We didn’t look into each other’s eyes for a few moments, the three of us left at the table, and then, with the coffee, the moment passed and we were on to something else.

We put on a record, two records, three records, we look at one another and it’s a bit empty in here: What shall we do.

Bibi laments that we’re not journalists in Italy, where playboys and playgirls from aristocratic families would drive us in roaring automobiles to their grandfather’s castle, its high stairways lined with sculptures, and we’d all dine by candlelight, clad in evening wear.

“Then we’d wander off, two by two, among the salons and gardens.”

“Or we’d play a sinister, fatal game.”

“Or we’d do all of the above in front of a camera, filmed by Fellini or some other director, Signor Whatever, and the intimacy of the crimson bedroom would repeat itself in the gaze of two thousand pairs of eyes, for hundreds of nights, in hundreds of theaters, and so on for all eternity.”

Bibi declares that she would like that, anyway, and proposes we put on a show. I think she’s doing this to be polite to her guests, though it really isn’t necessary.

She explains that for me—so I can write it—she’s come up with a spectacle that she’s already made notes on, which could be called Daily Life in . . .

“Where?”

“In many places, many eras.”

She quickly gets excited, drags us to her room, throws us onto her bed, and tells us to study the papers she hands us.

I read. Marcela reads. Bibi waits.

These all seem like Bibi’s inventions, she’s made a satire out of everyday characters and deliberately selected fragments of literary and dramatic history, including Shakespeare.

I stop reading and so does Marcela. Bibi’s been watching us and understands. She says, “I know, I know: It won’t work.”

“We could still try,” Marcela says to encourage her.

“No,” Bibi admits, “we’re not drunk enough and there’s nothing suggestive or atmospheric about this house. My bedroom is my bedroom.”

“But I,” Marcela rises resolutely to her feet and, playing along, transforms herself into a whispering, venerated crone, “I’m in Athens and I observe to my neighbor, ‘That Patroclides was a courageous man, he took his own life without even asking permission from the Senate . . .’”

Now it’s my turn, and I step straight out of ancient Rome to declaim energetically, “The law must exercise greater rigor in forbidding the act of suicide. Perverse habit, even the slaves are hanging themselves now. At this rate, who will cultivate my lands?”

Marcela, a prince’s wife in medieval Lorraine, applauds the Roman lord. “A prudent and necessary remedy. Good heavens, what damage the servants’ pretension to dispose of their own lives does to us. How can we allow it, how can we tolerate it?”