We’ve been friends ever since.
I text her back.
Serena: Later. I have one more lunch.
Sophie: Of course you do.
Serena: Some of us contribute to society.
Sophie: You eat pasta professionally.
Serena: Exactly.
I tuck the phone away and finish the bread. By the time I return to the hotel, my fingers smell like figs and cheese, my dress has a crumb near the hem, and Lucia looks at me as if she has been expecting this exact version of me all morning.
“You look successful,” she says.
“I am.”
“Good. Rome approves.”
“Rome is very generous with approval if you know where to eat.”
Lucia lifts one shoulder.
“That is not generosity. That is discernment.”
I point at her. “Thatis going in my notebook.”
“It should,” she says.
So I put it there:
Rome is not generous. It is discerning.
The line stays.
So does the crumb on my dress, because by 10:14 AM, I have three tabs open on my laptop, one unfinished paragraph on Roman restraint, and exactly six minutes before Sophie becomes impossible.
She calls at 10:20. I let it ring twice because Sophie hates being answered too quickly. She claims it makes the conversation feel “administrative,” which is rich coming from a woman who schedules emotional check-ins with the precision of a corporate merger.
I swipe to answer and set the phone against the small stack of hotel stationery near my laptop.
“Before you start,” I say, “I’m alive, I’ve eaten well, and I have not made any questionable decisions.”
Sophie’s face fills the screen a second later, framed by loose auburn waves, gold hoops, and the kind of silk robe she wears to answer emails from her West Village apartment as if a Vogue photographer might break in unannounced. Her eyes are green, sharp, and already narrowed at me.
“That depends entirely on how you define questionable,” Sophie says.
“I define it in ways that protect my peace.”
“That is not a definition, Serena. That is a legal strategy.”
“It’s been working.”
Sophie leans closer to the camera.
“Why is there a crumb on your dress?”
