Training in Love (8 page)

Well,
sure. My screw-ups, my binges, my eating disasters have always been hidden, done
while I was alone.

“Since
then you’ve stayed more or less the same. I’ve seen you lose something while
you were doing some diet, but then gain it back almost immediately afterwards.”

I
nod, a little dispirited.

“So.
Junior high. Does it tell you something?” Linda recaps, as usual entering into
the spirit of the thing.

“No.
Frankly no,” I reflect. “Certainly my father’s abandoning us was a trauma, but
that happened before. Years before.”

We
remain silent while thinking. In the meantime I begin to eat my cake, but
slowly. Another lesson from the book was to slow down, to give your stomach
time to get used to it.

“Anyway,
it has to be that,” says Linda between one mouthful and another of her
croissant. I look up. She nods to herself. “Sure, what would you say it is?
Unless some other serious thing happened to you that I don’t know about, it’s
got to be your parents that messed you up. You would have begun to look for
comfort in that, as an outlet, and then over time, your mother’s nice little
remarks only worsened the situation.”

I
relax on the cafè chair. We look at each other in silence for a few moments and
continue with our breakfast.

“Anyway,
this thing is interesting,” Linda says after a little.

“Yes,
I think so too,” I reply while stirring my cappuccino a little.

“And…”
She clears her voice, “how is the training going?”

“Oh,
well, I have to say,” I answer while taking another tiny piece of tart. My
damned stomach has almost had enough. “This week we began to run and you know,
I was afraid I couldn’t do it… fucking terrified – you know how I am at
sports.” I look up a second to meet her gaze. “With Andrea’s method though, I
managed to finish. I was destroyed at the end, as though I’d done who knows
what instead of ten minutes of running alternating with walking, but… anyway,
for someone who didn’t think she’d even get to five, it’s not bad,” I conclude
smiling.

Linda
nods, she’s studying her cup too, then she begins to play with the teaspoon.
“Well, fine. But,” she clears her throat again, “how’s it going with him?”

“Him
who?”

Linda
looks me straight in the eye, cocking her head to the side as though I were a
child in need of reprimanding.

I
look at her quizzically.

“With
this Andrea.”

“Oh.”
I had, obviously, understood, but I played around because I didn’t like the
tone she’d used and all the throat clearing she had to do. “Really well. I’m
very pleased with him.”

Linda
looks at me for a second without speaking. “That’s it?”

I
think for a minute about it. “He’s competent. Really. I’m really confident,
this time, that my plan to lose weight will have a positive outcome.”

Linda
nods, but I see that she’s skeptical. I start to drink my cappuccino again.
Unfortunately I can’t finish the tart if I have to be faithful to the desires
of my stomach.

“Oh
come on!” She burst out suddenly, pulling up her head and looking me in the eye
with her cheeks a little red. “Don’t you like him even a little?”

I
raise my eyebrows.

“I
mean, Nic describes him as who knows what… and Nic’s girlfriend that night too…
He seems like this big whatever! And you don’t say anything!”

I
burst out laughing. “Oh Lindy…” I chuckle, shaking my head. “Andrea
is
this big whatever. It’s one of the few times in which someone’s reputation is
completely deserved.”

“So?”

“So
what?”

“So
do you like him?” She asks leaning a little forward over the table.

I
start laughing again. “Of course I like him. The reverse would be unlikely.
Everyone likes Andrea,” I conclude calmly. “I’d advise anyone who didn’t like
him to get their eyes checked. Everyone has their own tastes, sure, but Andrea
has an objective beauty.”

Linda
leans back on her chair with a half frown.

“Lindy…
I’m sorry to mention it to you, but you don’t seem satisfied even now…” I say
smiling.

She
puffs, “No, it’s that…”

“Hmm?”

She
stares at me. “You say it so… calmly. Too calmly.” She studies me. “You had a
much more conspiratorial air when you told me about Gianca.” She stops for an
instant before continuing, as if the idea suddenly came to her, “Or is Gianca
more good looking?”

I
laugh again. “No! Not at all! Andrea is really hard to beat!”

She’s
even more perplexed and her faces make me want to die laughing.

“Quit
laughing!” As I was saying… “You say these things, but it seems like you don’t
really like him.”

“Oh,
no, I like him!” I correct her, still laughing. “I like him the way I like Brad
Pitt.”

Linda
frowns. “What do you mean?”

I
get a hold of myself, but the smile remains on my lips. “I mean that it’s a
totally abstract and theoretical liking.”

Finally
her face relaxes, I think she understands what I mean. “Yes, but you don’t meet
up with Brad Pitt three times a week… alone,” she says, lifting her eyebrows
allusively.

Nothing
– I can’t help it – I laugh again. “Oh, Linda…,” I answer shaking my head.
“Believe me, it would be the same if I met up with Brad Pitt three times a
week! Nothing would happen anyway between me and Brad, ever. Never anything in
a million years of seeing each other three times a week. And you know why?
Simply because we belong to different levels,” I end, as though explaining
something very easy to someone who should have already been versed on the
subject. “In fact, if you’ve noticed, Brad is with Angelina Jolie, another
inhabitant of his same level.”

“You’re
saying that this Andrea belongs to the level of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie?” She
asks keeping her eyebrows raised, but this time to express skepticism. Profound
skepticism.

“Exactly!”
I answer laughing.

Linda
narrows her eyes. “You’ve invented this thing about levels and you’re the only
one who believes it, I’m sorry to inform you. Anyway, I’d really like to see
this guy in person.”

I
laugh. “Marco would kill me if you ended up leaving him for Andrea, but… if you
want, you can come Thursday morning to the cafè. He and Nic have started having
breakfast there on Thursdays. Or at least it’s been like that up until last
Thursday…”

“Really?”
She asks, surprised.

