“Yes,” the Colonel agreed. “I have been.”
“Don’t you think we could do it once more?”
“Sure. Of course. Why not?”
“Do you see the boy with the wave in his hair, that is natural, and he only pushes it a little, skillfully, to be more handsome?”
“I see him,” the Colonel said.
“He is a very good painter, but he has false teeth in front because he was a little bit pédéraste once and other pédérastes attacked him one night on the Lido when there was a full moon.”
“How old are you?”
“I will be nineteen.”
“How do you know this?”
“I know it from the Gondoliere. This boy is a very good painter, for now. There aren’t any really good painters now. But with false teeth, now, in his twenty-fifth year, what a thing.”
“I love you very truly,” the Colonel said.
“I love you very truly, too. Whatever that means in American. I also love you in Italian, against all my judgment and all of my wishes.”
“We shouldn’t wish for too God-damn much,” the Colonel said. “Because we are always liable to get it.”
“I agree,” she said. “But I would like to get what I wish for now.”
Neither of them said anything and then the girl said, “That boy, he is a man now, of course, and goes with very many women to hide what he is, painted my portrait once. You can have it if you like.”
