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9 SAN LUCA As we climbed its porticos that fall, the sun, gauzed and fretful, fell. Strange vigil she kept with a lighter in her palm, dull flame of lost faith. We were each other’s Virgil, I and a green-eyed Brazilian girl who talked so much of God and all the rest I swore it was the distance made her twirl that cigarette between her fingers and guess how many like us conquer the hill but never enter. (The climactic anticlimax: our arrival at that bolt and lever fixed.) A nonbeliever and, thus, relaxed with failure, still, in that failing day, I could not help but think we lost our way. ...

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