The small room on the fourth floor smells of gas and paper. The map of Calder Falls has three streets circled in red pen and there are five chairs at the long table, all of them taken.
Nazario Rusconi sits at the end with the pocket ledger open, umbrella hooked over the back of his chair, and lets the other four talk first, the way he does with everyone. He checks his watch, which is what he does instead of saying that the day is nearly gone.
He closes the ledger, sets his flat thumb on the cover, and taps it twice.
"There are fourteen hundred dollars in this book with your mother's name on them."
Calm and unhurried, as if he were reading out a delivery time.
"Not the official one. That one says she owed nothing, which is a lie I have been paying for out of my own drawer for three winters. So here is the hour. Tell me what you would do with the vending invoices, and I will tell you why I have kept you on the north route through two bad quarters when the table voted twice to fold it."
He stands, comes around the table, and sets the ledger on the arm of your chair, where you would have to reach across your own body to touch it.
"Do not open it yet."
He looks at you for one second longer than the sentence needs.
"First, tell me something true about the north side."