Nino touches me as he kisses Lila, hands on my waist, lips on her.

She kisses him, tasting me on his lips. Our eyes meet. She is a cipher and I cannot read if it is desire or disdain.

The sauce will burn. The heat in the kitchen is intolerable.

"We should eat," Lila says. Nino moans. I breathe deeply. I am scared that any moment Bruno will arrive to ruin this moment, our idyll.

I offer to set the table, and to collect my thoughts. While laying out the cloth napkins I become aware I am faint with hunger.

The aperol is cool, bitter apricot and I finish it. I give it to myself as a gift. The drunkenness will excuse me.

Lila enters with plates. Her skin is cool as she brushes past me, despite the heat. Nino follows with the bowl of pasta arrabbiata. He refills my glass as if he has sensed why I am drinking. Sober Lenu would have left an hour ago. Sane Lenu never would have come inside. But I'm not sane or sober; I'm wrecked with desire. And now their trap has been laid, with the finest silver.

Nino makes a toast.

"To youth and to summer, its season."

Lila watches the liquid travel down my throat like a mother observes a child obeying orders.

Nino's stare is more lecherous, like his father's. How similar they are, both lusting in kitchens, bringing their filthy demands from books to the hearth, the women's domain. But I succumb to Nino. I recall his intellect in class, how even the teachers couldn't help but smile at how fast his mind works.

Nino begins speaking, talking about summer and the bodies on the beach and the soul of this country in its working class struggle. All they are offered, he rants, are a couple measly weeks on a dirty beach. They spend their year's savings on overpriced ice cream for the children and cheap beer for the men. Then it's back to the factories. "It makes me sick," he says. I don't know if he's including ourselves in his calculations: the son of a crazy woman, the daughters of a clerk and shoemaker. Are we the same as the factory workers, poor dumb cogs in the machine as Nino says? What choice do we have?

"I reject that lie," Lila interjects. "Who are you to judge them? Who gave you the right to condemn their pleasure?" Her eyes squint; she can sense blood in the water like a shark smells prey on the beach.

"It's not their pleasure I condemn, it's their work. The conditions they live in; it's not fit for animals." Nino's voice raises, slowly.

"I want to hear what Lenu has to say," Lila says abruptly.

I pause. I take a breath. "I believe it is all  narrative, whatever you choose to call it."

"Either society is doomed or life is monotony punctuated by moments of tiny pleasure, there is no truth to be found. Whether you think your sense of self is constructed over your lifetime, or whether that sense of self comes from a process of moulting away the unnecessary parts. It doesn't matter. They are all just stories we tell ourselves: in cafes, courtrooms, philosopher's halls. Pick the story you like most. Tell it well. Find someone to listen."

I take a breath and find Nino and Lila have put down their forks. Perhaps they disagree with my take; perhaps it does nothing to further the revolution to dismantle the notions of the working class struggle, to unmask it. I am not sorry. I love Nino but I find his politics tiresome. I envy Lila but I find her defence of the status quo tired. I want them both to admire me in silence. I know that their silence would destroy their allure. I'm caught between my desire and my ego.

"Lenu never looks more beautiful than when she is thinking," Nino breaks the silence.

"Come," says Lila to me. "I have something to show you in the bedroom."