The Crossroads (15 page)

Piazza di Spagna was crowded with people relaxing at the tables of the Wild Goose Chase Bar. There was a clown with a top hat and walking stick who for three euros would pose for photographs with children. And a bikini-clad blonde lying on a sunbed, her body covered with sticking plasters and coloured wires which made her buttocks quiver.

There they are
.

They were sitting on the steps, engrossed in trying on the clothes they had just stolen.

Cristiano's first impulse was to just walk on by, but instead he kept going anxiously backwards and forwards, throwing furtive glances at them without their noticing his presence. He pretended to have an appointment with someone, looking up at the clock on the wall from time to time.

Another thirty seconds and I'm going
.

When the thirty seconds had passed he decided to wait another twenty. And it was a good thing he did, because when the hand reached the eighteenth second he thought he heard Esmeralda call his name.

The music played by the clown was so loud he couldn't be absolutely sure.

Then the two of them beckoned him over.

Cristiano took his time sauntering up those four steps. Esmeraldo spread her arm, inviting him to sit down. ‘How are you doing?'

The saliva had gone from Cristiano's mouth and he had difficulty in saying: ‘I'm okay.'

Esmeralda put on a violet top over her blouse. ‘How do I look?'

‘Fine.'

‘Only fine?' and then, to her friend: ‘See? I told you it wouldn't suit me.' She took it off and dumped it on the ground.

Fabiana observed him for a moment with her pale blue eyes. ‘What are you doing here?'

‘Nothing …'

‘Are you waiting for someone?'

‘No …' Then he remembered the act he had been putting on. He shrugged. ‘Well, yes … But I was late getting here.'

Esmeralda pulled out of her bag a sweatshirt emblazoned with the S of Superman. ‘Your girlfriend?'

Cristiano said a too hasty ‘No!'

‘There's nothing wrong with having a girlfriend, you know. Are you scared of girls?'

‘No, why should I be?' With these two he always felt as if he was under interrogation. He added, to make himself clearer: ‘I just haven't got a girlfriend, that's all.'

‘What about Angela Baroni?'

‘Angela Baroni?'

‘She's always telling everyone how crazy she is about you …'

‘But you don't even deign to look at her, poor girl. You're a hard-ass,' Fabiana mocked him.

Angela Baroni was in 3C. A little girl with long black hair. He had never noticed that she liked him.

‘I don't fancy her,' he whispered awkwardly.

‘Who
do
you fancy?'

Cristiano dug his fingernails into his arm. ‘No one.'

Esmeralda rested her head on his shoulder. His whole body went stiff, as if someone had rammed a broomstick up his arse. He caught a sweet smell of shampoo which made his head spin. She purred in his ear: ‘It's not possible. You, the handsomest hunk in the school, and you don't fancy anybody …' and gave him the lightest of kisses on the neck.

And, although he was sure she was only taking the piss, it was a dizzying, disorientating sensation, which stunned him for a long, long moment, leaving him breathless and with gooseflesh all down his back.

‘Hey, what's this? You get to kiss him and I don't?' And Fabiana kissed him full on the lips. Cristiano felt a second shock, perhaps even more violent than the first, as if he had been stabbed in the chest. An indescribable noise escaped his throat.

It had been all too brief, the contact with that soft flesh. Beautiful and painful. He stopped himself putting his fingers to his lips to see if some of that moistness had clung to them.

‘What about us, then?'

‘Don't you fancy us?'

Esmeralda picked up a Cossack hat made of phosphorescent green plush and plonked it on his head. Then she burst out laughing. ‘It really suits you.'

Fabiana got out her lipstick and ran it over his lips.

By now Cristiano was so confused and disorientated he would have let the two girls give him a shampoo and set.

Esmeraldo took a pocket mirror out of her handbag. ‘Look at yourself!'

Cristiano took the briefest of looks and cleaned his lips.

‘Why don't we go to the games arcade?' Esmeralda said to her friend, and walked off towards the gallery.

