She took her eyes away from her own destiny. “Anything above forty proof,” she said. From the smile she gave me, anybody would have thought she’d spent the whole evening waiting for me. It was a smile that isolated the person it was addressed to, raising him to heights he would never have suspected he could conquer. A smile like a blow to the head, in which only one thing remained unequivocal. That she didn’t give a damn about you. “What about that game?” she said, as if the progress of the evening depended on me. I spread my palms wide.

“Here it is!” Viola said, joining us with paper and pencil. Then she took me by the arm and said, “Come with me. You’re not thinking of betraying me with some nymphet!” So I had to go back to my armchair, where I discovered that the bowl of peanuts had disappeared. Ten minutes later, in the silence of the living room, the only sound was the scratch of pencils on paper, the occasional laugh, and, I feared, the rumbling of my stomach.

It was at this point that another soft noise pervaded the room. The girl, Arianna, had abandoned her couch and was proceeding miraculously between the armchairs. The fragility of her body made whatever she did seem courageous, even just walking across a room full of friends. With every step, her glossy rain boots emitted little sighs around her knees. She reached the arm of Viola’s chair and leaned down to whisper something in her ear.

It was now that the woman named Eva intervened, saying, “Come on, Arianna, stop it!” Then, to Viola: “Don’t you think she’s dumb? This morning as she was putting on her blouse, she scratched a spot on her skin, and all day long she’s been trying to phone Venice to talk to her doctor about it.”

The girl barely looked at her, then said she’d heard of people who’d died from scratching a mole.

“Really, Arianna?” Viola said. “Do you have a consultant you trust?”

Well, that’s how things were. The girl had gone to make her phone call, and I was trying to find an excuse to leave and go somewhere to eat when Viola, seeing that I couldn’t make up my mind to write my anonymous message on the sheet of paper, looked at me pensively and said, “Listen, would you go get the ice from the kitchen? I’m sorry, but Ernesto isn’t here, it’s his night off.” Because now they even had a servant. She gave me directions on how to get to the kitchen, informing me that I would find it changed and that only the refrigerator was still the old one.

I had a flash of hope. Two years earlier, that refrigerator had been the best stocked in the city. “My old friend!” I said. “How is he?”