Chapter 1

Photography, like nothing else, teaches how fleeting time is. The picture we want to take is gone before we can point our camera at it: everything moved, the rare bird fled away, the lovely grin on your lover's face gone. Photography also teaches something else, something one thinks writing should teach too.

Details.

Everything is in the details. Details make life. God is in the details. Whether it is a blink too hard or a leg swinging, hands making involuntary movements or a gaze away when a lie is told. Noticing details will make you walk out of a poker table with more money than you started with, and life is a very big poker table.

Because, with Athena, all it took to start it was a single word.

I got her first email one day, out of the blue—obviously, since I did not know her. She said she had liked my stories, and made a few comments about them. I replied. Soon we were writing to each other daily; she was a writer herself, and I started to read her stories. Telling about those early days is confusing; memories are discontinuous and fragmentary, changing over time, and the emails jump from subject to subject and do not follow the increasing feeling of intimacy and comfort that we began to share.

From the beginning I assumed it was "her" and not "him;" not only from the stories she wrote and from her style, but also because her nick was Athena, and it didn't seem to me that somebody who would pick Athena as an alias would be male. Either way, soon the emails made it obvious that Athena was a woman.

Again, details.

Her stories were delicacies exhaling class and style, a pleasure to read among the usual garbage that is found online. Soon our emails outgrew our literary production. We talked about everything—except about who we were in real life—but mostly about writing.

One day I picked that word out.

I like slang. It may be the most interesting aspect of language, after the concept of language itself. It's a remarkable way to affirm your identity, to pretend to be (and perhaps become) somebody, to say what you want in a way that will be understood by those (and only those) who you want to understand it. It shows who you are, where you came from. The accent, the words you pick.

I think nobody would have noticed it, unless they lived in the same city we lived; it was a local slang. I liked to use it too, and once a friend that lived far away made a comment about it. "You sometimes use funny expressions," he said, referring to the inhabitants of my city in general. People have a remarkable ability to change completely how they are talking, to new dialects, almost. You're talking with your friends, using all the four-letter words you know and your phone rings, it's your girlfriend. You immediately change to another dialect. If it was your mother, it would be another one. Your boss, another one. You change the tone of your voice, the kind of adjectives you use, the speed you talk, the way you address the person you are speaking to, everything; I've seen people that had ticks when talking in certain environments and lost them in others. Maybe Athena had grown used to me, maybe she just assumed I'd understand it, maybe she was distracted. Either way, she didn't even notice it.

Little things. Details.

I told her about it. We liked to pick on each other. She had a passion for History, and often set her stories in the past. She wrote carefully, she researched, she got even the expressions used at the period right. I loved to find anachronisms in their stories and tease her, but it was hard to find a mistake. She did the same with my stories, finding inconsistencies, typos, my lousy syntax. It was a little game we played. It was challenging, it was fun.

She replied, "You told me where you live, yet you just guessed where I live." I searched through the old emails, finding all the comments I could gather that could help my case: weather, traffic, anything. It took me hours, but I got four phrases, which I sent with comments and the date she wrote them. No, I didn't have anything better to do that day.

"Do you think you are Sherlock Holmes or Hercule Poirot? It doesn't matter, both are cocky, boring and never get a girl." The playful argument continued and died, we both knowing we lived no more than an hour away, who knows, maybe a couple blocks from each other. I now started my emails with something like "I hope the weather there is as pretty as it's here" and other gists like it.

We started to chat online. We had began to do so sometime after we discovered we lived in the same town. One of those conversations stand to my mind. It was two in the morning, I was trying to gather my will to finish some late work, and I saw she was online.

"So don't you sleep? Of course, it must be the time zone," I began.

"What about you?"

"I'm working."

"I don't buy that."

"I am working. I did not say I was being productive."

"Are you writing?" I asked.

"No. Are you?"

"A little."

"What are you writing?"

"It's unpublishable."

"Hm, must be interesting."

We chatted for more than two hours about nothing, then she said she was going to bed. Looking back, that harmless conversation was a turning point. I told her about a big sale at a book shop the following week, in an email I sent some days after the chat. "Don't miss it," I said. Her next question surprised me. "Do you work there?" I said I didn't, which is the truth, but it was the first time one of us had asked such a direct question. "Do you want to meet me there?"

"I don't think it's wise," she said.

But the box was open. I asked her something that from time to time popped into my mind. "Did it occur to you that we may know each other?" We shared a lot of interests. No matter how big a city is, people that share interests are likely to go to the same places.

"Yes. Wouldn't it be disappointing if we do? We meet and talk to each other, probably bored to death, while wondering if we have new emails from the very person we're talking to."