Fabiana crossed her arms and pouted. ‘Has anyone ever told you you're a real drag? Why don't you ever laugh? I reckon you take after your father.'

Cristiano stiffened. He didn't like talking about his father. ‘Why?'

‘Well, he looks so mean, with that shaven head and those tattoos … Hey, where did he get them, by the way?'

‘What?'

‘The tattoos.'

‘I don't know … At the tattooist's.' Cristiano genuinely didn't know. Rino had had most of them done when he had been too small to remember, and the more recent ones in some place near Murelle.

‘I know that. But where?'

‘I've no idea. Why do you want to know?'

‘I'd like to have one done.'

‘Where?'

She smiled and shook her head. ‘I'm not telling you.'

‘Go on! Where?'

‘In a secret place.'

‘Oh go on, tell me.'

‘You tell me where your father had his tattoos done, then.'

He put his hand on his heart. ‘I don't know. I swear.'

‘I could ask your father myself, you know. Do you think I'm scared? I wouldn't think twice about it.'

Cristiano shrugged. ‘Go ahead and ask him, then.'

Fabiana stood up, grasped his hand and pulled him to his feet. ‘Come on, let's go.'

The games arcade was full of young people. Some were from their school, but most were older.

It was an enormous room. There was a four-lane bowling alley, a game that involved throwing a ball into a basket, with a scoreboard recording each successful shot, cranes that picked up cuddly toys, and hundreds of videogames. The music was deafening. The place was full of Filipinos, Chinese and children jumping about on a platform trying to dance in time to the music, following the instructions of a videogame. Down at the other end was a second room, darker and less crowded than the first, with fruit machines all round the walls. In the middle were a dozen green billiard tables illuminated by low-hanging lights, with black figures armed with cues standing around them.

Cristiano had never been in there. In the first place because there was a notice saying you had to be eighteen to enter, secondly because he didn't know anybody, and thirdly because he was crap at billiards.

Fabiana rushed into the room, ignoring the age restriction, and Cristiano was about to follow, but he stopped in the doorway when he saw that Tekken was there.

Tekken was playing a doubles match and Esmeralda was doing her level best to put him off. She would knock the cue when he played a shot, tickle him under the arms or rub up against him. He pretended to be annoyed, but anyone could see he was loving it.

He was with two other boys. Memmo, a guy with a fancily trimmed goatee beard and a ponytail, and Nespola, who thought he looked like Robbie Williams but didn't.

Just then Esmeralda climbed up on the billiard table and Tekken fired a ball between her thighs, to the raucous guffaws of everyone present.

Cristiano closed his eyes and leaned against the wall. He couldn't breathe. He could still feel on his neck and mouth the pressure of Esmeralda and Fabiana's lips.

‘What a pair of tarts …' he whispered, resting his head against the wall.

His father was right – girls like that only liked rich guys. Like Tekken. Their motorbikes. Their money.

If you were poor, like he was, they just took the piss out of you.

He felt something acidic burning his stomach, as if he had drunk a bottle of bleach. He felt like throwing up.

A wild anger clouded his thoughts. His hands itched. He felt like going in there, picking up a billiard cue and smashing it over that bastard's head. But instead he turned and ran out, panting hard. He hated this place. The people. The shop windows full of useless things he couldn't buy.

He went into a kichenware shop, took a long knife out of a block of wood, hid it under his jacket and walked out into the car park, elbowing his way through the crowd.

He ran round behind the rubbish bins, pulled out the knife and slashed the saddle and punctured the tyres of Tekken's motorbike. He was about to dig a deep scratch across the petrol tank when he heard a voice behind his back shout: ‘Hey! What the fuck are you doing?'

His heart leaped into his tonsils with fright.

He turned round. Sitting astride a big Ducati was a guy in a black helmet and a leather jacket. ‘You little creep, I'm going to beat you to a pulp!' the biker shouted as he propped his motorbike on its stand.

Cristiano threw away the knife and ran off between the cars, while the guy shouted after him, ‘You coward! It's no use you running away. I know who you are! You're at the junior high! We'll find you! We'll find you and when we do …'

He came out onto the highway and kept on running.

