Rosario was excited. Of course—Arianna was wearing that blue-and-white-striped dress and smiling enough to dazzle him. I too was on tenterhooks, but for a different reason. I was afraid she would eventually discover that all I was in this place was a fucked-up typist. I started typing the article again, as quickly as I could. Looking up from time to time, I could see her and Rosario chatting, while she looked with curiosity at the booths, with their cork walls and obscene scribbles, the thin brown discs for recording copy, the magnets for cleaning them, the typewriters with their pedals and headsets. When one of the telephones started ringing, Rosario went to answer, and Arianna was again behind me. I sensed her presence growing heavier as she stood there reading the nonsense emerging from my typewriter. “It isn’t exactly Proust,” she said.

“It isn’t me either,” I said, performing an act of self-destruction.

“You mean to say,” she said, when I’d explained to her that I was only transcribing someone else’s article, “you never write anything that’s yours? They never send you to cover something and write about it? You never do features, in-depth articles, that kind of thing?” She may not have known anything about newspapers, but there was no way I could make her believe I was the editor. I saw a possibility for salvation in the fact that Rosario was coming back. But it was like clinging to a lead life jacket, because once he’d caught what we were talking about he offered to explain to her in detail the way the department worked. I started typing again, while still keeping an eye on Arianna. She was bravely trying to keep a smile on her lips, but every time she turned to look at me it fell to earth before reaching me. I finished my task satisfactorily and joined them. “A job for students,” Arianna was saying, to which Rosario replied that students did in fact give us a hand on Sundays, when there was more work.

“Order something at the cafeteria,” I said to Rosario. But Arianna said she had to go, she had errands to run. She’d put on her dark glasses and was searching for her purse. She passed by it a few times before she saw it. One of the telephones rang and I went to answer it. By the time I got back she’d gone.

“Strange girl,” Rosario said. “What do you think happened to her?”

“Nothing. Why?”

“She looked as if she was about to start crying, didn’t you see?”