It took me a while to get back because the tourist buses had all started to leave and were blocking the intersections. When I reached Graziano, I found him fast asleep right where I’d left him. I woke him up enough so I didn’t have to take him in my arms to put him in his seat and then I drove home. It was a problem getting him up the first flight of stairs to the elevator. “What would I do without you?” he kept saying, genuinely touched. “You’re better than my mother, that’s for sure.” I managed to put him on the double bed, the one I never used. “Christ,” he said, “I’m at the end of my tether,” and fell asleep before I even had time to take off his jacket. He still had his bottle of Chivas Regal in his pocket and I brought it with me into the room overlooking the valley. I took a glass, filled it, and switched on the radio. Then I threw myself into the armchair and started drinking, alone.

The morning after, my head felt as big as the room I was in and it wasn’t easy to get it through the door of the kitchen to make coffee. I brewed it in industrial quantities, then woke Graziano.

“Did we at least have fun?” he said, taking his cup of coffee in both hands. He was shaking. He asked for the sugar bowl and ate a few spoonfuls. “I dreamed all night about our movie,” he said. “When shall we start?”

“Not today,” I said, “tomorrow. Today my head’s full of sand.”

“Have you been drinking? Tell me the truth, you’ve been drinking. The old boy has been drinking, now that’s something to celebrate. Got any left?” he said, rubbing his hands.

I’d had some left, but I’d poured it down the sink when I made coffee because just the sight of the bottle made me want to throw up. “Let’s talk about the movie,” I said.

The problem was Sandie, but he said he would work on her in the appropriate way. He just had to hold out to her the possibility that the Irreversible Pendulum would begin working again. As a start, we established that we’d go to the movies every night to study the question from the technical point of view, camera angles, reverse shots, and all that crap, he said. We would start that very evening. For now, he had to go home and calm Sandie down. Where was the phone? He dialed his home number but didn’t say anything, just to gauge from Sandie’s hello how much venom she was spitting, then, apparently reassured, he took a bath, combed his beard, lit a cigar, and left.