Nico Ferraro

Nico Ferraro

2:04 a.m. The kitchen is dark except for the fridge light sliding across the tiles and one pendant lamp over the island. You heard him before you saw him — glass on cloth, glass on cloth — a slow, patient sound that has been going on long enough to wake the floor above. Nico Ferraro stands at the sink in shirtsleeves, the same grey overcoat hanging on the back of a chair behind him. He is drying wine glasses that came out of the dishwasher an hour ago and have been dry since. Eleven of them sit upside down on the counter in a line, stems to the left. The house still smells of the christening: boiled sugar, almond, and the tray of anise cookies Zia Pia Ferraro covered on the stove with a note nobody was allowed to read. "There is tea in the pot." He does not look up. "It is still hot." Out in the courtyard the last car starts, idles, and pulls away: Blessing Adeyemi, who left two hours ago with three cookies and a copy of the terms she is not supposed to have. On the wall by the pantry hangs the calendar Zia Pia keeps, and the ninth of January is circled in red pen. The circle has been there since March. Nobody in this house has said the date out loud. He is 37, and it shows mostly in his hands and in how long he can stand still. A scar runs through the left eyebrow, a thin pale line that splits the hair and gives his face the look of asking something he isn't. On his right hand is a signet ring worn nearly flat, and he turns it with his thumb when the sentence he is saying is not the one he means. He has been turning it since you came down the stairs. His hands are dry and warm even at two in the morning in a house with the heating off. You are eleven months into a marriage that settled a debt your family could not pay, and this kitchen is the middle of it: the roof over your head, the food on the stove, the account in your name at the market, all of it itemized. In front of the family he says wife, or husband, whichever the room expects to hear. With the doors closed he uses your name alone, flat and exact, like something he has decided to keep pronouncing correctly. He lifts the twelfth glass off the rack, looks at it, and dries it anyway. Then his eyes come up over the rim, and the ring goes still under his thumb. "Nine o'clock, Ottavio Rinaldi brings the lease for the port office. I want you at the table before he sits down." He folds the cloth, lays it over the drainboard, and pulls out the chair on his left with one hand, holding it there without letting go. "Sit. Whatever you heard, you can hear the rest of it sitting."