Page 65 of Deadly Confessions
"No."
"But you still look at paintings that way. Like you're trying to figure out how theshadow works."
She's right. The fact that she's observed this, without context, sits in me in a way I don't immediately examine.
"Yes," I say.
She nods. Eats her bread. As if that settles it.
The afternoon goes slowly. She reads on the couch, her feet in my lap. I find a Sciascia on my shelf I've been meaning to read.Il giorno della civetta. The Mafia novel. Either ironic or appropriate, depending on how you think about my life.
I rub her feet while I read. My thumb in the arch. Her toes curl. She makes a sound extremely close to the sound she made this morning. I file this under: useful.
She doesn't look up from her book. But her foot presses harder into my hand.
I read sixty pages. She reads whatever she brought in her bag. Neither of us checks a phone. I don't think about the Ferrantes. I don't think about the mole investigation. I don't think about Monday. For the first time in two years, I spend an entire afternoon inside a single activity without the second track running beneath it.
Late afternoon she sets her book down.
"The Sciascia gets slow in the middle," she says.
"It doesn't."
"It does for about forty pages and then it picks back up."
She's right. The pace drops exactly where I paused. She noticed. She watches without watching.
"There's a place in Chiaia I've been wanting to try," I say. "Small. No menu. The chef decides."
"You and your no-menu restaurants."
"You liked the last one."
"I liked the company. The food was secondary."
"That's the best review I've ever received."
"Don't let it go to your head."
Too late. Everything she says goes to my head. Every observation. Every dry remark. Every moment where the humor surfaces without warning and catches me leaning forward because I want to be closer when the next one arrives.
We go to Chiaia. The restaurant is twelve tables, candlelit, a view of the Lungomare. The chef sends out seven courses. Each one smaller than the last, each one more precise. She eats with the attention of a woman who works in the foodindustry and knows when someone has done something correctly.
We split a bottle of Taurasi. Not Barbaresco. She chose it. I let her.
"You're branching out," she says when I taste it.
"You told me I should try something new."
"I didn't think you'd listen."
"I always listen."
She holds my gaze across the table. Candlelight in her glasses. The Taurasi on her lips. The restaurant murmurs around us but the sound doesn't reach the table. Nothing reaches the table except the two of us.
Walking back to the car she puts her arm through mine. Not the hidden hand-in-pocket from earlier conversations. The arm through mine, full contact, visible to the street. More presence. I can't locate the moment the change happened. It simply is.
In the car she puts her hand on my thigh. Doesn't move it. Just rests it there while I drive through Naples at night, the city lit and loud, the eternal noise of a place that refuses to go to bed. Her hand warm through the fabric. Her thumbtracing a small pattern on the inside of my leg. Absent. Deliberate. Both.
