Worked out why I keep catching the eye of Laura, a woman working here in the Relais Palazzo del Capitano. Every time I do so, I am rewarded with a smile of stunning radiance. (No doubt, in honour of I. Pavlov, I also drool a little.) Calls to mind fragments from an early poem of Marilyn Hacker’s:
Satisfied lovers eat big breakfasts. I
want black coffee and a cigarette to
dull this cottonmouth. …
… Sleep and don’t smile
that crazy candlepower for a while.