Elena had taken her shoes off at the door.
She had done it without asking, the way a woman did when she had decided that her arrival at a man's house was going to be the kind of arrival where shoes were going to come off. Vinnie watched her put them on the rack beside the door and noticed how small her feet looked without the heels and noticed that he had noticed, and got out of the way of his own noticing by going back to the kitchen.
She walked the downstairs slow.
She did not say anything at first. He let her have it. He had cleaned all afternoon and the cleaning had been the kind a man did when he had not known what kind of cleaning was the right kind. He had thrown out three things from the refrigerator and put two of them back in. He had wiped the kitchen counter twice. He had folded the dishtowels into squares the lawyer's wife had once told him was the right way to fold dishtowels.
She came into the kitchen.
"This is your father's stove."
"It's my father's stove. The pilot light hasn't worked on the back left burner since 1986."
"Was it ever going to work?"
"It will not."
"That's nice."
She came over and stood beside him at the counter. He was slicing tomatoes — the first ones from the produce stand on Bloomfield, not yet from the garden — and he kept slicing them. She did not pick up a knife. She watched him slice for thirty seconds.
"Vincent."
"Yeah."
"This is the first place you've ever asked me to come."
"It is."
"I appreciate that."
"Don't say I appreciate it like I'm a stranger."
"I appreciate it the other way."
He set the knife down. Wiped his hands on the dishtowel — refolded the towel into the square — and turned to her and kissed her. The kiss was short. The kiss was not a parking-lot kiss and it was not a doorway kiss and it was the kind of kiss a man could give a woman in his own kitchen because both of them knew where the front door was if they wanted to go through it later.
She went back to her wine. He went back to his tomatoes.
"What're you making."
"My mother's veal."
"I thought your mother was in Florida."
"My mother is in Florida. The recipe is in a drawer."
"That's a different thing."
"Same recipe."
She laughed.
They ate at the kitchen table because the dining room had not been a room either of them had wanted to put a meal in. The veal was correct. The tomatoes with the basil were a step above. He had bought a Brunello from the case Tony had not finished and had decided that this was an occasion the case had been waiting for, and the bottle held up.
When she had finished the second glass she set the glass down and looked at him.
"You have a folder in your study."
"You went into the study."
"I went past the study. The door was open. There was a folder on the desk that said Marchetti — 2000 YTD."
"That's the folder."
"I'm going to ask to see it."
"I'm going to show it to you."
He brought the folder to the kitchen table. Pushed his plate aside. Set the folder between them. She opened it. He had organized it the way the lawyer had taught him to organize things for a banker. The cover sheet was the consolidated revenue page — three columns, three months by three buckets, January through May. The first bucket was waste hauling. The second bucket was legitimate-adjacent — the Rossi auto body share, the partnership flow Tony had been routing through legal vendors that the lawyer had vouched for. The third bucket was the new column. Hotel chain. Construction LLC pre-revenue. Bank line of credit, which was not revenue but which he had broken out separately because the banker had told him to.
She read it line by line.
She turned the page.
The page behind it was the same numbers in percentages. Five months of percentages, sliding.
She put her thumb on the percentage that said thirty-five.
"This is real."
"It's real."
"Thirty-five percent."
"Up from ten when we met. I know it doesn't sound like much in absolute terms. But it's compounding. Hotel kicks in July. Newark RFP is two weeks out. If we win the Newark RFP, that bucket jumps to fifty before Christmas."
"And if you don't."
"If we don't, it's still forty by Christmas. The hotel alone moves it."
She turned the page again. The page behind it was the org chart the lawyer had drawn up. Marchetti Holdings, LLC at the top, with the two operating companies underneath. The drawing was deliberately boring.
"You had this in a folder."
"I have this in a folder."
"You walk around with a folder that says all of this."
"I keep it in the study, Elena."
"You keep it in a study."
She closed the folder. Held it in both hands for a second like she was weighing it. Set it down. Reached across the table and took his hand.
"Vincent."
"Yeah."
"You're actually doing it."
"I'm working on it."
"I didn't know if you would."
"I told you I would."
"Men tell me a lot of things."
"I know."
"You did it."
He held her hand. She held his back. The candle on the table that he had lit because the lawyer's wife had once said you light a candle when a woman comes to your house for the first time burned down a quarter inch in the silence.
"Two more years," she said. "Maybe three."
"Two and a half."
"You've thought about it."
"I think about it constantly."
"And then."
"Then I step back from the other thing. Slow. Quiet. Not loud. The way a man steps back from a business he's been running for years — fewer meetings, fewer decisions, more delegation, less time at the deli. By the time anybody notices I'm not there, I'm not there."
"And then."
"Then we stop hiding."
She did not say anything to that.
He went to the freezer where he had put the tiramisu the place on Mulberry had sent over by car at three. He cut two pieces. Brought them to the table with two clean forks. She took one bite. Closed her eyes. Opened them.
"Vincent."
"Yeah."
"This is your tiramisu from the place by the bakery."
"It is."
"You went to two places."
"I went to three places."
"Stop."
She laughed the involuntary laugh, the one she did not choose. She covered her mouth and the laugh came through her hand. He ate his tiramisu and watched her laugh and did not feel the need to do anything with the moment besides be in it.
They washed the dishes together at his father's sink. He washed, she dried. She knew where the cabinets were after the first three plates. He noted that she knew.
At the door she put her shoes back on.
He held her coat.
In the driveway, at her car, she stopped with her keys in her hand and turned and put one hand on his chest, flat on his sternum, and pushed gently as if she were checking the wall was a wall.
"I believe in you."
"I know."
"Don't make me stop."
"I won't."
"Say it the other way."
"I'm not going to make you stop, Elena."
She kissed him. The kiss was longer than the parking-lot kisses had been. She got in her car. She drove out of his driveway and turned at the corner. He stood in the driveway in his shirtsleeves until her taillights were not on his street.
Then he went back into the house and locked the door and put the folder back in the study and turned out the kitchen light and went up to a bed he was going to sleep in for the first time in three months.
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