He couldn't believe he had been such a fool. In the space of a few seconds he had landed himself up to his neck in shit.

Of all the stupid things to do, he had chosen the most stupid one possible. Slashing Tekken's motorbike and getting caught in the act!

He kept one eye on the ground as he ran, trying to avoid the puddles. He had a stitch in his side and pressed his hand against it. The highway, the guardrail and the car headlights blurred over and reappeared at every step.

Below the hoarse wheeze of his breathing he kept hearing the threats of the black-clad biker: ‘Where are you running to? I know who you are! I know you! We'll get you for this!'

He felt as if it was all a bad dream, as if all he had to do was stop, close his eyes and open them again and he would be back in that dark corner of the games arcade which smelled of sweat and deodorant.

He must have been out of his mind. He had stolen the knife and slashed the motorbike in a kind of hypnotic trance. As if he'd had a kind of blackout. When he had entered the kitchenware shop he hadn't even looked round to check if anyone was watching.

He didn't know how he could keep on running, with all that fear in his body. Soon Tekken's vengeance would come down on him with all its merciless, crushing force.

The guy was quite capable of killing him.

Once Cristiano had seen him get into a fight with a truck driver outside the bar.

The thing he remembered was his coolness in confronting a man who was twenty kilos heavier than him and had fists as big as shoulders of ham. Tekken had skipped about, swaying his hips like a merengue dancer. He was enjoying himself. As if he was training in the gym.

While the big ape swung his arms and hurled insults, Tekken had kicked him on the knee and the giant had collapsed on the ground. Then he had grabbed hold of his ear, jerked up his head and said, wagging his finger from side to side: ‘You're nobody around here. So don't try to throw your weight around.'

And all this simply because the big brute had asked Tekken, without saying ‘please', to move his motorbike so he could park his truck.

Just think what he'll do to me for destroying it
…

His lungs were on fire and he had to slow down. He ran onto a bridge that passed over an irrigation canal and stopped, panting, in a bus shelter halfway across. The timetable and walls were plastered with coloured scrawls. The bench was caked with ketchup and with the remains of chips and rice croquettes. And the place reeked of urine. A dim neon light crackled on the ceiling.

He stood there, scanning the road for a sight of the bus.

By this time the biker would have told Tekken what had happened. “
Who the fuck was it?
”

“
A fair-haired guy. From the junior high
.”

Fabiana and Esmeralda would have twigged at once that it had been him. “
We know him. His name's Cristiano Zena. He goes to
our school
.”

Those two bitches would never cover for him.

Meanwhile there was still no sign of the bus. And Tekken and his gang would certainly be on his trail by now. Cristiano hid in the narrow space between the shelter and the guardrail. He could hear the gurgling of the water that flowed in the canal some ten metres below the bridge.

He was just wondering whether to continue on foot when the yellow eyes of the bus appeared in the distance.

Thank God
.

He emerged from behind the shelter, leaned out into the road and was on the point of raising his arm when three motorbikes overtook the bus on the right and dazzled him with their headlights. He stepped back and the bus flashed by without even slowing down. He saw the people sitting behind the windows and, immediately afterwards, the red rear lights.

It hadn't stopped. But the motorbikes had.

He tried to make a run for it, but a black Ducati swerved round and braked in front of him and Tekken, who was riding on the back, leaped on him.

Cristiano fell down in the mud and banged his shoulder hard. He tried to struggle, to kick, but Tekken had gripped him at the base of the biceps, pinning him down with an arm across his chest. With the other hand he grabbed him by the hair, pulled him up and slapped him full in the face with the back of his hand, knocking him back against the guardrail.

Cristiano's suprarenal glands were producing millions of molecules of adrenalin which prevented him, at least for the moment, from feeling any pain.

He jumped to his feet, trying to escape towards the road, but only managed to take a few steps before he fell down again.

Tekken had scythed his legs from under him with a kick.

Now Cristiano was gasping in the ice-cold mud, trying to get up, but his legs wouldn't respond.