"Maybe we like each other. But, to tell you the truth, I don't think we've met," I wrote her.

"Why?" she asked.

"We'd know."

"How?"

"Knowing," I said. "Just like I knew you lived here."

To live is to be constantly pushed around by the unexpected. I saw she was online one day, it was close to lunch time. I rarely log in while working, but I was bored and wanted a refreshing conversation. "I was thinking about Chinese today, what do you say?" I started.

"I hate Chinese," she said, thinking I was joking.

"I bet you love Italian food."

"I do."

"I know a great restaurant. What do you say?"

The long pause was much more important than the "no". I almost wrote the name of the restaurant and that I'd be there, but I'd be giving her a big advantage. She could go there and see me, find me in the crowd, and not show herself. I waited a little longer.

Then I decided it was worth the risk. If she did that, tough luck.

"I'll be at Antonio's. Ask for my nickname," I said, giving her the address. Antonio's was a small Italian restaurant that pretended to be pretentious, but was not. I chose it because there were some tables that couldn't be seen from most of the restaurant. "I'll wait for you. Can you be there in fifteen minutes?"

"I won't go."

"Fine. I'll be there in fifteen minutes. I'll have a drink, then lunch. I hope you show up."

This is how it all began. I could have written a story about it, how we fell in love and lived happily ever after. Only it didn't happen that way.

I got the corner table, one that was practically hidden from everywhere else. I told the hostess that someone might come looking for me. I asked if someone was waiting for me already, but she said no. I looked around, trying to find Athena, not knowing what she looked like.

I asked for a Bloody Mary, and was prepared to take my time. I didn't want to go back to the office, whether Athena showed up or not. I was sure she wouldn't show up.

But she did. I was reading the menu, deciding what to get. She was ten or fifteen minutes late. I saw movement, and there was the hostess with a woman, right in front of my table. "Can't be her," I thought. "She is too young." But she came to me. "Hi," she said, looking down.

"Hi." The hostess was smart enough to go away quickly. "Nice to meet you."

"You are ... aren't you?"

"I am. Is it you too?"

"Yes."

I smiled. "Nice to meet you," I said again.

"You too."

"Do you want something to drink?"

She was uncomfortable, nervous, ready to leave.

"I don't know. Maybe I should leave." But she looked at me, asking for a reason to stay.

"You are here already. It'll be fun. I bet in a couple minutes you'll be saying stingy phrases like you are used to."

I called the waiter, who miraculously came that same second. "The lady wants ... What do you want to drink?"

"White wine." After the waiter had gone, she continued. "So, I was right after all."

"About what?"

"About us."

"What do you mean?"

"We don't know each other. I told you. I'd know."

"Yes, I guess you are right."

"Do I look like you imagined?" She asked me, point-blank. I hate when women do that.

"Yes," I said. She saw through me, though.

"No, I don't. I saw your look when you first saw me. I almost ran away. I should have known."

"Why do you say that?"

"How did you imagine me?" Her tone of voice grew more demanding. "Come on, you describe your characters well. And don't bullshit me, I'll know if you lie."

So I drank a gulp of my Mary, and closed my eyes, picturing her—as I had imagined her before.

"I thought you'd be shorter. You know, petite, five foot and something. You'd have darker hair, dark brown hair. I don't know what it would look like, maybe shoulder long. Not very short, boyish, no, never. It had to look feminine. You'd be dressed in something expensive—all your clothes were expensive—but picked at random. I don't know why I thought you were small, because you have such a presence in your emails, but I thought you'd be one of those small, bossy girls that, if they are not unbearable, they are incredibly cute. You'd be the cute type. But talk, be aggressive. I thought you'd come here and be yourself—Athena, I mean. And you'd have a soft face, pretty, with dark eyes."

I opened my eyes. She was quiet. "I guess the only thing I got right was that you are pretty. With a soft face. And your voice, I thought it would be ... less delicate. More aggressive." She had a very light brown hair, almost blond, which was long, but not enough to fall beneath her shoulders. She was neither tall or short—shorter than me, however—, but she was pretty; she had a certain "it" which some women have, for which I could never find a proper adjective; the look of someone too mature for their body, and who isn't aware of her attractiveness. It's something about the way they move, the way they look at you. A touch of girl-next-door, I guess.

She was still quiet. "So you were a good surprise. I mean it." I saw she needed something else. "Do you know why I stared at you like that? I thought you were older. Ten years older. You should not be taken back by that, I won't treat you differently because of it. You should consider it a compliment. It's easy to seem ten years younger in a conversation. The other way around, however, is impossible to pretend if you are not mature enough. And I doubt I am the first to tell you that, that you are too mature for your age. Am I?"

