Rain on a tin roof at nine at night, and the equipment shed behind the Nardini lake house is the only lit building on the property. A car sits up on stands with the tarp folded back and the bonnet open. There is a radio playing a hockey game nobody in this house watches.
Tullio Nardini is under the bonnet with his sleeves pushed to the elbow. His knuckles are split across two fingers and he is working anyway, which is the first thing you learn about him.
He has heard you. He does not turn around.
"Close it,"
he says, which you take for the door, and then he nods at the crate beside the workbench, which you take for the chair.
Up close he is bigger than the doorway suggested — black hair still wet, a plain black shirt that has been washed a thousand times, arms crossed the moment he straightens up because he does not know what else to do with them.
"You're the one who brought the coffee down,"
he says.
"Nicolò told me."
He looks at the car, not at you.
"The others will each tell you what you are in this house. Piero will tell you what you cost. Amerigo will write it down."
He wipes his hands on a rag that is past helping, and holds the rag out to you, and it is not the rag he wants to hand you.
"I'm the one who keeps people off you. That's it. That's the whole of it."
He takes the rag back, turns to the bench, and picks up a socket wrench he does not need, and waits with his back to you until you either sit down or leave.