“He’s trying to be very precise,” said Andrea, feeling his teeth clench together.
“Ah,” said Lora. “I’m glad I didn’t make any plans today.”
Luca went on asking the basics: date of birth, place of birth, previous address. He wrote every letter so carefully that it seemed like he wasn’t going to file her paperwork, but have it engraved into a tablet.
“Motivo per il cambio di residenza?”
“Reason for the change of residence status.” Andrea looked at Lora.
“Well, it’s not really a change, is it?” She turned to him again, adding in a low voice, “More of a temporary move.”
“Legally, you can’t say that,” Andrea explained, trying not to whisper so that Luca wouldn’t suspect that they were engaging in collusion. Which was, of course, exactly what they were doing. “You can’t say that you’re declaring residency so that you can get out of here. Remember that the idea of residency is to make the citizenship go faster, but they don’t need to know that. So, you have to say something like ‘family reasons.’”
“But do I really want to say that? I’m not here for family reasons, I’m here for me reasons.”
Andrea shifted more toward her in his chair, starting to feel heat prickle up his back in the tiny room.
“This is a nuance that may seem important, but at the moment, you have to answer the question in a way that will allow us all to go ahead and do our jobs, right?” Andrea plastered on a rigid smile and drew his chin down. He hoped like hell she would get the message.
“OK, then I am here for family reasons.” She returned the tight smile and turned to Luca.
“Motivi familiari,” Andrea repeated, then turned to Lora. “This is almost over. We let him finish the last couple of questions and we’re done, OK?”
After scrutinizing every line in the document for a couple of minutes, Luca finally signed and stamped it with his official seal. He reminded them that “a member of the police force”—which they knew could only be him—would berequired to perform a residency check in which the officer would physically come to the house to see that the resident in question was actually there, residing. Lora nodded, indicating she understood the seriousness of the protocol. Then they thanked him, shook hands, and Andrea said something about seeing him soon at the festival. Luca, of course, shook his head and lamented crowd-size restrictions. Andrea picked up the folder, and they exited the building. It was, it seemed, a success.
“I’m going to walk with you back to city hall so you can give this to Franca,” he said as they stepped into the sunshine. “Are you OK?”
“Yeah, I told you I was up late with the girls and there was wine. It was fizzy,” she said, wincing slightly. “Isn’t there any other reason why someone would choose to move to a different place in this country? I can’t understand why this is so complex and strict. You can move anywhere you want in the US and never have to let anyone know about it—much less let them know why.”
“It’s a formality, Lora. It’s what we do here. When anybody moves, even if it’s one town over, we have to declare residency. We go and fill out the paperwork and then forget about it. It doesn’t have to mean anything.”
“Except that it does mean that with all of theseformalities, everything is taking so long. My timeline is useless now. I feel like there’s no end to this.”
“I get the frustration, believe me,” he said. “Maybe you need to get some rest. If you can take a nap, I know you will feel better.”
“Nap? Oh my god, no. I haven’t taken a nap since I was like ten years old, and I think that was because I had mono.”
“Hmm, well, maybe you can just relax,” he tried, guessing that she found the idea of relaxing as repellant as the idea of napping.
“Sure,” she said. “Why not defer another semester while I’m at it?”
“Here’s a better idea,” he said, officially losing his patience. “Why don’t you think really hard about all the terrible things that can happen and add it to the list of terrible things that already happened so that you can make a careful, research-based prediction of how irritated you should be for the next few weeks?”
“I’m sorry! I don’t understand the way things are done here. I knew it was going to be a process, but this is ridiculous. I had to lease a house, declare residency, explain my ‘family motives’ for being here. How long do we think this is going to take?”
“It’s going to take,” he said, stopping in the middle of the piazza and opening his arms to the sky, “as long as it takes!”
“Excellent,” she said, taking the folder back from him. “That makes everything clear. And also, I don’t want to come with you to the farm, stables, whatever it is that used to belong to Ivo.”
“That’s fine. You know what? You don’t need to come to city hall to file this either. I will do it for you.” He tapped the edge of the folder, trying not to look at her eyes.
“I—I can do it,” she said, handing him the documents. Her lower lip looked like it was about to start shaking.
“Go, Lora. Go home and—” He broke off, taking thepaper from her. “Do whatever you want. I know you’re upset, but we all have our shit. Even me.”
“I didn’t mean to yell. At you, I mean. I was trying to be in a bad mood on my own.”
“But you’re not on your own. If you want to be alone, go ahead and live in a cave somewhere and be miserable to the stones. If you want to be around people, you have to be careful with them. Being close to someone means you get all of them and they get all of you. That’s supposed to be a benefit.”
