How could she think she could live anyplace else than in Rome, Tina mused, when all the world, the one she felt good in, was right here. Perfect. That was the trouble with Rome, she knew. Her part in it was too perfect, too easy. All she had to do was nothing—simply be her father’s daughter and everything would be accessible and easy and she would only have to let things happen.

The thought of what was wrong with her fell like a shadow over the feeling of well-being that had suffused her; fear came back. Absurd, she thought, as she glared at the easy skirmishes of spiraling forms and wafting billows where the facade of Sant’Agnese undulated and the figures in the fountains swirled and played. A theater of the absurd. How could she see her life in terms of sitting in Piazza Navona and basking? Even reading a paper was too difficult in that spot.

She deliberately picked up Il Messaggero to read the news of the day, all terrible. At an adjoining table she recognized the banalities of American tourists. The waiter brought her order and Tina heard a man’s voice: “Say, look at that, Grace, a hot dog!” Tina let her glance go over to the table where the Americans were sitting—a man in an open sports shirt, wearing sunglasses and a camera over his shoulder, and a woman with knee-length shorts and a hairdo static with spray.

“It’s called a Würstel here,” she said, regretting it as she did, wondering why she felt compelled to help them.

“Say, aren’t you American?” the man said. She nodded. “What are you doing reading that rag?” he kidded, pointing to her Italian newspaper.

She thought of replying rudely “None of your business” or “What’s it to you?” But she never could with these people; much as she disliked the tourists, their very helplessness and candor made her unable to deal with them.

“I live in Rome,” she said. “My father is Italian.”

“Hear that, Grace? She’s Italian, too. We’re Italian,” the man said, beaming proudly while Tina winced at the mistake she had made. “You speak Italian, huh? Nyah poke?”

“What?” Tina said. “Nabob? What’s that?” But the minute she uttered the strange word she had figured it out. The man was trying to say un poco—meaning “You speak a little Italian?”—and she blushed for him and his pathetic words.

“You speak a different dialect, huh?” he said pleasantly, nonplussed.