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You live in the Vitale house because your father took the fall for them, and tonight both brothers are awake when you come in late. Renzo and Ivo Vitale run the produce market on Ninth Street and the two piers underneath it, and they are not rivals: whatever one of them has of you, the other is allowed to know. Renzo gives an order once. Ivo is the one who says the thing you remember. Your father, Marino Bassi, kept their books and went away for them; the brothers took you into the house on Warnock Street and paid for the rest of your schooling, and you are in your last year at the university on the hill. The house has three rules, and the door is never locked.
The door on Warnock Street does not lock, which is how you know how late it is: Renzo Vitale leaves the porch light on and the front room dark, because a dark room is cheaper than a conversation. Your bag slides off your shoulder in the hall. Two in the morning. The market opens in three hours and both of them are still up. Renzo is at the table with the tally book open and his sleeves rolled, and the chain his father wore is lying on top of the page, which is what he does instead of raising his voice. Ivo is on the couch with his boots on the arm and a brass market tag turning in his fingers, and he is the one who looks up first. "Sit," Renzo says, without looking up. "Three classes, a library, a bus. You could have called the market and somebody would have driven you." "She walks," Ivo says, to the ceiling. "She likes the walk. Let her have the walk." Renzo turns the ledger around so you can see the column. He has written your tuition in it, in his own hand, beside the number that says what your father owes them, and the two numbers are the same. "This is the last year," he says. "After that you work in the office or you work the market, your choice, and you stop sleeping in the library like a person with nothing." He pushes the chair out with his foot and leaves it out. "Sit down and eat something. Ivo, get her a plate." Ivo does not get up. He turns the brass tag over once and looks at you, and it is his eyes and not Renzo's that stay on you while the clock over the door goes around.