One Step to You (The Rome Novels #1)(10)

In silence, without a word about where she lived, she quickly grabbed her shopping bag from where it had fallen and climbed up behind him. The motorcycle took off, lunging forward. Babi shot backward. Instinctively, she threw her arms around him. Her hands wound up, unintentionally, under his jacket, which had puffed up in the blast of wind. His body was warm in the cool of the night. Babi felt clearly delineated muscles slip beneath her fingers, shifting with every slight movement he made. The wind ran over her cheeks; her wet hair fluttered in the air.

The motorcycle veered to one side, and she clung tighter to him and closed her eyes. Her heart started pounding harder. She wondered if it was merely fear.

She heard the sound of other cars. Now they were on a larger street, it wasn’t as cold, and she turned her face and laid her cheek on his back, still without looking, allowing herself to be lulled as the bike rose and fell, at the powerful sound she could feel roaring beneath her.

They were racing faster and faster, overtaking cars, leaning right and then left, whizzing between the vehicles, downshifting again to climb hills, higher and higher, a climb and then nothing. Absolute silence.

Babi opened her eyes and recognized the shops, closed now all around her, the same ones she’d seen every day for the past six years, ever since her family had first moved there. She got off the motorcycle.

Step heaved a deep sigh. “Well, that’s a relief. You were crushing me to death!”

“Sorry, I was afraid. I’ve never ridden behind anyone on a motorcycle.”

“There’s always a first time for everything.” Then he put the bike into first gear and, with a mocking “arrivederci,” roared away into the night.

*



That night, a great many people slept poorly, some because they were at the hospital emergency room, others because of their nightmares. Among the latter was none other than Chicco Brandelli. He was going to have to face up to his father, exactly as Roberta had been forced to do that same evening with her parents. Babi was in bed, exhausted from the evening. She decided that the blame for everything belonged to that half-wit, that uncouth oaf, that wild animal, that filthy beast, that violent roughneck, that rude bumpkin, that arrogant, smirking idiot. Then, when she stopped to think it over more carefully, she realized that she didn’t even know his name.





Chapter 3



Step poured himself a beer and switched on the TV set. He turned it to channel 13. On Videomusic, an Aerosmith video, “Love in an Elevator,” was playing. Steven Tyler was getting a very warm welcome by an insanely hot babe. Tyler, with a voice ten times better than Mick Jagger’s, was showing the proper appreciation for the young woman.

Step thought about his father, sitting right across from him. Who could say if the old man appreciated her too?

His father picked up the remote control lying on the table and switched off the television. “We haven’t laid eyes on you for the past three weeks, and first thing you do is turn on the TV. Let’s talk, all right?”

Step took a drink of his beer. “Sure, why not? Let’s talk. What do you want to talk about?”

“I’d like to know what you’ve decided to do.”

“I don’t know.”

“What do you mean, you don’t know?”

“I mean that I still don’t know.”

The housekeeper came in with the pasta. She set the serving bowl down at the center of the table.

Step looked at the TV, switched off and silent now. He wondered if Steven Tyler had taken his signature backflip at the end of the video. Forty years old and look at the shape the guy was still in. An incredible physique. A force of nature. Step was going to be in even better shape than that when he was forty.

He looked at his father. Step tried to imagine him doing a backflip just a few years ago. Impossible.

His father passed him the serving bowl of pasta. It was seasoned with bread crumbs and anchovies. That was the kind of pasta he loved best, the kind his mother always made him. It didn’t have a special name. Just spaghetti with bread crumbs, period. Even if it had anchovies too.

Step served himself. He remembered all the times he’d eaten at that same table, in that dining room, with his brother Paolo and his mother too. Usually extra sauce or seasonings were brought to the table in a small porcelain bowl. Paolo and his father never wanted extra, so Step always ate it. His mother would flash him a smile and pour the rest of the bowlful onto his pasta.

He wondered if his father had made his favorite pasta intentionally. He decided not to bring it up. That day, the porcelain bowl wasn’t on the table. In fact, lots of other things weren’t there anymore either.

His father politely wiped his lips with his napkin. “How’d dinner turn out?”

“It was good. Thanks, Papà. It turned out great.”

And it hadn’t been bad, truth be told.

“The only thing is, can I have another beer?”

His father called the housekeeper. He waited for Step to take a drink before resuming the conversation.

“Not trying to be a pest here, but why don’t you enroll at the university?”

“I don’t know. I’m giving that some thought. And anyway, I’d have to decide what major.”

“You could study law, or business, like your brother. Once you’ve finished school, I could help you find a job.”