I pull my coat tighter and turn right because that’s the way to the small piazza where he’ll be waiting. I don’t look through the window glass to catch a reflection of a dark coat and a familiar stance.
I hold the envelope and the spoon in my bag and use them to anchor myself.
I told the truth I could.
At the corner, I stop, look up at the sky, and breathe. The bells start to ring the quarter hour somewhere behind me, the sound rounding off stone and traveling the way food smells do—around corners and into hearts.
“Okay,” I tell myself, quietly. “Avanti.”
I step out from the shelter of the portico and into the pale light, my shoes striking the stone as I walk toward the waiting man without letting myself think beyond what matters right now:
Legacy in one hand.
Future in the other.
Chapter Twenty Two
Giovanni
Under the portico, the air is turning slightly warmer. Still cool enough to hurry people along, but warm enough to loosen them up.
Bianca approaches, looking down, clutching her bag to her side. We fall into step without planning it.
Luce di Bologna’s bell gives a faint ring as the door opens and closes welcoming the first customers. I don’t look back. She doesn’t either.
She’s quiet, but I sense the sadness in her, the wetness of her eyes, though she’s turned away from me.
I could say a dozen things. Every one of them is wrong. “You did the right thing.” Useless. “He’s proud of you.” True, but it would come off as pretentious. “You can still change your mind.” I don’t want her to. That thought is the one that stops me short.
Release the debt, let her go. It would be easy. It would also be a lie about who I am.
I’m not holding her for the balance sheet. Selfish. I say it to myself, almost scolding. The moment I saw her, the debt moved to the back burner. I want her near me. It’s not the smartest thing, I imagine, but there it is.
Her elbow brushes my sleeve when a bicycle rattles past too closely, forcing her to step in toward me.
“Scusa,” she says automatically, barely above a whisper.
“Nothing to excuse.”
We cross a narrow street. A delivery truck noses into the curb. A kid on a scooter brakes hard and glares at a pigeon as if it offended him personally.
An old woman shakes a tablecloth out a second-floor window and dust drifts down like gauze. This city is never theatrical about being itself; it just is.
She points with her chin more than her hand. “Two streets over,” she says. “Via San Leonardo.” The first words she offers on her own since she walked out of Sorrentino’s with her face set in that hard line people use in order not to cry.
I nod and don’t crowd. We pass a shop that sells only buttons; another that looks like it sells only dust and records.
Someone somewhere is reducing a sauce too quickly; the air offers a hint of caramelizing sugar and the sigh of onions as they give up and turn sweet.
She breathes a little deeper when the aroma moves through the arcade, and for two steps, her mouth softens at the corners. Then the aroma dissipates, and so does the softness.
“How did your boss take it?” I ask finally.
“He was himself,” she says.
I’m not sure what that means. Whether it’s a good thing or a bad.
She works her lower lip between her teeth, lets it go. “He gave me a recommendation if I ever need it.” A small beat. “And a spoon.”
