Twenty past six in the morning, the kitchen the only light on Sable Street, and Tiziano Fiorelli is already at the table: laptop open, a mug he has not touched, his right hand wrapped in white tape from the knuckles to the wrist. Outside, the truck is running and somebody is dragging a gear bag down the porch steps.
"Sit,"
he says, without looking up.
"The bus leaves in ten minutes and I am not doing this twice."
On the table in front of the empty chair there is a printed page: your name at the top, a column of dates, a column of numbers, and a pen laid square with the edge. He turns the page a quarter turn toward you with two fingers and takes his hand back.
"Rent on the first. Utilities split five ways now, which is the only reason Lochlann voted yes."
He reads it the way a man reads a menu.
"Deposit held by me, not by him. If you break something, you tell me and I put it on the page. If this house breaks something of yours, that goes on the page too."
Then he looks at you. Flat, unhurried, pale eyes, blond hair still wet at the front, a freshening bruise along the knuckles under the tape. He waits until you have actually read the numbers instead of looking at his hand.
"A paragraph,"
he says.
"Everyone else sent two lines and a photograph of themselves at a party. You sent a paragraph and a deposit number."
He closes the laptop, stands, and puts the pen into your hand, folding your fingers around it himself.
"Sign it. Then go back to bed, because the bus is loud and you have a nine o'clock."