4. Matteo
MATTEO
A hotel opening in Milan loses a chef, a florist, and part of its refrigeration plan before I finish my first coffee.
None of those things requires me to leave Bellamare.
If every solved problem still needs me in the room, I hired badly.
I sit at the long table in the small study off my residence with my laptop open, one call in my headset, and the coffee going cold beside my hand. The chef is already covered. Engineering has isolated the refrigeration problem. The florist requires a vendor decision, not me.
A regional director starts explaining the refrigeration failure anyway.
“Is the kitchen unsafe?”
“No.”
“Will opening service be affected?”
“Not if the temporary unit arrives this afternoon.”
“Then get it there early. Give Elena authority to replace the vendor if this happens again.”
There is a pause. “Understood.”
“Good.”
I end the call before anyone can turn a solved problem into a meeting.
Outside the open window, a camera shutter clicks twice.
I look up before I decide to.
Claire is on the public side of the eastern wall, half hidden by lemon branches.
She is crouched beside a stack of wooden crates someone from the neighboring property has left near the path, photographing the hands of an older man tying twine around them.
She says something I cannot hear. He laughs.
She lowers the camera while he answers instead of taking another picture through the laugh.
Then she shows him the back of the camera.
He leans closer. She waits.
Whatever he says makes her grin.
I look back at my laptop.
Three unread messages have arrived.
I answer the first two. On the third, I read the same line twice because a camera shutter sounds again outside.
This is inefficient.
I close the window.
Ten minutes later, I open it again because the room is hot.
Claire is gone.
I get through half a paragraph before realizing I haven’t absorbed a word.
Before noon, Milan has a replacement chef, refrigeration is no longer interesting, and Sebastian has sent six messages to the Bellamare group chat about whether a person can be banned from his own boat for leaving wet towels on it.
Nico: Yes.
Luca: No one is banning anyone before lunch.
Sebastian: This is oppression.
Adrian: It is a towel.
I mute the conversation.
A few minutes before noon, Luca appears in my doorway without knocking.
“Lunch.”
“In seven minutes.”
“Now.”
“You said noon.”
“I changed my mind.”
He walks away before I can explain why that is not how times work.
I save the document in front of me and follow him toward Casa Bellamare.
The main kitchen doors are open to the terrace. Luca has put out enough food for twelve people despite there being five of us, which means he has either miscalculated for the first time in his life or invited someone.
Claire is standing at the counter with a bowl of tomatoes in her hands.
Of course.
She looks over when I enter.
“Good. You came.”
I stop. “Were you waiting for me?”
“No. Luca said you would object to lunch starting early, and I wanted to see if he was right.”
Luca points a knife at her. “I told you.”
“It is not noon yet,” I say.
Claire looks at the clock on the wall. “This is devastating. Four whole minutes stolen from you.”
“I will recover.”
“Brave.”
She turns back to the tomatoes, but I catch the smile she is trying not to give me.
Yesterday morning, she stood across a small café table and told me attention disappears when people become secure. Then she left after informing me, indirectly and with unnecessary satisfaction, that I think like a spreadsheet.
I told her I would prove one of her assumptions wrong.
I still intend to.
Her smile makes me absurdly pleased with an argument I haven’t won.
Nico comes in from the terrace carrying the wet towel Sebastian has apparently turned into a constitutional issue.
“Found the evidence,” he says.
Sebastian follows him. “You cannot prove that is mine.”
“Your initials are on it.”
“Circumstantial.”
Claire watches Nico drop the towel over Sebastian’s shoulder.
“Do all billionaire disputes get resolved this efficiently?” she asks.
“No,” Adrian says from the table. “Some require napkins.”
Nico gives him a look.
Claire laughs. Nico does not explain.
Luca presses a plate into her hands. “Sit before Matteo starts assigning minutes to the tomatoes.”
“Tomatoes do not need minutes.”
“Growth, ripening, transport, serving,” Claire says as she takes the chair beside Luca. “He can absolutely assign minutes to tomatoes.”
Sebastian drops into the seat across from her. “You have known him for three days and I feel deeply understood.”
“You feel deeply understood by mirrors,” I say.
“Only flattering ones.”
The meal begins the way Bellamare meals usually do, which is to say no one waits for the subject in progress to end before beginning another one.
Luca wants opinions on a producer near Salerno.
Nico wants Sebastian to stop using the dock as storage.
Adrian is answering an email between bites until Luca reaches over and turns his phone facedown.
Claire says less than the rest of us at first.
Luca tears bread before passing it instead of putting the basket down. Adrian removes the olives from his plate without comment; Claire slides the empty dish toward him when Luca is not looking. Then she asks Nico why the terrace table still wobbles after he fixed it last night.
“Because Luca removed my napkin,” Nico says.
“It was a napkin,” Luca says. “People need those.”
“The table needed it more.”
Claire turns to me. “You own real estate. Is this not offensive to you professionally?”
“It is not my table.”
