“You just need to shut your trap!” shot back the little old lady on the second floor of Staircase A, plucking at her cardigan sweater. “And worry about your husband!”

“I guess you’d like to worry about him for me, wouldn’t you?”

“Fuck yourself!” shouted the woman with the oversized eyeglasses and shut the window. She vanished, swallowed up by the dark room behind her. Tatiana looked up at the neighbor woman on Staircase B. “Buongiorno, Signora.”

“Why were you talking to that slut?”

“I wanted to know if you’d seen Corrado. Corrado Pizzuti, the guy in the mezzanine apartment on Staircase A.”

“What, are you his girlfriend?”

“No. His business partner, we run the Bar Derby on Piazza della Sirena.”

“Slut. You’re a slut, no better than my sister!” And with these words, she, too, slammed her casement window shut and withdrew into her apartment. Tatiana threw both arms wide in helpless frustration. Then she turned her eyes up to scan the other windows in the apartment building. Except for the ones on the second floor, they all seemed abandoned. She rang the buzzers of all the other apartments, but no one answered. Except for the little old lady on the second floor, who reappeared in her window. Tatiana gestured to her in an appeal to buzz her in, but the woman did nothing other than to vanish again.

“Where could you be?” she said in a low voice. It occurred to her to search the area around the apartment buildings for Corrado’s green Fiat Multipla. The surf was rough. During the night a north wind had sprung up that was now shaking the palm trees and pushing the waves into roaring breakers. Tatiana put on her baseball cap. She walked around the block three times, but there was no trace of Corrado’s car. Anxiety was by now a constant knot at the center of her chest, blocking her windpipe. She leaned against a wall, trying to get a breath of air. She could feel it. Something had happened.

“Chto mnye delat’?” she said to herself in a faint voice, speaking her native Russian. “What am I going to do?” There was nothing left but to go to the Bar Derby. Open the place up for business. Then wait till nightfall. And if Corrado hadn’t given any signs of life by then, she’d go to the police.