Doran shed his cardigan and sat at his dusty patio table in shirtsleeves, his fair arms freckling in the first real sun of the new year. The balcony of his apartment overlooked the gray water of the bay and for a moment he watched the foolish little boats that bobbed on its rippled surface. On the last of his pale blue stationery he wrote, "Dear Glenda, I think I’d like to attend the Grand Prix’s little ceremony. Tell Byrne to save me a pew."

He managed to book an affordable flight to Rome the following Wednesday; from there, a fast train would take him north to Firenze.

He had not yet cracked the slim volume Glenda had sent him late last year—her hubby’s translations of the last poems of the Spaniard, Lorenzo Alvarez.

It had been clever, he thought, of Byrne to get into the translation game and Spanish was the "New Italian" according to a student in the evening course he had been asked to teach last fall. And what luck (Byrne specialized in luck) that Byrne and Alvarez, in graduate school, had both pursued the chaste and irresistible Glenda Kelley. Commiseration and failure had forged their bond, which even Glenda’s ultimate choice of Byrne could not sunder.

Doran crouched at his bookcase and extracted "Hand over Helm," Byrne’s first chapbook. Its dun-colored wartime vellum had darkened to tea-brown, even wedged in the airless space between the massive Swift and corpulent Mann. He took out his magnifier and positioned it above the lines of verse. The print itself had degraded, well on its way to dust. Doran’s notations in the margins, made in once-rich fountain pen blue had fared markedly better. His advice, "resist a tendency to mawkishness," written alongside Byrne’s now famous "Garden of Rose and Peony" brought a rush of pride that warmed his breast. How clearly he remembered that boozy predawn conversation on Byrne’s staircase all those decades ago.

They had huddled like schoolboys over a salacious magazine, running their fingers over lines of verse—Byrne so desperately in love with his own progeny and Doran, the voice of reason, the nib of his pen poised to strike out any unworthy sentiment or phrase.

One by one the pages of the old chapbook parted from their jacket and dropped to the floor. He creaked to his knees and gathered them up, fetched some yellow glue and elastic bands from the kitchen drawer and, at his desk, stuck the disarrayed pages back together.

On the plane he kept the bound-up pages in his inside jacket pocket along with his wallet and passport.

The flight attendant came by with her rolling tray. He accepted a very small glass of red wine and savored its nail-varnish hue and bouquet. Thankfully he had destroyed his taste buds by smoking ever more cigarettes and attending protracted Scotch whiskey-tasting sessions. There was something comforting about contempt justified, he thought, swirling the red liquid in its plastic cup. A few drops sloshed onto his lap. When he returned from the lavatory with the damp patch blotted nearly clean the cup had been taken away and the cabin lights dimmed for those who had nothing better to do than sleep. He pulled the sad little volume out of his pocket along with his pen, but his eyes soon stung. He removed his glasses, pressed his eyelids with his thumbs and let his chin drop onto his chest.

He could smell Rome far below him-diesel exhaust, ancient brick and warm humanity. He imagined women walking together, arms entwined, young men following them with that languorous swaying gait that strained the seams of their trousers.

In the cab from the airport to his pensione he rolled down the window and watched the throngs on the sidewalks, no longer so different from the urban Canadians. Had there always been so many blonds, so many blacks, so many shorts-clad legs in Italy? And the urgent purposeful stride he considered a North American affectation had spread here too. Even the obvious tourists rushed from one landmark to the next, panning video cameras across the faces of their companions. He looked away and felt the digital eye glide over his cab and driver as they hovered at a traffic light.

At the Pensione Suisse, a silver haired gnome summoned by the proprietress’s cry of "Antonio!" hopped up the narrow staircase with his bag. Doran retrieved it from the creature’s knobby hand, thanked him and presented the expected gratuity.

His room was furnished with a simple bedstead and chest of very dark wood. A tall narrow window opened onto a tiny balcony of apricot-colored stone. The room was comfortably cool, street noise muffled to a pleasing rumble. He almost spoke, remarking on it, but of course, he was alone. His eyes filled with unwelcome tears. He should have slept on the plane; this sudden fatigue was an infuriating waste of time.  He stretched out on the bed, picked up the phone and connected with the front desk.

"Would you call me in an hour or so, signora? Let the telephone ring until I answer, would you?"

The first ring brought him to sudden consciousness and he mumbled his thanks into the receiver. He shaved the grey stubble from his cheeks and combed his hair carefully. The room was darkish; the slant of the late afternoon sun made only a small orange rectangle on the dark wood floor. He stood on the little balcony with his shaving mirror in his hand, smoothing down his heavy eyebrows. His eyes were red-veined and sore. Just a bit of supper, he thought, and a walk past Keats’s abode, then back to bed.

