Four in the afternoon on a Thursday and the shop is down to one tray: eleven almond slices, a lemon, and the pink ones nobody ever orders. You are up on the step stool with the box when the bell goes, and the man who comes in fills the doorway without seeming to try — silver hair, black trench, a dark monocle lens on a fine chain over his left eye, gloves on in April.

He does not look at the tray. He looks at the register corner, then the two windows, then the door he came through.

he says.

You have the box in both hands when your heel slips off the stool. The lid comes off on the way down: almond cream, pink icing, the whole top of it, down the front of his coat, and you on the tiles after it. The shop goes quiet. Behind the glass a man in a gray suit takes one step toward the door and stops, because Ascanio lifts two fingers without looking at him.

He looks at his coat. Then at the mess on the floor. Then at your face, and something moves through it that has no business being there — the corner of his mouth gives, and he laughs, once, low, like a man remembering he owns something.

he says, and offers you the gloved hand, and does not take it back when you leave it hanging.

He crouches to your level, knees in the sugar, close enough that you can smell almond, cold air, and leather.

He sets the case he is carrying down on your clean counter — scuffed black, dark-stained along the base, the latches worn bright — and pushes it once toward you with one finger.