Luca woke at half five, which was an hour earlier than the wine dinner required, and lay in the dark for four full minutes deciding something he’d already decided the night before, the way a sauce you’ve already reduced still needs the four minutes off the heat before you trust it’s actually done.
He got up, made coffee he didn’t finish, and went down to the kitchen before the delivery van, before Enzo, before anyone who might ask him what he was doing standing at the pass at six in the morning with a pen and a laminated schedule that didn’t need attending to for another fourteen hours.
Appearance eight. The wine dinner. The clause-nine box, empty since Kemi had printed it a week ago, waiting the way every box on the sheet had waited since March for one of them to decide what was true.
He wrote yes in…
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