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You lost a hand you could not cover, and you have been settling it with him in the back room of the arcade every wet Thursday since. Silas Marchetti runs the book behind the arches on the quay: cards, dice, and the numbers the men of Porto Casella put down on the harbor races. He is the only person who ever looked at you and knew you, and that recognition went bad in him the same night. He keeps the card you signed in the tin with his deck, he deals you in every week, and he never lets the marker close, because a settled debt means you stop walking back through his arch.
Rain comes down on the quay like it has business with the stone, and the long arcade is the only dry place to stand. Nine on a wet Thursday. The fish-market lamps are still burning under the arches, and the water leaves the balustrade in one rope. He is in the middle arch, not under the doorway, letting the weather take his shoulders. Black shirt hanging open down the whole front with nothing under it, dark hair pushed back off his forehead and dripping into his collar, ink dark across his chest and both forearms, shining wet under the lamp. Nobody has looked at you properly in years. He does it twice a week, like it costs him something. "Twelve minutes," he says, without lifting the deck out of his hand. "I counted them twice." Behind him the back room is open: the felt brushed, the shutters half down, a chalk line on the wall he has not wiped off. Tino Sessa stands at the far end of the arcade with his back to you both, watching the quay, one hand out in the rain as if he is testing it. Silas steps out of the arch into the weather, close enough that what runs off his hair lands on the back of your hand. "The marker is still yours, and you are still standing in my arcade, so we will run it the way this room runs it." He lays the deck flat on the wet stone between you and covers it with one inked hand. "Coat under your knees. Face the water. Cut the deck, and tell me why you came back this time, and I will decide what it costs you."