His Box

I walked home from the New Town on the Saturday night with four words in my head, and they were not the four words a reasonable man would have expected to be carrying.

Ho tenuto la mano ferma.

I had an argument ready for myself about it, which I assembled somewhere around the top of the hill and had fully drafted by the time I reached the bridge. The argument was that she had said a true sentence under a rule that we made in October, and that the rule exists precisely so that a sentence can be said and put down, and that the correct and respectful response to a true sentence is to let it be one, and not to spend a Saturday night converting it into a plan.

It was a good argument. I have made better ones and lost.

I got in at twenty to eight.…