“It’s something gross—from a guy at work because I’m always losing mine.”

I imagined this stranger kissing her. She was beautiful, and I wanted other men to think so.

While we walked up the street, headed back home with our bags, I said: “Where else could I go for vacation? Where are you all going?”

“You want to horn in on our trip?”

“Maybe. Me and all your girlfriends—we’d have a blast.”

“Right. You could go hide out somewhere with three manuscripts. You wouldn’t bother anyone.”

“Really? Could I?”

“Come on. What would you do—go find someone else to ‘work’ with, and you two ‘work’ together?”

“So where are you going?”

“Not sure yet. Lisbon, maybe. So how much time will you have to spend in Milan over the holidays?”

“Actually, I’m thinking I won’t go back between Christmas and Easter. Maybe not even after that.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know. I’m just joking.”

“Oh, sure. Joke all you want. You always make me sleep alone.”

I stopped, carefully set my two bags on the roof of a car, and hugged her, lifting her off the ground: “You’re right.” We started kissing warily.

Barbara’s mouth was dense, cool; her lips were chapped. When I set her back down, she looked me in the eye for a moment. A pack of rice and some zucchini dropped to the ground from one of the grocery bags. I told her: “What if you and I go away alone together, right now, and forget about Christmas? We won’t take time off.”

Her eyes shut down. I looked away; I squatted to pick up the fallen groceries. We started walking again, in silence.

By the time we opened the iron grid over the front door, I’d forgotten about her long silence; I filled the fridge, withdrew into the bathroom, turned on the fan, and put some music on my phone, because the bathroom door faces the bedroom.

Through the different sounds, I heard the bedroom door slam. I slowed down, kept sitting, listened to music, and after flushing, I washed myself with various cleansers, intimate, then facial, then a bar of soap for my armpits; before I left the bathroom, I put my shirt back on, cleaned my ears with a cotton swab.

I turned the key and looked in to find that the bed was suddenly unmade, and there was a wet blotch in the center. Barbara could cry quite a bit, and all at once. I felt my heart clench, and I didn’t know where to go. I turned—I was in the doorway—and I opened the closet: on the highest shelf, where we kept our suitcases, the red roller bag was missing. I stepped into the courtyard and looked toward the street. Her scooter was gone.

The red roller bag has a symbolic purpose. Barbara looks at it to remind herself that she’s free to escape whenever she wants. This isn’t the only manifestation of her restlessness toward domestic life: at dusk, for instance, I can’t lower the rolling shutters all the way, or she’ll feel like she’s suffocating. We don’t lower them fully until she goes to bed.