I have an Italian friend who drives like he’s in a death race with every other car on the road, which is to say he drives like most of his countrymen. For the past few days, he was at the wheel as three of us made our way from Sorrento to the hill town of Fiuggi, and he bore down on every car in front of us at a speed that suggested he either did not see it or planned to drive straight through it. At the last possible moment, he’d swerve around, weaving in and out of traffic while everyone else on the road was weaving in and out of traffic, a kind of high-speed square dance in which nobody signals and everybody somehow knows the steps. It’s sort of impressive, in a terrifying way. Unless you’re a nervous passenger.

My other friend, an American, who sat in the passenger seat, is a nervous passenger in the best of circumstances, but these were, unfortunately for him, Italian circumstances. His right foot kept stamping on an imaginary brake. His hand found the grab handle above the door and never let go while his other hand pressed hard against the dash. Somewhere just north of Naples, I thought he was going to dissolve into a puddle of sweat and cortisol.