In her tank top, no underwear, Barbara, wrapped up in herself, had been staring into the bathroom mirror for at least a half hour as I watched, picking up tweezers, clippers, makeup remover, cotton swabs. She had a big bruise under her ass, on her thigh, which she probably hadn’t noticed. I was pacing between the bathroom and bedroom telling her about my day with my family, getting worked up at the sight of her back, her prominent shoulder blades. It was like her backside was speaking to me, without her knowing, she was so focused on her nails and cuticles.

Then I stopped talking about my parents and my brother and came up behind my wife. I grabbed her around the neck: “You’re beautiful, so beautiful.” I lowered my pants and rubbed myself against her, the tweezers falling into the sink, the clippers staying put on the edge. “Trimming your nails like that, a half hour of showing me your ass. You doing that on purpose?”

While we made love in the dark, in bed, I thought a little about my wife, a little about my sister-in-law, like all husbands with married brothers.

The program director didn’t like my talk show pilot, the one I’d developed with Francesco. We shot it at my place, and the idea was to prepare a drink for a literary guest, then we’d discuss books, life, society; I drank one too many gin and tonics and proved to be such a novice that my guest—one of the most famous writers in Italy, who also wrote for television—had to tell me when to start talking and when to stop, and ever since I’ve been embarrassed running into him. I got myself involved in the project with the idea—that I obsessed over at every gathering—of making a “simple” show, like a video podcast, something popular now in America, just talk, no montage; Francesco and the other writers involved, all far more experienced, had wanted it to be paced for television. It didn’t wind up fitting either category, and we came off as amateurs. The program director didn’t even attempt to edit the raw footage.

“You must have been bummed,” said Luca.

We were having dinner out, the four of us, including Daniela and Barbara.