Summary

In Italy, Shay sits in a café with her friend Orso, a gay man in his fifties, as they wait for their children to come out of school. He senses that she has something on her mind, and she says that she does. The narration comments that it is the time of day (late afternoon) in which people all over the city contemplate their love relationships, and Orso senses that Shay is no exception. He asks whether she is thinking about a man, and she says she is – Marius, known as Maz.

Shay begins the story of her relationship with Maz by saying it begins a few years after the construction of the Red House, after she and Senna had had their two children. She describes encountering the physically attractive Maz at a New Year’s Eve party on Madagascar, a party that...