Page 24 of Two Chances With You

He says so long and takes off. What on earth is he coming to the gym for? He hasn’t gained a pound. He’s skinny as ever, as even my most faded memory. That’s his fucking business. But I like him.

***

There. I knew it! I knew that Step was coming here to work out at the gym. I was positive of it. And I was certain that it would be this gym, and no other! I’m just too smart. And he’s just too conservative. A creature of habit. Too much so. I hope that at least something about him has changed! All right, well, time for me to go. He didn’t see me. But I heard everything I needed to hear.

***

I start off on the first exercise machines. I warm up fast, machine gun bursts of reps, to stretch and soften my muscles. I don’t overload, just the bare minimum I can get away with.

I see a young woman leave in a hurry, wearing an orange baseball cap pulled halfway down on her head. I have to tell you, there are some really weird people in this world.

I smile and think about my abs. First, I do a series of a hundred sit-ups.

Second series of a hundred. I look up at the ceiling without stopping, one after the other, hands behind my head, elbows neatly aligned, tense, wide open. One after the other. Harder still. I can’t take it anymore, the pain is starting to make itself felt.

I think about my father, and his new girlfriend. I continue without stopping.Eighty-eight, eighty-nine, ninety.I think about my mother.Ninety-one, ninety-two.How long it’s been since I last saw her.Ninety-four, ninety-five.I need to call her, I ought to call her.Ninety-eight, ninety-nine, one hundred.All done.

Chapter 9

Anyone who’s never been to Da Vanni can’t begin to understand. I park my motorcycle out front and get off. It’s a sort of modern casbah of colorful individuals. Everyone’s chatting loudly, the occasional customer orders a frozen yogurt, and young people astride their scooters prepare for the evening ahead. The occasional Maserati cruises past, searching for a parking spot. A Mercedes decides to double-park. Everyone greets everyone else; everyone knows everyone else.

I take a look around. I’m here to meet someone powerful, at least I imagine him to be powerful from my father’s description. He told me I’d be meeting an extremely cultivated man, tall, well-dressed, slender, and always impeccably groomed, with long hair, dark eyes, a striped tie, and at least one of his collar wings unbuttoned. My father insisted stubbornly on that point. “The loosened collar has a genuine meaning, Step, but no one has ever managed to figure it out.”

I’m guessing that no one ever bothered to ask him, for that matter. There’s no one in sight who matches up with my understanding of the “powerful.”

But then I spot the man in question. There he is. He seems practically extraneous to everything that’s happening around him. He’s sitting alone at a small round table, sipping something light colored with an olive floating in it. His hair is long. As in the description, he’s wearing a dark blue linen suit and a white shirt, impeccably pressed. A tie with black-and-blue stripes lies softly down his chest, coming to a rest beyond his belt, there, between his crossed legs. Just below the cuffs of his trousers are a pair of Top-Siders, neither too new nor too old, as worn as necessary to be in line with the belt of his trousers. In case I’d had any lingering doubts, that shirt collar, unbuttoned only on one side, would have eliminated them instantly. It’s him. “Hello there.”

He gets to his feet. He seems happy to see me. “Oh, buongiorno. Are you Stefano?” We shake hands. “Your father had only good things to say about you.”

“What alternatives did he have?”

He laughs. “Excuse me.” His cell phone is ringing: “Ciao. Certainly, don’t worry. I’ve already told them everything. I’ve already taken care of everything. Everything is going to work out. Wait and see, they’ll sign.”

A powerful man who’s in love with the word “everything.”

“Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m in a meeting. That’s right, ciao. But of course. But of course I’m delighted. I told you that.” He ends the phone call. “What a pain in the neck.” He smiles. “I hope you’ll excuse me, eh? So what were you telling me?”

I start talking again and I tell him about the course I took in New York.

“So 3D graphics.”

“Yes.”

“Perfect.” He nods contentedly. He seems to really know the business. His cell phone rings again. “Please, excuse me, today is really just crazy.”

I nod, feigning empathy. I imagine every day is like this for him. I remember that I have a cell phone myself. Stupidly, I come close to blushing. I pull it out of my jacket and power down. Maybe he notices. Or maybe he doesn’t.

The telephone call comes to an end. “All right, let me turn mine off too. That way we can chat without interruptions.”

He noticed.

“All right then. You’ll serve as assistant to the full-time graphic designer. His name is Marcantonio Mazzocca. He’s excellent. You’ll meet him soon. He’s on his way over. That was him on the phone just now.”

I hope it wasn’t the guy on the first phone call because he called the other guy “a pain in the neck.”

“Just think, he’s an aristocrat. He owns vast hillsides covered with vineyards up north. In Verona, that is, and his father owns them. Then he became a painter, doing canvases. He moved down here to Rome and started circulating, in the clubs, and you know, designing invitations to parties and concerts, little jobs like that, right? Then he gradually started specializing in computer graphics, and finally, I hired him.”

I listen. Certainly, to quote a great film,Along Came a Spider, “You do what you are.” But I decide not to say it. First I want to meet him, this Mazzocca.

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