Cardiofitness by Alessandra Montrucchio

Now she had to get to know him better.
On Tuesday Stefania - black leotard, eyelashes quivering with mascara, ponytail nice and fluffy - spotted Tendina as soon as she got out of the changing room. She was supposed to go on the exercise bike, and whether it was destiny or because the cycle was the standard warm-up exercise for anyone doing weights, Tendina was there pedalling away. On his own.
"Hi."
"Hi."
Stefania sat on the saddle of the cycle. Her feet barely reached the pedals. Tendina showed her how to lower the saddle. Then, since (pretending, but only partly) she couldn't make out the digital counter and all those buttons and that damned lever which changed the resistance of the pedals, he helped her select speed, duration, degree of difficulty of the exercise. And so she could start up the conversation. A conversation about the wind and rain, to tell the truth, but there you go, every little helps. And there was nothing there to make anybody suspicious, a fifteen-year-old and a twenty-six-year-old chatting on the bikes.
"Have you been coming here long?"
"No, just a few days. How about you?"
"Me, oh, a year and a half. I come here with some friends. Are you here on your own?"
"More or less. Sometimes I come with my father."
(Sometimes. Why are you looking so surprised? Because Stefania really was taken aback: if the Barnacle was Tendina's father, it meant that he had spawned before he was twenty - never mind surprise, that was to weep for.)
"No - surely not! Don't tell me that the chap who was talking to you yesterday was..."
"He's my father."
"But he's so young!"
"He's thirty-three."
"And how old are you?" (Let's tell him he looks older, because adolescents always like to look older than they really are.) "Seventeen?"
"No, almost sixteen. It's my birthday in a couple of weeks. What about you?"
"Twenty-six."
"I would have thought you were twenty-two or twenty-three, no more than that."
"Yes, everybody tells me I look younger than my age."
(Bloody stupid cliché to come out with. But on Tendina's face a smile was opening out like an April flower.)
"You're still studying, I guess."
"Yes, as an electrician." (The look on her mother's face if she introduced her to a fifteen-year-old who'd barely got his basic exams and had an ear-ring in his left ear.) "What do you do? Do you work?"
"I wish. I graduated in Languages a year and a half ago, but it's not that easy. Well, I did have a job but - well, I've just finished a postgraduate course at the University and now I'm doing another one as an interpreter. For all the good it will do me."
(No expression on the face of the future electrician when faced with the future super-qualified linguist.)
"Right, I'm going on the rowing machine," announced Tendina.
"Okay. See you upstairs."
But Stefania had decided to do eight minutes on the stepper, a machine which - well, what a surprise - was just a couple down from the rowing machine. Not that the stepper was part of her routine, but how would the other gym-goers ever work out that she was risking a coronary on that damned machine simply so she could get another look at Tendina? It was just a pity that while she was gamely struggling on the machine's pedals (virtual, but realistically knackering), he was still waiting his turn at the rowing machine. That meant that she would have to go on to the fitness suite before he had finished rowing - and the fitness suite was dismally far away from the cardiofitness gadgets such as the rowing machine and the cycles. But Tendina smiled at her a couple of times, and Stefania trotted off to the fitness suite with a jaunty step.
When next they were together, about ten minutes later, Stefania had checked out that the Barnacle wasn't there and that the conversation could pursue its brilliant course: the next topic was aerobics, since Guy's class would begin at eight o'clock. The Barnacle was nowhere to be seen and their conversation carried on reasonably smoothly. But Tendina decided not to do aerobics and come eight o'clock Stefania found herself, just like the week before, peering at him through the double filter of translucent glass and mirror. And to add to all that at twenty to nine he headed off towards the changing-rooms. So she could kiss goodbye to the last possibility of anything along the lines of if your father's not here how are you getting home, can I give you a lift? Stefania finished the class half-heartedly, abandoned Cecilia to the Beast and his amore I telefonare te tomorrow, left Rossana and Ilaria to moan at the Wailing Wall, and sauntered down towards the changing-rooms. If he'd gone for the showers at twenty to nine, Tendina would be coming out any time now so she would have to lie in wait for him around the reception area but without letting the Broomstick spot her - Stefania was pacing between changing room swimming pool and gymand suddenly, there he was.
Not in his outdoor clothes and not in the Reception.
In his swimming trunks. He'd obviously just got out of the water. (And he must have seen her anxiously pacing up and down.)
Tendina stopped in front of her. With a half smile on his lips, his wet hair finally off his face and a hand on his chest, just below a nipple, which might as well have been a flashing arrow with TOUCH HERE written on it. Stefania noticed a worrying stab of pain which shot from her heart down her left arm.
"Hey, have you been for a swim?"
(As if you couldn't tell.)
"I don't mind swimming. Don't you ever go in the pool?"
"I'm afraid of the water." And when prompted by Tendina, Stefania launched into a synthesis which in a few short sentences was intended to communicate the triple concept of a) I don't like swimming b) For me the sea is the abyss in which I cannot live and c) When I was small they threw me into the swimming-pool when I couldn't swim; but all she managed to express was her childish shock.
