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it happened to be both a stranger and a man) would start talking about himself and forget to ask her anything. And this was what she was now doing with Angelo.
    She asked him about Rome, about his studies, about what kind of architecture interested him; about his aunt (whose sickness, surprisingly, seemed to be authentic); and finally even got him talking about a German girlfriend called Claudia to whom someday he hoped to be married. At which point, the disparity between his confessions and her almost total reticence became so great that he placed his palms upon the white crumb-strewn tablecloth and demanded a few answers from her.
    He asked if she worked and she told him about selling the bookstore and what a relief it was after all these years to be free of it.
    “You didn’t like it?”
    “I loved it. Books are my great passion. But small independent stores like we were have a hard time competing nowadays. So now I don’t sell them, I just read them.”
    “What are your other great passions?”
    “Mmm. Let me see. My garden. Knowing about plants.”
    “And now you have sold the bookstore, you can enjoy all these things. You are . . . How do they say? A lady of pleasure.”
    “I think what you mean is a lady of leisure.”
    Sarah smiled and looked at him over the rim of her glass while she took another slow sip of wine, realizing as she did so that she was flirting. It was about a hundred years since she had felt like flirting with anyone. She thought she’d forgotten how to. But she was enjoying it and, in that moment, had he asked her if he might come back with her to her hotel room for a shared siesta, she might even have found herself saying yes.
    “So you were married,” he said.
    “Correct.”
    “But no longer.”
    “Correct.”
    “For how long were you married?”
    “A lifetime. Twenty-three years.”
    “And you live in New York.”
    “On Long Island.”
    “And you have children?”
    She nodded slowly. Here it was. The most compelling reason to avoid questions. She felt pleasure draining from her through the hole he had just unplugged. She cleared her throat and replied quietly in as level a tone as she could.
    “One of each. A boy and a girl. Twenty-one and twenty-three.”
    “And what do they do? They are students, yes?”
    “Uh-huh.”
    “At college?
    “Yes. Kind of. Can we get the check?”
    She needed to leave, to be outside again. And alone. And she saw that, of course, he was puzzled by this abrupt change in her. How could the mere mention of children so snap a woman’s mood? It was the subject above all others to which they normally warmed. The poor boy would misinterpret it, naturally. He would probably assume she was embarrassed to admit that she had children not much younger than himself. Or conclude that she wasn’t really divorced at all, just out for a good time and that the mention of children had struck some chord of guilt. She felt sorry for him and sorry too for fracturing what had been so easy and pleasant between them. But she couldn’t help it. She stood up and took a credit card from her purse and placed it on the table in front of him, ignoring his protest. Then she excused herself and walked off to find the restroom.
    Outside, bewildered, he asked her if she would like to visit another gallery and she said no and apologized, pretending that the wine had made her feel unwell, that she wasn’t used to it. She thanked him for being so sweet and such a fine guide and for all the wonderful things he had shown her. He volunteered to accompany her to the hotel but she said that, if he didn’t mind, she would rather go alone. She said good-bye and offered him her hand and he looked so forlorn that instead she put both hands on his shoulders and kissed him on the cheek, which only seemed to confuse him more. When she walked off he looked quite bereft.
    Back at the hotel, the lobby was quiet. A young British couple was checking in. They had the shy felicity of honeymooners.