Monday, 5th July 1993

                                    

                                          
            
                          
Marco came to my door at the time agreed, in front of me mostly a cadaver. But at least that time he got like that just for fun.
                          
"We're fighting against rust, eh?!"
                          
"There's no a muscle which is not hurting me now."
                          
"Also your face is not so well, if I can say."
                          
He reacted mugging, therefore definitively touchy.
                          
"Perhaps I should have done like others, taking a day off."
                          
"You're still in time if you want."
                          
"Come on, let's go. Otherwise we'll find traffic."
                          
It meant no.
                          
Marco proceeded like a snail, accompanying each movement with an exaggerated amount of grimaces. Or he had a very low pain threshold, more or less like all men, either he felt very bad.
                          
"Do you want me to get you at work or at the emergency recovery?"
                          
But the joke quickly finished, unhappily.
                          
"At work, alive."
                          
I pretended to be indifferent. He opened the trunk where he put our bags, then he handed me the keys.
                          
"Take it."
                          
"Are you joking?!"
                          
"Absolutely not."
                          
"Do you want me to drive Eva?!"
                          
"Eva?! Did you give a nickname to my car? How did you do that?!"
                          
"Delta Evolution, Evo. But it's a car, so as female name it becomes Eva. Like the first woman, primordial object of passion and desire for a man, just like sporting cars. Isn't that good?"
                          
"Wouldn't you like join my marketing staff in the future?"
                          
"You should ask to his boss."
                          
Marco shook his head, thinking to who knows what.
                          
"However no, thank you."
                          
"What? Wouldn't you like to work with me?"
                          
"No, your car. I don't want to ruin it, I know you care about it."
                          
"It's just a car."
                          
Just a car. Marco wanted to make some therapy that morning, to turn another important page of his life.
                          
"Last week you said I could drive it only if you were desperate, tired is not enough."
                          
"Are you sure to have seen me well this morning? I can't even walk, let alone to hold the steering wheel. My hands are also full of blisters, look."
                          
He was looking for my pity to win also that morning, it didn't take him so long to convince me. I unexpectedly sat on the driver seat, with an huge smile reached also my ears. I moved the seat forward, then I got intimate with the instrumentation, then I put my hands on the wheel, uneasy. I couldn't believe it!
                          
Before I turned on the ignition key, the second pilot spoke again:
                          
"Giulia, just a recommendation."
                          
One, yes. However I attentively looked at him, if I were in his place I'd have been even worse.
                          
"Be careful with the accelerator. Eva is sensitive and she revs up fast, exactly like women."
                          
"Okay dad, I obey!"
                          
I turned the key and I made a first attempt still firm, carefully pressing the right pedal, just to test my empathy with the beast. Despite my cautiousness a crazy roar came out. Luckily the hand brake was still on and the gear not yet plugged in.
                          
Marco covered his face with the ruined hands, then he bent over the knees with the head between his hands; I sensed some euphoria held, I believed necessary to defuse the tension of the moment. I had never seen him like that before, without barriers; in the end my clumsiness was a good therapy, if we got home healthy and safe.
                          
"All right, it doesn't matter" he commented panting. Maybe telling that more to himself than to me.
                          
"Did you change your mind?"
                          
"Let's go" he then told me convinced.
                          
Ready, steady, go. The right feeling with the accelerator was soon reached, I only had some difficulties with the clutch; on the first curves of the inner road I faced several problems during the gear change and Eva's engine immediately protested to make me realize it. Marco simulated an heart attack by placing his right hand on that beat for other reasons already so fatigued.
                          
"Aren't you well?"
                          
"Don't distract yourself, look at the road."
                          
He spoke again only a few kilometres after, probably when he felt almost all his anxieties under control:
                          
"I need to sleep. Have fun."
                          
"Do you want to die in the peace of sleep?"
                          
"No, I'd like to try to recover more before the office."
                          
So devastated it wasn't possible, but it was a mourning he had to elaborate a little at a time, we had all the journey to Milan for hoping he could do it. Meanwhile first-aid manoeuvres were welcome; at the first open pharmacy I stopped to buy the aspirin, he waited for me in the car. He immediately swallowed two pills, without water and even without first having breakfast, not exactly a smart choice. And who knows how many times he already did it in the past, I felt apprehension.
                          
The second stop was then to the baker, where I bought some sweet carbohydrates he could entertain with during the trip, at cost of crumbling on his precious velvety seats. Even that time he consumed everything without offering or waiting I insisted more.
                          
I also offered him to refuel to repay him for all the free past rides, but my travel companion put together all the last survived energies to make determined resistance.
                          
A trip with more stops and chats than kilometres.
                          
Not so eager to go to work that morning, honestly.
                          
I knew what I left behind, even more what was waiting for me once at destination.