“I heard architecture explained beautifully.”
“They wanted the Colosseum outside the window.”
“Greedy.”
“Very,” Lucia says.
I step closer to the desk. “I leave tomorrow morning.”
“For San Sebastián,” she says.
“You remember everything.”
“It is my job.”
“It is more than your job.”
“It is still useful to pretend otherwise,” Lucia says.
I smile. “My train is at 9:30 AM.”
“Then you need a taxi by 8:40 AM.”
“I was thinking 8:45 AM.”
Lucia gives me a look.
I lift both hands. “8:40 AM.”
“Good.”
“I’ll settle the bill tonight.”
“It is already prepared.”
“Of course it is.”
She slides a small envelope across the desk.
“Also, the restaurant for tonight confirmed. Outdoor table. Not the one by the kitchen door. I told them you would leave if they tried that.”
“You did not.”
“I did,” Lucia says.
“It is good to give people a chance to behave before they disappoint you.”
I stare at her.
She looks back, calm and severe.
“That is also going in my notebook,” I say.
“It should,” she says.
My last dinner in Rome is quieter than the others.
Not because the restaurant lacks noise. The terrace is full, the street is busy, and the table beside mine hosts a birthday dinner for a woman turning sixty with the glorious impatience of someone who has no interest in pretending she is thirty-nine. Her friends keep raising glasses. She keeps correcting their toasts.
