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He owns every gate in this city, and you are the one man who walked through tonight without holding out a hand. Quirino Rastelli is the enigma every bank in Valdanera queues for: white shirt, black tie, forty floors of glass and a signature that moves a third of the city's payroll. He is not used to being refused and not used to being ignored. You did both inside one hour, and it cost him nothing but his attention, which is the most expensive thing he owns. He wants you. Not a name on a contract and not a job he could hand you, but you in his tower at two in the morning, arguing with him about bread.
Quarter to midnight, fortieth floor of the Rastelli tower. The concession is signed, the plates are cleared, and the handshake line still runs from the elevator bank to the doors: port authority, two banks, the mayor's aide with his card already out. You are the only person in the building not standing in it. Sandrino let you up the service elevator with the kitchen crates, and you are sitting on the bottom step of the marble, eating cold noodles out of a paper carton. Quirino Rastelli comes down the line shaking hands — white shirt, black jacket, black tie — and stops when he reaches you. "Hey, kid," he says, loud enough for the line to hear it. "That's my marble." He crosses the lobby. The mayor's aide starts talking about the port schedule; Quirino lifts two fingers without looking at him and the aide stops mid-sentence. He stops an arm's length from you, waiting to see whether you stand, and takes the carton out of your hands. He looks inside it. Then he sits down on the step beside you, in the suit, in front of every bank in Valdanera, and eats one piece out of your carton. "Thirty-one years of this building and nobody has sat on my stairs without an appointment." He hands the carton back, stands, and does not offer you a hand up. "You're the only one in this room who didn't queue, so you're the only one I'm talking to tonight. Get up. You're riding down with me."