But Babi didn’t see anyone step forward to dress her down. Everywhere she turned, all she saw were the joyful eyes of the other girls in her class, proud and entertained by her courage.
Then she looked farther on. And what she saw terrified her. There sat Signora Giacci, staring at her. Her gaze, devoid of any expression or sign of life, was as hard and grim as a slab of gray stone on which someone had labored mightily to carve the word hatred.
Chapter 9
It was noon. Step walked into the kitchen wearing a sweatshirt and a pair of shorts, ready for breakfast. “Good morning, Maria.”
“Good morning, sir.” The housekeeper immediately stopped washing the dishes.
Step took the coffeepot and the pan of hot milk off the stove and sat down at the table, but then the doorbell started to ring. Step lifted a hand to his forehead. “Who the fu…”
With tiny footsteps, Maria hurried to the door. “Who is it?”
“It’s Pollo! Would you let me in, please?”
Maria turned to look at Step with an inquiring expression. Step silently nodded his head so Maria opened the door.
Pollo came rushing in. “Hey, Step? You don’t know what an incredible thing! A fairy tale, the coolest shit ever!”
Step cocked a brow. “You brought me sandwiches?”
“No, look at this.” He showed him that day’s edition of Il Messaggero.
“I already have the newspaper.” He lifted a copy of La Repubblica from the table. “Maria brought it to me. By the way, you haven’t even said good morning to her.”
Pollo turned to look at the housekeeper impatiently. “Morning, Maria.”
Maria smiled. “I’ll go and tidy up your room, sir.” And she left the kitchen.
Step sipped his hot coffee. Pollo opened the newspaper and laid it out on the table. “Have you seen? Take a look at this unbelievably cool picture! A legend. You’re in the newspaper.”
Step put his hand down on the page with the local news. It was true. It was him on his motorcycle with Babi on back as they were pulling a wheelie in front of the photographers. Perfectly recognizable, but luckily it was impossible to see the license plate. Otherwise there would have been bitter repercussions. There was a whole article. The illegal street races, the surprise arrival of the police, some of the names of those arrested, and a description of the chase that ensued.
Pollo looked enthusiastically at his friend. “Did you read it? You’re a legend, Step! You’re famous now! Fuck, if only I could have an article like this.”
Step smiled at him. “You can’t pull wheelies as well as I can. Oh, it really is a nice picture! Did you see how good Babi looks?”
Pollo nodded glumly. Babi really wasn’t what he would have defined as his ideal woman.
Step held up the newspaper in both hands and gazed at the photograph in a state of bliss. “No doubt about it, my motorcycle really looks great here!” He wondered if Babi had already seen their photo. Almost certainly not. “Pollo, you need to take me somewhere. Here, have some coffee while I take a shower.” Step went into his bedroom.
Pollo took his seat. He looked at the photo. He started rereading the article. He lifted the coffee cup to his mouth. Yuck! Oh, that’s right. Step always took his coffee without sugar.
Step’s voice arrived muffled from the shower: “What time do the shops close?”
Pollo put his third teaspoon of sugar into his coffee. Then he looked at the clock. “In less than an hour.”
“Then, fuck, we’d better get moving.”
Pollo tasted his coffee. Now that was the way it should be sugared. He lit a cigarette.
Step appeared in the doorway. He was wearing a bathrobe, and with a small hand towel, he was vigorously massaging his short head of hair. Soon, his head was nice and dry. He turned to look at Pollo again and then gazed at the photo. “So, what’s it like to be friends with a living legend?”
* * *
The motorcycle, with Pollo sitting on it, sat motionless, parked on its kickstand on Viale Angelico. When Step walked out of the print shop, Pollo kicked over the motorcycle engine and revved it.
Step climbed on behind him, being careful not to crease the poster. “Oh, Pollo, drive carefully. I put the poster right between us.”
“How much did they charge you?”
“Twenty-two thousand lire.”
“Son of a bitch. I wanted to do the same thing with my picture, but does it have to cost that much?”
“Practically speaking, they print it, plus they laminate it too. That’s not much, if you stop to think about it.”
“I don’t want to stop, and I don’t want to think. Where are we going now?” Pollo asked.
“To Piazza Jacini.”
“What for?”
“That’s where Babi lives.”
“Not seriously! And you’ve never seen her place?”
“Never.”
“Life is funny, isn’t it?”
“Why?” Step asked.
“Well, at first you never see someone at all, and then you start seeing them practically every day.”
“Yes, strange.”
“Then it’s even stranger how, after you start to see them every single day, you start to bring them sweet little presents too.” Pollo felt the sharp slap of Step’s open hand on his neck. “Ouch!”
“Are you done? You’re like one of those pain-in-the-ass taxi drivers who never stop talking while they take you to your destination and then they ask you a bunch of questions. All you’re missing is a crackling radio, and you’d be identical.”
Pollo started driving cheerfully and then twisted his mouth into a strange grimace to turn his voice rasping and metallic in imitation of a taxi radio. “Ktchsss Piazza Jacini for Pollo Forty, Piazza Jacini for Pollo Forty,” he said, shouting at the top of his lungs.
Step gave him another smack on the neck but Pollo continued in the voice of the taxi radio. And so they kept going, laughing and shouting, zigzagging through the traffic with all the cars around them slamming on their brakes to avoid them.
They approached a real taxi. Pollo shouted into the driver’s window, “Piazza Jacini for Pollo Forty.” The cabbie almost had a heart attack, but he said nothing. As their motorcycle roared off, the taxi driver raised his hand, gesticulating at them and shaking his head. It was perfectly clear that this taxi driver’s idol could, at the very most, be Alberto Sordi, certainly never Robert De Niro.
“Piazza Jacini to Pollo Forty, arrived at destination!” Pollo’s motorcycle stopped, roaring, in front of the lowered electric arm in front of Babi’s apartment building.
Step waved hello to the doorman, who waved back and let them through. The motorcycle climbed the ramp. The doorman watched those two muscle-bound arrivals, vaguely perplexed.
Pollo turned to speak to Step. “Oh, then you’ve been here before. The doorman recognized you.”
“Stop here and wait for me.” Step hopped off the motorcycle.
Pollo revved the engine and switched it off. “Make it snappy. The thingy that tells you how much to pay is running…”
“The meter.”
“Whatever the fuck it’s called, that’s what it’s called. Get moving. Otherwise I’m leaving.”