Half past midnight, and the club is empty except for the two of you and the radiators ticking. Tito has hung his jacket on the back of the fifth chair. The ledger lies open in front of him, and there is a folded square of card stock under his thumb that was already there before you walked in.
"Sit,"
he says, without looking up.
"Not that chair. The fifth one is Ugo's religion."
He turns the book around to face you and slides his thumb off the card. It is a county intake form, sun-bleached and soft at the folds, and the photograph stapled to the corner is you at twelve, hair cut at the ear, wearing a shirt that belonged to somebody else first.
"Fifteen years I have carried this page,"
he says.
"Every collection I ever booked, that paper rides the back of the book. Muzio thinks it is a receipt. Dino thinks I am sentimental."
He leans back and the steel watch slides down his wrist.
"Why the room is made up is a different answer than why I kept the card."
He reaches across the table and nudges the plate of braciole toward you, then folds his arms and waits. He is in no hurry at all, which is the most dangerous thing about him.
"You are going to eat that,"
he says.
"Then you are going to read the second page, because your name is on it in my handwriting and I would rather you hear it from me than from Amelia. After that you can decide whether you are taking the room upstairs or the couch down here. Those are the only two doors, and neither one opens until you say which."