The pensione served supper only by pre-order according to the brochure at the door of the dining room. He dawdled in the doorway, sniffing the air like a dog. A family of three was the only diners. The adults had before them what appeared to be osso buco. The child picked at a plate of pasta, pushing shavings of carrot and onion into a neat pile on its rim.

The signora saw him from the kitchen and waved him in, then pointed at a casserole of meat and vegetables, to which he nodded gratefully. He sat as far as he could from the miserable family at a table set for two, wedged into a warm, airless corner.

Belly filled, he stretched to his feet and walked out onto the sidewalk, weaving his way through the milling hordes of Romans and students. He leaned against the balustrade at the base of the Piazza D’Espagna and took stock of the bodies sprawled like cats on the warm stone of the tiered expanse. There was just enough light left to read by. He took out Byrne’s book of Alvarez and let it fall open. The print was arranged with the original Spanish on the left-hand page and Byrne’s anglicized version on the right.

With every read-through Doran grew more agitated. At school, languages, Latin in particular, had been his distinctive talent. And what was Spanish after all, but the more biddable daughter of the grand old dame? Byrne’s translation was quite incorrect. Doran’s pen decorated the page with ragged arrows, wide-mouthed circles, thick black underlines, until at last, quite winded, he looked up to discover daylight gone and the piazza filled with walking shadows.

A globe light burned just above his head. For some time he must have stood in its spotlight like an unwitting actor, unaware that the curtain had been raised. A group of young men approached him from the left; at his right, American girls in shapeless shorts moved forward. The boys feinted boldness, made as if to block the girls’ path, but the Americans barreled on with squared shoulders. A rather pretty girl met Doran’s eye, smiled and slowed just a little as she passed.

He had always been popular with women. His wife had dreaded society and much of his time had been spent at least outwardly alone. He had never meant to attract or encourage them; every assignation had been effortless on his part and all his dalliances happily reattached to their families in the end. Of course, he had relished the peculiar intensity of unfamiliar skin. His casual lovers had explored his corporeal self like voyageurs. They talked a great deal, especially before the physical fait accompli. They talked of music, poetry, sometimes sculpture, and seemed happy to be corrected. He soon discovered that the most effective way in which to end an affair was to begin approving their opinions; like successful students they willingly moved on.

He sometimes wished he had talked about this with his wife, if only to have made clear to her the insignificance of it all. After her death he lost all interest in adultery. An image of the Byrnes, like a wedding portrait, floated before his eyes. They were such old folks together, had been so ever since their marriage. He called her his muse, his best reader, his adviser in matters financial and practical. Any hijinks on Byrne’s part would be limited to ménage a trois. Doran smiled a little at this thought and the American girl beamed and tossed her head before fading from view.

He closed his book and strode the short distance back to the Pensione. By the time he climbed the stairs to his room sleep was already half upon him. He barely had time to unfold and slip on his pajamas before falling across the narrow mattress. A soft exhalation brushed his ear, nothing more than the displacement of feathers inside his pillow. Soon a ridiculous dream spoke to him saying that if only he opened his eyes again, just for a moment, he might have seen her, the shade of his wife, sitting with her hands folded at the foot of the bed.

He awoke as planned at the dot of seven, the sun already slanting, heavy as syrup, into the room. In his habitual home on the forty-ninth parallel, sunlight was a pale grey-eyed thing. In the years before the ozone trouble it had been possible to soak it in all the length of a mid-summer day and never burn. The faces of his children had turned from cameo-pink to golden in the first week of summer vacation. When he arrived home from work and settled in his chair with his gin martini they would climb into his lap and he could smell their toasted flesh.

He pulled the heavy drapery more completely closed, then dressed and repacked his case. In the breakfast room he ate a croissant and drank a pot of milky coffee, and his energy steadily returned. The Signora smiled and nodded as he handed over the key .

Close by he met the 53 bus that took him to the rail station. Overwhelmed by a sudden rasping thirst, he bought an Orangina from a vendor and downed it in a long swallow. By the time he reached his seat, the amount of liquid he had ingested since rising sloshed heavily in his stomach, threatened to rise again into his throat. What was he doing here? The panicked thought rushed through him with the false fresh chill of refrigerated air. His hand explored his breast pocket and closed around the little book of poems. He held it to his chest like a hymnal, staring through the dusty compartment window, until his blood flowed warm again. He opened the book to its marked place, again examined his own translation. "Red Anguish", he read, and underscored it approvingly,

The last line, although his own, surprised him. At the birth of their second daughter he had given his wife a garnet ring, a large, dark, flawed stone in a heavy gold setting. It had cost less than a hundred dollars. Who knew how long it had lain in the linty velvet of the jeweler’s display case? Soon after that, he had left her for an assignment at another college and during their time apart had found it impossible to picture her face, while the details of the ring remained clear in his memory.

