Those were great days in Rome. The new independent music scene, romantic and electronic, its flashes of lyricism in sync with the young people of Rome and their struggles—those living as artists and those who dreamed of doing so, undeterred by the constant remarks about how the city was dying from ignorance and corruption. Eleonora and her boyfriend hung out with the producers of that music, the singer-songwriters, and also with young comedians, writers … but she was frustrated that her boyfriend hadn’t finished his first novel, which she couldn’t wait to edit: he seemed too satisfied with his lifestyle to dedicate himself to art. She found a little freelance work, some copyediting under the table, five hundred euros a month. As the months passed, her anonymous work started showing up in the bookstores she’d visit, and she was thrilled. So what if these novels weren’t so great—just a bunch of genre fiction—it was fun seeing the paper fruits of her intelligence budding in the greenhouses of culture.

Another girl from the (now finished) workshop wrote me and sent me her first novel. I sent it on to Eleonora, like I had the story and again, I was pleased with the result, and this time forwarded it to my publisher, and they bought it.

I gave Eleonora the news over the phone; she burst out crying, apologized, and hung up. A half hour later she called back to ask if the colophon could include her name as editor. I told her the author could put her into the acknowledgments.

The publisher I worked for, one of the big houses, is located in Milan. I divided my time between Milan and Rome, where I’m from, because it was my job to work with our Roman writers. When I returned to Rome that day, I met Eleonora in a tearoom downtown: she seemed unhappy. She’d entered the literary world by truly, irrefutably helping a young, talented writer, and this had unnerved her: “I can’t take it. It’s over, just like that, there’s nothing stable, no place to stand. Stefano’s perfectly happy as he is, hanging out with singers, this endless Tartar Steppe is fine by him … this dream he’ll never obtain. Marcello, I can’t take it.” And then she made this leap in logic that I still remember, maybe because I was so struck by hearing my name spoken in such an intimate way: “Do you think I used him? For his money? I want to start eating again, Marcello. I hate feeling so bad.”