We ate at an excellent Vietnamese restaurant owned by a man from Rome, who left off the “t” in “Vie’namese,” and gave us our first inside joke. He stood at our table for fifteen minutes, going on and on—to the point that we stopped feeling embarrassed about our impulsive date—about his battles over social media with people who didn’t understand that his restaurant served “regional Vie’namese, not national,” because “talking about national Vie’namese food is technically incorrect.”

He was so distracting that we could relax. I liked this woman, how she dressed, her earnest expression. Soon she was telling me about the “stagnant” phase she was going through: a boyfriend in another city who was probably seeing someone else by now.

I prodded her. “So it’s been a long time since you went to bed with someone.”

“Yup. You got it.”

“What’s that like, then?”

“Well, you know. It’s spring.”

“So, what would you wish for, to break this terrible dry spell?”

“Something ridiculously easy.”

“Someone you don’t know, someone who isn’t dangerous, who can be traced—not like a stalker—just someone who does it all, takes you out, treats you nice, washes you, dries you, and sets you, all soft and ironed, back on your shelf with all your folded clothes.”

She looked at me. “Boy, wouldn’t that be fantastic.”

“All right. First, though, you have to calm down.”

“Oh, I’m very calm.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“You are very calming.”

“Well, good. Then I can calm down, myself.”

We smiled at each other.

“Listen, Barbara,” I said, “you’re fantastic. You know what I’d like to be for you? A gay friend. I’d be a gay director, or something, and we’d have this extremely intimate relationship, because you wouldn’t see me as a threat. You know—I’d get to be the gay guy in your dressing room.”

“You don’t seem gay to me.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Yes, I do.”

“I’d get to be around you, but not like some vulture … I’d just want … while I’m checking out your tits, I’d want you to trust me.”

We laughed.

“Marcello, you’re great. I think I get what you’re saying. And we can get to work on that.”

“Nice diversion, don’t you think? For the poor, unhappy girlfriend.”

“Nice for you, too.”

“Very nice indeed.”

[I don’t like long, drawn-out stretches of dialogue (as an editor, it just feels like a cheap way to add on pages), but I have to make an exception when it comes to the card game of seduction.]