However mixed my emotions had been about Johnny before, they were more so now. It was my own doing, my own mistake. A few evenings before, out on the balcony with a glass of wine in my hand, in a fit of loneliness, I’d weakened. I’d texted where we were. I allowed myself to believe afterward that he wouldn’t come. Even to imagine—to forget, to push the memory into darkness—that I hadn’t responded at all. I dismissed it, as one does drunken behavior. But there he stood, my brother, Johnny, in front of me in the hall. I wondered if the appearance of the man outside was coincidental.

“Your boy, he sleeps quite prettily.”

“I asked you to wait.”

“I didn’t see the sense of a hotel.”

“You could’ve told me you’d arrived. So I could prepare the others.”

“Zanche wasn’t particularly happy to see me, I admit.”

“She let you in?”

“Reluctantly.”

“Where is she?”

“Off to the market. She blends in quite well. Before long, I suspect she’ll be able to walk with a basket of fruit balanced on her head.”

I went to the balcony doors and peered through the slats. The man had migrated up the street. His appearance was yet more disconcerting from a distance, the way the clothes hung about his body, so long and thin, almost skeletal.

“Come here, Johnny. That man—”

“Aren’t you glad to see me?”

“Just come here.”

“Let me finish what I have to do.”

He was in the bathroom, taking a shit.

Outside, the man seated himself with his back to the building, on the steps at the top of the terrace, looking down over the little park and the rooftops toward the gulley below. The Avenida ran in that gulley. It was full of noise, of honking horns, an endless, slow-moving road that dwindled forever toward the pampas. I wished I had taken the rest of the money from the bank.

Johnny emerged.

I nodded toward the balcony.

“Do you know that man?”

“Which man?”

“Outside. On the steps.”

My brother went to the blinds. He peered through the slats, then opened the doors and stepped out forthrightly, standing there like he owned the balcony and the world it looked over.

“It’s quite the view,” he said.

I stayed sitting on the bed.

“Do you recognize him?”

“Who?”

I went to the balcony. The man was gone. Then I saw him on the lawn below the terrace: his long body, how he moved his arms and legs, as if jerked about by a string. He turned a corner and vanished altogether. It was possible I was mistaken. Men leaned against the wall all the time, to smoke and look at the view. When I glanced at my brother, I couldn’t help but remember that night at Palazzo Orsini, and the little dog who had chased me down the streets of Mount Giordano toward Lodovico and his gangly friend.

35.