The love of those we don't love in return settles on the surface and from there quickly evaporates.

Mattia thought that he and Alice were like that, twin primes, alone and lost, close but not close enough to really touch each other.

She found herself thinking of how it would feel to be safely trapped in his arms, with no more possibility to choose.

She emptied herself of Fabio and of herself, of all the useless efforts she had made to get where she was and find nothing there. With detached curiosity she observed the rebirth of her weaknesses, her obsessions. This time she would let them decide, since she hadn't been able to do anything anyway. Against certain parts of yourself you remain powerless, she said to herself, as she regressed pleasurably to the time when she was a girl.

The scene was set. All that was required was an action, a cold start, instant and brutal as beginnings always are.

Mattia was right: the days had slipped over her skin like a solvent, one after the other, each removing a very thin layer of pigment from her tattoo, and from both of their memories. The outlines, like the circumstances, were still there, black and well delineated, but the colors had merged together until they faded into a dull, uniform tonality, a neutral absence of meaning.

Why did you choose to stay here?" (...) "I don't know," he said. "It's as if there's more oxygen here.