The lights weren’t on; the sun hadn’t set, and from up the wooden staircase with no handrail came the music of running water, Eleonora’s shower, which she’d stepped into right after answering my second ring. On this half-level there was a bathroom and the (empty) room of the man who rented to her, a friend of mine, a designer with his own line of streetwear shoes whom I’d met when I was writing a meaningless article on intellectuals and fashion and why the young entrepreneurs in design and similar fields didn’t rouse the least bit of interest in Roman intellectuals (one of those suicidal pieces I insisted on writing to get a reaction, and that the intellectuals on the Roman scene took as something not all that far removed from supporting fascism; my former friend Leone, a character who’ll figure into this story, wrote on social media that now he finally knew for sure that the roaring eighties were back and political commitment was dead once more). The stairs led up past that middle level, to Eleonora’s single room above, furnished with just a mattress; this apartment and its jutting spaces were shaped by those of the apartment next door.

The euphoric sense of freedom inspired by these nicely juxtaposed spaces and by the owner’s lifestyle—he was always traveling to Asia or the States to sell shoes—was something that she could only tolerate once or twice a month: she lived there, but when she was alone, she only worked. When we were there together, though, we breathed deeply in that atmosphere, knowing we’d never get to live so brightly anyplace else. We needed our unhappy relationships, but fucking in the bliss of feeling single let us pilfer some of the designer’s spiritual wealth. The cleaning and utility bills were two hundred euros a month and not a part of the lease, just what they’d arranged, because the designer wanted someone else to keep the place warm when he wasn’t around, but he’d stopped letting girls in fashion stay in the second room: they were always throwing parties, inviting god knows who, making a mess, empty bottles of liquor they never threw out, saved, as if their touch turned these bottles into trophies.

I went into the downstairs bathroom, washed up with some soap I kept in my backpack, then I went to the kitchen, got some ice and a bottle of vodka, and I sat down quietly at the table to have a drink, feeling a tingle of anticipation.