After a few seconds the water stopped again. The tomato was still down there, intact. The lake on the floor had ceased spreading. Mattia had once explained to her that there's a precise point at which water stops spreading, when the surface tension has become strong enough to hold it together, like a film.

Alice looked at the mess she had made. She closed the lid of the toilet, as if surrendering to disaster, and sat down on it. She brought her hands to her closed eyes and began to cry. She cried for Mattia, for her mother, for her father, for all that water, but mostly for herself. Under her breath she called Mattia, as if seeking his help, but his name remained on her lips, sticky and insubstantial.

Fabio knocked at the bathroom door but she didn't move.

"Ali, everything okay?"

Alice could see his outline through the frosted glass of the door. She sniffed quietly and cleared her throat to disguise her tears.

"Sure," she said. "I'll be there in a minute."

She looked around, lost, as if she really didn't know how she'd ended up in that bathroom. The water from the toilet bowl dripped onto the floor in at least three different places and Alice hoped, for a moment, that she could drown in those few millimeters of water.

GETTING THINGS IN FOCUS

30

She had turned up at Marcello Crozza's studio at ten o'clock one morning and, feigning a determination that had cost her three walks around the block, had said I want to learn the trade, could you take me on as an apprentice? Crozza, who was sitting by the automatic developer, had nodded. Then he had turned around and, looking her straight in the eyes, had said I can't pay you. He hadn't wanted to say forget it, because he'd done the same thing himself many years before and the memory of the courage it had taken him was all that was left of his passion for photography. In spite of all his disappointments, he wouldn't have denied anyone that sensation.

They were mostly vacation photos. Families of three or four people, by the sea or in tourist destinations, hugging in the middle of St. Mark's Square or under the Eiffel Tower, with their feet cut off and always in the same pose. Photographs taken with automatic cameras, overexposed or out of focus. Alice didn't even look at them anymore: she developed them and then slipped them all into the paper envelope with the yellow and red Kodak logo.

It was mostly a matter of being in the shop, receiving rolls of twenty-four or thirty-six shots, shut away in their little plastic containers, of marking the customer's name on the slip and telling them they'll be ready tomorrow, of printing out receipts and saying thank you, good-bye.

Sometimes, on Saturdays, there were weddings. Crozza picked her up from home at a quarter to nine, always in the same suit and without his tie, because in the end he was the photographer, not a guest.

In church they had to set up the two lights, and on one of the first occasions Alice had dropped one and it had smashed on the steps of the altar and she had looked at Crozza in terror. He had pulled a face as if one of the pieces of glass had gotten stuck in his leg, but then he had said never mind, just clean it up.

He was fond of her and didn't know why. Perhaps because he had no children, or because since Alice had been working there he was able to go to the bar at eleven o'clock and check his lottery numbers and when he came back to the shop she smiled at him and asked him so, are we rich? Perhaps because she had that bad leg and lacked a mother as he lacked a wife and all lacks are pretty much the same. Or because he was sure that she would soon get tired of him and in the evening he would pull down the security gate on his own again and set off for home where no one was waiting, with his head empty and yet so very heavy.

Instead, after a year and a half, Alice was still there. Now that she had the keys she arrived before him in the morning and Crozza found her on the sidewalk in front of the shop, chatting with the lady from the grocer's next door, with whom he had never exchanged more than a "Good morning." He paid her under the table, five hundred euros a month. If they did weddings together he would drop her outside the door of the Della Rocca house and, with the engine of his Lancia still running, take out his wallet and hand her an extra fifty, saying see you Monday.

Sometimes she brought him her own snapshots and asked his opinion, even though it was clear to both of them that he had nothing more to teach her. They sat down at the desk and Crozza looked at the photographs, holding them up to the light, and gave her some advice about exposure time, or how best to use the shutter. He let her use his Nikon whenever she wanted and had secretly decided that he would give it to her as a present the day she left.

"We're getting married on Saturday," said Crozza. It was his way of saying they had a job.

Alice was putting on her denim jacket. Fabio would be there to pick her up at any moment.

"Okay," she said. "Where?"

"At the Gran Madre. Then there's a reception in a private villa in the hills. Rich folks' stuff," commented Crozza with a touch of disdain, immediately regretting it because he knew that Alice came from that world too.

"Hmm," she murmured. "Do you know who they are?"

"They sent the invitation. I've put it over there somewhere," said Crozza, pointing to the shelf under the cash register.

Alice looked in her bag for a rubber band and pulled back her hair. Crozza watched from across the shop. Once he had masturbated thinking about her, kneeling in the gloom after they'd lowered the security gate, but then he had felt so dreadful that he hadn't eaten and the next day he had sent her home saying you've got the day off today, I don't want anyone underfoot.

Alice rummaged among the sheets of paper stacked under the counter, more to fill the time while waiting than out of genuine interest. She found the envelope with the invitation, stiff and imposingly large. She opened it and the name leaped off the page in a gilded cursive, full of flourishes.

Ferruccio Carlo Bai and Maria Luisa Bai are delighted to announce the marriage of their daughter Viola…

Her eyes darkened before she went any further. A metallic taste flooded her mouth. She swallowed and it was like gulping down that fruit candy from the locker room all over again. She closed the envelope and waved it in the air for a moment, thinking.

"Can I go alone?" she ventured at last, her back still turned to Crozza.

He shut the drawer of the cash register with a rattle and a ding.

"What?" he asked.

Alice turned around and her eyes were wide open and bright with something and Crozza couldn't help smiling, they were so beautiful.

"I've learned how by now, haven't I?" said Alice, walking over to him. "I can do it. Otherwise I'll never be able to manage on my own."

Crozza looked at her suspiciously. She rested her elbows on the desk, right in front of him, and leaned toward him. She was only a few inches from his nose and that gleam in her eyes begged him to say yes and not to ask for explanations.

"I don't know if-"

"Please," Alice broke in.

Crozza stroked his earlobe and was forced to look away.

"All right, then," he gave in. He didn't understand why he was whispering. "But don't screw it up."

"I promise," Alice said, making her translucent lips disappear into a smile.

Then she pushed herself forward on her elbows and gave him a kiss, which tickled Crozza's three-day beard.

"Go on, go on," he said, dismissing her with his hand.

Alice laughed and the sound of it scattered through the air as she left with that sinuous, rhythmic gait of hers.