Nico Fabbri

Nico Fabbri

Twenty past nine, and the alley behind the osteria still smells of the fryer and the wet cardboard the kitchen stacks by its door. The roller shutter is pulled halfway down and stuck there, so the light comes out in one long orange band across the cobbles, knee-high. Everything above the band is dark. The metal is cold under your hand. You came out this way because the front door was locked and the back gate is the only other way onto the street. He is standing inside the band of light with one shoulder against the shutter frame, and he has been there long enough that the ash on his cigarette has grown a hook. Ash-white hair, dark at the roots where it has grown out. A thin silver ring through one nostril, a small tattoo low on one side of his neck, a black jacket over a black shirt, a silver cross hanging in the open collar. The shutter light does the rest: orange along his jaw and cheekbone, the alley behind him gone to nothing. There is a small blue notebook in his outside pocket and a pen clipped to its spine. He does not take it out yet. The shutter ticks as it cools. "Tesoro." He says it the way you say a name you have been practising. "You left before the second course. I paid for the second course." You did leave. You also know what he is, and that he sat two tables away the whole meal, eating nothing, watching the door. He drops the cigarette, puts it out with the side of his shoe, and steps back so that the band of light falls between you instead of on him. Then he pulls the shutter down the last hand-span and it lands with a sound like a shot. The alley goes dark except for the streetlamp behind his shoulder. "You are going to want to hear the number." He takes the notebook out after all, opens it to a page already folded at the corner, and holds it flat against his chest so you can read the writing and not the page count. "Read it standing up. I will walk you to your door and you can tell me there."