“I just do. And that means that 7 down was . . . ‘purposeless’!”

“‘Purposeless’?”

“Exactly.”

I look at her. “Are you mad at me?” Obviously, she’s mad at me. One thing is certain. My wife always reels off strings of words as big as Saturn’s rings, but by now I’m used to that. “Are you mad at me? Then why don’t you just go ahead and tell me so, directly?”

She sets down the magazine, gives Lupa a kiss on the muzzle, and heads off to the bathroom. She stops in the doorway. She looks back at me with her enormous eyes—“Do something, for Christ’s sake!”—and vanishes through the door.

THERE THEY WERE, MILLING ABOUT, MUTTERING UNDER THEIR breath. Donkeys. Only donkeys walk in circles and turn millstones. These tattered remnants of men did nothing but wear out shoe leather and the grass in the courtyard.

“All done, everyone inside!” shouted a young guard with a wispy beard and his skin still speckled with acne. Agostino, a.k.a. the Professor, stood up, followed by Oluwafeme, the Nigerian giant, and Erik the Red. Another fucked-up day, the umpteenth fucked-up day. He slowly walked through the door that led into the staircase of Wing 2 of the house of detention of Varallo. He greeted the bald prison guard with a grin and started up the steps. He didn’t even notice the glances of respect from the other convicts. Or the requests for summary justice brought to him with trembling hands during social interaction hour, when the cell doors were left open and you could wander around the prison wing, collecting cigarettes and debts. Those prison walls were starting to nauseate him. He needed a change; he needed a transfer. Fresh air, new surroundings, a new life, new people to subjugate. Two convicts he’d like to take with him were Oluwafeme and Erik, competent, loyal, and, above all, dangerous. Plus, Erik was a fabulous cook. “What are we having for dinner?” he asked him as they filed through the last door before the corridor of the prison wing.

“Tonight, I’ll make you pasta alla carbonara. And chicken breast with lemon.”

Agostino nodded. “Will there be olives in the chicken?”

“Of course there will, Professor!”

He exchanged handshakes with a couple of convicts who’d extended their arms to him, and then, finally, he walked into his cell. The only bed that wasn’t part of a bunk bed was his. He immediately noticed that someone had moved his pillow. The sheet was folded wrong. He slipped his hand under the blankets and pulled out a note, a sheet of paper torn from a graph paper notebook.

“Tomorrow!” it read.

Agostino looked at Erik and the Nigerian. Then he popped the piece of paper into his mouth and began chewing.

“What’s that?” Erik asked him.

“The antipasto . . .”

“COLOMBO POLICE STATION, GO AHEAD.”

“Put me through to De Silvestri.”

“Who’s speaking?”

“Deputy Chief Schiavone.”