One Step to You (The Rome Novels #1)(61)

“Well, it’s not exactly that simple. She had to pay.”

“How much?”

“Ten million lire. To charity…”

Step whistled. “Fuck! Nice act of kindness…” An embarrassed silence ensued. “Are you still there, Babi?”

“Yes, I’m here.”

“I thought we might have been cut off.”

“No, I was just thinking about Signora Giacci, my teacher. I’m afraid that this isn’t going to be the end of it. I caught her out in a mistake in front of everybody, and now she wants to make me pay at all costs!”

“More than ten million lire?”

“That’s money my mother paid, obviously. But now she’s going to go after me. What a pain in the ass! Just think, my grades were so good, it would have been a walk in the park.”

“So, you really can’t come?”

“No, are you kidding? Just think if my mother phoned, and I wasn’t here. It really would be the end of the world.”

“Then I’ll swing by your place.”

Babi looked at her watch. It was almost five o’clock. Raffaella wouldn’t be home for quite a while. “All right, come on over. I’ll make you a cup of tea.”

“Not a glass of beer?”

“At five o’clock?”

“Nothing better than a beer at five o’clock.” He hung up.

Babi hopped quickly out of bed and put on her shoes. “Dani, I’m just going downstairs for a second. I’m running by the store. Do you need anything?”

“No, nothing, thanks. Who’s coming over, Step?”

“See you soon.” Babi left the door ajar and, without answering her sister’s question, hurried down the stairs. She bought two kinds of beer, a can of Heineken and a Peroni. If it were wine, she would have had a better idea of what to get. But she really knew nothing about beer. She hurried back upstairs and put the beer in the fridge.

A short time later the doorbell rang. “Yes?”

“Babi, it’s me.”

“Second floor.” She pushed the button in the intercom’s receiver twice and went to the door. She couldn’t help but check her appearance in the reflection in the glass of a painting hanging along the way. She looked fine.

She opened the door and saw Step coming up the stairs, taking them three at a time. He slowed down only at the end so that he could flash the smile that she liked so much.

“Ciao.” Babi leaned against the door, letting him pass. He walked past her and then, while Babi was shutting the door, Step pulled a box out from under his jacket. “Here, these are English butter biscuits. I bought them near here. They’re fabulous.”

“Thanks, I’ll eat them right away.”

Step followed her in. He was slightly worried. He hadn’t bought those biscuits at a shop. He’d pilfered them at home. Then, as he stopped to think it over, he relaxed. After all, he was really doing Paolo a favor. It definitely would do him no harm to go on a bit of a diet.

Daniela came out of her room especially to see him. “Ciao, Step.”

“Ciao.” He smiled at her as he shook hands, appearing not to notice that she’d called him by his nickname.

Babi shot a quick glance at her sister. Daniela, getting the point immediately, pretended she’d only come in to get something and went right back to her bedroom.

A short while later, the water came to a boil. Babi took out a pink box. Then she used a little spoon to sift tiny tea leaves into the pan. Slowly, a faintly exotic odor wafted through the kitchen.

Not long after that, they were seated in the living room. She had a cup of piping hot cherry-flavored tea in her hands, and he had both cans of beer in front of him.

Babi pulled out an album of family photographs from a cabinet in the living room and started leafing through it with him. Maybe it was the Heineken, or it might have been the Peroni, but the fact remained that he was enjoying himself. He listened to her vivid accounts that came with each different photo: a trip somewhere, a special memory, a party.

He didn’t fall asleep this time. Slowly, progressively, he watched her grow up as he leafed through those plastic-covered pages. He watched as her first teeth came in, as she blew out a single birthday candle, learned to ride a bike, and then there she was, just a little older, on rides at the amusement park with her little sister. On a sleigh with Santa Claus, at the zoo holding a lion cub in her arms.

Slowly, he watched her face thin out, her hair darken, her small breasts grow, and then, suddenly, after he turned the next page, she was a woman. She was no longer just a skinny little boy-child with a sulk and a swimsuit, her hands on her hips. Instead, a small bikini covered the bronzed body of an attractive young woman with smooth legs, slender now and longer. Sitting on a pedal boat, she smiled through her long, sun-bleached hair. Her shoulders showed through, golden beneath her locks, bleached almost salt white by the sea. All around her were out-of-focus beachgoers in the background, unaware that they were being recorded for posterity.

With every page that they turned, she seemed to resemble more and more closely the young woman that now sat beside him. Step, his curiosity aroused by the stories recounted by their subject, followed those photos, sipping his second beer, every so often asking a question or two.

Then, all at once, knowing what was coming, Babi tried to skip a page.