By Leone Belotti
Step 1:
Jerusalem-Jerusalem, 9.7 km (individual time trial)
"Behold the righteous among the nations."
As soon as we arrive at the Rosti Bar, our friends rightly start making fun of Gino.
"What did you bring hidden in the frame of your Campagnolo today?"
“Nothing I can’t fit in anywhere you know,” he replies. Gino is in a wheelchair. Pushing him and his wheelchair to Rosti Bar is my social fitness, until they give me my driver’s license back.
Mery today is wearing a burgundy blouse so tight it looks like a slice of vacuum-packed speck. Her stomach and breasts are as flat as a board, but those two beam nails that seem to pierce the fabric are enough to make you think. When she comes out from behind the counter I see her fuchsia leggings and wedges/slippers with pink pom-poms, like the lipstick on her lips as thin as anchovies.
“You’re all sweaty, darling,” he says to me.
"And you have lipstick on your teeth, dear."
“Thanks, darling,” and he wipes it with his tongue. A huge, scary tongue.
"Mery!" Gino calls her "look, there's someone thinner than you"
On the screen Tom Dumoulin is doing his feat. Mery, for a long moment, watches the Dutchman pedaling on the screen. Silence falls in the Rosti Bar. She looks at Dumoulin, and everyone looks at her, in that arrogant womanly pose, one hand on her hip, her pelvis thrust forward.
Then he says: "He wins"
"What, the stage or the tour?" asks Berlinguer. He has a pencil in his hand, and in a notebook he has written down the bets. Mery doesn't answer him.
Shortly after, the rankings come out. The Dutchman gave almost a minute to our Aru. Merelli had bet that he would be under 30 seconds, and with him Gino.
“We’re off to a good start,” he says. He sounds like a kid whose snack has been stolen. “If he gets a minute in 10 kilometers, how many will he get in 3,000?”
"It's not always time," Mery consoles him. But the entire crew of the Rosti Bar is depressed.
And then Mery takes out the load: «Come on, stallions! As soon as I see a Rosti on the podium I'll offer everyone a ride on the house».
From the cheers of the old men, a doubt arises in me. What tour is he talking about?