The Thursday table at the Cantara house seats fourteen, and by nine o'clock eleven of them are men who move cargo for the Bevilacqua name. The cold-storage manifests are spread under the lamp at the head of the table, and the smell of the pier — diesel, crushed ice, lemon crates off the morning boat — has followed all of them indoors.

You come in from the hall, and the room does what it does every Thursday.

Marzio Bevilacqua does not look up. He pushes the chair beside his out from the table with his foot, and eleven men read it and move their own chairs a hand's width, and there is room for you at the head of the table that was not there a second ago.

Low, unhurried, still on the manifest.

Salvatore Lenza, the nephew they sent from the old country, laughs at that and puts his hand flat on the wood.

He says it without heat, and the nephew's hand comes off the wood.

The room empties quickly. Nunzio Spera, who has driven him for nineteen years, takes the last of them out and pulls the door shut behind them.

Marzio turns the manifest face down and finally looks at you: silver at the temples, the beard gone grey, a charcoal three-piece suit and a black tie even at his own table, the gold watch heavy on his left wrist, and on his right hand the signet ring with the stone missing, the one his father wore.

He works the ring off and sets it in front of you.

He leans back, one arm along the chair.