One Step to You (The Rome Novels #1)(93)

“If you don’t like it, you can always return it.”

“Are you kidding? Paolo, thanks. I seriously didn’t have this one. Hold on a second, I have something for you too.”

A short while later, Step came back from his bedroom with a small case. He’d bought it that afternoon while he was waiting downstairs from Babi’s house. Before he saw her. He preferred not to think about that too carefully.

“Here.”

Paolo took the gift and opened it. A pair of Ray-Ban Balorama sunglasses appeared in his hands.

“They’re just like mine. They’re tough as nails, they’ll never break. Even if someone knocks them onto the floor.” Step smiled at him. “Oh, by the way, you can’t exchange these.”

Paolo put them on. “How do I look?”

“Great! Fuck, you look like a tough guy. You’re almost scaring me.”

Then it suddenly popped into his mind, clear, perfect, and amusing.

“Listen, Pa, I have an idea, but you can’t say no to me the way you usually do. Today’s Christmas, so you can’t turn me down!”

*



The cold wind was messing up Paolo’s hair.

“Could you slow down, Step?”

“I’m only going fifty.”

“In the city, you’re not supposed to go faster than thirty.”

“Cut it out. I know you like it.” Step accelerated.

Paolo held on tight, clinging closer. The motorcycle was running fast through the streets of the city, crossing intersections, whipping through yellow stoplights, silently and deftly. The two brothers rode along in a fraternal embrace. Paolo’s tie broke loose of his jacket and fluttered cheerfully in the night, flaunting its argyle pattern. Above the tie, behind his new sunglasses, Paolo was watching the road in sheer terror, ready to pick up on any impending danger.

In front of him, Step was driving confidently, unruffled. The wind was caressing his Baloramas.

There were people hastily double-parking in front of a church. Christmas prayers weighed down by the flavor of panettone. For a moment, he, too, was tempted to go in, to ask for something, to pray.

But then he wondered how God could ever care about someone like him. He looked up, into the sky. The stars appeared crystal clear, sparkling and glowing in their thousands. Suddenly that midnight blue seemed so far away, farther than ever, unattainable. He accelerated, and the wind stung his face as his eyes slowly began to glisten, and not only because of the chill.

He felt Paolo clinging tight to him. “Come on, Step. Don’t go so fast. I’m scared!”

I’m scared, too, Paolo. I’m scared of the days to come, that I won’t be able to keep it up. I’m scared of what I’ve lost, of what is going to be blown away by the winds of time.

Step let up on the gas a little and gently downshifted. For a moment, he thought he heard Pollo’s laugh. That powerful, giddy laugh. He saw his face again and heard his fond voice.

“Fuck, Step, we’re having fun, aren’t we?” And more beer, and more late nights, always together, always giddy, with an overwhelming lust for life, for fighting, sharing a cigarette and so many dreams.

So he twisted the throttle all at once, sharply. Paolo screamed while the motorcycle’s front wheel reared up. Step continued like that, accelerating on a single wheel, popping a wheelie just like in the old days.

*



Far away, much farther away, on a sofa in an elegant home, two nude bodies were caressing each other.

“You’re so beautiful.”

Babi smiled, shy, ashamed, still slightly absent.

“But what’s this?”

A hint of embarrassment. “Nothing, just a tattoo.”

“It’s an eagle, isn’t it?”

“Yes, I got it with a girlfriend.” A bitter lie.

A sense of sadness filled her heart. And fate clearly had it in for her, as if to punish her, when “Through the Barricades” came on the radio. Their old song. Babi started crying.

“Why are you crying?”

“I don’t know.”

She couldn’t come up with any answers. Maybe because there really were none.

*



Slowly the wheel lowered back to the pavement, just as smoothly as it had reared up.

Paolo started breathing again. Step slowed down and smiled.

Very slowly, the motorcycle leaned into the curve. It was time to go home now. It was time to start over, little by little, without thinking about it too much. With just one thought. Will I ever go back up there, in that place that is so difficult to reach? Three meters above the sky, where everything seems so much finer, so beautiful.

And at the very instant he asked that question, he already, sadly, knew the answer.





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Dear reader,





This novel was born long ago in 1992, when I first took on the challenge of becoming a writer. The manuscript was rejected by every major publisher in Italy, except for Il Ventaglio, a small independent publisher in Rome. The first two thousand copies disappeared very quickly from the shelves, and the publisher became bankrupt, so no reprints could be put in place and my book was nowhere to be found. At that time, I thought my career as a writer was over before it had even started.