Page 7 of Two Chances With You

“How wonderful! And what was your conclusion?” I ask.

“That our neighbor must have been harassing Mamma somehow, rude flirtations or one too many insults. I don’t know, somehow you found out about it and, wham-bam, you sent him to the hospital…”

I sit in silence. Paolo stares at me. I try to avoid his gaze.

“Still, though, there’s one thing that I just don’t get. I mean, listen, Mamma was there at the trial and she never said a word, she didn’t tell the court what happened, what that guy could have said to her, or anyway, what made you react the way you did. If only she’d talked, then maybe the judge would have been able to understand.”

So what does Paolo actually know? I look at him for a second before turning my eyes back to the road. White stripes on the pavement, one after another, pass placidly under the body of the Audi. One after another, here and there slightly sloppy, the paint going over the line. The sound of the road. Ba-dum, ba-dum, the Audi, running along gently, rising and falling at each little bump. The seams between sections of that piece of road can be felt, each as it goes under, but none of them really annoying.

Is it right to tell the truth? Present one person under a different spotlight to another person? Paolo loves Mamma the way she is. Or he loves her the way he thinks she is. Or maybe the way he chooses to believe she is.

“So, Paolo, why are you asking me this?”

“I don’t know, just to find out…”

“It doesn’t really add up for you, does it?”

“Well, no, not really.”

“And for an accountant like you, that’s a nightmare.”

So our neighbor’s name was Giovanni Ambrosini, something I only discovered during my trial. Actually, no, that’s not true. I found out his surname before that. When I rang his doorbell, it was written right next to it.

He came to answer the door dressed in nothing but a pair of boxer shorts. When he saw me, he quickly tried to slam the door. I’d only stepped in to talk to him. To ask politely whether he’d turn down the music.

Then my heart raced. In the narrow gap where the door stood ajar, framed by that door jamb, her face. That glance, a glance that joined us and divided us for all time. I’ll never forget it. Nude like I’d never seen her before, beautiful as I’d always loved her…My mamma. Between the bedsheets of another man. I don’t remember anything else except for the cigarette she had in her mouth. And her eyes. As if she were hungry for something else to devour after him, that cigarette. Listen, my son, this is reality, this is life.

And then I yanked Giovanni Ambrosini out his apartment door by the hair on his head. I knocked him to the floor. I broke both his cheekbones when I kicked him in the head. His face got wedged between the uprights of the stair railing, and I kept bringing my heel down hard on his right ear, his face, his ribs, the fingers of his hands, until I’d shattered them. Shattered the hands that had touched her. And then enough. Enough was enough. Please, enough. I can’t take anymore. Those memories that just won’t quit. Ever.

I look at Paolo. One deep breath. Calm. A second, longer breath. Calm and lies. “Sorry, Paolo, but sometimes things just don’t add up. I didn’t like that asshole, and that’s all there is to it. Mamma had nothing to do with it. I mean, come on.”

He seems satisfied. He likes this version just fine. He looks out the car window. “Ah, there’s something I didn’t tell you.”

I give him a worried look. “What?”

“I’ve moved. I still live in the Farnesina, but now I have a penthouse.”

At last, a piece of decent news. “Is it nice?”

“It’s great. You’ve got to see it. You’re sleeping at my place tonight anyway, aren’t you? My telephone number is still the same. I managed to keep it by asking a friend who works at Telecom.”

He smiles with satisfaction at this tiny moment of power of his. Damn it, I hadn’t even thought about that! I’m just lucky he kept the same number. It’s the number I put on my business card.

Corso Francia, Vigna Stelluti, and up, up, up toward Piazza dei Giuochi Delfici. I pass by Via Colajanni, the cross street that leads to Piazza Jacini. A scooter stops suddenly at an intersection. A young woman. Oh, sweet Jesus. It’s Babi. Long, ash-blond hair, spilling out from under the helmet. She’s also wearing a baseball cap. She has a sky-blue iPod and a light jacket, also pale blue, just like her eyes. It really, truly does look like her.

I slow down. She’s nodding her head in time to the music, and she smiles. I stop. She takes off. I let her drive past. She veers cheerfully past the front of our car. She thanks me silently so I can read her lips…

My heart slows down again. No, it isn’t her. But a memory surfaces. Like when you’re in the water, at the beach, early in the morning, and it’s cold out. Someone calls your name. You turn, you wave. But then, when you turn back to continue your walk, a wave suddenly crashes over you. And then, without even wanting to, I find myself back there, shipwrecked unexpectedly on the beach of a day just two years ago. A day, or, really, a night.

Her folks were out. Babi had called me. She told me to come see her.I climb the steps. The door is open. She left it ajar. Slowly, I open it. “Babi? Are you there? Babi…”

I don’t hear a thing. I shut the door behind me. I walk down the hallway on tiptoes toward the bedrooms. The faint sound of music comes from her parents’ bedroom. That’s strange; she’d said they were at Monte Circeo. From the half-shut door comes a faint light. I step closer. I open the door.

Suddenly she appears to me, next to the window. Babi. She’s wearing her mother’s clothing, a light, sand-colored silk blouse, translucent and unbuttoned. Underneath I see an ivory white brassiere. Then a long skirt with a paisley pattern. Her hair is pulled up, intricately braided. She seems older. She wants to be older.

She smiles. In her hand, she’s holding a glass of champagne. Now she’s pouring another one for me. She sets the bottle down in an ice bucket that stands on a side table. All around are candles and a scent of wild roses that slowly envelops us.

She puts one foot up onto a chair. The slit skirt slides open and falls to one side, revealing an ankle boot and her leg, sheathed in a stocking in honey-colored fishnet. Babi stands there, waiting for me, with the two champagne flutes in her hands, and her eyes suddenly change. As if she’d suddenly grown up.

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