A few days later, when the paper put me on the night shift, we started working on the movie. Graziano showed up at my apartment at nine in the morning, clean-shaven. “New life, new look,” he said. “Have you hidden all the bottles?” He’d promised he wouldn’t drink until six in the evening for all the time it took us to write the screenplay. “Oh, Lord,” he said when I put a bottle of orange squash in front of him. “I’ll never manage to drink so much water. You wouldn’t have any leftovers that are more fun, would you?”

“Don’t forget your angel,” I said.

“Oh, well,” he said, sitting down at the typewriter, “I get the message.”

And so began our battle with the thirtieth-birthday angel. It would last a long time, almost until the end of July. For a month and a half, we worked every day until sundown, naked to protect ourselves from the blasts of heat coming in through the window, breaking only for lunch, to eat some sandwiches and then sleep for an hour in the sunbaked apartment. Every once in a while, we’d take a shower, then get back to the typewriter.

The story of the thirty-year-old who killed his father was coming along well, and sometimes Graziano would get to his feet, clap his hands, then rub them together. “Good, good!” he would say. “Now, how about we have a little pick-me-up so that when we get back to work we’ll be sharper and brighter?” But he mainly said this to hear me say no, even though I knew perfectly well that as soon as I left the room he’d take the opportunity to have a slug. Then, around sundown, we’d go out on the balcony and look at the valley while Graziano drank his tandem. “How can you resist?” he’d say. I was at the end of my tether, truth be told, because in the evening I still had to go to the newspaper and, all in all, I never slept more than four hours a night. Sometimes I was so exhausted I’d fall asleep at the typewriter at work until I was awakened by the phone ringing.

There was one advantage, though, which was that I didn’t think about Arianna. I didn’t want to think about her, but every time the phone rang at home I’d clench my teeth until I knew who was on the other end. Since that evening at the top of the Spanish Steps, when I’d left without saying a word, I hadn’t heard from her. Then, after a couple of weeks, the front doorbell rang. Graziano and I put our pants on, wondering who it could be. It was her.