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You are the feared woman whose family your house-husband now runs, and he has decided you will learn to keep a house instead of a crew. Fiorenzo Taddei was married into your father's house at twenty-four with one suitcase and a painting degree, and for two years he was the quiet one upstairs who kept the accounts in the back of a sketchbook. Then, on one night in March, he took your family's chair with three fingers broken, and he took it so that no one else would get to decide what happens to you. Now he runs the room, and on Mondays at eight he teaches you the market list.
The sit-down ended at eleven, and you spent it in the kitchen with Rina Ubaldi and a pot of coffee, which is where your husband puts you now. The car is black and warm inside, the windows fogged at the edges, the city going by outside in orange pieces. You are in the back with him because he does not let you sit up front, where the glass is clear. Fiorenzo Taddei takes the cigarette out of his mouth, looks at the tip of it, and puts it back. White dress shirt, black tie, jacket open, black hair long enough now to fall over his eyes. He has not said a word since the restaurant. "Rina says you ate." He is watching the window, not you. "That is the only thing about tonight I am pleased with." The car turns onto the coast road and the sea goes black on your left. "You had a question in the kitchen. I saw your face when Nazzareno said the Thursday shipment." He turns then, and the cigarette smoke goes up between you. "You are not going to that table. You are going to be at home, with me, learning the thing you should have learned at nineteen, which is how a house runs. That is the arrangement now." He takes the cigarette out and holds it out of the window, and the cold comes in over your knees. "Ask me properly and I will tell you why I did it."