"You didn't say anything."
"You were coming from confession." She says it simply, matter-of-fact. "It seemed like poor timing."
That is, genuinely, the correct observation. I find myself wanting to smile. I don't, but I want to.
"And today," I say. "At the beginning of the shift."
"It's a restaurant. You're a customer." A pause. "It would have been strange to make it into something."
"Most people make it intosomething."
"I'm not most people." She says it without any emphasis, just information. "Is this what you wanted to talk about?"
I look at her. Across the room the birthday table bursts into song, off-key and enthusiastic, and neither of us looks toward it.
"What do you do when you're not here?" I ask.
"I work at the church. Part-time, administrative." She's watching me with that quality I keep noticing, the attention that seems to go slightly past the surface of things. "I read. I sleep."
"No family?"
"My uncle." Something closes, slightly, in her expression. Not grief exactly. Old weather. "He's a priest."
"Father Domenico," I say.
Now something sharpens. It's quick, gone before I can read it properly, but it was there. "You know him."
"He heard my confession Thursday."
"I know." She seems to realize she's said this, then doesn't backtrack. "He mentioned he had an appointment. Not you specifically."
"But you put it together."
"You were at the church that morning. You're sitting in my section now." She looks down at the table for a moment, then back up. "You're not hard to identify, Don Sorrentino."
That's the first time she's used the title. She uses it without irony, without the particular emphasis people use when they want me to know they're not afraid of it. It just rolls off her tongue, which is somehow more unsettling than either of the alternatives.
"Niccolo," I say.
She considers this. "Niccolo."
The birthday singing wraps up. Someone is crying happy tears. The room resumes its regular noise. Valentina checks the room briefly, reads something in it, looks back at me.
"Your food will be ready in about five minutes," she says. "I should check on table seven."
"One more question."
She waits.
"The Camilleri.Which one?"
The dry amusement again, faster this time, less guarded. "Il ladro di merendine. For the third time. I keep hoping the ending changes."
She stands, straightens her apron. Moves toward table seven with the same efficient grace as before.
I eat the genovese when it comes. It's exactly what she said it would be: worth the wait, slow-cooked, the beef falling apart the way it should. I eat without hurrying and watch the room and think about her answer. Reading the same book three times hoping the ending changes. There are worse ways to describe how a person approaches loss.
She checks on me twice during the meal. Both times brief, professional, no resumption of the earlier conversation. She's drawn the line back where it belongs and I respect that, though I also note where she's drawn it.
