Not for a job, though he needed one. Not for his lost wallet, though that would’ve helped. He was searching for a film he had glimpsed once, late at night, in a tiny Sicilian trattoria that no longer existed. La Riffa — something about a woman selling her possessions in a raffle, a story of dignity and desperation. He’d caught only twenty minutes before the power went out, but those twenty minutes had lodged themselves behind his ribs like a splinter.
Marco had been searching for weeks.
She led him to a back room, unlocked a metal cabinet, and pulled out a single rusted film canister. La Riffa was written on the tape in fading marker.