Page 29 of Three Times You

I go back out into the hallway, and I make myself an espresso. When it’s ready, I go back to my office, shut the door, and sit down at my desk. I pull my cell phone out of my pocket and set it down next to the photo album. There’s nothing. No texts, no messages. No phone calls. So much the better.

I blow on the hot espresso and look at the photo album lying closed in front of me. Maybe I ought to listen to the advice Don Andrea gave me. But there’s nothing I can do about it, my curiosity is too extreme, so I take a sip of espresso, and then I set the demitasse down at one side of the desk. Then I look at it and, somewhat obsessively, push it farther to the right to occupy a bit more of that empty space, and then I turn the handle toward me.

Then I open the photo album.

Chapter 21

And I find myself back where I’d started. The photographs of a little boy growing up, becoming taller and taller, smiling, making funny faces, whining, laughing like a fool. Trying to ride a bike, succeeding, tearing down a hill with the wind in his hair and hands clutching the handlebars tight. A boy who looks like me.

And I never experienced any of that. Another man experienced it. But in these photographs, that man never appears. You’d almost think that he doesn’t exist. Not so much as a hand, not a shoulder, not a snippet of any part of him, not even an object that might represent him. Maybe it’s no accident. Maybe Babi edited the pictures expressly for my benefit.

But when I get to the last page, I see it. There’s just one picture with him in it. Him, the guy who thinks he’s that little boy’s father. And when I see him, I’m stunned, speechless, gasping in disbelief. I hadn’t recognized him on Facebook. It’s Lorenzo.

It just can’t be. I was determined to know nothing about it, not the day, not the church, not even the reception, and above all, I was determined not to know who he was. And now I discover that it’s Lorenzo—Lillo. An asshole. A guy who’d been pestering her ever since they were kids, the classic suitor who’s been carrying a torch all his life. Who, usually, in the personal history of all women, just stays the friend, a guy you’re happy to run into again, just by chance, a pleasant happenstance, who married someone else, not the young woman he was head over heels in love with. But that’s not how it went with Babi.

I do my best to remember anything else about him. He was a solid soccer player. I’d seen him occasionally on the beach at Feniglia, but he didn’t have much of a physique. His legs were short, his shoulders were broad, and his hair was a little curly. His eyes dark, and one tooth chipped. I look at the picture. Yes, he hasn’t changed much. His hair is just a little shorter, and he’s dressed a little fancier. One time, we were alone at the beach house, and he dropped by, to see Babi more than to see the two of us. He’d invited us to a party, but Babi had told him she didn’t want to go. I just remembered it.

I can hardly believe it. So he tried and tried, and in the end, it worked out for him. And I can imagine them together, the way their relationship began, where it took them, where he gave her the first kiss, where…No, Step. Enough is enough. You can’t keep doing this. Stop your mind, force it to move far away from all this, for fuck’s sake. Just set fire to your memories, all the pictures, and the excruciating pain that it all causes you.And slowly that all happens.

It’s as if I were sedating myself. A strange feeling of calm suddenly settles over me. It’s like a sudden sprinkle of rain, and then all the clouds vanish. The sun shines brightly again, but there’s no rainbow. Or else like a stormy sea, dark and raging with towering waves that break over everything in their path, and then a few seconds later, you see those same waters flat and serene, like oil or, even better, like a tabletop. Just like that, my breathing settles and slows. It’s done now.

Once, when Pollo saw how angry I got on account of Babi, as if she and she alone could really pluck the strings capable of making me foam at the mouth, he told me something.“You want to know something? Something you might not like, but which might be the real reason that you’ve gone completely overboard for that damned young woman?” And then he just stopped and stared at me.

In the end, I just broke out laughing.

“Why are you laughing?”

“Because of the way you said ‘that damned young woman.’”

“But it’s true. Just look at the shape you’re in.” And he’d reached both arms out to me, pointing at me with both hands. “You’re out of your mind! All right then, do you or don’t you want to hear the brilliant conclusion that I’ve finally come up with?”

I threw my leg over the saddle of my motorcycle and sat down. “Okay, let’s hear it.”

He’d smiled at me and taken a seat on his bike, in turn. He sat there, without a word, for a little while, and then, before I could ask him again, he’d finally piped up: “Just four words: resign yourself to it.”

I’d stepped off the motorcycle, and with one hand, I’d waved him away. “A fine conclusion! You and your brilliant ideas.”

“You underestimate me. Remember those words: resign yourself to it.”

And now I’m here, looking at the last photo in this album, and as if that wasn’t enough, the picture with that asshole, of all people. And yet, I remember that one and only time we’d even talked about him. That day.

“But you can’t be jealous of a guy like that, Step. You just can’t. He’s nothing but a friend.”

“He annoys me, plus he’s always coming around to see you. He doesn’t even take into consideration the fact that you’re with me.”

“That’s not true. He takes it to heart. In fact, he’s inviting us, not just me!” Babi looked at me with a smile and caressed my cheek. “Have I convinced you?”

“No.”

“So now what?”

“So now I’m thinking I’m going to have to give him a beating. That way everything will finally be clear.”

“Cut it out now. You drive me crazy when you’re like that.”

There. I really would have done the right thing by beating him to a pulp back then. Who can say, maybe things would even have gone differently as a result.

No. It wouldn’t have changed a thing. In fact, I find myself thinking about something that I’d forgotten. And yet we’d talked about this too. He’s rich, very rich, goddamned rich, so rich that, as soon as he was done with college, he’d opened a chain of intimate apparel just to diversify, he liked to say.

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