Chapter 1
Sophia’s ass is Europe’s finest. That bright red graffiti, the work of some stealthy hand armed with a can of spray paint in the dark of night, now gleamed in all its brazenness on one of the massive columns lining the Corso di Francia bridge.
Nearby, a Roman eagle, carved long ago, had doubtless seen it all, but wasn’t about to name the guilty party. Just beneath the fearsome bird of prey’s marble talons, like a baby eaglet sheltering in its protective shadow, sat the boy.
His hair was short, practically a buzz cut, with a high fade at the nape of the neck like a US Marine.
His dark Levi’s jacket was missing a button, scraped off along with a stretch of blue paint when he and his motorbike had wiped out on the asphalt of a curve that turned out to be tighter than expected.
Collar turned up, smoldering Camel dangling from his lips, and a pair of wraparound Ray-Ban Baloramas—these accessories all buttressed his tough-guy pose, but none of it was really necessary. He had a dazzling smile, but only a select few had ever had the pleasure of seeing it.
He glanced down the span of the bridge to the cars poised menacingly at the stoplight. Lined up, waiting motionless, like race cars at the starting line, except no racetrack had ever seen such a motley assortment of makes and models—a Fiat 126, a VW Beetle, a Ford Fiesta, some other nondescript American car he couldn’t identify, and an Alfa Romeo 155.
He smiled.
A few cars back, in a Mercedes 200, a slender finger with a badly bitten nail gave a gentle push to a cassette tape protruding slightly from the latest-model Alpine stereo. The sound of a tiny motor seized the tape and drew it into the tape deck. From the twin Pioneer speakers in the doors, a young female vocalist’s voice burst suddenly to life.
The Mercedes gently moved forward, following the flow of traffic. The scent of the driver’s aftershave wafted through the air in the car’s interior.
The girl in the passenger seat mused to herself that, even if she’d wanted to, there was no one she could tell, “Go away, love,” like the words to the song. If anything she’d have happily kicked her sister out of the car rather than listen for one more second to her pestering demands for a different song: “Change it to Eros, come on, I want to listen to Eros.”
The Mercedes rolled past precisely as the cigarette, smoked down to the butt, was hitting the sidewalk, propelled through the air by an expert flick of forefinger against thumb and lofted a little bit farther by a chance gust of wind. The boy strode down the marble steps, adjusted his 501s, and swung one leg over the saddle of his dark blue Honda VF 750 custom motorbike, with a few slight dents and scratches on the front mudguard. He twisted the key, barely tapped the ignition button, and pushed down hard on the kick-starter.
Suddenly the green light vanished from behind the NEUTRAL on the instrument cluster and, as if by magic, he found himself moving through the line of cars. His right boot shifted through the gears, reining the engine in or letting it roar, as its torque shoved him powerfully forward like a breaking wave, sliding now right, now left. He leaned gently into each curve, slaloming through the narrow spaces between one car and the next like a series of ski gates.
The sun was rising, it was morning, a bright beautiful morning. She was on her way to school; he was still up from the night before. It would have been just another day if that morning, at that stoplight, they hadn’t come to a halt side by side.
Red light.
He glanced over at her. An ash-blond lock of hair fluttered out the open car window. As the hair tossed gently in the morning air, it intermittently left her neck uncovered, revealing a faint golden down that followed the direction traced by the wind. Her determined profile was punctuated by the blush of her cheeks and the blue of her eyes, gentle and serene, as she listened dreamily, half-lidded, to the second song, “La vita mia.” The sight of such tranquility struck him forcefully, and maybe that’s why:
“Hey!”
She turned to look, caught off guard, opening her large, innocent bright blue eyes a little wider. She stared at him. A stranger, stopped beside her on a motorcycle, with broad shoulders, his hands too tan for the mid-April sun. His eyes, concealed behind sunglasses, would surely have had something to add to the already utterly shameless face.
“You want to go for a ride with me?”
“No, I’m on my way to school.”
“So just pretend to go, why don’t you? I’ll swing by and pick you up out front.”
“Pardon me.” She gave him a tight, forced fake smile. “You must have misunderstood. What I meant to say was, ‘No, I do not want to go for a ride with you.’”
“No, listen, you’d have fun—”
“I very much doubt that.”
“I’d solve all your problems.”
“I don’t have any problems.”
“Okay, now it’s me who very much doubts that.” Green light.
The Mercedes 200 shot forward, leaving the boy’s confident smile anchored to the spot. Her father turned to give her a glance. “So who was that? A friend of yours?”
“No, Papà, just some idiot…”
A moment later, the Honda motorbike pulled up next to the pretty girl for a second time. This time, the boy reached out and grabbed the open windowsill with his left hand, revving the motor slightly with his right hand, just enough to keep from having to lean too hard on the moving car, though that shouldn’t have been a challenge for those sixteen-inch biceps.
The only one who seemed to be struggling with the situation was the father. “Hey, what’s that reckless fool up to? Why is he driving so close to the car?”
“Don’t worry, Papà. Let me take care of this—”
She swiveled decisively around to glare at the boy.
“Listen, don’t you have anything better to do?”
“Nope.”
“Well, find something.”
“I already have.”
“You have?”
“Yes. I want to take you for a spin. Come on, we’ll go for a fast ride on the Via Olimpica, open her up so you see what this bike can do, then I’ll take you somewhere nice for a quick breakfast and drop you off right in front of your school. I promise.”
“I doubt your promises are worth very much.”
“True, true.” He smiled. “So you see, you already know all about me. Admit it, you like what you see, don’t you?”
She laughed and shook her head.
“All right, that’s enough now.” She opened a book she’d just pulled out of her Gherardini bag. “I need to think about my one and only real problem.”
“Which is what?”
“My Latin test.”
“I thought it was sex.”
She turned toward him, shocked. This time, without a smile, not even of feigned courtesy.
“Get your hand off my window.”
“Why, where do you want me to put it?”
She pressed a button. “I can’t tell you, my father’s listening.”
The power window started to close. He waited until the last second and then, yanking his hand out of the narrowing gap and shooting her one last glance, pulled away from the car. “See you later.”
He didn’t stick around to hear her curt reply: “Oh, no you won’t.” He leaned slightly to the right and veered away. As he took the curve, he shifted gears and revved the bike’s engine, accelerating sharply until he’d vanished into the line of cars. The Mercedes continued straight ahead, with no one left to interfere as it carried the two sisters to their school day.