I was immersed in the piercing joy of fish and pisco sour and now he was offering me a job, a small job, but still, a job. “You mean right here in Milan? I’d come up here, live here?”

“Yeah, I know it would be a bit risky, but Irene tells me you like it here.”

“And you thought of me?”

“You’ve already worked in Milan. I always thought it would be a good fit, you and me working together.”

I didn’t toss out some tasteless joke, like: “Careful what you wish for.” It was just so affirming, what he’d said, so nice to hear, that my own response was just as enthusiastic, so he wouldn’t regret being open with me: “It’s true,” I said. “Working with you would be a blast.” I felt like someone who was running, vague shapes blurring by.

My sister was watching the small TV over the bar, a trio of Peruvian singers on a variety show. She looked bored and attentive at the same time.

He was pleased by my reaction and let himself go on: we could have all kinds of soup, try Soylent for lunch, go see a game, soccer, basketball … [In some alternate version of this novel, I could put different details in, to hide his identity, but I’d still be talking about the person I work with now; everything would have to be changed. I like writing about him in secret, referring to him affectionately as the “cuckold,” understanding his soundness as a father, as a man.]

My sister and I asked our waiter to wrap up our ceviche leftovers, and we finished them off at home, after smoking a joint. Sprawled on the living room couch, I started stressing about my friend, now my future boss, that he might be looking to start some kind of perverted love square between the four of us: him, me, my sister, and Francesca, an anxiety I kept to myself. (Now, seeing him daily, I know him as a man whose wants are illegible, who’s so involved with his family that it’s almost as if he has no desires of his own. He often gets free tickets to see AC Milan, and we’ve also gone to see Juventus play in Turin, sitting in a fashion house’s skybox, with spumante and out-of-season strawberries in that lounge overlooking the field.)

My sister gave me the master bedroom and continued to sleep in her half of the living room, behind the dividing wall.

Her vulgarity in speaking of money, while perhaps her most annoying trait, is the golden glitter of freedom. When she was surviving in Bologna by working in coffee bars and sewing clothes, she’d already decided that she couldn’t separate from the family without a pile of money. In the end, out of the three of us, she was the one who most resembled our father.