Page 68 of Two Chances With You

“There you go, go get yourselves some gelato, go on.”

“Yes, a gelato kiss.” They both laugh. They just had to go for the parting joke.

Gin tries to whirl around again, but I push her away forcefully. “Go get changed, get a shower, and then gelato. March, and don’t argue.”

“Hey, you’re scaring me worse than my papà. Just look, I’m shaking all over.” And she simulates a sort of butt dance, twerking wildly.

Wow. I smack her on the ass. “Go on, I told you. Go get changed.”

And with one last push, I manage to propel her toward the locker room. Phew, that wasn’t easy.

Gin slips back out the door to the locker room. “Listen, I’m getting changed strictly because it’s eleven, and I’m done with my free hour of gym.”

“Yes, certainly.”

She looks at me in bafflement for a moment with one eyebrow raised, then she drops it and smiles. “Okay.” She understands that I’ve just let her win. “It’ll just take a second. I’ll see you down at the gym café, all the way down that hallway.”

I go to get changed myself. What a battle. I don’t know if she’s better in the ring or out of it. I pull out the key to my locker. What is it that’s so special about her? I get in the shower. Okay, no doubt, a nice ass, a nice smile…I find a bottle of shampoo someone’s left behind and empty it over my head. Sure, she’s amusing, a quick wit. But she’s exhausting too. True, but how long has it been since I had an affair worthy of the name? Two years.

I dry off, and I put on my pants. I button my shirt, and I grab my gym bag. I arrive at the bar, and I order a Gatorade, not too chilled.

“With what, excuse me?”

“With orange.”

I shell out two euros, I twist off the top, and I drink my Gatorade. I look around. A guy dressed up in standard post-training gear is readingIl Tempo. He eats mechanically, bent over a bowl of rice, plain, colored here and there by a few scant kernels of corn and a green pepper. At the next table, another muscular guy is chatting up a young girl in an unbearably false tone of voice. He reacts with excessive cheer to anything she says to him. Two young women plan who knows what for a hypothetical vacation they’re scheming to go on together. Another is telling her dearest, closest, bestest friend how badly some guy treated her.

A young man at the counter, still sweaty from his workout, another already changed into street clothes. A young woman drinks a smoothie and then leaves. Another young woman is waiting for who knows what. I search for the face of this second young woman in the mirror facing the counter but she’s covered by the young man who’s working the bar. Then he serves an order and leaves, unveiling her. Like the card that is dealt you in a hoped-for hand in poker, like the last bounce of the ball in roulette that maybe lands on the number you’d put every penny on…it’s her. There she is. Gin looks at me and smiles. Her hair is hanging down right over her freshly made-up eyes, smudged with a light gray. Her lips are pink and faintly pouty.

She turns around and looks at me. “Well, what’s up, don’t you recognize me?” Gin is wearing a powder-blue skirt suit. On the hem, you can see a pair of small monograms. D&G. I smile. All credit to YOOX. Then a pair of ankle boots in the same color. Extremely elegant. René Caovilla. The pattern of the laces reveals stretches of her ankles. Her toenails are painted with a lighter shade of pale blue, peeking out of a faint dusky tan. Chanel sunglasses, again light blue, sit perched atop her head. It’s as if a thin layer of honey had been allowed to drip over her bare legs and perfectly molded to her arms and over her smiling face. “Well?”

Well, all my good intentions vanish in a puff of smoke. I try to come up with a word or two. I’m tempted to laugh, and at the same time, my mind darts back to that scene inPretty Woman. Richard Gere looking for Vivian in the hotel bar. Then he sees her. Ready for the opera. Gin is every bit as perfect, or better. I’m in dire straits here.

She picks up her purse and walks toward me. “Are you thinking about something?”

“Yes.” I lie. “That the Gatorade was too cold.”

Gin smiles and walks past me. “Liar, you were thinking about me.”

She heads off, self-confident as she climbs the steps leading out of the gym. Her legs extend below the hem of her skirt, faintly pleated, and then vanish upward, lithe and strong, perhaps just slightly anointed with beauty creams, and taper down into a solid and determined square heel.

She stops at the top of the stairs and turns around. “Well, what are you doing, looking at my legs? Come on. Don’t stand there staring. Let’s go get an aperitif or whatever you want, and after that, I have lunch with my parents and my uncle. A real pain in the neck. Otherwise, I never would have bothered to get tricked out like this.”

Women. You see them at the gym. Skimpy bodysuits, strange, invented leotards, tight short-shorts, and spangly T-shirts. Full-tilt aerobics. Sweaty, their faces without makeup, their hair plastered to their scalps, straggling down their faces. And then, poof. Like something out of Aladdin’s magic lamp. They emerge from the locker room, and a miracle has been performed.

“Oh, what are you thinking about?”

“Me?”

“Who else? Nobody here but you and me.”

“Nothing.”

“There you go again. Well, it must be a very special nothing. You seemed like you were lost in a trance. I guess I must have punched you too hard, huh?”

“Yes, but I think I’m recovering.”

“I’ll come with my car,” Gin says.

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