One Step to You (The Rome Novels #1)(90)

Step ran his hand through Madda’s hair but shook his head and smiled at her.

She shrugged her shoulders. “Too bad.”

Madda went over to the guy with the hard look in his eyes. When she turned around, Step wasn’t there anymore. Where he had been sitting, there was just an empty can of beer.

Outside it was cold now. Step zipped his leather jacket nice and snug and pulled up the lapels, covering his neck.

Then, almost without meaning to, he started his motorcycle. By the time he switched it back off, he was in front of Babi’s apartment building.

He stayed there, sitting on his Honda, watching the people going by, hurrying along, loaded down with packages. A woman stopping to satisfy her curiosity, looking at the shop windows. A young man and woman holding hands pretended they were interested in something behind a plate glass window. Their gifts were certainly at home, already wrapped. They laughed, both certain that they’d chosen the right thing, and then walked away, leaving the window to a mother with her daughter, with the same noses but different ages.

The doorman came out of his booth, took a few steps in front of the gate, and nodded hello to Step. Then, without a word, he went back to his warm perch inside. Step wondered if he knew. What a fool, he thought to himself. Doormen always know everything. He must have seen Babi’s new boyfriend, no doubt. He must know the person that I’ve only heard about over the phone.

“Hello?”

“Ciao.”

He’d remained silent for a moment, uncertain what to say, giving his heart room to run wild. It hadn’t pounded like this in more than two months. Then, the most banal question imaginable: “How are you?”

Then a thousand other questions, full of enthusiasm. Then, that enthusiasm had slowly subsided in the face of her pointless words, full of local news, old developments in her life, once considered interesting, at least by him. Why had she phoned? He listened to her pointless chatter, asking himself that same question over and over. Then, suddenly, he knew.

“Step…I’m seeing another guy.”

He’d remained silent, struck harder than ever before in his life, a life that had suffered thousands of punches, injuries, falls, headbutts to the face, bites, and hanks of hair ripped out of his scalp. At last, struggling, he’d managed to summon his voice. He’d found it there, at the bottom of his heart, and he’d forced it to come out, gaining some modicum of self-control.

“I hope he makes you happy.”

Then that was all. Only silence remained. The telephone receiver hung up, put back in its place, mute now. This can’t be. It’s a nightmare. Wishing he could travel back in time and, right before hearing the news, hover and remain there, halting time and stopping his own life, never to advance another second. Caught in a magical, terrible equilibrium.

He’d lain there, alone in his bed, a prisoner of his own mind, of hypotheses, vague, formless ideas. He imagined her in the arms of someone else. Faces of people glimpsed, possible lovers appeared and mingled, swapping noses, eyes, mouths, bodies. Her face, close to the face of some imaginary man who was still, unfortunately, all too real.

Step felt a hot shiver run through his body, and he trembled slightly. Then he got off his motorcycle and started strolling. There was something in a shop that he liked. He went in to buy it. When he came back out, he felt like he was dying. A Lancia Thema went by, right in front of him. But not so fast that their eyes didn’t have time to meet. At that moment, their eyes told each other everything, suffering deeply, and this time, once again, together. Babi was right there, behind that electric-powered car window.

They maintained eye contact for a little while longer, with their old memories and with a new, added sadness. Then Babi vanished into the apartment building.

He remained there, walking slowly toward his motorcycle, thinking as he went. He couldn’t say what it was he was feeling. Babi was there, close to him, in that home where they’d spent afternoons and clandestine nights when her folks were out. But now that other guy was beside her. Who the fuck was he? What did he have to do with her life? Why?

He sat down on his motorcycle. He’d wait for him. He remembered everything Babi had always told him. “I hate violence. So if you continue doing whatever you want, we won’t be together much longer, I swear it.”

He’d accepted her demands. “All right, I’ll change.”

Like that time at Club Classico. A guy had bothered her—he’d asked someone else to tell him her name, and then he’d called out to her from his table: “Babi! Come on over here. Sit with us.” He was acting the clown with his friends, the idiot.

Step hadn’t batted an eye. He’d stood beside her, calm and smiling. He’d finished his beer in silence.

At that point, Babi had leaned toward him and whispered in his ear, “I love you! Shall we go to my house?” Instead they’d gotten no further than making out for a while outside the front door downstairs. Unfortunately, her folks had come back early.

Babi had complimented him. “There, that’s the way I like you. You were so good, you didn’t fight with that idiot. You’ve changed. You seem like another person.”

He’d smiled at her and walked her upstairs to her apartment door. He’d waited for it to shut behind her, and then he’d hurled himself down the stairs, leaped onto his motorcycle, and raced to Club Classico.