But still I kept her on tenterhooks as we walked in the direction of Piazza San Silvestro. She was so nervous, she insisted on crossing when the lights were red. We walked into the remainder bookstore and started moving down the aisles, separately, but from time to time I raised my head and looked at her, against the colorful background of the books, with her impatient profile and her hair that kept getting in her face, and that’s the most significant memory I have of this whole story, if not the most beautiful, until we emerged as if from a maze, unsteady on our feet, and found ourselves at the exit, where I gifted her a copy of Under the Volcano, which she never did read.

“Come on, now!” she said, at the end of her tether. “Are you ever going to tell me what all this celebrating is about?”

“I’m getting my head together,” I said. “As of tomorrow, I’m working in television.”

She stood quite still, staring at the photograph on the book cover, the one of Lowry on the shore of the lake with his frayed white shirt and sad goatee. “I don’t know if I like that,” she said at last.

“Why not?” I said.

“I don’t know,” she said. “You’re you.”

And, with this incontrovertible statement, she put an end to the subject and refused to talk about it for the rest of the afternoon. To do something, we went window-shopping on Via Frattina, but she looked at the displays without seeing them. She was very nervous, and when we went to dinner at the usual open-air trattoria she ate listlessly.

“Why are you doing it?” she said suddenly.

“Because I’m tired of leftovers.”

“What does that mean?”

“I know what it means,” I said.

She fell silent, playing with the base of her glass. It was damp and she was using it like a rubber stamp, leaving rings on the white paper tablecloth. “Are you sure you’re not doing it for me? I don’t want you to do it for me.”

“I’m doing it for myself,” I said, “only for myself.”

“Oh, all right, then,” she said.

We sat for a while in silence, though I felt like screaming, and when I asked for the check I did so in too loud a voice. Arianna stopped playing with her glass and took hold of my hand, gripping it tightly.

“Shall we go to your place?” she said.