I decided to complete my exploratory tour. I walked to Mergellina and when I reached Piazza dei Martiri the black sky was so low that it seemed to be resting on the buildings. I hurried into the elegant Solara shoe store certain that the storm would burst at any moment. Alfonso was even more handsome than I remembered, with his big eyes and long lashes, his sharply drawn lips, his slender yet strong body, his Italian made slightly artificial by the study of Latin and Greek. He was genuinely happy to see me. The arduous years of middle school and high school we'd spent together had created an affectionate bond, and even though we hadn't seen each other for a long time, we picked up again right away. We started joking. We talked easily, the words tumbling out, about our academic past, the teachers, the book I had published, his marriage, mine. It was I, naturally, who brought up Lila, and he became flustered, he didn't want to speak ill of her, or of his brother, or Ada. He said only:

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