[I can’t even call her Barbara in this chapter—now her name means something else entirely—deep down, I link it more to Leone’s name than mine. While the woman I walked with in Milan, or sat cross-legged with on the balcony, that woman was something else, something unfamiliar, not belonging to me or Leone.]

Some mornings, from the bedroom, we hear the sounds of Irene and Francesca at breakfast. My sister has a large, five-cup moka pot. She wakes up in a good mood and the only trick to being a part of that happiness is not to talk, not to make speeches. A preference Barbara shares, and they both tease me about my tendency to groggily philosophize.

Barbara would get up and have coffee with Irene, or Irene and Francesca. I’d dress quickly and follow her out, sit down and start gabbing, or begin to make an omelet like I’d once seen done in a Cambodian hotel: tilting the frying pan, over the flame, the egg gathering there, solidifying.

Barbara and Irene would laugh. I’d protest, briefly. When Irene bragged about something—money, or trips, or people she hung out with—no one teased her, but if I put so much as three sentences together to tell them about something, I got teased; I was always the first one to leave the table.

I’d head out for work on my bike and wonder if Irene and Barbara might … Like a Dostoevsky novella, me in the role of the humiliated little man who wanders about embracing and insulting figures larger than himself, trying to destroy and to save them all at once, to destroy and save himself. But then I’d remember that I mustn’t cut in on that budding relationship, to direct it where I wanted it to go, because that invisible place, where everything is within my control, is orange, and when life first appears in that orange shade, it dies.

Better to think about that television job, the idea of dedicating ourselves to earning money that we still get for entertaining a mass audience. Someday, we’ll write exclusive TV programs for a public of two thousand, just the very rich, at least, according to essays I’ve read and at times reviewed for cultural magazines. But what a dream to work and get paid: in the office, the first meeting, always a light meal delivered by a South American kid on a bicycle. White light through the window, the silent courtyard. The writing room, a part of a multipurpose complex not far from the apartment my sister owns, the place I’d love to move to eventually, if Barbara and I can fully reconcile.