“Who you- are stories” are familiar now to Myriam. They start early in the day, sometimes too early, with the milkman for next door, with the postman pushing letters into metal boxes, with the dust truck, and swearing hot men too loud.
It continues as she walks the ancient paving stones, along the Appian Way still in her old dress. She walks by the San Sebastiano Catacombs, where dead Christians lie, a woman with a tiny dog on a leash watches Myriam with a cold eye, she allows the dog to yap and bark and does not rein it in or speak to it. Myriam does not delay but walks resolutely, she has her plan, her day is mapped, is long drawn.
She signs in at the Academia and remembers to release the pen. She climbs the stairs to room fourteen, removes her jacket and places it on a coat hook near the door.
Theodore, the tutor, is about to start. Today he is wearing a cross around his neck. Myriam sits at right angles to his chair, places her journal squarely on the table. Other students refer to him as Theo, but Myriam resists doing that.
She saw him dressed as a gladiator one Sunday down on the Appian Way, a sort of festival she had assumed, but then, he was not free either.
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