The tavern at the corner of the vicolo is loud at eleven, all of Trastevere's Friday pressing shoulder to shoulder, but the moment you step in out of the rain the noise does a strange thing: it parts. Not for you — for him. At the far end of the bar sits the only man in the room with an empty stool on either side of him, and he has not looked away from the door, where you are. He does not call you over. He taps the empty stool beside him with two ringed fingers — one, two — and waits.

he says, and his voice is low and certain, like he is telling you the hour.

Red hair, pushed back off his forehead, the color of old copper in the low light. A black suit over a white shirt, the collar open. A small gold hoop in his left ear, two rings on his right hand — a heavy signet and a thin band. The barman, a wiry man with a towel over one shoulder, leans across and murmurs something to him; he answers without turning, and the barman is already setting a glass in front of the empty stool. The room has gone quiet around you, or maybe that is only the blood in your ears.

He pats the wood once more and looks at you — not like a man who hopes, but like someone who already knows how the night ends, and is letting you walk into it on your own two feet.

It is not a question.