"Well, I'm off to get changed."
(Go on Stefy, ask him.)
"How do you get home, when you come on your own? Have you got a bike,or..."
"I get the bus. A real pain, because I have to get two of them."
"Where do you live?"
"In Corso Francia - up near the Tourist Hotel."
"I see... listen, do you want a lift? I'm meeting someone in the centre anyway, it's on my way..."
(Well, she really was meeting someone.)
"That's great, thanks."
(Had Tendina already seen through her?)
"Okay then... right, whoever's ready first waits for the other one."
Beating her personal best record, in twenty minutes - twenty minutes - Stefania showered, washed and dried her hair, dressed, put on make-up, made her friends keep their voices down about the new turn of events (she only met him yesterday and she's already whisking him off in her car, the maniac) and arrived in reception before Tendina. She waited for him sitting on a sofa, knees crossed, relaxed-looking; she ran into the Beast who described the place he was going to dinner (I mangiare pizza con miei's amici) and finally Tendina appeared. He wore a duffle-coat and looked like a character from Dead Poets Society. Stefania got up with some difficulty as her legs would not obey her brain and gave him a little curtsey. He smiled.
"Shall we go?"
"Let's go."
They went out one behind the other as the Broomstick watched them curiously, then they moved side by side. Tendina smelt of sandalwood.
"Where's your car?"
He was next to her. So tall, so scented. So gracious in his movements, as if he didn't want to disturb the air around him.
"Over the road."
"What sort of car have you got?"
She could for example shift her sports bag from her right shoulder to her left one, and as she pulled the strap off her shoulder she could - whoops! accidentally touch him, Tendina and his smell.
"A Méhari-that yellow one there."
"A Méhari?? Jesus it's a beauty! I didn't think there were any around any more."
"Oh, mine must be twenty-five or twenty-six years old. It was mygrandfather's."
"He must have been really cool, your grandfather."
"He must've been what?"
"I mean, he must have been a great guy."
"I don't know, he used the Méhari around the countryside. And for the moment that's all I can afford, even if it's so draughty I'll probably get rheumatism."
They threw their bags onto the back seat and sat side by side. Tendina caressed the dashboard, as if he couldn't get his head round being in what he probably thought of as a fascinating archaeological exhibit. Stefania looked at his neat fingernails, his thin legs, his delicate profile. She would do better to concentrate on the road.
During their journey (short, unfortunately, and even the traffic lights were against her, always red when you are late and invariably green when you would like the moment to last just a bit longer), Stefania learnt the first important details.
a. Sicilian parents - that explained his sensual, tired way of speaking. And the shiver that had gone down her spine when Tendina had said you've got a funny accent, it's nice though;
b. date of birthGod, even a different decade;
c. not many friends and especially turned off by big groups in which it's impossible to be yourselfthat much they had in common;
d. in summer, bumming around with Dad; in the winter, skiing, still with the Barnacle (but where was his mother in all this?);
e. the unusual hobby of getting on a bus simply to watch people. A detail of some importance, if not fundamental, to someone like her who is obsessed with clinical cases.
But as ever important events come rushing at you just when you don't have time, you have to go and you can't stay to savour the moment.
"Do you go to the gym a lot?" Tendina asked her.
"Oh...practically every day. What about you?"
"I try to go every day too. Are you going tomorrow?"
(Are you going tomorrow?)
"Yes."
"See you tomorrow then."
Fragments beyond time as eyes look into eyes, repeated goodbyes that are a meaningless echo as neither seems willing to move, the heart which has perhaps given out but who cares about that now, in other words a blurred shot out of a vintage romantic drama. Then those fragments slot back into normal time and Tendina has been swallowed up by his own front door.

Stefania was driving towards the centre now, one of the few cars on the dark streets of midweek Turin. She pressed the pedals, turned the wheel, grated the gears, and all the time she, the most Cartesian of them all, the most sceptical and cynical of Charlie's Angels, she felt as though she were flying. Oh Tendina, there's nothing I can teach you, but if you were to take my hand we could both try and escape the prison of our own banality, if you take my hand. A dramatic and tear-jerking sound-track with full violins would have been the perfect accompaniment to that ecstatic flight on cloud nine. Oh Tendina, together we won't change the world, but perhaps we could change ourselves just a bit, and that would be a small miracle, a small, phosphorescent miracle. Tugging at the steering-wheel, with the car in the wrong gear, Stefania continued her flight; and as she sailed over the lucid geometry of the city, she sensed that the Tactics of Operation Tendina were at an end, that perhaps something would come out of it and perhaps not, but anyway what was important was something else altogether - what was important was that flying carpet, it was the fact that she had started writing again, that she had experienced those few moments outside of time and that she could be glad of the simple fact of Tendina's existence. And there you are, you might, perhaps, almost have thought that, maybe, it was love. If the world hadn't already given it another name.