“No, they aren’t,” Matthew said. That was when the waiter with the tray—a huge tray with many bowls of olives—collided with one of the palm trees on the terrace.

It could have been “The Kill” or “This Is War”—I don’t remember which of their songs Thirty Seconds to Mars was playing—when the partygoers started stepping on the olives. When you step on olives with pits, they feel like live beetles. Matthew said later he was sure he was singing along with “A Beautiful Lie” when the older Italian woman started screaming about the beetles. We were walking on beetles, she wanted everyone to know—in English, and in Italian.

Em said later she was saved by the olives underfoot. In truth, the irrational dread of walking on beetles was what rescued Em from a conversation that had gotten her all riled up. Giuseppe, a pushy journalist, was pursuing the same question he’d asked us at our onstage interviews; he hadn’t liked our earlier answers. The politics in our novels could be considered anti-American, Giuseppe had told us. Why wouldn’t we admit we were “political refugees from the U.S.”—wasn’t that why we were living in Canada? Em had reminded Giuseppe that we’d moved to Toronto before Donald Trump was a Republican candidate; we’d begun the immigration process when Obama was president, and we loved Obama.

“It was a personal decision, to go back to where I was born—politics was only part of my decision,” Em had already told Giuseppe. “And he only thinks about politics after everything has happened,” Em had said, pointing at me.

“I would go anywhere she went—I would move to Italy if she moved here,” I’d told Giuseppe, pointing to Em.

“Republicans were bad and getting worse before Trump was their guy—Republicans will be bad after him,” Em pointed out to Giuseppe, but Giuseppe ignored what he didn’t want to hear. Our being dual citizens didn’t interest him. Em told Giuseppe that she and I intended to keep voting in future U.S. elections; we just liked living in Toronto, she said, but Giuseppe wouldn’t listen. Giuseppe wanted to make our story all about the pussy-grabber.

Pantomime originated in Roman mime, Em had told me; this was why she’d first come to Italy, to the Disastri Festival. On the terrace, while Thirty Seconds to Mars was playing, I heard Em saying to Giuseppe: “You are too focused on Trump—you should be more aware of his enablers.” Em put the blame where the blame belonged—on chinless Mitch McConnell and dickless Lindsey Graham, and the craven Senate Republicans—as I’d heard her do a hundred times.