The train sped past the ancient olive groves, asserting its modernity. He imagined the bitter perfume transpiring from the canopy of gray leaves, the flat green tang of the hanging fruit. Florence was less than an hour ahead of him. Like his mind, his stomach seemed unable to move forward, the liquid weight remained at his midsection, rocking with each slight movement of the train.

Where were Glenda and Byrne now? He wondered if, in this heat, Byrne would give up his tie and tweed jacket, if Glenda would roll down her stockings and walk barefoot across the cool marble floor of the Accademia? Doran shifted uncomfortably in his seat, suddenly aware of the years since he had really spoken to his friend. The pictures in his mind were hopelessly out of date; this amount of time could make the fondest friends unknowable to each other. To Doran’s once piercing perception the mysteries of Byrne’s translation now seemed impenetrable. Would he blurt out as he reached for Byrne’s  hand, "I don’t understand you?"

Doran drank an aqua minerale at the station and belched ferociously into his handkerchief. At last his bodily functions were pushing on. His mind was again open and free.

He traveled by taxi to the Hotel De Ville, dropped his case in his air-conditioned room and picked up a message from Byrne at the front desk.

"We’ll be back from the Pre-prix at three," wrote the celebrated bard. Doran made that "hmph" sound he had perfected at Cambridge and tucked the note into his pocket. He strolled into the American Bar and started in on the G and Ts. When the Byrnes arrived, stockinged and tweeded, he was good and well drunk. He would not have known them sober, but the Byrne-shape and Glenda-shape that hovered before him were instantly recognizable.

"You have the advantage of me sir," the remnants of the great Byrne baritone said.

"Dear me," ghost of Glenda giggled. Each took an arm (not a strain, for he was, as ever, slight of build and stature) and propelled him first into the elevator then into their suite on the second floor.

Never in his life had he felt so wonderful.

"Sit down, you’re looming," Doran said to his old friend. Glenda helped her husband lower himself into an armchair, stood beside him and clasped her hands.

"I’m sorry we can’t join you, Dor. Doesn’t mix with his medication. Would you like an espresso?" she said.

He waved away the notion and took the little book out of his pocket.

"I’ll just go in and rest my legs for a bit, then," she said, brushing his cheekbone with her dry red lips.

"Thank you," Doran said, staying the urge to stroke her smooth silver hair. There was something so steadfast about Glenda, so solid and complete. Her presence lingered after she had left the room.

Doran dropped the book onto the floor, where it fell open with a splat. An odd ringing began in his ears as he stooped to retrieve it, but vanished as he righted himself.

"I’ve been having a look at last at this famous Alvarez," he said.

Byrne’s jowls shook with pleasure. "Isn’t he marvelous! I can’t tell you how restorative it was to be given the job. You may have read that it was Lorenzo’s own idea when he received the medal to have me put the work into ingles...how doubly marvelous for him now that his work, through me, receives the Prix!" The poet caught his breath and managed a sheepish smile. "It is good, isn’t it."

Doran looked into his friend’s eyes, those boiled jellies that had always looked with deep and equal fascination at the pattern of brick in a wall, the tracery of veins on the back of an oak leaf, or the back of his own immense and now arthritic hands. Unwanted and unbidden, the certainty came to him that Byrne and Glenda still slept in the same bed, still touched each other with pleasure, still felt delight at the world that welcomed them each morning and blessed them every night.

Doran looked down at the ink-smeared pages of the little book, its print gone unaccountably dark and blurry. His own translation, so superior moments ago, appeared unreadable. Byrne reached out a long arm and plucked the book  from his trembling fingers, and as if the pages were as bright and unmarked as new, began to read aloud, in a voice that washed in and out of the white noise that filled Doran’s head. He put a hand over his breast and felt the erratic hammering of his own heart. Byrne sang on, page after page and after an eternity Doran began to decipher the sound that traveled the long road from his ear to the pit of his heart. Doran could see Byrne’s long fingers curled over the page tops. Doran had not made it so deep into the little volume. The words were all new and desperately crisp and clear as Byrne read, "Drowned."

The poet’s eyes glittered with age and tears. He pressed the little book to his forehead and blotted his brow.

"Worth the effort, eh, Dory? Marvelous!" Byrne stretched out his unnaturally long legs and leaned back. His foot tapped Doran’s ankle.

"Yes," Doran whispered, like an empty glass asking to be refilled.