“Whatever you had for breakfast,” the mister says at the water break, “have it again tomorrow.”
“It wasn’t breakfast.”
“Then skip breakfast again.” He walks on.
Ricci wants my read on the Czech press, already preparing for what if. Gallo wants my read on his new boots.
“Their right side steps early,” I tell Ricci over the cones. “Force it there and the gap opens behind.”
“And Kovár‘s side?”
“Kovár never steps early. Kovár waits.” My voice comes out flat and professional, and I leave it there like a coat I’m not sure is mine. “Go at the other one.”
This part is easy, the being of use, the being warm at people who never cost me anything. The squad gets the whole Enzo. They always have. That’s never been the wound.
Gianna calls at two. No voice note. Live.
“Tell me,” she says.
“There’s nothing to tell.”
“You answered on the first ring at two in the afternoon. You’re not even pretending to be busy.”
I look at the container by the sink, which has been sitting there all day saying nothing, the way evidence does. “He came by last night.”
“Came by?”
“Returned something.”
“At what time?”
“Nine.”
“Nine.” She lets the number stand there and rot. “So it’s the same. A year later, a World Cup, a new continent, and it’s the same situation.”
“It’s not the same.”
“Tell me one thing that’s different.”
“He sat. After.” It’s out before I decide it should be. “He stopped in the middle of getting ready to leave and sat there. Four minutes, maybe five. In two years of whatever it was, Gianna, he never once even slowed down.”
She’s quiet a second. Gianna being quiet is rarer than an eclipse.
“You counted the minutes,” she says.
“I count everything about him. That’s the disease.”
“Okay. Then hear the history, since you’ve decided to repeat it. Last year, you stopped setting the second place at your table, and it took a month, because your hands kept doing it anyway. You’d catch yourself putting down the second fork and have to put it back in the drawer. You kept a phone number you neveronce used. You cooked for one for a year like a punishment you’d earned. I watched all of it, and I’m not watching the sequel, and neither are you.”
There it is. Itemized, held by somebody who saw it. My thumb presses the edge of the counter.
“I’m not angry at him,” I say. “That’s the thing. He was what he’s always been. I’m angry at the doorman that let him in.”
“Good. Anger’s useful. Mamma cooks angry every Sunday and it’s the best food in Naples. So what are you going to do?”
“Cook.”
“Obviously cook. For him or at him?”