Babi opened her notebook to the excused absences page. She filled one out. She wrote down the day, and then, where it said reason for absence, she wrote in: Ill health. Actually, it was true. The idea of not running away with Step made her feel sick. She smiled.
Then it was time to forge the signature. She turned serious again. She tried another one on a sheet of paper at hand, under dozens of previous attempts at Raffaella Gervasi. This last effort turned out even better. It was perfect. Her own mother would have had a hard time picking it out from a string of authentic ones. But at this rate, she could even fake a check to buy herself a Peugeot Metropolis scooter. She realized she’d overdone it. After all, she didn’t need money. She just needed a note justifying her absence.
She picked up the pen, fearfully staring at the dotted line immediately below the printed word: SIGNATURE. Then she leaned in and went for it. She started with the R and so on down the line, sliding as naturally as possible until she reached that last dot on the i. Then, still shaking from her extreme concentration, from the grueling effort of writing perfectly just like her mother, she looked at her signature. It had turned out even better. Incredible.
Chapter 23
Later, after Babi’s parents had gone out for the evening, Step came by to pick her up. The whole group was downstairs waiting for her. Schello, Lucone and Carla, Dario and Gloria, the Sicilian, Hook, Pollo and Pallina, and a couple of other guys in a VW Golf with two girls. They rode their motorcycles toward Prima Porta and then veered right toward Fiano.
By the time they got there, Babi was chilled to the bone. The restaurant was called Il Colonnello—The Colonel—and it was very far away. Babi couldn’t understand why they’d picked a place like that for dinner. There were two big dining rooms with a pizza oven open to view and rows of perfectly ordinary tables. Maybe the place was especially affordable, she supposed.
They sat down, and a young waiter showed up to take their orders. There were fifteen of them, and they were all constantly changing their minds—all except for her, who had decided from the outset to have a salad without too much oil.
The waiter was confused. Every so often, he’d try to go back over the list of pasta dishes so that he could proceed to the entrées, but by the time he made it to the side dishes, there was always someone who’d come up with a different selection.
“Listen, waiter, we’ll take a couple of pappardelle al cinghiale.”
“Make that three.” Then there was a fourth order of pappardelle, and then a fifth. After which two others decided to get polenta, or a carbonara. It was the most indecisive group Babi had ever watched order in a restaurant. As if that weren’t bad enough, Pollo tried to help out every time by repeating all the orders, which only mixed things up worse.
At last, they all laughed heartily. It had turned into a sort of game. The poor waiter walked away. The only thing he knew for sure is that he needed to bring them fourteen medium draft beers and one…What was it that pretty blonde with the blue eyes had asked for? He checked his pad, covered with scratch-outs, and headed into the kitchen, reminding himself to add a Diet Coke to the list.
The dinner went on in the throes of utter confusion. Every time a dish was brought to the table, whether it was prosciutto or mini mozzarellas or bruschetta, there was a general assault on the serving dish, with everyone lunging at it, and in an instant, it was gone.
A group of girls whose eyes were too heavily made up laughed in jolly amusement. Babi looked at Pallina, in search of a smidgen of understanding. But by now her friend seemed to have merged perfectly into the group.
Babi caught Step’s eye. He was smiling at her. She tried to respond, but she wasn’t all that sure of herself. She dropped her gaze. Her mixed salad without too much oil had arrived, and she ate along with everyone else.
Then, no one knew how it happened, but a chunk of bread flew through the air. Then it was a hail of bread chunks, a genuine all-out food fight with leftover meat, flying potatoes, and beer.
They threw anything that came within reach of each other. The girls were the first to abandon their seats. Babi and Pallina hurried quickly away from the table, closely followed by the other girls. The boys continued to throw scraps of food at each other, hard and vicious, indifferent to the other tables in the restaurant, even though they were hitting customers sitting nearby.
The high point came when the waiter tried to stop them. He was smacked dead center in the face by a wet chunk of bread, and there was a standing ovation. That waiter had never been more popular in his life.
Then the check arrived, and Pollo offered to collect the money. Step locked arms with Babi and led her out of the restaurant. One after another, everyone else left. In pairs or little groups of three, they all started their motorcycles. The ones in the VW Golf were the first to leave.
Babi pulled out her wallet. “How much do I owe?”
Step smiled. “Are you kidding? Forget about it.”
“Thanks.”
“Don’t thank me. Just get on.”
Step started the motorcycle. Babi climbed up behind him.
“So who should I thank? I heard Pollo say that he was going to collect the money.”
“No, that’s a sort of password.”
At that very moment, Pollo came running out of the restaurant and jumped onto his motorcycle. “Let’s go, boys!”
Pallina held on tight, and they all took off, tires screeching. The motorcycles shot forward, turning their lights off. The waiter and a few others came running out of the restaurant. They shouted, to no avail, trying unsuccessfully to read the license plates.
The sound of motorcycles echoed loudly through the narrow alleys and lanes of Fiano. One after the other, leaning around curves at high speed, they made their way out of town, taking the smaller streets, laughing and shouting, honking their horns. Then, practically flying by this point, they took the Via Tiberina, shrouded in the chill of the road. Only then did they dare to turn their headlights back on.
Pollo rode closer to Step. “Oh, that’s pretty good food at this colonel’s place. Too bad we won’t be able to go back for a while.”
“Hey, you know where we could go on Saturday?”
“Where?”
“Up to Nervi. There’s a really excellent restaurant. Farinello and the others have gone to it. They say it’s great.”
Pollo looked at him, worried now. “How much do they charge?”
“About forty apiece.”
“Too expensive!” He put on his little kid smile and then hit the gas and raced off with Pallina, laughing crazily.
Babi leaned forward. “So are you saying that we didn’t pay?”
Step slowed down. “Why, is that a problem?”
“A problem? Don’t you realize that they could report you to the police? They might have read one of your license plates.”
“They can’t see a thing with the lights off. Listen, we’ve always done this, and nobody’s ever caught us. So don’t jinx us!”
“I don’t jinx anybody. I’m just trying to get you guys to listen to reason. Even though that strikes me as quite the challenge. All right, let’s say they never catch you. But don’t you ever think of the people at the restaurant? Those are working folks. They’re in the kitchen all day, sweating over the stoves, setting tables for you, serving you food, clearing up after you, keeping the place clean, and this is how you treat them? You humiliate them, you spit on their work. You don’t give them the slightest consideration.”