Opening Claudio’s profile, they leaned over the phone in unison. Foscari, for good measure, also poked his snout between them for a look. A smiling bright face came up on the screen. Lucia seemed to soften next to Francesco.
‘He’s handsome, that’s for sure,’ Francesco said. ‘Writehandsomein the table.’
‘Checco!’ Lucia managed a laugh. ‘You wanted facts.’
‘Itisa fact.’
She shook her head fondly and added the note to Claudio’s table entries.
‘Claudio Rota, it’s your turn.’
Lucia again noted a collection of emojis. ‘Are words no longer in fashion?’
‘It’s the language of social media.’ He patted her thigh. ‘It’syou, Lucia, who chooses not to speak it.’
‘You got a double-mask emoji in my ball invitation text. That’s as far as I stretch.’
‘It was noted and very much appreciated.’ Francesco read aloud, ‘Crucifix. Father and daughter. Pasta. Wine. Tennis ball—’
‘That sounds promising. Do you think he’s a father?’ Lucia pondered that a moment.
‘Would you date someone with a child?’
The thought had never crossed Lucia’s mind. ‘I guess so. It wouldn’t be ano.’
‘There’s a love heart, here. “Matilde”, it says.’
Lucia looked again. The man’s eyes were definitively blue. ‘The man I kissed didn’t have blue eyes. They were brown.’ A little bubble seemed to burst in her resolve. Perhaps the pasta-loving, tennis-playing father to Matilde could have beensomething?
‘He may have been wearing costume lenses.’
‘Perhaps,’ she sighed.
Noting her disappointment, Francesco said, ‘It’s not a bad thing.’
‘Why?’
‘Because the final two emojis are the peach and the eggplant.’
‘So, he likes to cook?’
‘Not quite. Never mind. What can I ask him?’
‘Ask him where we kissed that night.’
Francesco shot back the message, and almost immediately, the bouncing ellipses signalled an impending reply.
Francesco fell quiet as he read the message that had appeared. ‘San Marco.’
Lucia’s eyes widened. ‘But the kiss happened in the piazzetta. Not the piazza.’ She gnawed on her lower lip a moment. ‘And his mask?’
Francesco typed, and they both waited with bated breath.
‘Black.’
‘Yes. It was black.’
At that moment, Paolo replied to Francesco’s message. He read, ‘An Arlecchino mask, of course.’ Paolo had attached a photo.
