Choices are made in brief seconds and paid for in the time that remains

Separating them were two layers of brick, a few inches of plaster, and nine years of silence.

With a little effort, she could get up by herself

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.

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

His scars were hidden and safe in her hand.