“Come on,” he said. “It’s evolution. Why argue?”

“Do you think five minutes is too long?”

“Well, you got out of the wrong side of the bed.”

“Lose the belt at least when you get home, okay? Sorry, it’s just, you know.”

“‘It’s different for women.’ Did I say it right?”

Giuli had the best range of pout. He offered a smile.

“The uniform still gives me the creeps,” she murmured. “I hate to say it.”

“I like it when you’re so frank,” he said.

“You should change at the station.”

Felix took two apples from the bowl and rubbed them. The apartment was all her, really. He would have had a bookshelf, a stereo, something to keep his laptop off the floor and near a phone jack, and some hooks. Oh, a place to stack empty bottles, of course.

And yes, since he’d gotten kicked out of the place he’d shared with Viktor and a rotating series of friends overnighters, hazy friends of friends it still struck him sometimes that he was living in a sort of art gallery. Or perhaps an artist studio. The afternoon light in from the platz reminded him of something from a Dutch Master. How could he possibly complain, living in an apartment in the centre of town, which for years now, Giuliana had added and decorated and transformed?

“You had a busy evening yesterday too,” she said. “And night.”

“What? I crashed out the minute I hit the pillow. What was it, one? Is that what you mean ‘busy’?”

“I meant dreams. You dreamed, didn’t you?”

“I think I must have,” he said. “I dreamed that one where you and I were like we used to be when we started out. Not this hausfrau and mann routine.”

“Get lost,” she said. “I’m not the one who puts on a uniform to go to work.”

“Maybe it’s time to try teaching your students how to make them?”

“Art,” she said in a monotone. “Uniforms don’t come into it.”