Serendipità goes back to the balcony where it’s cooler. An hour has passed since she gathered and distributed the funds, and since the hundred workers exited the property. The sun’s almost gone. Across the street where the man with the knife cuts things and the woman with the hands crochets things, someone is now hanging items of clothing from a clothesline: wet jeans, wet t-shirts, pink shirts, blue shirts, lavender shirts.

Serendipità feels the balcony move beneath her and goes back inside. She gathers the watermelon rind. She throws everything away. She sweeps the floors. She mops the floors with warm water and white vinegar. She goes to the pitch-black room and waits for sleep to come.

Serendipità is on the balcony. On Tuesdays the view is the sea. There’s nothing else, only the sea. The building across the street is gone—the man with the knife gone, the clothesline gone, the crocheting woman gone. She likes Tuesdays best. The one hundred construction workers won’t be coming to make their clamor; she will be alone. She’s alone. She makes do with what she has stocked in the cabinets, and in the refrigerator, and in the deep freezer. Serendipità goes to the garbage. From the black bag she takes out some of yesterday’s watermelon, she rinses off the white dust, takes it to the balcony. She eats the old watermelon, now dark red and hot on her tongue, sour. The sea moves, the sea moves and the boats make geometric lines, the lines come in and out.

Serendipità slathers herself with sunscreen, rubbing it in. Rubbing it even into her belly button. She pulls the red and green lounging chairs from the storage closet, one for her, the other for the plant, and they lounge. On Tuesdays the church bells are nonexistent, there’s only sea and sky. Clouds. There’s relief, and this relief can be seen around Serendipità’s mouth. The sun is moving on the water like strobe lights, the clouds are moving on the water like traffic, small rocks roll in the breeze. In the distance—an inactive volcano. The water moves like a king-sized sheet on a clothesline. Seagulls are moving. The balcony is reflected in the water, and so is the green mesh netting, the plant, the yellow building, and the brown shutters. The weather on Tuesdays is hot and humid.

Serendipità strips down to nothing. Three moles are visible: on her right breast, on her right inner thigh, on her top lip. Stretch marks on her right breast, on the right inner thigh, on her calves. Tomorrow she’ll purchase stamps from the post office. Tomorrow there’ll be lines of people gathered at the post office.