I don’t think he’s worried about hell, he just wants to do the right thing on earth. He believes there’s a difference between right and wrong. I suppose you can’t believe that, if you think it all means nothing in the end.
No, I do believe there’s right and wrong, obviously.
She raised an eyebrow. Oh, you are deluded, then, she said. If we’re all just going to die in the end, who’s to say what’s right and what isn’t?
He told her he would think about it. They went on eating, but presently he broke off again and started to shake his head once more.
Not to harp on about the gay thing, he said. But would he have any gay friends, this guy? Simon.
Well, he’s friends with me. And I’m not exactly heterosexual.
Amused now, even mischievous, Felix answered: Oh, okay. Me neither, by the way.
She looked up at him quickly and he met her eyes.
You look surprised, he said.
Do I?
Returning his attention to his food, he went on: I just never really had a thing about it.
Whether someone is a guy or a girl. I know for most people it’s like, the one big thing they really do care about. But for me, it just doesn’t make any difference. I don’t go around telling people all the time because actually, some girls don’t like it. If they find out you’ve been with guys they think you’re a bit not right, some of them. But I don’t mind telling you since you’re the same yourself.
She took a sip from her wine glass and swallowed. Then she said: For me I think it’s more that I fall in love very intensely. And I can never know in advance who it’s going to be, whether they’ll be a man or woman, or anything else about them.
Felix nodded slowly. That’s interesting, he said. And it happens a lot, or not that much?
Not that much, she said. And never very happily.
Ah, that’s a shame. But it’ll go happily for you in the end, I bet.
Thank you, that’s kind.
He went on eating, while she watched him from across the table.
I’m sure people must fall in love with you all the time, she said.
He looked at her, his expression open and sincere. Why would they? he said.
She shrugged. When we first met I got the impression you were always going on dates, she said. You seemed very blasé and cool about everything.
Just because I go on dates doesn’t mean people go around falling in love with me. I mean, we’ve been on a date together, you’re not in love with me, are you?
Placidly she replied: I wouldn’t tell you if I were.
He laughed. Good for you, he said. And don’t get the wrong idea, you’re welcome to be in love with me if you want. I would have to put you down as a bit of a lunatic, but I kind of think that about you anyway.
She was mopping the remaining sauce off her plate with a piece of bread. You’re wise, she said.
/
On Thursday morning an assistant from Alice’s publishing house picked her up outside the apartment at ten and took her to meet some journalists. Felix spent the morning wandering around the city looking at things, listening to music on his headphones, taking pictures and posting them in a WhatsApp group. One photograph showed a narrow, shaded cobbled street, and at the end a resplendent white church in the sunlight, with bright green doors and shutters. Another showed a red moped parked outside a shopfront with old-fashioned lettering over the door. Finally he posted a photograph of the dome of St Peter’s, creamy blue like an iced cake, seen in the distance from the Via della Conciliazione, sky blazing in the backdrop. In the group chat, someone with the username Mick replied: Where the fuck are you lad??? Someone with the username Dave wrote: Hold on are you in ITALY? what the fuck haha. You not at work this week. Felix typed out a reply.
Felix: Roma baby
Felix: Lmao
Felix: Here with some girl I met on tinder, ill tell you when im back
Mick: How are you in rome with someone you met on tinder?
Mick: This needs way more explanation hahaha
Dave: Wait what!! did a wealthy old lady pick you up on the internet?
Mick: Ohhhh
Mick: Hate to say it but ive heard about this
Mick: You are gonna wake up with no kidneys
After this exchange, Felix closed out of that group chat and opened another, which was titled ‘number 16’.
Felix: Hey has sabrina been fed today
Felix: And not just biscuits she wants wet food
Felix: Post a picture when its done I wanna see her
No one responded or saw the messages right away. At the same time, in a different part of the city, Alice was recording a segment for an Italian television programme on which her voice would later be dubbed over by an interpreter. From a feminist perspective, it’s about the gendered division of labour, she was saying. Felix locked his phone and continued walking, crossing partway over a bridge and pausing to look down the river at the Castel Sant’Angelo. Through his headphones he was listening to ‘I’m Waiting for the Man’. The quality of light was very crisp, golden, casting dark diagonal shadows,
and the waters of the Tiber below were pale green, milky. Leaning on the wide white stone balustrade, Felix took out his phone and flicked over to the camera app. The phone was several years old and for some reason opening the camera app caused the music to skip and then switch off. He removed his headphones irritably and took a picture of the castle. For a few seconds then he held the phone out at arm’s length, headphones dangling loose over the side of the bridge, and it was not clear from this gesture whether he was trying to see the existing image better, getting a new angle in order to take a different photograph, or simply thinking about letting the device slip soundlessly out of his hand and into the river. He stood there with his arm outstretched and a grave-looking expression on his face, but maybe he was just frowning under the glare of sunlight. Without taking another photograph, he wound up the headphones, pocketed the phone and walked on.
Alice was giving a reading at a literary festival that night. She told Felix there was no need for him to attend, but he said he didn’t have other plans. Might as well hear what your books are about, he said. Seeing as I’m not going to read them. Alice said if the event was really good maybe he would change his mind and he assured her he would not. The event was outside the city centre, in a large building that housed a concert hall and exhibitions of contemporary art. The corridors of the building were busy, with various readings and talks going on at the same time. Someone from the publishing house came over before the event and took Alice away to meet the man who would interview her onstage. Felix wandered around with his headphones in, checking his messages, his social media timelines. In the news, a British politician had made an offensive statement about Bloody Sunday. Felix returned to the top of his timeline, refreshed it, waited for new posts to load, and then did the same thing again, several
times. He didn’t even seem to read the new posts before pulling down to refresh again.
Alice was at that point sitting in a windowless room with a bowl of fruit in front of her, saying: Thank you, thank you, that’s very kind of you, I’m so pleased you enjoyed it.
About a hundred people attended Alice’s event. Onstage she read for five minutes, then engaged in conversation with an interviewer, and then took audience questions. An interpreter sat beside her, translating the questions in Alice’s ear and then translating Alice’s answers for the audience. The interpreter was fast and efficient, moving a pen rapidly across a pad of paper while Alice was speaking, then delivering the translation aloud without pausing, and then striking through everything she had written and beginning again as soon as Alice resumed. Felix sat in the audience listening. When Alice said something funny, he laughed, along with the others in the audience who could understand English. The rest of the audience would laugh later, when the interpreter was speaking, or else they wouldn’t, perhaps because the joke didn’t translate or because they didn’t find it funny. Alice answered questions about feminism, sexuality, the work of James Joyce, the role of the Catholic Church in Irish cultural life.