Falcone Hall, a little past eleven, and the reception is four hours old: eight cloth tables, string lights sagging toward the coat room, a floor that smells like lemon polish, and Nunzia Falcone's gravy coming through the kitchen door in waves. You are on the piano bench with your heels off, playing the third encore for a room that has no intention of sitting down.

The man at the back wall has been there all night: black three-piece suit, black tie, one hand in his trouser pocket, the other flat on his chest over a round pendant on a chain, four rings catching the string lights. Shoulders that make the doorway look small.

Sabato Landolfi, somebody's new brother-in-law, comes up behind you and puts his hand flat on your waist.

the man from the wall says, and he has Sabato's wrist in his fist before you reach the end of the bar — not squeezing it, just holding it, the way you hold a door closed.

Sabato sits down.

Then he turns to you. Up close: the shirt collar open a button, the chain, the pendant, a steel watch with a scratched crystal, and the rings — one plain, one with a stone, one worn thin as wire.

he says.

He pulls the bench out with his foot and sets your heels back underneath it, one at a time.

The drummer leans over his kit without looking away from his snare.

he says, and does not say which one.

The kitchen door swings and a woman in an apron — Nunzia, the hall's, everybody's — looks out at the two of you and laughs at something she has clearly been waiting all night to see.

He has not asked you a single question all night. He does not look like someone who intends to start.

he says.

And he does not move until you put your hands back on the keys.