"I should get rid of Marta," she says.
"Don't be mad-she forgot to bring down your paper one day. I'll get it now."
"No, no! Hang on, wait. There's no rush."
"Didn't I come over for that?"
"Yes, but I'm not sure I need it now."
"You can't fire Marta." His mobile phone rings-the digitized sound of a sheep bleating. She frowns: modern technology is not allowed in her house. "Sorry," Dario says, and takes it outside by the elevator.
Massi wanders back in, holding a white rectangular contraption studded with buttons and two unlit gray screens. He must not turn on video games at his grandmother's house.
"Let's go into the kitchen," she says. "And I don't want to see that thing you have there." If you feed children, that works. She sits this one on a chair. His legs dangle and he kicks off one of his Nikes, baring a dirty white sports sock. "What do you like?" she asks. "Are you hungry?"
"Not very."
He hardly eats, this one-Dario said something about that, didn't he? That they struggle to get Massi to finish meals. "Well, you'll have something in my house," she declares and searches the cupboards. "This is grown-up food, mostly." She checks the fridge. "I'll make you pastina in brodo."
"No thank you."
She ignores this and heats the broth. The boy watches his grandmother. Her perfume infuses the kitchen. As the broth simmers, fatty-chicken aroma overwhelms her scent. She turns to Massi, holding a wooden spoon that steams. She sweeps his bangs aside. "You can see now. But your parting is uneven," she says. "I'll fix it for you."
"No thank you."
"I'm good at it." She leans in. He leans back.
He stares at his plastic video game, a Nintendo DS Lite, which he got a few weeks ago. "Can I turn it on?"
"Your food is almost ready."
"I don't want any food."
Ornella doesn't speak for a moment. She switches off the stove. Crushed, she hurries into the living room. She stands motionless, watching the front door, behind which stands her eldest son, laughing into his cellphone.
He comes back inside, still smiling at the exchange that concluded his phone call. "Where's Massi? We should get going."
"I tried to make him eat something. I see what you mean-it's impossible."
Dario is puzzled. "We can't stop him eating."
The boy hobbles out of the kitchen, wearing only one sneaker and engrossed in his video game.
"Turn that off," his father says. The boy does not, stumbling out the front door, too engaged to say goodbye.
"Goodbye," Ornella says nonetheless.
"I meant to tell you who I saw," Dario says, nipping into the kitchen to collect his son's abandoned Nike. "Kathleen Solson." This is his former girlfriend, whom Dario met in 1987 when they were both interns at the paper. "She's back now, back from Washington."
"And how is she?"
"The same. Older."
"I don't want to know anything more."
"This has nothing to do with current events."
"It has to do with the paper. I don't want to know."
"Do you want tomorrow's or not?"
"I'm worried about tomorrow," she says, her voice dropping. "You don't remember, do you."
"Remember what?"
"Marta isn't back until Tuesday."
"And you can't wait till Tuesday to fire her?"
"You misunderstand."
She stands at the bottom of the stepladder, holding it for him. She wants to stop fretting. It's just another date-it's not as if the paper will contain an account of her own life on that day.
He climbs up and looks around the storage space. "It's not here."
"Yes, it is."
He continues searching. "It really isn't. You want to come up and look? It's missing, I promise you."
"I've collected them all," she insists. "I've never missed an edition."
"Well, you'll have to miss one now, I'm afraid. Do you want April 25, 1994? That's here."
"No, I don't. I'm not there yet."
He comes down the ladder and, leaping from the third rung, swoops beside her and kisses her fast on the cheek.
Unprepared, she smiles bashfully, then bats him aside and, catching herself, gets angry. "You could have knocked me over. It's not funny."
The paper's headquarters on Corso Vittorio are a taxi ride from Ornella's home in Parioli. She has never visited, has always been wary of that office, which contains all the world yet is itself contained in a single grubby building. But she has no choice-her storage space does not contain tomorrow, and she must find a copy.
"Che piano?" asks a man with a strong Anglophone accent.
"Not sure what floor," she answers in English. "I'm trying to find the headquarters of the paper."
"Follow me." He closes the elevator gate after them and nudges the third-floor button with his knuckle. The elevator rises.
"You work there?" she asks.
"I do."
"What's your name?"
"Arthur Gopal."
"Ah yes, I've read your obituaries. You did one on Nixon the other day."
"Nixon died ages ago," he says, confused. "Anyway, I don't do obits anymore. I'm the culture editor."
"A bit too one-sided, I thought. Nixon did some good things, too."
She asks to see Kathleen Solson, and Arthur enters the newsroom to convey the request. Ornella is tempted to follow him in, to view the workings of this place herself. But, no: if you want to keep enjoying sausages, don't visit the sausage factory.
After a few minutes, Kathleen appears. "I'm seeing all the Monterecchis lately. I bumped into your son a few weeks back."
"Yes, he told me." Haltingly, Ornella leans in to hug Kathleen, regretting it the instant she has committed herself. She embraces the younger woman rigidly and fast.
They are silent in the elevator down. Ornella keeps wishing she hadn't hugged Kathleen. It was embarrassing. Was it disloyal to Dario somehow?
"Which way?"
"I can't venture too far," Kathleen says.
They walk along Corso Vittorio, the roadway a blur of buses, taxis, and droning motor scooters. Ornella must speak up to be heard. "I still read the paper religiously, you'll be glad to hear."
"What year are you up to?"
"1994. Which, as it happens, is when we saw each other last."
"Yes-when I left."
"I even remember the date we last met-it was at the hospital when Cosimo got sick, April 24, 1994."
Kathleen's BlackBerry rings. It is Menzies. She issues a few orders and hangs up.
"You were rude to that person," Ornella says.
"No time for politeness at my job, I'm afraid."
"That can't be true." After a pause, she adds, "You know, I sometimes wonder whether I might not have liked to work in journalism. In my next life, shall we say?"
"Did you ever try?"
"Don't be ridiculous."
"You could have."
"I tried to get Dario to go into it, but he didn't take to newspapers."
"I know-we did that internship together."
"Where would I have been, had I done something brave like you?" She glances fast at Kathleen, then away. "I'm old now. Fifty-eight. That's the age when a person is at the height of their career, isn't it?"
"Can be."
"You and I are alike," Ornella says. "Don't look so horrified. We're very different in some ways. But in others-" She stops. Ostensibly, she came here to obtain a back issue of the paper and, secondarily, to catch up with a former acquaintance. But she finds herself tempted toward another course: she wants to say something. To talk-to confess, even. To tell this woman about tomorrow, a day in which Kathleen had a walk-on part. "Do you remember my husband at all?"
"I certainly do. I was sorry, by the way, to hear that he had passed-"
Ornella interrupts. "Terribly handsome, wasn't he."
"He was."
"And a baron, you know, though he didn't use the title. I remember when he and I met, Cosimo was so distinguished. I myself was rather a pretty young thing back then-you can see in the old photos, if you don't believe me."