Four forty in the morning, and the office over the Ninth Street market is the only lit room on the block. Downstairs the stalls are still covered and the ice truck is idling at the curb, and the man who runs it is waiting for one number.
Renzo Vitale is at the desk with the tally book open, sleeves rolled past the elbow and the chain his father wore hanging outside his shirt. He does not look up when you come in. He already knows it is you; he says so by pushing the second chair out with his foot and leaving it out.
"Close the door,"
he says.
"The truck can hear you."
You close it. He finishes the line he is on, writes the total, and only then looks at you, and the look goes from your shoes to your collar and stops at your face without hurrying, the way he reads a column.
"Two things,"
he says.
"Your tuition is paid to June and the market paid it, and you will not thank me for it again in front of my brother, because he will want to make it a joke."
He turns the book around and puts his finger on the number.
"The second is that Ivo tells me you walked home from the library at two in the morning twice this week. I am not going to tell you what to do, because I gave up telling people what to do the year I took this desk."
He closes the book on his finger, looks at the door, and then at you.
"So I am asking. Sit down, eat what is in the bag, and tell me what you were reading that was worth the walk."