Everyone was in the same mess, but maybe because her car was much larger than the others, and gave the impression of blocking more, a young, open-shirted guy from a little Fiat 500, infuriated, jumped up in the open sun-roof of his car and directed his wrath uniquely to her. “Stronza!” he called out in rage, shaking his fist at her. That she should have been so singled out in all that mass of stalled cars was the first surprise—then, following closely, the crudeness of the insult.

Stronza . . . worse than merde; the hard, bulletlike turd that comes from a begrudging bowel. A tough shit. The token of uprightness. And suddenly she understood.

That guy had picked her out, unerringly, for it was the costiveness of her life which gave her a badge of recognition. Of course. The traffic began a slow, tortuous crawl. And her mind, too, accepting the violence of the purgative insult hurled at her, began to move slowly.

She reached home. No one was there. There was a telephone message from an American friend she hadn’t seen in a year or so, and she called back.

“Marguerite! What’s up? Alberto was very vague, says you’ve been living in Florence.”

“Peg—Alberto and I separated.”

“Oh. Whose fault is it?”

Fault? What fault? she thought, irritated at the question. But what had she expected—instant approbation, immediate acceptance, and no questions asked? “Well, Peg, no one’s fault, actually . . . it’s just that it hadn’t worked out. We decided to separate because it was no good staying on together.”

“Poor Alberto. I just couldn’t help feeling sorry for him. He sounded so low.”

Marguerite was embarrassed. Besides being a nuisance this separation thing was getting embarrassing. Away from Richard’s contained little world, she felt self-conscious about it. As if she had to keep apologizing and reassure everyone that Alberto would be all right.

“Alberto will be all right, Peg,” she said. “Come up to Florence and see me when you can.”

The heat broke in an enormous thunderclap, and it began to rain. She sat in the kitchen eating the leftovers of Alberto’s last dinner and wondering where he was at the moment. Probably taking Weezy out to a great lunch, she thought morosely.

She was tired and went to her old room to rest on the bed until they got back. Listening to the rain, she thought of the heavy dragging depression of Florence that had blocked her feelings, had made her a stronza. And a Rome traffic jam had forced that miserable, punitive constipation of feelings to come unloosed. In relief, Marguerite admitted her feelings back into her life: I am not forced to stay in Florence. I am not forced to accept the legal bureaucracy of a homologated separation decree that says I am now free. Freedom is something else. I am not forced to leave Alberto.

I can do as I feel.