CAs if that wasn’t enough, it was raining. And to think that the day had started well, with the brand new Star-tac cell phone that she had given herself for her birthday. It had cost her a fortune, but you only turn thirty once, right? Then, just as soon as she inserted her phone card and turned on her laptop, the message arrived. Plus it was raining, hard. It couldn’t have gone any worse. He cried all the way along the way, trying to call back to no avail (a voice insisted: “customer not reachable”), confusing tears and raindrops on his face.
She arrived at work, soaked, angry, tired. And late. The boss treated her very badly. There was a client who had already been waiting in the massage room for a quarter of an hour, they had offered her a coffee and then made her undress, but now they no longer knew how to waste time, waiting for “her highness” to deign to show up. It was time for Sonia to take on her responsibilities, to stop acting like a naughty little girl. He almost sent her to hell and left everything and everyone behind. Then, out of a sense of responsibility, she decided that at least this last client, who was waiting for her innocently half naked on the bed, should receive her treatment. Because she was good as a masseuse, otherwise that bitch would have kept her in her massage center. And in black, by the way.
He entered the small, dim room. He apologized, choked back the tears in his throat, and freed himself to begin work.
“Oh,” said the woman lying on her face, looking at the phone that Sonia had just placed on the shelf: “A Star-tac! So many memories!”.
“What, excuse me?”.
“I had one too, it worked great.”
“But…”. Sonia didn’t understand. “It’s a new model, how is this possible?”.
The woman bit her lip, as if she realized she had revealed an unspeakable secret. “Yes, of course, you’re right.” You could tell he was making up an excuse at the moment.
“It’s just that I had the previous model and so…”.
“I guess I’ll change it anyway” replied Sonia dejectedly, starting the massage.
“And why, darling?”.
Illustration by Fred Benaglia
The woman had a warm and affectionate voice. A familiar voice, like that of an old aunt you haven’t seen for years but who has known you since you were a child.
“It only brought me bad luck.”
“Why do you say that?”.
“Why…”. He couldn’t hold back a tear that dripped down the woman’s back, making her shiver.
“Excuse me, excuse me…” he said hastily cleaning her shoulders.
“Darling, what’s going on?” the woman asked, turning around. Sonia let herself go. He needed a confessor.
“It’s just that today is my birthday and the first message I received was from my boyfriend who left me. Do you understand?” He wiped a tear with the back of his hand.
“Not even a phone call. We were together for four years, we were looking for an apartment, I had imagined my future life with him and instead…”.
By now he was crying without restraint.
“Today is also my birthday. I turned thirty and I feel very old”.
“Don’t say that darling. Just think, today is also my birthday, I turned sixty. Twice your age”.
He sat down, motioned for the girl to sit next to him then offered her a tissue.
“If you are old then what am I? With one foot in the grave?”.
“No, ma’am, I would never allow myself…”.
He accepted the handkerchief and the invitation to sit next to him.
“Excuse me, I’m acting like a little girl, but I’m thirty now, I should behave like a woman”.
“Oh, you know… time moves so strangely. At your age, the goal of sixty seemed very far awayand now that I actually have them, thinking back to my thirties seems like yesterday. Yet, it’s still thirty years. But from where you look at them they seem long or short. You have no idea how many things will happen to you. In your life and in the world. Just think that when you were born there were the Beatles and the Berlin Wall. Who knows what you’ll see in the next millennium.”
“And this should be enough for me not to feel sad?”.
“But no, of course, darling. But, stop and think about it for a moment: maybe it’s better this way, right? Once the tooth is pulled, the pain is gone. That boy didn’t deserve you, especially if he ran away like that, with a WhatsApp, from you and his responsibilities. A real coward.”
“With what?”.
“Ah, no sorry… I meant: with a little message…”.
He lay down, as if to change the subject.
“Come on, finish your work. I think I need a good restoration.”
They remained in silence for a few minutes.
“Is today really his birthday?” Sonia then asked, continuing to massage her.
“I wish I could get there so toned at her age.”
“Sure honey. Sixty round. Or, if you want, twice thirty, you decide.”
“And what did she give herself?”.
The woman smiled. “This massage.”
“And I’m ruining it for you with my whining, sorry, I’m being unprofessional.”
“But no. Everything is fine. I’m where I wanted to be and with the right person.”
A few more minutes of silence. When Sonia turned her onto her back the woman looked her straight in the eyes.
“I only ask you one thing, as a gift, will you allow me?”.
“Of course, go ahead.”
“Don’t do it.”
“What?”.
“Now, as soon as you’re done with me, don’t leave slamming the door. Wait for the morning to pass. Then you can decide to send that unpleasant owner of yours to hell.”
“But how do you know…”.
“Trust me, okay?”.
Sonia couldn’t say anything more. That woman fascinated and worried her at the same time. He finished the job and let her get dressed.
“I’ll leave the money to you,” the woman said, and it wasn’t a question.
“Yes, okay. It’s fifty thousand lire.”
“Here it is.” He gave the note to the girl.
“I kept them on purpose, you know?”.
“Thank you ma’am…”.
She had calmed down. Well, after all, her ex was an idiot. Better to lose him than find him, someone like that.
“Indeed, I’m always here when you want…”.
“Don’t say for sure. The future is a mystery. And after all, that’s its beauty, isn’t it?”
He left. And Sonia had the clear feeling that she would never see her again. He looked at the banknote and for no specific reason decided that he would not hand it over to the cashier. That he would keep it in his pocket as a good luck charm. Half an hour later the owner told her there was another customer waiting. A boy.
“How did it go?” the man asks as he seats the woman inside the time device.
“Everything is fine, I think he will do what he has to do” she replies with conviction.
“Thank goodness I kept that banknote in my drawer for all these years, I couldn’t pay it in euros! What about you?” “I convinced him that he should go and get a massage” he replies, typing on the keyboard.
“Of course, I explained to him, it was a gift for his girlfriend, but if she had left it without a reason, what should she have done, throw the money away?”.
Then the light. They disappeared.
The boy had such a shy and awkward behavior that it made me want to eat him with kisses. He made excuse after excuse: he had never had a massage, it was the first time, in reality he wasn’t supposed to come and that, in short, he was ashamed like a child. Then he placed his cell phone on the shelf. A Star-tac.
“It’s not possible!” she said, incredulous.
“Look,” he said, pointing to the two paired cell phones.
“They look like twins.”
“Soulmates” thought Sonia, smiling.
They were both thirty years old. Full of life and the desire to live it. They would encounter ups and downs. They would have demonstrated in Genoa, seen the Twin Towers collapse, taken out a mortgagechatted on social media, had two children, changed jobs, changed cities. They would travel to the future time. And maybe even in the pastwith who knows what time machine would have been invented, perhaps in 2026, when at sixty, thirty will seem very close. But all this didn’t matter now. The most important thing was that it had stopped raining. They left the massage center, arm in arm. The sun blessed them.
Gianni Biondillo is an architect and writer. He published with Guanda the series dedicated to Inspector Ferraro and many other novels and anthologies. He writes for cinema and television, lives in Milan with his wife and two daughters. The last effort is The perfect storm and other stories (Guanda), an eclectic (like him) collection of stories that move between science fiction and history: from the Roman days of the attack on Mussolini to the Milan of the Sixties, from the tablet in the hand of a boy to the months of lockdown.
