1971 was the year a person lived to cook spaghetti. They bought special cookware at a specialist cookware store and a variety of spices from stores catering to foreigners. They also bought all kinds of pasta and tomatoes. Every day was spaghetti day, and every week was spaghetti week.

They always ate spaghetti alone because they were convinced that it tastes best that way.

Every time they sat down to a plate of spaghetti; they had a feeling someone was going to knock on their door. They always imagined it was a different person. Sometimes, it was an old lover. Other times it was a stranger or a past version of themselves. Once it was an old friend, William Holden, with Jennifer Jones on his arm.

No one ever knocked on the door.

Every season that year they cooked spaghetti like it was an act of revenge.

One afternoon in December of 1971, the phone rings. It is a girl asking about one of their old friends. She wants to know where he lives. The spaghetti cooker says they do not know and that they have not seen him in a long time. This is a lie. While they have not seen them, they do know where they live. The spaghetti cooker, however, does not want to get involved in other people’s business. The girl on the phone tries to get more information. The spaghetti cooker tells her that they are in the middle of cooking spaghetti. They are not; they are lying on a sofa.

They imagine they are cooking spaghetti and tell the girl they can’t talk because they can’t ruin the spaghetti. The girl asks who they are making it for. The spaghetti cooker says they will eat it themselves. The girl tells the spaghetti cooker that she needs money, and it is her ex-boyfriend that owes it to her. The spaghetti cooker says they must tend to their spaghetti. The girl hangs up. The spaghetti cooker lays on the sofa and stares at the ceiling. They feel a bit guilty about not helping her. The spaghetti cooker did not want to get involved. That is why they cooked so much spaghetti alone—so they would never have to be involved in things.

The spaghetti cooker wonders if the Italians knew that when they exported wheat, that they were really exporting loneliness.