From the villa came the muffled strains of “Have You Ever Seen the Rain?” At that precise moment, the first time I’d heard her use the word “us” when talking about her and me, I knew – for no particular reason, therefore with absolute certainty – that she would soon vanish from my life.

Sometimes she’d mention the novel she was writing. When I asked her to tell me about it, though, she would change the subject, retreating as if realizing that she’d exposed herself, shown a vulnerability she couldn’t bear.

One Saturday morning – it was July by now – she phoned me and told me to pack a small bag, and make sure I included swimming trunks. She would pick me up in her car in half an hour. Before I could ask her where we were going she hung up.

We went to Santa Maria di Leuca in her beat-up old Alfasud. We took a room in a pensione on the promenade, then hired a small boat and made love out at sea. We were still there, surrounded by the motionless, limpid water, with the sun going down, when she told me about the time she and a friend of hers had gone to Othonoi in a motorboat.

“Where’s Othonoi?”

“It’s the nearest Greek island, in the Strait of Otranto. It’s only about fifty miles from here.”

“And how long did it take you to get there?”202

“Two hours, more or less. It was a fast motorboat. We got there in the afternoon, had dinner there, slept in a fisherman’s house, and the next day came back to Santa Maria di Leuca.”

“And what does your friend who rides fast motorboats do?”

She shrugged, became evasive again and changed the subject. I thought about her mysterious, adventurous life, full of real, concrete things, including real men. Men capable of taking a motorboat out into the open sea, maybe of facing a storm. The adult version of those fearless boys who’d obsessed me during my years as a shy, rather clumsy adolescent. Those who drove motorbikes along dirt tracks, who played soccer well, dribbling easily, who dived elegantly into the sea from the tops of rocks.

I had never been gifted at sports. I’d become quite good at boxing only because I’d really committed myself, almost as if my life depended on it. Maybe, in a way, it did.

I thought about these things while Lorenza was lying in the bow of the boat with her eyes closed, her head resting on a rolled-up towel. The boat swayed gently, the sun was setting, and little flying fish gave off silver flashes as they jumped.

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