ONCE IT WAS DIFFERENT
Before introducing himself to the interview with the foreman, this morning, Piero recalled a gallant appointment when he was eighteen.
His cousin Emma wanted to introduce a friend to him. "To help him get out of the shell," he said joking around.
Emma lived with her family in front of Piero's house and knew about him "life, death and miracles", as the common friends used to say. So he knew that Piero, who was also a handsome boy, had never gone out with a girl alone.
Of course, sometimes he had the opportunity to kiss or something more pushed, for example at the festivals of the country, as happened to everyone.
However, he never had a real date.
That evening would have been the first time for Piero. Emma's friend was about fifteen miles from there. Emma had organized everything in detail, in a pub almost halfway.
Piero would certainly have arrived earlier.
So, waiting for her at the entrance to the pub, she remembered this morning, Piero, the wrong rigor had returned to him the year before in front of the talent scouts of the major series.
They had come on purpose from Rome. Two executives of as many so-called "satellite" companies of the major teams of the capital. They had heard of him and his ability to drive the midfield.
Someone doubted his coldness in the door, but for a director who played in front of the defense like him it was not a problem.
But every now and then he was forced to shoot the penalties.
Like on that occasion. A ball that, unfortunately, was decisive for his team, who with that goal would have won the group and, by accessing the regional stages, he and his team-mates would have had the opportunity to show off and be chosen by important teams.
The goalkeeper was a little boy and Piero did not expect a flicker like the one that took the ball from the corner, sending it on the pole and then to the side. That match ended even. The talent scouts did not show up in the locker room and Piero discovered that he had been "seen", as was said in the jargon, only the following week.
At the appointment with Emma's friend, Piero had presented himself twenty minutes early. After dressing elegantly, under the supervision of his mother and Emma, he had run away from home to give vent to excitement. He had driven as if suspended with his whole car two meters from the road, so he felt euphoric.
The memory of rigor, sitting at the counter waiting for Emma's friend, stopped him for a few moments. When the girl arrived, Piero still had the sensation of a knot between stomach and intestine. A feeling that only disappeared when he lay down in bed, a few hours later.
This morning, before leaving home for the job interview, the good-bye greeting of his father arrived: "You know what to do, Piero".
The interview is the fourth with the company. After the preliminary one, the one with the psychologist and the one in English. The last step, in fact, is the meeting with the foreman. The most important and decisive, because it is carried out with the man with whom one must collaborate if hired.
The mother, on the door of the house, placed the collar of his jacket and gave him a kiss on the cheek without saying a word.
"So you never played as a professional, is that it?" Piero listens to the question of the man in front of him. A guy with a mustache and glasses, holding his curriculum vitae on the desk.
"Yes, that's it," he replied.
"Who knows what happened? I do not even remember what that friend of Emma's name is, "Piero asked himself to himself.