“What a bore, what a pest you are! Why would you possibly want the future when here we have this glorious present?”

“I want to know what to prepare for . . . what to expect.”

“The team; expect to be part of a team, my little individualist. No more cult of the personality. To get on successfully in society, you will have to be part of a functional group. The personal identity crisis will be old-hat, perverse really—an expression of self-centeredness that will be very suspect.” He drawled lazily, as they lay prone on the warm, white sand and listened to the sounds of the waves.

“Mmmm,” she said, trailing her hand in the sand. “Sounds delicious. What else?”

“No more the two of us alone on this beautiful beach with no one in sight for miles. We will be lucky to have room enough to walk to the water among all the throngs . . . Calabria will be filled with skyscrapers as people begin immigrating here from more populated areas. Money will become more and more meaningless since there will be less to buy in terms of nonfunctional items. There will be lots of leisure, of course, as everything gets automated. Lots of time for a lot of sporting sex.”

“What’s that?”

“What we’re doing on this trip.”

“Meaning?”

“No big meanings, no big romance. Recreational sex will be all.”

“Why is that?”

“The mythology of love will have vanished—as completely as the forests of Bruttium.”

In spite of herself she liked him. He had shed his arrogant, bantering self along with the expensive shoes and beige linen suit of his Hotel Staffa wardrobe and become a natural, easy person to be with. He was quiet, silent for long stretches, content to walk on the beach with her, swim, eat, nap, make love. There were no man-woman battles between them, no cultural clashes, not even passion. All the lasciviousness he had hinted at had only been part of the role he was playing when he was the clever Professor Simongini. When he was not playing, he was, in his way, as simple and natural as Duke.

He was resting, withdrawing from himself; when he put back on his expensive handmade leather shoes and Rome wardrobe, and got behind the wheel of his Maserati again, his eye flashing over the despoiled landscape to see if it held any other villages inhabited by Luluzzos for him to plunder, then he would be once more the Ferruccio who taunted her and set her on edge.

She was calm, content during the day, but once at night she woke with a start wondering where she was, remembering, and her eyes filling with tears as she thought of her losses.