“You’ve already said yes.”

“No. I wanted to tell you first.”

“You’ve made up your mind.”

She hesitated briefly – the only time she did – then nodded.

I’d been thinking she was about to tell me she was expecting a baby. I’d been thinking that at the age of forty-two my insipid life was suddenly, as if by magic, about to have a meaning, a reason. All because of that boy, or girl, I’d be able to teach a few things before I got too old.

I didn’t say that. I kept it all inside, like something you feel ashamed to even be thinking. Because you’re ashamed of your own weakness, your own fragility.

Instead, I asked her when she’d be leaving, and I must have seemed ridiculously calm, because she looked at me with a mixture of surprise and anxiety. From the street came the angry, prolonged snarl of a moped with a souped-up exhaust. I’d remember that sound, I thought. I’d hear it again every time that unexpected, pitiless scene came back into my mind.

She didn’t know when she’d be leaving. Ten days, two weeks. But she definitely had to be in Milan by the end of the month, and in New York by the middle of October.

So, I thought, she did know when she was leaving after all.

We were silent for two or three minutes. Or more.

“Don’t you want to know why?”

No, I didn’t want to know why. Or maybe I did, but I said no all the same. I didn’t want her to burden me with her reasons – which I was sure were excellent reasons – to ease her heart, or her soul, or wherever it is our guilt is located. I had my own guilt, and she had hers. I would think about it in the weeks and months to come, tormenting myself with that question and the memories and all the rest of it.

But for that tepid, pitiless September afternoon, we’d said enough.

I stood up and said I was going back to my apartment, or maybe going out.

“Guido, don’t do this to me. Say something, I beg you.”