Page 106 of The English Bookstore in Bologna

Chapter 25

What’s the Point, Duo?

A notification dinged on Harold’s watch. He hoped that it was Alice, despite it having been several agonizing days without a peep from her.

Hey, it’s Duo. Let’s get a new streak going.

Lying on the couch in his tighty-whities, surrounded by empty pizza boxes and drained cans of Coke, Harold stared at his phone, wondering how someone, or something—he wasn’t even sure of Duo’s gender, or maybe it was a robot—could be so invasive.

“Do you see what I’m going through, Duo?” Harold asked out loud.

Even worse, Duo’s only purpose, only mission, was to get him to start a new streak and keep learning Italian, which was absolutely fucking pointless now. The programmers at Duolingo had found every possible way to nag a man until he felt broken and riddled with shame.

“What’s the point, Duo? Soon as I can get the freaking landlord to respond to my emails, I’m going home. Of course, he doesn’t speak English, and you’re a terrible teacher, so my Italian is nonexistent.”

Another notification popped up. Hey, it’s Duo. You still there?

“Oh, I’m here, Duo. Where else would I be? Have I told you how much I hate you? My feelings of fury toward you bubble up from the deepest corridors of my being. It’s you and Hitler and Pol Pot and maybe Genghis Khan, the worst entities to have ever come to being. How’s it feel to be grouped with them?”

Deciding he’d had enough, Harold opened his phone and navigated to the Duolingo Support section, scrolling through the FAQs. At the bottom, he found Send Feedback. It finally gave him a text box to express himself, and that he did, starting with: I have no idea how Apple lets you infest my life with your antics, but it stops today. Sure, I can delete the app, but we’re way past that. I’m coming after you, do you understand? Full legal battle. I will take this company down if it’s the last thing I do.

A ding on his watch and phone.

A desperate hope that it might be Alice.

Nope, it was Moira. How’d it go? I still haven’t heard from you.

He set down the phone and fell back onto the couch. Everything had fallen apart. Aroldo lay dead in the square outside of Renzo’s apartment. And here was Harold, the pointless piece of shit he’d always been. His dad had been right all along.

Oh, give up the pity party, Harold, he told himself.

But what was there to go back to now? His awful job? His awful life? He couldn’t keep living this lie, that’s for sure.

No college degree. That was the biggest issue. Why couldn’t he have been brave and made something of himself?

Moira again. If you need someone to talk to, I’m here.

He shook his head. Oh, he needed someone to talk to, all right. He needed major help.

Glancing back at his watch, the watch he’d bought for her, he accepted that no number of steps could have out-thwarted Renzo. Even Aroldo was no match for that man.

All he could hope for now was to one day celebrate their inevitable divorce, because that bastard didn’t love her, and she certainly didn’t love him. No, she was a victim of Stockholm syndrome, and in fact, love didn’t exist at all.

Love was dead.

He looked at his step count for the day. Thirty-five and it was almost noon.

Thirty-five.

That summed up Harold: a fake, a sham. Even if she had come back to him, he’d have had to eventually tell her the truth, and she would have run out on him all over again.

Standing, he went out onto the balcony, noticing that it was gloomy out, and rightly so. If love was dead, then the sun had no right to shine.

Harold unstrapped the watch and slung it into the air, sending it four floors down to its death. “That’s what I think about your step-counting and your Duolingo.”

He even considered hurling himself off the balcony but then heard a “Hey!”

He approached the railing and timidly glanced down. Sandy stood below, looking up at him with piercing eyes. “Was that you?”