“Yes.”

“I
didn’t know anything about it.”

I
laugh. “But why, do you know all about your brother-in-law’s movements?”

Linda
crosses her arms on her chest. I can tell from her look that she has doubts,
that something doesn’t add up – like in an equation – and until it does, she
won’t let it go. “No, but I would have thought it normal to tell me if he sees
my best friend every week…”

“Oh
God, Lindy!” I exclaim finally, lightly exasperated at her Machiavellian
attitude. “Let’s not embroider the facts. It doesn’t mean anything.”

She
replies with a noncommittal “Hmm”.

I
sigh and shake my head.

“And
in any case,” she says after a bit, “For the record, no-one is more handsome
than Marco. Not even Brad Pitt.”

I
smile. Ah, l’
amour
!

7.

A week
later I’m waiting for Andrea at the bike track. Today, which is Saturday and
I’m not working, we’ve decided to move our appointment to the morning, because
Saturday afternoon the path is overflowing with people and I’m embarrassed a
little because of the indecent appearance I have after a couple of minutes of
running. It’s not very early though, because I categorically refused to wake up
before nine on a weekend day. If it were up to Andrea we would have met up at
seven. He even unconsciously suggested it.

“Hi.”

I
jump and jerk around towards the voice at my back. “Where did you come from?” I
ask him, vaguely indignant.

“I
came earlier and took advantage of the time to do a little of my own workout,”
he answers breathlessly, and I notice the state he’s in – a post-jogging state.
If you can call Andrea’s extremist running workout “jogging” – red cheeks, messed
hair, a veil of sweat which covers his forehead and drips from his temples, his
chest which rises and falls in the slightly adherent T-shirt. It’s the first
time I’ve seen him without a baggy tracksuit and, good heavens, it was better
not knowing.

Andrea
is practically Linda, Andrea is practically Linda, Andrea is practically Linda.

My
gaze involuntarily slides to his pectorals and I think that today with my
mantra I’ll have to go over my usual dozen times. If he doesn’t cover up I’ll
probably have to repeat it the entire time.

Andrea
follows my gaze and maybe thinks the same thing, because he picks up the
sweatshirt that was thrown at the foot of the tree near the beginning of the
bike path and puts it on. I redden slightly and turn away. And Linda tries to
tell me that the different levels don’t exist. Here’s what I was talking about!
Here are the levels! When you belong to Andrea’s level, you’re even more hot
after doing sports. The people at my level are not fit to be seen.

“Let’s
do some stretching,” I hear his voice behind me.

“We
usually do it after…” I protest weakly.

The
stretching session is that painful moment when, every blessed time, Andrea
tries to put his hands on me – in a purely innocent way, of course – and I… lose
it. Completely. It’s just that I can’t resist the impulse to pull away from
him. I simply can’t stand for someone like him to touch all this… fat. So he
tries to do something that he’d do with anyone else, even with my grandmother
for instance, and I – as a total nutcase, I realize, and this is probably the
worst thing! – flee, attempting to hide the fact that I’m fleeing. I badmouth
him and create other lovely scenes that I’d like to avoid remembering at the
moment.

“Today
we’ll do it before.” I’m not sure, but there seems to be a slight note of
challenge in his tone.

Without
saying anything, I slowly come closer and stop a good fifty centimeters away.
Andrea puts himself in a position which I copy. He does another and then
another. At the fourth I draw a breath of relief. Maybe he’s finally got it!
After about ten minutes we begin my workout. He has completely recovered his
breathing – now it seems as though he didn’t do anything and just arrived from
home after a night of repose.

“Just
out of curiosity, how much did you do before I got here?” I ask after a bit.

“I
went around the lake.”

I
stop. I know that it is specifically prohibited in Andrea’s Ten Commandments
for Running, but it comes out spontaneously. “What?” I ask in a shrill voice.

He
turns to me, notes that I’ve stopped and comes back. He pulls on my sleeve.

“You
did what?” I repeat in a voice I don’t even recognize as my own as I follow
him, dazed.

He
glances at me from his height of one hundred-eighty-eight centimeters. “You
heard me. I went around the lake.”

This
shocks me to such a point that I can’t speak for several minutes. It’s about
thirty kilometers of track and I, frankly, don’t think I’ve done thirty
kilometers on foot all of last year.

“You
know how I do this kind of thing?” He breaks the silence after almost ten
minutes.

“You’re
Superman in disguise?” I answer with a smile. “I bet if I looked at your ID
card I’d see ‘Andrea Clark Colucci’ written there.”

He
doesn’t laugh, or smile, he looks straight ahead and speaks as though I hadn’t
opened my mouth. “Motivation. It’s motivation that gets you to do incredible
things.” He thinks for a bit and adds, “Motivation together with a precise
limit line in terms of time.”

I
don’t say anything, he doesn’t seem to be in the mood for pleasant conversation
today.

“My
motivation is the Iron Man race I’ve signed up for, and the deadline is August
of this year,” he continues, and at this point I feel the obligation to
participate. “That’s great! Where will it be held?”

He
glances at me. “In the United States.”

I
just say, “Nice,” a little because he’s too serious today, a little because
we’re already halfway through the workout and I’m beginning to heat up and have
breathing difficulties.

“At
this point the question is – what is your motivation?”

I
knew it. I knew that we’d get to something like this and just now, when I can’t
manage to speak anymore or think lucidly. I know he won’t give up until I say
something to him, so I answer almost immediately, “Buy myself some clothes.”

He
steals a glance and raises his eyebrows. “Really? This is your big motivation? To
buy yourself clothes?” His tone is decidedly scornful.