And that’s what we did, as dawn came up over the city. In the gray air, groups of people were waiting for the first buses. It was the hour when anyone who’s been on his feet all night demands something hot in his stomach, the hour when hands search for each other under the sheets as dreams become more vivid, the hour when the newspapers smell of ink and the first sounds of day start to creep out like an advance guard. It was dawn, and all that remained of the night were two shadows under the eyes of this strange girl by my side.

“To all the things we haven’t done, the things we should have done, and the things we won’t do,” I said, raising a cup of boiling hot caffè latte. Arianna laughed, said it seemed rather too programmatic a toast, but, basically, it was fine. Then she leaned across the table and gave me a kiss on the cheek. “And now,” she said, settling back on the metal chair, “tell me something amusing.” We were in a café at the bus terminal. Around us was the good smell of coffee, that good smell cafés have early in the morning, and a boy was spreading sawdust on the floor between the feet of a few drivers reading the Corriere dello Sport. I felt good after the coffee, even though my bones ached. So I told her my story about Via dei Glicini, where for a while I’d given Italian lessons to a gang of kids more ready to bum cigarettes off me than to consider Manzoni’s The Betrothed anything other than an endlessly delayed fuck. During the last lesson, I should have been explaining the subjunctive, but I had a three-day hangover and couldn’t keep still on my chair. They noticed, and started patting me on the back, which I pretended to enjoy in order to save face. In the end I couldn’t hold out any longer and crashed to the floor. I think the father of one of my disciples took me back to my hotel on his motorbike, with me lying across it like a dead Indian, I don’t really know. What I do know is, I wasn’t paid even for the lessons I’d given when I was sober, and for a long time I planned to abduct one of the kids and demand ransom. Arianna was laughing, then stopped suddenly and sat looking at me over the rim of her cup. She was looking at me very closely, her eyes half shut.

“What’s up?” I said.

“Nothing,” she said. “I like your gray eyes. I was asking myself if I could fall in love with you.”

“There’s no need,” I said, lighting a cigarette. “You can come to my place anyway, and stay as long as you like.”