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49 Delirium Just before I fainted in the restaurant that evening, I was telling you a story about a madman I saw earlier in the day as I walked home from my ballet class just off the Piazza Santa Maria del Carmine. After crossing the bridge of Santa Trinita, looking in at Ghirlandaio’s frescoes for the Sassetti family, then wondering how many women there were who were young and rich enough to wear the see-through lace cowboy shirts in the Gianni Versace windows on the Via Tornabuoni, at the intersection of the Via de Calzaioli and the Via del Corso, I walked into a hullabaloo being drummed up by a bearded man who was stalking back and forth, screaming something in Italian, of course, and waving his arms in the air. But when he turned he would reach down with one hand, clamp his crotch, and then pull his body around as though his hips were a bad dog and his genitals a leash he was yanking. After each turn he’d continue stalking and flailing, until time to turn again. So I am trying to explain this and our pizza comes, and I saw off a bite, but it is too hot, so what do I do but swallow it, and it’s too hot, and I think, it’s too hot, 50 and my voice decelerates as if it is a recording on a slowly melting tape and the scene in the restaurant begins to recede: in the far distance I see the bearded man ranting on the street, then nearer but retreating quickly you and the long corridor of the restaurant, then it’s as if I am falling into a cavity behind me, one that is always there, though I’ve learned to ignore it, but I’m falling now, first through a riot of red rooms, then gold, green, blue and darker until I finally drift into the black room where my mind can rest. I wake up in the kitchen, lying on a wooden bench, with you and the waiter staring at me. “I’m fine,” I say, though it’s as if I am pulling my mind up from a deep well. The waiter brings me a bowl of soup, which I don’t want, but it doesn’t matter because the lights go out and a man at the next table says, “Primo quella signora ed ora la luce,” which means, first that woman and now the light, and it’s so dark that I can’t see myself or you, and I feel as if I’m turning, a mad voice rising from my stomach crying where are we anyway, and who, and what, and why? ...

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