For Aldo in particular, the spring was much as it always was. His students always did better in the second half of the year; the approach of longer days and warmer weather was enough to motivate even the most ambivalent of learners. He typically did his best work in the spring as well, finally able to return to his usual patterns of park visitation, his pursuit of open space. He took his motorbike, mostly cleaned of salt and rust, to the usual park, making his way to the usual bench and letting the sun’s rays, old but new, drift again over his shoulders.
It was much the same as it always was, his thinking. It was constant and frantic and dull and stagnant, as his thoughts had always been, and put to work for an impossible problem, as it usually was. On that particular day, he withdrew a newly rolled joint from his pocket and spun it between his fingers, much as he often did.
Only this spring, things were slightly different. For one thing, Aldo’s hair, which usually fell into his eyes until he scraped it carelessly back, was freshly cut. His clothes were clean, and he no longer smelled faintly of weed. He smelled, instead, a little like acrylic paint, spilled wine, and honeysuckle. The t-shirt he wore was new, purchased on his behalf and then slipped into his closet without ceremony.
The problem, too, was slightly different than it had been.
“You seem a little distracted,” said Aldo’s advisor.
“Is there a problem with my dissertation?”
“No, nothing like that, your work is fine, and, well, you’ve always been…”
（People were usually too polite to finish that sentence.）
“Distant,” the professor continued, clearing his throat, “But still, is everything quite alright?”
“With me? Yes, of course,” said Aldo, who unlike Regan, could only lie selectively.
His problem was this: Beginning in late March, Regan had stopped sleeping. Her sleep patterns had always been erratic, often easily disrupted, but that had been the difference: the predictability of her unpredictability. During the winter, she had occasionally been loath to leave their bed, still nestled in the sheets until Aldo returned from class in the afternoon, or else she would be inclined to stay up all night, postulating wildly about the universe. Regan didn’t often cook, but when she did it was a production, a spectacle; she used every pot and pan in the cupboards and produced multiple courses of varying quality. On those days, Aldo would spy the glasses of wine upon entry and observe, drawing from his shallow but reliable well of experience, that it would be another night of sex and conversation.
His days were a process of recognizing subtle cues: Had Regan gotten out of bed willingly or sluggishly? Had she leapt or dragged? Had she purchased something, many things, and had she been gone for several hours, or had she never left the house? Was Regan smiling, was she crying, was she shouting? Regan’s tears were almost never of sadness and, instead, usually of rage or frustration, little of which was directed at him. More often she was at war with something entirely different; someone she’d seen that day, or a thought of injustice she’d recently had. She could spark to passion about almost anything, and Aldo learned to recognize the signs, the patterns: What films had she been watching? She had happy films, sad films, cathartic ones, and same with books. She read voraciously, several books at once, or not at all. She consumed music like it was a conversation with her soul; Did you hear that, Aldo, were you listening? How can you stand there as if nothing has changed when either you are not alive at all or all of what you are is now inconceivably different?
He grew accustomed to the turbulence until, abruptly, it stopped. March rolled around, the first day of spring came and went, and by April, Regan had begun to assimilate herself to regularity. Whose regularity that was, Aldo couldn’t say. He knew that when he came home in the evenings, she was gone; she would creep in late at night and kiss his neck, or climb into his lap and say things—Regan things—like, Aldo, I’ve been thinking about you all day, Rinaldo I’d like to put my fingers in the slats of your ribs, I want to shape my teeth to the ridges of your stomach, I’d like to kiss the tip of your cock and hold you inside me until we both see stars.
He didn’t ask what she’d been doing, because he had already learned that she didn’t like to be asked much of anything. Don’t pry, she would say, I’ll tell you when I’m ready, and he would listen to her because he trusted her, because he was afraid of her, because he loved her.
“I love her,” he told Masso, who sighed.
“I know, I know you do, Rinaldo, but everything is too fast. First you like her, then you love her, then you live with her, then what?”