100 Days of Happiness by Fausto Brizzi Page A

invariably folds.
    â€œSorry to disappoint you, but tonight Corrado is in Tokyo; he’ll be back the day after tomorrow. If you can do without him, we could go, just the two of us.”
    I’ve already changed my mind. We terminally ill patients can afford to be unpredictable.
    â€œOh well, that doesn’t matter, enjoy your dentist, I’m going to the movies to see the latest from Woody Allen.”
    â€œIt hasn’t come out yet.”
    I’m batting zero today.
    â€œThen I’ll go home instead.”
    â€œSpeaking of which, how are things with Paola?”
    â€œNot well. She speaks to me in monosyllables.”
    â€œWell, in a way, that’s what you deserve.”
    â€œNo, please, no lectures tonight. Come on, thanks for seeing me. What do I owe you, Doctor?”
    â€œThe usual fee for large animals is a hundred euros.”
    â€œIdiot.”
    â€œSpeak for yourself.”
    When we argue, we regress to elementary school in a flash.
    I slap him on the back and say good-bye, then head for the door. He stops me to ask a question, and I know that it’s been on the tip of his tongue for the past few minutes: “Why did you say that dentists are boring in bed? Have you slept with one? Maybe it was just her; maybe dentists aren’t all boring.”
    â€œI’ve never taken a dentist to bed. It’s just a figure of speech. You must have heard it: ‘as boring as a dentist in bed.’ People say it all the time.”
    â€œWho says it? Which people? I’ve never heard anyone say it.”
    â€œAll the people who’ve ever taken a dentist to bed! They all say it.”
    I leave the café, abandoning him to his doubts and sticking him with the check.
    I go back home and play with the kids for a couple of hours, under the watchful gaze of Shepherd. It’s the only therapy that really does me any good.

−95
    â€œI quit my job.”
    I can’t see Paola’s face because she’s in the shower, but I can imagine it perfectly.
    I lie on the bed in silence for three minutes. Then my wife, wrapped in a bathrobe, appears in the bathroom door. With the light behind her, I can’t see the look on her face. But I can imagine it, too perfectly.
    â€œWhich job?”
    â€œThe only one that gives me a paycheck, if that’s the subtext,” I reply.
    â€œThat is, you’re going to go on coaching for free, but you decided to give up your salary from the gym?”
    â€œPrecisely.”
    â€œIf you don’t mind my asking, why would you do that when you know perfectly well that we barely make it to the end of each month?”
    I could deliver a lecture on “the invalid’s psychology,” but I know I’d bore even myself to tears.
    â€œI’ve decided that for the next little while I’m only going to do what I feel like doing. It strikes me as the only decision that has any meaning.”
    â€œThat has any meaning for you.”
    â€œAre you looking for a fight? Let me warn you that I come preirritated, so I’d recommend against trying to set me off.”
    â€œWho’s trying to set you off? You just told me how it was. Period.”
    â€œIt wasn’t done intentionally. It just came out that way.”
    â€œOkay, okay, don’t get angry. . . . How do you feel today?”
    â€œThank you for asking. Aside from the fact that there’s a constant pain in my gut, that I’m having a hard time breathing, and that I’m in a lousy mood, I’d say pretty good.”
    â€œShall we go get a second opinion, see another oncologist?”
    I knew she’d say it sooner or later. It’s called the medical spiral, that is, consulting a series of doctors, each of whom gives you diametrically opposing diagnoses and treatments. It’s a spiral you can’t escape, like one of those M. C. Escher staircases.
    Almost every family on earth has dealt with the pointlessness