We crossed the small piazza, not speaking; he couldn’t seem to raise any objections. We walked past the full dumpsters. It was a bright day. I nodded to the baker.

“I can’t, for tax purposes. I can’t have you do the same work at the same salary but with a VAT number: there’d be an inquiry. Plus, you could sue me, you know.” Under his hunting jacket and then his checkered suit coat, his white shirt was dappled with sweat. “It would be better to collaborate on individual projects, with you consulting, like before. Maybe in the end I’d be paying you the same amount, but I can’t guarantee that sort of regular salary. I just can’t.”

“But I’m already meeting you halfway,” I answered. I was headed for the grocery store. That ark of fluorescent lighting, linoleum, cardboard, plastic was the only place where I could get rid of him. “It would be a position as coordinator, not one project, as if it were one project…” We took the stairs down to the consular road that ran past the corner grocery store.

“Like I told you, I’m sorry,” he insisted, “but I just can’t.”

“So, let me tell you what I think.”

“Please. Thank you—please do—I know I’m asking a lot.”

I forced myself to look him in the eye and to keep my hands in my pockets, so I wouldn’t violently wave them around. He was still holding the espresso cup—it was empty—and now he was cradling it in one hand. I wanted to grab that cup and chuck it against a car.

“If you want to keep me,” I said, “then make me editor in chief. You make me editor in chief, you write it down, send out an email announcement, all over Italy, then you can pay me whenever, with all the VAT numbers you want. No—you don’t even have to pay me. But you have to say I’m editor in chief.”

He just stood there, mouth slightly open.

“Work-for-hire, consulting on individual projects, no pay. But you have to call me editor in chief. If over the long haul you trust me and want to build your publishing house with me, you have to call me editor in chief. The only way I can accept this is if you call me editor in chief. I’ll give you a few days to think it over. Now I have to do my shopping.” I held out my hand, he shook it, and not looking at him or taking back my espresso cup, I walked into the store.

Once inside, I glanced back through the glass doors: the publisher was still there, standing motionless, then he tentatively raised the espresso cup for me to see. I waved my index finger, letting him know he could return it some other time.

That fall, there were mornings when one of us would wake the other without so much as a movement or a word, like a fluorescent light clicking on, under the sheets. Facedown on the bed, arms numb up to my shoulders, unable to move, I woke my wife with my worried thoughts. It was Saturday.