“Sabina fed our men for many years,” I say. “We show up. Pay our respects.”
He grins sideways. “You say ‘we’ but it sounds like ‘me.’”
“You like people.” I open my door. “I’ll let you talk to them.”
Inside, the air is all steam and tomato and grief. Christmas lights zigzag the ceiling and try to lighten the atmosphere. It almost works. I clock exits without thinking: front, kitchen swing door, the back hall by the bathrooms that leads to the alley. Old habit, old muscle.
Heads turn. Some in fear, some in curiosity. Some nod. Some whisper. And still, some are completely oblivious.
Francesca is by the bar, stiff as a knife in the block. She wears a black dress that isn’t new, hair sprayed up like a helmet. When her eyes find me, color drains under her powder.
She walks over quickly and stiffly on worn black heels.
“Giovanni,” she says. It’s a greeting and an accusation, both small, both brittle. “Roberto.”
“Francesca.” I tilt my head. “We heard about Sabina. I’m very sorry for your loss.”
I mean it. Sabina was small and loud and made the best ribollita I’ve ever eaten. She told me once I slouched, and I straightened all night without thinking. “We came to pay respects.”
Her mouth presses into a white line. There’s a small tick in her eye as she glances toward the kitchen and back at us. “You shouldn’t be here.”
Roberto slides forward with a smile that disarms juries and bartenders. “We won’t take a plate. We won’t take a chair. Five minutes and we’re gone.”
“I didn’t say—” She catches herself. Her hands are clean, but the knuckles are red from work. “It’s… not the time.”
“When is it ever?” I ask, quietly. “We owe Sabina. That’s all.”
Her eyes flick to the room. People are watching, pretending not to. She knows what a scene costs. For a second, the line of her shoulders softens, then tightens again, like she’s wrestling with something only she can see. The panic flashes brighter, then goes down behind her eyes the way a burner turns low.
“Fine,” she says. “Five minutes.” She moves aside hesitantly. “Don’t… just don’t.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Roberto says, already easing toward a knot of old men who loved Sabina’s eggplant more than their wives. He claps backs, kisses cheeks, promises prayers he’ll never say. He’s good at this. It’s what we keep him for, besides his practice of the law.
I keep my hands in my pockets and my back to a wall. The room is a collage of sound and mood. Sentences start with laughsand end with cries, chairs scrape, lids clatter. A baby cries, and someone bounces it against her hip in a rhythm.
I nod to men who nod back. I thank a server who sweeps past with a tray of meatballs, and he flusters like he’s not sure if he should be grateful or terrified. It lands somewhere in the middle.
Francesca threads through people like a captain cutting through weather. Twice, she looks at me and looks away, the panic flaring and going dark. I file it in a drawer marked Later.
Roberto materializes at my shoulder, a pepper of perfume and laughter following him. “Old man DiNallo cried into my jacket for two solid minutes. You owe me dry cleaning.”
“He never liked you.”
“He does now. I told him you make a mean marinara.”
“I don’t.”
He winks. “He’s ninety. By the time he tells that story again, you invented tomatoes.”
Someone behind me says, “Conti,” low, hushed. Feared.
I don’t turn. If there’s trouble, it will come to me. It doesn’t. The room keeps moving around the hole where Sabina should be.
Then I see her.
Not because she’s loud or drawing attention, but because the air shifts around me. The door to the kitchen swings open, and in one second, I take it all in. She’s at the stove, tall, back straight, hair pulled into a neat knot on top of her head. A ladle in her hand. She tastes, frowns, and the door gently closes, shutting her away from me.
“Who was that?” I murmur to Roberto.
