Mirko is happy, or at least he thinks he is. He can’t think of anything that could dim the glow of this moment.
He spent the evening with his longtime friends, who by now consider him something on the order of a minor god. At a certain point, he even pulled out one of the two fifty-euro bills, with feigned distraction, to make them think that it had plenty of company in his wallet, and said, “Guagliu’, this round is on me. This is for all the times you guys stood me beers, when I didn’t have a cent to my name.” So cool! And a couple of them have even had their hair cut in a Mohawk, just like his. In short, he feels important.
And Antonio gave him a hug when he brought back the money from selling the baggies. He pinched Mirko on the cheek and told him, “Bravo, guagliuncie’. You did good, believe me.” And he said it right in front of two guys from another neighborhood, guys Mirko knows by sight but understands are in business with Antonio. Those guys looked at him and nodded their heads affirmatively, with serious faces. In other words, the next time they see him, they’ll know him; they might even say hello to him.
Everything that occurs to him tonight makes him smile. Outside the rich kids’ school that morning he saw the blonde girl again. Always surrounded by her girlfriends. One of them, a cute brunette, even came over to buy a baggie, but he’d already sold everything he had. Too bad, because maybe he would have given it to her and kicked in the ten euros for Antonio himself, in exchange for the blonde girl’s name, or even her cell number.
He decides that when things start spinning along at full capacity, the first thing he’ll do is trade in his motor scooter and get a real motorcycle instead. He’s seen the blonde taking the bus home from school, or getting in her girlfriend’s micro car, one of those tiny unlicensed cars. So if he shows up outside the school on a real motorbike, maybe not like the one Antonio rides, but one at least as good as the bikes those idiots he goes to school with ride, then she’d really have no option but to accept a ride home from him. Then he’d know where she lives.
But first, Mirko thinks as he climbs the road homeward, he’ll need to do something for his mother. A man, if he’s a real man, has to pay his debts before anything else. And his mother brought him up, making sure he had everything he needed. He hadn’t been forced to steal, he’d never pulled any of the bullshit that other kids in the quarter got up to, because his mother, even if she was single, made sure that his every whim was satisfied.
So now, Mamma, the first lot of money is for you. I’ll take you out to the movies, and then to dinner in a restaurant. And then maybe I’ll get you some new clothes. A flowered dress, like the ones you used to look at wide-eyed in the shop windows on the Via Toledo, when you used to come pick me up from school.
By now he’s almost home, he’s in the courtyard. He props his motor scooter in its usual place. He looks up: the window is illuminated. Never once has he come home to find her asleep, even if he stays out as late as he has tonight. But tonight is special, Mamma. Because so many different things have happened, all of them wonderful. Now let me lock the chain on the scooter, and I’m hurrying upstairs to tell you all about it.
Tonight it begins.