see that he’s avoiding meeting my eyes. There’s a knock at the door, and he goes to answer it.

“Here we are. This is Monica.”

She’s a good-looking woman. Not very tall. She’s wearing strong perfume, a formal dress, hair with too much of a permanent, and too much lipstick. I get to my feet the way my mother taught me, and we shake hands. “A pleasure to meet you.”

“Your father’s told me so much about you. You just got back to the country, didn’t you?”

“Yesterday.”

“How did you like it, overseas?”

“Fine, just fine.”

She sits down calmly and crosses her legs. Long legs, shoes with a bit of wear. It’s the shoes, I’ve read, that can really tell you everything about a person’s sense of style. I read lots of things, but I never remember where. Oh, now I remember, it was an issue ofClasson the airplane. It was an interview with a bouncer. He was saying that it’s the shoes that help him decide whether to let someone into his club or not. He wouldn’t have let her in.

“So how long did you live in New York?”

“Two years.”

“That’s a long time.” She smiles, with a glance at my father.

“Oh, time flew by. It wasn’t a problem.”

I hope she doesn’t ask any more questions. Maybe she understands that because she stops. She reaches into her bag and pulls out a pack of cigarettes. Diana Special Blend Blue. When it comes to the cigarettes, the bouncer would have some misgivings too. Then she lights it with a colorful BIC lighter, and after her first drag, she looks around. She does it strictly to send a message, not actually looking for anything.

“Here, Monica.” And my father rushes to her side with an ashtray grabbed on the run from a side table behind her.

“Thanks,” she says, and tries to tap some ash into the ashtray. But it’s too early. She’s printed the shape of half her mouth on the cigarette in red lipstick, with all the wrinkles and indentations.

“Well, I’d better get going. See you around.”

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