Three days of information retrieval. “Now tell me everything you’ve been doing,” says Emily Ordure, “in chronological order. What are your impressions of this country after having been away so long? . . . What do you think of the European mood at this moment? . . . Now just how does Alberto go about his work? . . .” I won’t bare my soul to this correspondent for the alumnae news.

She’s reading Updike’s Couples (“I don’t care much for the characters”) and keeps a persistently open outlook on hippies and the copy of Evergreen Review Tina gave me. “Well, it’s an exchange of ideas, anyway,” says Miss Emily Ordeal of all the turbulence and turmoil, the revolutions and disasters, the violence and vehemence and human waste around us. Oh, Emily Ordway! The world is full of you with your gadgets and efficiency and zeal for self-improvement; with your fridge full of stuff stored in plastic bags and one brownie stowed away in the freezer top and labeled “one brownie”; with your sofa bed set thus, in the middle of the floor, and not next to the wall as I’d prefer it because I might mark the wall, and a lumpy flashlight under the pillow “in case you have to go to the bathroom,” which I won’t. Careful, nut-storing squirrels.

At morning coffee she pumps away, jotting all the names I mention on separate index cards, with brief notes on their work, specialties, outlooks. All followed by “friend of Marguerite.” That’s public relations. I mention Giorgio Corsi: UN diplomat, NYU professor, Italian intellectual, etc., etc. She’s scratching away and I add, “He’s also gay.”

Emily lives in a huge apartment complex just across the street from where the neighborhood turns bad. She blinks lights with a librarian in the facing wing to let each other know they’re all right. An Egyptian tapestry, bought because it was “Scandinavian in feeling,” hangs in her entry; a Siamese fertility mobile of oscillating fish hangs in the living room, chiding her barrenness; wine for meals is measured by the half-glassful and the bottle carefully corked and put away.

I skip out the third day when she’s busy with clients, leaving her $5 for the frozen foods I’ve used and my outlook for the future written on an index card.

I go to Giorgio’s in The Village. He’s appalled to see me, but since for years he’s been telling Alberto and me to consider his place our pad in New York, he takes me in and gives me his studio couch. Lots of tips, too, on people to see for doing translations or other work in Florence.