Two days went by. My hangover had been quite bothersome, but it had passed. I kept wondering how to track down the girl from the party, but couldn’t think of a satisfactory way. The one possibility was to contact Verio, but I didn’t have his telephone number and didn’t even know where he lived. In any case, with all the people who’d been crammed into the professor’s apartment, it was likely that even Verio didn’t know her.

I have the distinct memory that my boss – the lawyer I was a trainee with – had given me the task that afternoon of writing an appeal against a sentence for repeated aggravated theft. The verdict struck me as indisputable. The defendant was definitely guilty of a series of raids on apartments in the centre of town and the magistrate had given him three years, which I actually thought was too lenient.

So I did the task I’d been instructed to do, I wrote the appeal, but I can honestly state, thirty years later, that I didn’t believe a single word. By the time I left the office I was very dissatisfied, and quite unconvinced – even more than usual – that I’d made the right choice in becoming a lawyer, which meant I was very worried about what the future had in store with me.

I had gone a few yards when I heard a strangely familiar female voice call to me.

“Avvocato Guido!”98

She crossed the street, came up to me and gave me a kiss, all in a totally natural way.

“I came to get you because I wanted to invite you to dinner.”

“Dinner?”

“Yes. It’s something people do around here in the evening. You get given food and you eat it, something like that.”

“Did I tell you where I work the other night?”

“You have no idea how many things you said. But not where you work.”

“So how did you find me?”

“I have my methods. Enough of that now, or I’ll get bored. And if I get bored, I’ll withdraw the invitation and leave you to spend a sad, lonely evening regretting what might have been.”

“No, no regrets. Never. Where shall we go?”

“I fancy a pizza. With that one premise, I’ll leave you to choose the place.”

I suggested a pizzeria near the prison, where they were in the habit – impeccable from a fiscal point of view – of writing the bill by hand on the paper tablecloth; a printed receipt was an arcane concept as far as they were concerned. But the pizzas were good and very cheap. She knew the place and approved of my choice.

“I have a car. But what kind of lawyer are you, without even a briefcase?”