One Step to You (The Rome Novels #1)(32)

“Raffaella!” He seemed horrified. “Have you seen today’s Il Messaggero? In the local news section, there’s a photo of Babi…”

“No, I haven’t seen it. Let me go and get it right away.”

“Hello? Raffaella?” But his wife had already hung up. Claudio looked at the silent receiver. His wife never gave him the time to finish speaking.

Raffaella hurried down to the newsstand in front of the apartment building. She took a copy of Il Messaggero and paid for it. She opened the paper without even waiting for her change.

She turned to the local crime news. There it was, the same photo. She read the banner headline “The Pirates of the Road.” Her daughter. The roundup, the city traffic cops, the high-speed chase. The arrests. What did Babi have to do with all this?

The lines of print started to dance before Raffaella’s eyes. She felt she was about to faint. Then she took a deep breath. Little by little, she started to feel better. She took her change.

Seeing her look so pale, the news vendor expressed his concern. “Signora Gervasi, what is it? Are you feeling ill? Have you had some bad news?”

Raffaella turned away, shaking her head. “No, it’s nothing.”

She left the newsstand. What could she have told him? What would she say now to her girlfriends? To the other tenants? To the Accados? To the world?

It was going to be hard to wait for the school day to end.

*



The voice on the intercom said, “Signor Mancini, it’s your father on line one.”

“Thanks, signorina!” Paolo pushed the button marked L1. “Hello, Papà.”

“Have you seen today’s Il Messaggero?”

“Yes, I have the photo of Step right in front of me.”

“Have you read the article?”

“I read it.”

“What do you think?”

“Well, there’s not that much to think. I think that, sooner or later, this is going to go in a bad direction.”

“Yes, I think the same thing. What can we do?”

“There isn’t much to be done, if you ask me.”

“When you get home, would you speak to your brother, please?”

“Yes, I’ll speak to him. For all the good it will do. But if it makes you happy, I promise I’ll do it.”

“Thanks, Paolo.” His father hung up the telephone. Happy. What’s supposed to make me happy? Certainly not an article like this one about one of my sons. He picked up the newspaper in both hands. He looked at the photo. God, how handsome he is. He takes after his mother completely.

And a faint smile appeared on his weary face, incapable of erasing that age-old stab of pain. And for a moment, he told himself the truth. He finally realized what could have made him happy.

*



Pallina pulled a pack of Camel Lights out of her purse. She took one out and stuck it in her mouth. She looked inside the cigarette pack. It would take three more before she got to the one turned upside down, the last cigarette, the one you could make a wish on. Almost always for the man of your dreams.

Then she started rummaging around in the purse. Finally, she found her lighter and lit her cigarette.

Babi watched her. “Hey, didn’t you say that you were going to quit smoking?”

“Yes, I said I was. I’ll quit on Monday.”

“But wasn’t it supposed to be last Monday?”

“That’s right. I quit on Monday but then I started again yesterday.”

Babi shook her head and walked down the last few steps. Then she looked around, and she saw her mother’s car parked on the other side of the street. “What are you doing, Pallina? Are you riding with us?”

“No, I’m waiting for Pollo. He said that he’d come by and pick me up. He might be coming with Step. Why don’t you stay here and wait with me? Come on, tell your mother that you’re coming over to my house for dinner.”

Babi stood in silence for a moment. She hadn’t thought about Step since that morning. Too many things had happened. She thought about how they’d said good night yesterday. How he’d said that she was full of contradictions. Just crazy. She wasn’t inconsistent, and she didn’t want to be.

“Thanks, Pallina, but I’m going home. Plus, like I’ve already told you, I don’t have any real desire to see Step. So don’t keep on with that refrain, or you and I really will have to fight about it.”

“As you wish. All right then. See you at five o’clock at Parnaso—” Babi tried to answer back, but Pallina was too fast for her. “Yes, with my Vespa.”

Babi smiled at her.

Pallina watched her walk away. Who knows why she was playing so hard to get. That was her business. Maybe it was a plan, she thought. Well, in any case, she liked Babi just the way she was.

Plus, she liked anyone who could put Signora Giacci in her place like that. She decided that it was time to start spreading the word a little. She walked over to a group of younger girls who were in ninth grade. “Did you hear about what a fool Signora Giacci made of herself?”

“No, what happened?”

“She was about to flunk Silvia Festa, a girl in my class. She’d gotten confused and given another girl’s grade to Festa.”

“Do you swear it’s true?”