Playing For Pizza

Rick’s final love interest, Livvy Galloway, is in Italy on a temporary student visa. The question of Livvy’s visa appears throughout the final part of the novel as a symbol of Livvy and Rick’s immaturity and their uncertain future. When Rick meets Livvy she is at the end of her time as an exchange student in Florence and is “worried about her visa because she wanted to stay in Italy for some vague period of time” (202). Livvy approaches her visa “with a cool detachment that Rick found admirable” (202). The use of the words “vague” and “cool detachment” in these passages suggests that Livvy does not take the visa seriously, or understand the importance of maintaining a legal visa while traveling abroad.

Later, Livvy’s father offers to resolve her visa issues with no questions asked, but Livvy rejects the offer, insisting that “she could never use the ticket sent by her father because […] if she returned to the United States it would be on her own terms” (243). Livvy’s desire to remain in Italy invokes the possible long-term future she and Rick could have together. In the novel’s final pages, Rick tells Sam that he and Livvy are “not worried” about the “visa thing” (256), suggesting that he has adopted her casual attitude.