What followed was a maudlin scene straight out of a Russian novel. I stomped out of the house, saying, “Come with me!” Surprised, the publisher obeyed, little cup in hand, as he walked after me, into the courtyard, then the street, awkwardly shutting the front door grate and then the gate to the yard.

“So meet me halfway,” I said, speeding up along the narrow road, nodding hello to the man with his little granddaughter on his bicycle and to the lady letting her dog do its business practically outside my gate. “We’ll do this: you keep paying me a salary. We’ll do eighteen hundred euros per month, regardless, and I’ll go back to working freelance.”

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.