“I remember your party. It was really touching.” I got up, went in, and took some martini glasses down from the shelf and put them in the freezer to chill. Then I stood there a moment, thinking I’d never wished my sister a happy birthday on her fortieth, but then Francesco came in and distracted me, handed me the large glass shaker. He opened the fridge and took out a fat lemon, already missing some of its rind.

“I’m on my third gin Campari.” He was grinning, his eyes very round, dark, haloed by yellow skin. His skin tone isn’t usually pink or anything, but it’s never been that yellow.

“I didn’t realize … You carried up all those cases…” I was checking for ice in the freezer.

“I’ve been drinking all week—at lunch, too. I keep thinking about how I felt last year. That this was the start of my golden age.”

“So my party won’t make that go away for me?”

I ran water over the ice tray, then smashed the ice on a plastic cutting board and put it in the shaker, incredibly happy to be there. One morning when I was a kid, I realized I could make my own breakfast with cold milk and cereal: I still remember that feeling of satisfaction, that if I opened the refrigerator for the milk, the one cupboard for a bowl, the other for the corn flakes, and the drawer for a spoon, then I could feed myself. Living in a neighborhood that let me just walk over to my friend’s, enter his home, I knew about putting the glasses in the freezer and when to take them out, I knew a real secret to life. So, this topic under discussion, this sadness my friend felt, was so strange: how is it possible, my friend, when you make me so happy, how can you be sad? And tonight, of all nights?

He handed me the bottle of vermouth while draining his Campari; I poured a little over the ice in the shaker, stirred it with a wooden chopstick; strained the vermouth into a glass; poured the gin into the shaker, over the soaked ice.

He grabbed the gin bottle from me before I could set it on the counter, unscrewed the cap, poured a splash into some Campari. “I don’t know, Marcè, I’m feeling pretty miserable.”

“Is it something in particular, or are you just feeling bad in general?”

“Both. I don’t know. I’m forty years old and I’ve got nothing to show for it. Here at home, things aren’t so great.”

“You want the keys to my place? I could boot the tenants.”

“No, no, the last thing I need is somewhere else to go.”