The waitress came out with my coffee, in a little white espresso cup on a little white saucer.

“Grazie,” I said.

Then she noticed my laptop on the table and frowned.

“I am sorry,” she said, “but we do not allow laptops here.”

“Shoot. I should have asked before I ordered,” I said. “Do you know anywhere in Rome that’s good for working?”

“Like Starbucks? We do not have such places here.” She thought for a second. “Let me ask my manager.”

The manager was a burly man with a thick head of gray hair. He introduced himself as Roberto. “I apologize,” he said to me, “but we cannot have anyone working in our restaurant. I do know a café in Monti. I believe it is called Gatsby. Many students work there, on the second floor.”

I looked up Gatsby Café on my phone, and it was a forty-minute walk. I sighed.

“It’s all right, I’ll find somewhere else.”

“Are you a student?” he asked.

I shook my head.

The man looked at my computer screen. “Ah, a coder!”

I laughed. “Not exactly. I’m editing a Wikipedia page.”

He scrunched his face. I explained, “Wikipedia—it’s an online encyclopedia.” I opened another tab that showed a finished page.

“Ahhhh, Weekeepehdia!” His face lit up. “You should make page for my daughter. She is very, very talented. I always tell her, Laura, you are so talented! Rising star! You need a page on this, this Weekeepehdia. She is a singer, Laura. Laura Pedrotti, look her up. Very talented.” He was waving his hands in excitement. “And she is in school in America! She finished her first year at Harvard.”

I googled Laura Pedrotti, and as much as I assumed the guy was just being a proud dad, she was in fact legit. She had been profiled in the Harvard Crimson and had one song with millions of Spotify streams; it was in a Nespresso commercial.

Then I had an idea.

“If I make your daughter a Wikipedia page,” I asked Mr. Pedrotti, “could I stay and work out of your restaurant sometimes?”

He thought for a second and shrugged. “Laura Pedrotti on Weekeepehdia. Perfetto! Okay!”

• • •

That night, I was back at Garbo, the bar where I had met Jahan. He was hosting a literature night where anyone could get up and read something. It could be something they wrote or just something they really liked. A poem, or a scene from a novel. I wasn’t really in the mood, but Jahan said if I didn’t go he would kick me out of the apartment, and I didn’t really feel like testing him, so I went.

The bar was buzzing with people. All sorts of characters. Men and women. An artistic crowd. These people wore funny hats, had interesting tattoos, looked at me with judgment, and I was honored—honored, I tell you—to have been judged by some of them. Women wore dark eyeliner. Men wore tight pants and loose dress shirts and held cigarettes between their fingers. Smoke swirled in the air above them.