"No."

"And you hate hearing that." She didn't nod, but I knew she did.

"I know it's an awful question, but how old are you? Of course, if you don't want to answer..."

"How old do I look?"

"Twenty. You could pass by eighteen or nineteen. But I think you are a bit older. Twenty-three."

"Almost. Twenty-two."

"Close enough."

"How old are you?"

"Guess."

"Thirty."

"Add three."

The waiter arrived with her white wine. "What do you want to eat? I'll have a Napolitan salad and the saltimbocca."

"I don't know, I haven't chosen yet."

"Would you come back later then?" The waiter left.

She opened her menu.

"Are you sorry you came?"

"No ... It's not that."

"Then..."

"You'll treat me like a child now."

"I won't. I don't treat even five year olds like children."

She just glanced down to her menu again. The waiter came back—his solicitude, to me, became obvious to be plain curiosity. "Ready to order?"

She nodded.

"I'll have a Capresi salad."

"Nothing else?"

"They have good fish here," I said, wondering if she was on a diet. Of course, women are always on diets.

"I suggest the sea bass," the waiter said. She agreed, probably more out of politeness than anything else. The waiter asked if we didn't want something more, but we refused. Once he was out of reach I talked again.

"He's curious."

"What?"

"He's curious about us."

"What did you tell them?"

"That if someone asked for me, I'd be here."

"Did you say your name?"

"I said Marquis."

"'If someone asks for the Marquis, that's me?' You said that?"

"Pretty much. I said that somebody might be looking for the Marquis de Poiuy, and to please show her to my table."

"Her."

"Yes."

"They think we're on a blind date."

"Poor fellows. How innocent they are. If only they read us." She grinned at this comment. It was the first time I saw her smile.

"Dirty mind." She said that whenever I suggested something malicious in our emails. I grinned back. "I wonder if they thought you are a real Marquis."

"There are no more real Marquises."

"And yet everybody would like to be one."

"Do you think so?" I asked. "Well. I read your email from this morning. I did not reply yet, but I liked that idea for a story."

"The professor seducing the student?"

"Well, put like that it sounds like a cliche beaten to death," I replied. I noticed how she twitched her head to the right when she nodded. "But you twisted it in an interesting way, making the professor a good-looking young woman, and the student a guy that is not interested. Are you going to write the rest of it?"

"Maybe. But if I did, it would be set in the past."

"As you usually do. But how could it be set before the sixties or seventies?" She did the odd nodding again. She raised her eyebrows lightly when she did it. I used to find her fondness of the past odd, but now I found it quite amusing. I thought then that her tender age explained it, but I was mistaken.

"Why is the period when a story happens so important to you? I already told you that I try to set my stories in such a way that they are timeless."

"Because you would like to live for ever? Or do you mind getting old?"

"Oh, now I start to recognize you, by the stings."

"Sorry. I didn't mean to be hostile."

"It's all right, you are just being yourself."

"I'm not."

"Yes you are."

"No, I'm not."

I got it.

"You are being Athena."

"Athena is not who I am. It's odd even to hear the name out loud."

"It is who you are. Maybe only when you write. It doesn't matter. Here, you can be her. Just like you always were with me." She didn't seem moved. "The difference is probably that Athena talks what comes to your mind, and you usually don't."

She looked at me, a bit hurt.

"You love to make these guesses, don't you? To pretend to read minds." I laughed at her remark, but she was serious. "You do." I was afraid, for a moment, that she'd leap away.

"I'm sorry. But you are so clever that I enjoy trying to understand you." She was surprised by my compliment. I decided to change the subject. "Did my invitation surprise you?"

"Yes."

"I was bored to death. And I thought, why not?"

She was quiet again, restless as she was when she arrived.

"You said you were not coming."

"I did."

"Were you bored too?"

"A little."

"Do you save your words for the emails?" She looked at me and I grinned as widely as I could.

"Yes."

"I wish I was the lucky bastard getting them." She smiled again, and we both relaxed.

The waiter came with the food. I asked for a bottle of mineral water. She started to eat as if she was not hungry. I once again wondered if she was on a diet. The questions that popped into my mind were more personal than I wanted, and we ate in silence for a moment.

"Do you meet online friends often?" She asked me.

"No. Rarely. I used to, but now I don't anymore."

"Why not?"

"I don't have much time to do that."

"For someone short on time, you write a lot."

"Writing is a good way of pretending to work. It's impressive. People see you typing like a maniac for two hours and they think that you are working your ass off."

"Don't they notice it?"

"That I'm writing? No."