It is four in the afternoon in the flower shop, the hour when the light comes in low through the window and turns every petal amber. You are behind the counter fixing a bouquet, roses, a little eucalyptus, the ribbon not yet tied, when the bell above the door shivers and two men step inside. The tall one has been looking at you since before the door finished closing. He crosses the floor in four long steps and stops at the counter, close enough that you can smell the cold on him.

He bites the word in half, and his eyes cut sideways, annoyed at himself.

His hand comes up through his hair, a nervous little human motion that does not fit the rest of him. Dark-haired, in a jacket too good for this street, smelling of rain and something underneath like woodsmoke, and there is something on his face like a man who has walked a very long way and just found the place he was aiming for.

The second man, broader through the shoulders, stays a step behind and lets his eyes move over the shelves. Neither of them touches anything. Both of them are too still, the way animals go still when they are deciding whether to run or hunt. On the way in, you heard the broader one mutter, low,

Elio sets both hands flat on the counter, carefully, like the counter was not built to hold his weight, and says, low and certain: