totally cool. But she's already tired. She's been hitchhiking since dawn. She has to be at the shoot first thing tomorrow morning. Without our help, she doesn't know how she can possibly make it. Robert says something you can't hear. Nayomi shrugs in Italian. Looking at how he leans in toward her, you realize this is the corner of your husband's character you like least — the one where he believes this thing yet says that just to please people and avoid confrontation. He's been doing it ever since you met him. He's the kind of person who will buy a fake Seiko from a street vendor to make the vendor quit bothering him. You're sure it has something to do with how he has an unforgiving father and a perfectly nice mother who felt she had other things to accomplish in life than raise a boy. Because of his parents, he developed inside himself. Whenever he gets around other people, all he wants is to take the path of least resistance. That way he can escape them as fast as possible. Except for the kids and you. If you sat him down and asked him, Robert would say he'd like the world to be composed of exactly the four of you. An ideal quartet. He doesn't understand why he can't act like it is. He often does. You can see it now in the slope of his shoulders, how he's reflexively brushing his longish blond hair back with his right hand, already thinking: How much can it hurt? We drive north a few hours. We drop her off before we cut east toward Venice. She hitches the rest of the way into Milan. Look at her. Doesn't she remind you of us at her age? Someone needs to look after her. Plus it'll give the kids a taste of an authentic southern European. It'll be educational. By midafternoon, we'll be on our own again. She makes it to her shoot in time. Back in the States, she'll become an interesting family anecdote. Nayomi is holding out some money, offering it to Robert. He is holding up his hands in front of him, shaking his head no, he couldn't possibly take it. His smile is widening as he does this, meaning he's progressively more uneasy, progressively closer to giving in. You open your mouth to interrupt his thoughts, distract him back to this moment by the gas pumps, but it's too late. No, really, he's saying. It's fine. Really. Our pleasure. We'd love to have you join us. You examine him, searching for clues. You glance past him into the Saab. Celan and Nadi are fascinated by this new being in their environment. Nadi has forgotten she is eating pizza. She's holding what's left of her slice like a phone beside her ear, watching Nayomi. You signal to her. She recalls herself and recommences eating. You smile weakly and head into the store attached to the restaurant to pick up some snacks for later and a couple bottles of water. The cute young guy at the register openly stares at your breasts as he returns your change. You feel in equal parts amused by his lack of finesse and creeped out. When you return, everybody has taken his or her place. Nayomi is in the backseat with the kids. Robert is in the passenger seat up front, trying to manage the map unfolded across his lap. You walk around to the driver's side, slip in, fasten your seatbelt. You put the engine in gear, roll forward, start picking up speed. Soon you're on the Autostrada again, only this time with a hitchhiker sitting behind your husband. Cars shoot past you even though you're doing 110 kilometers, near 70 miles per hour. The sky is an amazing empty blueness. Hazy Tuscan hills rill alongside you, plowed fields, red-roofed white villas nestled among biomorphic swaths of dark green trees and pastures. Nayomi is talking. She doesn't seem able to do anything else. She is playing I Spy with the kids. I spy a castle, a vineyard, an eighteen-wheeler heading south. She reaches into her daypack and pulls out three sticks of fruity chewing gum, offers one to Celan, one to Nadi, peels the third for herself. The kids adore her instantly. During lulls in the game, Robert tosses her questions. He seems genuinely interested, but you know he isn't, that this is just what he does with strangers to pass time while appearing polite. If you asked him three hours from now what Nayomi's answers were, he wouldn't be able to tell you. Nayomi says she grew up in a dingy part of Munich, started university there, took an emphasis in political science, found herself working in a café in a neighborhood not far from where she had been a child. The economy was terrible back then. The economy is terrible now. Some things don't change. The fascists from World War Two are still in power, she explains. Many think they are not, but they are. This is the big secret nobody knows. It's just that they've learned how to dress like you and me, how to act graciously. Welcome, she says behind your husband, to the age of decorous totalitarianism. This is what governments are good at: organizing, manipulating, and exploiting human weakness. Everyone is unhappy. Some people know it. Some don't. But they are all unhappy with what the system has made out of them. Nayomi considered herself lucky to have any job at all. Many of her friends have none. The rich continue rolling around in their money like poodles in a Doberman's droppings, pretending Nayomi and her friends don't exist. When business was slow, she could sometimes sneak in some reading behind the counter. She likes political novels. Malraux. Sartre. But she likes political theory more. Why make fiction out of fact? Why not simply say what you mean? One day a well-dressed man walked in off the street. He was wearing a sharply cut pin-striped suit and tie and cufflinks. He took a table by the window and ordered an espresso and an Apfelkuchen. He was maybe in his early thirties and spoke German with an Italian accent. Have you ever thought about modeling? he asked. I have some friends in Italy. They could help. The pay's a thousand times better than what you must be making here. That's how it started. Nayomi had never thought about modeling. She was twenty-one then. Now she's twenty-three. Her life is changing every day. Yet she's also aware that twenty-three is already old for a model, that she has to move quickly or she'll be out of the frame by the time she's twenty-six. And, like she said, it's a much harder life than she had assumed, than anyone assumes. You should see how men look at you. Women, too. Both are angry with you for being who you are, but for different reasons. Even so, it's better than working back in the café. It's heavy, but it's cool. That's what she says: It's heavy, but it's cool. Nayomi plans to return to university after she's saved enough money to help out her parents and her, return with the knowledge of the world she's been collecting… only…