Synopsis

"I'm no longer interested in anything or anyone, I steal pens, I wander down run-down streets, I drool over a concierge and that's it, that's it," says the narrator of this story of himself, an unpleasant and dishonest old man, gruff, mean. Irresistible. And if the concierge he's fallen for—an attractive, ski-friendly woman in her sixties—accepts the advances of a bartender with fixed teeth; if his ex-wife, who was "a whirlwind of generosity, whims, ovulations, and amazing little initiatives," looks at him as if he were her tire dealer; if she talks mostly about the weather with his daughter, he can only digress and talk about all this. And about Armando, his best friend. The good part of the artichoke that is him. A rare, kind, positive person. With a crazy project in mind. Yes, because while everyone wants to leave something behind after their death—some a well-established tobacco shop, some a great novel, some a collection of beer cans—Armando wants to leave behind a love. He's got it into his head that two neighborhood kids who don't yet know each other, Chiara and Giacomo, would be a perfect match, and he intends to give fate a hand. This is a claim that the intractable old man considers ridiculous and tries to thwart in every way. But after spending over seventy years convincing others not to count on him, he will find himself caught up in Armando's annoying, insistent, implacable faith in life.