The Brooklyn Rail

Quarry

He expected to arrive into an exuberant Italian spring, the kind he read about in Goethe, James, et al. But on the trees in the Orto Botanico he found only a swarm of hard, black buds—more infestation, it seemed, than the promise of a new season. On the third morning, he bought a trench coat, but that same afternoon the sun finally broke through, and he found himself sweating under the weight of his new purchase. He removed it, never to put it on again.