59 / 180
59
“But he looks so incredibly good”, pleaded Irene.
They glanced at each other, wordlessly voted two against
one, and the ice cream man was no longer an issue for
either Paul or Max.
“And what about Luisa?” Irene protested. “She has a right to
vote too, and kids love ice cream. And Italians love kids!”
“Lulu is three weeks old”, Paul pointed out. “She’s a baby.
Babies don’t eat ice cream.”
Irene didn’t have a chance, not even with me as another
woman, so to speak, who could have shown some
solidarity. Could have. If I’d wanted to, but I didn’t because
I didn’t want a stranger, didn’t want Francesco, or Claudia,
who Max now suggested, once Francesco had been
discarded. She was also someone who apparently looked
insanely good, was a fellow student at the Art Academy and
Max naturally wanted to get into bed with her, and so on
and so forth. It wasn’t easy for my father, who’d gone
through the painful experience of being roughly thrust into
maturity on the day of my birth, and who now suffered
from needing to be responsible. But for me, with the same
burning desire for responsibility plus honest devotion, it
wasn’t easy either. No, I didn’t want new faces. I didn’t
want more flatmates who’d be more or less disinterested in
me. I wanted my tea-leaf-scented Englishman who, by then,
had visited me three times bringing touchingly meaningless