Page 22 of Two Chances With You

“Ciao, Stefano. It was a pleasure to meet you,” and she smiles a little too broadly. And she watches me go as I walk away.

“Wait. I’ll see you to the door.” My father walks me to the door. “We’ve known each other for a few months. You know, after all, it’s been four years since I last went out with a woman.” He laughs. Every time that he tries to get out something that strikes him as difficult, he laughs. Plus, he justifies himself too much. It always seems as if he’s trying to convince himself of the choices he makes.

“You know, she’s really nice…”

I can see that he’s talking and talking and talking about her. But I think about other things. I remember when I was little and my mother joked around with him in the dining room. Then she started running, and he went right after her, down the hallway, chasing her all the way to the bedroom door, and I ran after Papà, shouting “Yes, let’s get her, let’s catch her!” Then they wrestled a little bit in the doorway. Mamma laughed and tried to lock herself in, and instead he tried to force his way in.

In the end, Mamma let go of the door and ran toward the bathroom. But then he caught her and threw her on the bed and Papà laughed because she started tickling him. I laughed, too, that day.

Then Paolo arrived. So Mamma and Papà shooed us both out of their bedroom. They told us that they needed to talk, but they were laughing while they said it. So Paolo and I went into our room to play. Then, a little later, the two of them came to our room too. But they talked slow and softly. It was as if their faces had softened. I remember them in a different light, as if they were luminous. Even their hair, their eyes, their smiles. And they started playing with us, and Mamma hugged me and laughed and neatened up my hair. She’d brush it back, somewhat forcefully, to uncover my face. It annoyed me, but I let her do it. Because she liked doing it. And because she was my mamma.

“Excuse me, Papà, but I really have to run…” I cut off any further conversation.

“But you did hear me, right? You understand? At two o’clock, at Da Vanni. Signor Romani expects you for that TV show.” So that’s what he’d been talking about.

“Sure, of course, I understand. Signor Romani, two o’clock, at Da Vanni.” I heave a sigh. “Excuse me, eh?”

Then I hurry down the steps. I don’t even stop to look back. A few minutes later, I’m on the motorcycle. I really want to get as far away as possible. I shift gears, and the speed is more welcome than usual.

Chapter 8

Paolo hasn’t come home. Maybe he won’t be back in time for lunch. The apartment is perfectly tidy. Too tidy. I pack my bag. Socks, T-shirt, shorts, a sweatshirt, and underwear. Underwear. Pollo used to make fun of me because of the words I used. My mother must have influenced me somehow. I told Pollo that once. He started laughing. “What a woman you are,” he kept telling me, “you have a woman inside you.” And my mother laughed when I told her about it.

I zip up my bag. I miss you, Pollo. I miss my best friend. And there’s nothing I can do to bring you back. I’ll never be able to see you again.

I pick up my bag, and I leave. I look at myself in the mirror as the elevator descends. I start singing an American song. I can’t remember all the words. It was the only song I used to listen to all the time in New York. An old Bruce song. Fuck, singing makes you feel better. And I want to feel better.

I set out of the elevator with my bag over my shoulder. I start to sing, “Needs a local hero, somebody with the right style…” Yeah, that’s not right, but it was something sort of like that. It doesn’t matter. Pollo is gone now. Little hero that he was. “Lookin’ for a local hero, someone with the right smile…” I wish I could talk to him but it’s not possible. My mother lives somewhere not far, but I don’t want to talk to her. I try singing it again. “Lookin’ for a local hero.” I never learned that song at all.

***

Flex Appeal, my gym, our gym. It belongs to us, to our friends. I get off my motorcycle. I’m deeply moved. What will have changed in there? And who will I run into?

I stop for a moment in the little piazza outside the front door. I peer through the plate glass windows, fogged up by straining muscles and sweat. There are girls dancing to an American song in the big exercise room. Among them are just two men who are desperately trying to keep up with Jim’s Bodywork. That’s the name I read on the sheet of paper posted by the door advertising the special class. They’re wearing shoes, leotards, exercise suits, and skimpy tops, nearly all of them designer brand names. How the fuck could two men not be ashamed of that pathetic attempt at gymnastics? In the middle of all those women, just to make things worse. Tight, colorful bodysuits, perfect makeup, black leotards, skin-tight workout outfits or hotpants…and then a couple of men in baggy shorts. They leap around, uncoordinated, panting, desperately trying to catch up to the rhythm. But they can’t find it. In fact, someone must have concealed it from them scrupulously ever since childhood.

I walk past and go in. At the front desk, there’s a young man with an uneven dye job in his long hair and a bronzed face. He’s speaking in a subdued voice on his cell phone with a hypothetical woman. He sees me, and for a little while, he continues chatting. Then he looks up and excuses himself with a certain “Fede”—short for Federica, no doubt—on the phone. “Can I help you?”

“I’d like to get a membership. For the whole month.”

“Have you ever been here before?”

I look around, and then I look down at him. “Isn’t Marco Tullio around?”

“No. He’s out. You can find him here tomorrow morning.”

“Okay, then I’ll join tomorrow. I’m a friend of his.”

“As you prefer…” He doesn’t seem to care. After all, that money doesn’t go to him.

I head for the locker room. Two guys are getting changed before working out. They’re still laughing and joking around while I head off to work out.

“Hold on to my keys for me. I’ll leave them right here.” I put the keys I used to shut the locker in a pencil holder on the counter.

The guy at the front desk tilts his head in my direction and goes on chatting on his cell phone. Then he has a second thought. He puts his hand over his cell phone and decides he needs to tell me something. “Hey, buddy, you can work out today, but starting tomorrow, you’re going to have to get a membership.”

He looks at me, smug with his wise-ass expression, along with a bit of a tough-guy scowl. Then with a moronic grin, he goes back to his conversation. He turns around, his back to me now. He boasts. He laughs. I hear his last words, “You understand, Fede? This guy shows up and already acts like he’s at home.”

He doesn’t even get a chance to finish his sentence. I grab him by the hair. A nice, fat handful of hair. I practically lift him bodily out of his chair. He stands to attention with his head bowed slightly in my direction. When you yank a handful of somebody’s hair, it hurts like hell. I know that. I remember all too well. But now it’s his hair.

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