Page 64 of Promised to the Don of Naples
If you ever need proof against him, it's there.
Take care.
—B.
I read it three times.
I put the key in my trouser pocket and folded the letter.
Now I was carrying two letters against my chest.
One told me: don't mistake the fire for the smoke.
The other told me: here's all the smoke, in a steel box.
That night I didn't go down for dinner.
I asked for a tray in my room, and Donna Beatrice brought it without comment.
I ate half and pushed the rest away. I tried to read the Calvino and read the same paragraph six times.
At eleven-thirty, I went down the service stairs to get cold water from the pantry.
And he was there.
Leaning against the pantry counter, alone. Nothing over the white shirt, the sleeves down—the shirt rumpled as if he'd spent the whole afternoon in it. And he had a glass of whiskey in his hand.
He saw me but didn't move.
"You came down."
"I came to get water."
I walked to the refrigerator and opened it. I took out the glass bottle and poured a glass. I closed the refrigerator but didn't leave.
I stayed there, glass in hand, ten feet from him. The pantry was dark. Only a low light over the counter where he was leaning. I saw him in silhouette—the shoulders, the open collar of his shirt, the glass of whiskey in his hand.
I couldn't see his eyes.
"Luca. How long have you been drinking?"
"Since seven. You asked me not to touch you, Valentina."
"I didn't ask that."
"Go away, bella."
"Why?"
"Because I've had four drinks and you're barefoot in the dark of my pantry, and if you stay two more minutes I won't answer for myself."
I looked at him, at his silhouette.
And I, with Bianca's key in my trouser pocket and my brother in a cellar two floors below, did the hardest thing I'd done in three weeks in that house: I climbed the service stairs without looking back.
LUCA MORETTI
I heard her footsteps going up, and then I hurled the glass of whiskey hard against the pantry wall.
