matfriends

The dress itself was still around her neck, so he could see the lovely slip she had underneath, lovely black slip, and it was the strangest thing, he knew right away that it wasn’t supposed to work like this, that the universe was showing him a girl-shaped thing undressed, but there she was with that… Continue reading

To reach the Pavillon de la Reine, one crossed the Place des Vosges to the townhouses on the north side, went east half a block to an arched passage that ran beneath and behind the buildings there to a small stone courtyard and the hotel itself. It was one of those exquisite European establishments, a… Continue reading

Up and up went the slow but indefatigable bus, swinging through great arcs along the winding road, and then as one often does at a time like that, when something has failed and you have to start over, she went up too in her own thought, up and up, slow like the bus but weightless,… Continue reading

She asked him if he’d ever read Il mondo dei soli. Paolo was an omnivorous reader but he had not. A novella by Giaconte, she told him, set on a planet many light years away where the dominant species were human-like creatures of two very different kinds. Different how? he asked. You would have to… Continue reading

Let me walk you through it, she tried again.  X is orbiting our sun at roughly the same distance as Earth, she continued. So it’s almost certainly formed of the same elements and under the same conditions, correct? Ok, he allowed. The same geology, the same chemistry, the same conditions for the emergence of life. … Continue reading

The Fiesole bus runs north from Firenze and up into the hills there. Everywhere a vista opened, the world shone bright as a Botticelli in the springtime sun. She thought of Boccaccio’s Decameron, of the novel’s ten young Florentines fleeing to Fiesole during the plague, of the stories they told one another to pass the… Continue reading

So a week ago and two days after their first painful talk, she told him that her sister Giuseppina had called to say their mother had The Virus and could Rosa come to Bologna for a few days to help out with things? Only after a long silence, Paolo said, You will go of course?… Continue reading

Paolo came to recognize Rosa’s growing uneasiness. For a week or two he watched her become more preoccupied. Once or twice he asked if everything was ok, but she deflected–to be fair, Rosa herself wasn’t sure at that point what the trouble was. Not long after that, she begged off their usual activities a couple… Continue reading

They showered together to warm themselves then went to bed, and under the thick duvet there he caressed her–her waist, hips, and thigh. She took him in her hand, then in both hands and pulled him toward her. He reached behind her and held her bottom, more bountiful than in the Botticellis they had seen… Continue reading

She saw him as she came around the fountain, right where he said he’d be and under his own umbrella, better sized for the earnest rain. He didn’t spot her until she stepped up to him, and as he turned to her she felt that very particular pleasure in seeing a lover’s face again, a… Continue reading