Loose End. Eva Mikula

after a few weeks, still looking out from the balcony of the house, I saw a van with the back door open, in front of the shop. They loaded the furniture and some boxes. The owners had given up: they no longer intended to continue their business. In my opinion they couldn't even cover their expenses because a supermarket had opened nearby.

      It was an opportunity not to be missed. In perfect Eva style, I immediately got in touch with the owners of the walls, an elderly couple. He was really very nice, she was a witch. Man of other times, Calabrian. I told him: "I saw that they are leaving the place. I want to take it ".

      Luck or coincidence? Here's what happened to me in those days. And then tell me if I didn't have a hand from heaven, which paved the way for me to realize my project, which was also my dream. Within those walls of that street there had never been a bar or even a restaurant.

      I needed the license. I called the office in charge of the Municipality. Since the licenses were limited to each district, I asked if there was a free one close to the street that interested me. The employee replied that no, there was nothing available. I was upset but I didn't give up, I insisted on the phone. I convinced her to double check. "Wait, wait... please give me the number you are interested in... let me see something". I dictated the exact address again and, as if by magic, she replied: "You are lucky miss, because from number 700 to 780 the licenses are free!". It was now done, I obtained the license from the municipality without having to take it over from others, paying only the cost of the administrative documents. I rented the premises and contacted the Lazio Region to obtain the funding dedicated to female entrepreneurship, I had the requirements of Legislative Decree no. 185/2000. I had also enrolled in the training course for the food trade and the administration of food and drink to study and obtain the professional requirement.

      After nine months, just like the time of a pregnancy and after an investment of two hundred thousand euros, I realized my secret wish: I inaugurated the bar, restaurant and diner, which, in a short time, became the flagship of food and bevarage of the area.

      I had redone all the interiors: masonry, systems, kitchen, bathrooms, changing rooms, the living room, the furnishings, the graphics, in short, everything. I made a careful selection of staff based on the desire to do and the desire to grow. Things were going well, really well, I was happy. I started work in the morning at six and came home at midnight, shoulder to shoulder with my employees, we had made a good team.

      It was tiring, but time wasn't wasted. After a year, the business was launched, the customers were numerous and, many of them, regulars.

      I was finally in control of myself and everything that interested me: I had no partners, no boyfriends or husbands. Free and happy, I trusted only myself, I constantly monitored the work of my employees, I managed and planned my small business every day, I did not delegate anything to anyone. I had a camera system installed to keep everything safe and I took care of the customers, offering first class service every day, where the smile was never lacking. It was my thing and it worked great. The passion for work stimulated creativity and ideas.

      During the weekends the place had also become a meeting place for the young people of the area, who then went to the center of Rome in the evening to the most attractive nightlife areas. I offered a wide choice of aperitifs and turned the bar into a pub by putting on lounge music and soft lighting. So in the end many of those guys stayed with me all evening. They preferred my place to raids in the center.

      Many Romanian citizens also lived in that neighborhood. The community was large and strong. I contacted a Romanian cook and on Sundays I offered dishes of the typical cuisine of my country. They came to me in ever more numerous groups. I had to set the tables outside. To express the idea of the success of those Sundays based on Romanian cuisine: I bought whole pallets of beer, but they were never enough. Destiny, which is no coincidence, always knocks on your door when you least expect it, as if to remind you that it never abandons you. It is only a matter of understanding whether to accept it, to let oneself go into its arms or to resist: just a matter of choices. However, it was at the very peak of my success as a restaurateur, that the phone calls from friends who complained because they had lost track of me came in mercilessly. How to blame them. I was only thinking about work and I was no longer looking for them. One became more insistent than the others.

      “Eva, you are gone, you didn't go out anymore. Since you have this place you are buried in there”. She was absolutely right. Relationships and, above all, friendships must be cultivated and maintained; they are good for the spirit if they are pure and sincere. So it was that I accepted her invitation to go out one evening: “Come on, next week let's meet, Tuesday they inaugurate a live music theater, come with me, I already have the invitations”. I went there coming directly from my restaurant, I had not even dressed in a fancy way, only pants and a shirt. The event was in Piazza dei Cinquecento; after just over an hour, I told my friend that I would leave, because the next morning I would open, as always, at six. Leaning against the wall there was a guy who was talking to the owner of the music theater. To reach the exit I was forced to pass between them. Referring to me, one of the two, the one leaning against the wall, said, making me hear him: “Here! You should invite girls like her”. Since I am a person of spirit, I retorted on the fly: “In fact, I was not invited, but my friend.” He, as they say in Rome, with a face like b... promptly replied: “But then I would like to invite you to dinner on Saturday...”. “If I remember you until that day, why not?!” I replied smiling as I handed him my business card. From the appearance and sophisticated clothing, he appeared to be a type full of himself. My reply had taken him by surprise and I took advantage, with a feminine touch, to take his clutch bag out of his jacket pocket. “Come and take it back if you want” I concluded smiling as I left.

      The next day he was already at my place. Destiny or coincidence given that he was Biagio and that he will become my son's father?

      Without warning he showed up at my bar-restaurant. It was around 6:30 pm. I wasn't there at that time, I went to the accountant. As I was returning, the phone rang, I pulled over the car to answer. It was an employee of mine: “Madam, there are two people here who are looking for you” I asked to talk with them. Biagio, amused and with a bold voice, said: “See?! I came to meet you, but if you want, since you're not there, see you next time... ". I could also have answered him: Okay come on, come back another day.

      Instead: “Okay I'm coming back, but there are two of you, who is the other?”, he replied: “He is my friend. I've never come around here and without him I would surely got lost, I brought the human navigator ”as if he were talking about an imaginary place out of this world. He lived near Piazza del Risorgimento, vain and snobbish, he could not stoop to the periphery. What's wrong with the road that leads to the lake?

      I was wondering while he was being funny. Anyway, I let the waiter come over and I suggested: “Offer them what they want, I'm on my way”. Biagio was inside with his friend. He had been accompanied by him, as he had told me on the phone, precisely so that he could act as a navigator: he had worked at Sip (now Telecom) and knew every corner of Rome and its hinterland.

      The bartender, upon entering, told me that during the wait they had eaten half the counter: sweets, pastries, chocolates.

      That day my story with Biagio actually began. I had started with a good-looking dude who never missed an opportunity to make me notice. Me, the loser who lived in the countryside, on the northern outskirts of the capital, he upper class who lived in the center, the beating heart of the metropolis: “I like to smell the stench of asphalt. All this green makes your head spin, too much oxygen”, he repeated like a broken record.

      I would never have gone into Rome, in 50 square meters, leaving my beautiful house of 200 square meters, surrounded by nature. Moreover, I preferred to pay the mortgage and have my own apartment forever, rather than shell out the money for rent every month.

      In the end he accepted: together yes, but at my place. It was really very tiring. Nothing suited him. Our tastes were very distant. “Why did you buy a house right here? And why did you decorate it this way? With all this stuff?”.

      He liked extreme minimalism: a table, a sofa and a TV. He stood with his breath on my neck to change all the furniture. I did not even think of it