She was out watering the courtyard plants and wore a short dress and light wrap. As she stooped over the sandeville, the shadow of her enormous boyfriend engulfed her from behind, and he held her tightly, hugging her, squeezing one breast, then grabbing her hips, fondling her rear. She nearly fell over, but her boyfriend held her up, and she laughed, found it touching and also slightly annoying that her space had been invaded while she was lost in thought.

From point-blank range she heard: “Let’s buy this place.”

Confusion. The first precise thought she managed was that she had only thirty thousand euros built up over ten years in an insurance fund and that she couldn’t ask her father for money. Barbara’s father had ruined the family business that her grandfather had handed over to him unprepared, throwing him in, when for years he’d only been assigned menial tasks. Since then, he hadn’t worked, and had paid what he owed by selling off all his assets. He lived in the family home of his second wife. Barbara would never be able to buy a house. Then, getting up, trying to turn off the hose, she said: “Buy this place? Who?”

Her boyfriend took the hose out of her hand, laughing, and pressed down hard on the nozzle trigger. “My father. There’s enough money to buy it.”

Who is this little prince, coming here, completely under the thumb of King Dad, and proclaiming he’s seized my little dukedom, and proclaiming it like it’s my victory? This is awful—here I am, a woman who’s struggled to build a life for herself, and now these two men come riding in with their sack of florins … “But you don’t even know if the owner will sell!”

“Sure, sure, we have to find out.”

The courtyard, the flowers, it was all being commandeered. “God, why are you like this!” she snapped. “You’re so spoiled!”

And she stared at that son, his nearly hairless body but his face covered in beard, overweight, someone who’d never had a real job, never worked in a restaurant, who’d never been actually scared, who now looked shocked: “Sorry … then we won’t do it…”

She said something she’d learned from one of her feminist friends, who’d been through a similar situation: “No, no—buy it. But my name has to be on the deed.”

They continued talking in that semi-flooded courtyard, because the watering hose was still running, she didn’t want to be shut up inside—if they took this topic inside, she’d feel claustrophobic. Her boyfriend explained that it wasn’t for him to decide whose name the apartment would be under, since the money wasn’t his.

“That’s bullshit!” she said. “You’re putting me in a terrible position!”