Free About Time by Simona Sparaco

horror, and stuffing it in a big plastic bag like any other piece of rubbish. The end of everything. And not even knowing how the people who gather for your funeral will behave. The fear that nobody might be experiencing genuine grief, nobody will have the feeling as they make their way home that part of them has died along with you, that nobody will think you’re irreplaceable. And it can happen just like that, in an instant. You look around and thirty years are nothing but a handful of memories, and the other thirty to come, even assuming there are thirty, look set to go by even faster. Tomorrow, I could wake up already old. I wonder if my last thought will be of You. Deep down there’s only oblivion, and it’s never before seemed so overwhelming tome. It’s poked its head out, and however absurd it may seem, nobody can hope to escape it.
     
    Drring, drring.
    It’s the penetrating ring of my new alarm clock, the one I bought when I realized I couldn’t keep letting the doorman wake me.
    It’s 6.30, and my race is about to start.
    My meeting with Righini, who’s just got back from Hong Kong, has been fixed for midday, so I can at least find a few seconds to devote to the mirror.
    It turns out not to be such a good idea. I look like a mess, my face is pale and emaciated. I must have lost a few kilos, which doesn’t cheer me up at all.
    As I comb my hair, I think again about my Aston Martin, I haven’t seen her since before Paris and I’m starting to miss her. She represents everything my life was until not so long ago: an unconscious race. Always a few friends or a pretty woman on board, me throwing the keys to a valet outside some exclusive club or other, a crowd of people stopping to watch us. It’s in homage to these memories that I decide I’ll steal a few seconds today to drop by the garage and say hello to my baby.
    The garage is dark, especially early in the morning when the shutters haven’t been completely raised and the light gives out before it gets to the far end. I step carefully, searching for her among the many parked cars, and my mounting sense of expectation makes me want to take her away, to go for a ride in her.
    There she is, a black shadow calling to me through the air damp with the smell of tyres and fuel. I keep walking, admiring her from a distance, but then stop abruptly when I realize that where my baby should be there’s nothing but a heap of dusty scrap metal.
    There must be some mistake.
    No mistake, that’s my number plate.
    What the hell kind of joke is this? I feel faint. I take a step forward, then another one, five very slow steps that take me into her decaying presence.
    Not even a fire or an act of vandalism could have reduced her to that state. She seems to have aged a thousand years, as if she’d been abandoned in some remote part of the world. She’s in pieces, completely covered in dust, her wheels askew, her bodywork dented, her leather interior torn to shreds: who could have done something like this?
    “Stefano!”
    The garage owner comes out of his lodge, almost scared. “Signor Romano, what is it?”
    “My Aston Martin! What the hell happened to her?”
    Stefano turns pale. “Nothing, Signor Romano, absolutely nothing.”
    Like hell, nothing. “Come and see!”
    We hurry through the garage, me in a panic and Stefano worried about an incident he can’t even explain. 
    “Who touched her?” I scream at him. “Who the hell touched her? She’s a collector’s item, don’t you realize that?”
    “Signor Romano, please, let me just see…I don’t understand.”
    There she is. There at the far end. Her silhouette stands out against the white wall, in the almost luminescent darkness. She looks newer than ever. Not a scratch, not even a speck of dust.
    I’m as embarrassed as he is, although he heaves a sigh of relief and looks at me in a daze.
    “I’m really sorry,” I stammer. “It’s just that… I don’t know… I can’t have looked properly. It