Luca looks insulted. “It is our table.”
“Then I vote to replace it.”
Four men object at once.
Claire’s eyes widen.
I look around the table. “This is irrational.”
“It has character,” Sebastian says.
“It has one short leg.”
“Exactly. Character.”
Claire is laughing again.
I know where she is without looking.
I take a drink of water.
Lunch shifts when Sebastian’s phone lights beside his plate. He glances at the screen and smiles.
Luca catches it. “No.”
“I said nothing.”
“You made that face.”
Claire looks between them. “What face?”
“The one that means he has developed an interest with an expiration date,” Nico says.
Sebastian puts a hand to his chest. “That is unfair. I am capable of sustained interest.”
Adrian looks up. “Name one.”
Sebastian considers this. “Bellamare.”
“A property does not count,” I say.
“You all make romance sound exhausting.” Claire reaches for the water pitcher. “Maybe that is the problem.”
Sebastian grins at her. “Romance is not exhausting. Pursuit is excellent. Pursuit has momentum. Everyone is paying attention. Everyone is trying.”
“And then?” Claire asks.
He lifts one shoulder. “Then you either found the right person or you start repeating yourself.”
Luca groans. “Do not listen to him.”
Claire pours water into her glass. “I think that is exactly what people get wrong.”
Sebastian looks delighted. “Finally, someone willing to improve me.”
“I have only eight weeks.”
Nico laughs into his drink.
Claire sets the pitcher down. “Pursuit is easy to recognize because everybody is performing effort. Dates get planned. Messages get answered. People remember which wine you like and whether you hate crowded restaurants.”
Her gaze moves briefly to me.
I remember yesterday’s empty espresso cup. Caffeine after noon means insomnia.
I say nothing.
“The interesting part is later,” she continues. “When nobody is auditioning anymore.”
Sebastian leans back. “That sounds much less fun.”
“For you, probably.”
Luca laughs so hard he has to put down his fork.
Usually I would enjoy Sebastian being the target more. Claire’s fingers turn her water glass a quarter turn against the table.
She did the same thing yesterday at coffee before she said beginnings are easy.
Adrian asks, “You think people stop trying once they know they’re wanted?”
Claire takes a second to answer.
“Some do. Not maliciously. That’s almost worse. They just start assuming the relationship can run on what they did at the beginning.”
She says it lightly. Her fingers stop turning the glass.
Luca reaches for the salad instead.
Sebastian, to his credit, leaves his phone facedown.
I hear myself say, “You keep describing inconsistency as if it is inevitable.”
Claire looks at me. “No. I keep describing it as common. Those are different things.”
“You also said yesterday that people are excellent at choices while they are trying to win something.”
“You remember exact wording when it annoys you?”
“I remember exact wording.”
She reaches for bread instead of answering.
Sebastian points between us. “I have missed a chapter.”
“You miss many chapters,” Nico says.
“Usually intentionally.”
Claire tears the bread in half. “We had coffee. He tried to turn love into a matter of personal discipline.”
“That sounds like Matteo,” Luca says.
“I said consistency is a choice.”
“You are not improving the defense,” Adrian says.
I look at him. He returns to his plate.
Claire smiles. “See? Independent verification.”
“You disagree with the premise but have not offered a better one.”
“I don’t disagree that people can choose consistency. I disagree that saying it makes them good at it.”
“Then how would you measure good at it?”
Claire laughs without trying to hide it.
I wait.
She puts down the bread. “You just asked how to measure romance.”
“I asked how you define sustained effort.”
“No. You absolutely asked for metrics.”
Sebastian looks at me with genuine affection. “Never change.”
“Please change,” Nico says.
Claire is still smiling when she says, “I actually made a list once.”
The table gets quieter by degrees.
I lean back. “A list.”
“Lists are useful.”
Claire laughs. “Of course that’s your answer.”
“Don’t look so pleased.”
“I am not pleased.”
“You look like someone just handed you a native language.”
Luca coughs into his hand to hide a laugh.
I ignore him. “What kind of list?”
She looks down at the piece of bread in her fingers before answering.
“Things I stopped expecting.”
No one interrupts.
She shrugs once. “After my last relationship ended, I found an old note on my phone. Nothing dramatic. Just things I had written down when I was annoyed, or lonely, or trying to work out when fine had started feeling so thin.”
I stop moving my glass.
“How long were you together?” Luca asks, and his voice is gentler now.
“Six years.”
Sebastian’s expression loses the last of its performance.
Claire glances around the table. No one has made a joke in several seconds, which at Bellamare is noticeable.
“Nobody cheated,” she adds. “Nobody threw plates. He wasn’t secretly evil. We were together a long time, and somewhere along the way we stopped paying enough attention.”
She takes a drink.
I think of a man getting six years of Claire and somehow learning to look past her.
I set my glass down harder than necessary.
“And the list?” I ask.
Claire’s eyes come back to mine.
“Ten things.”
Of course I ask, “Why ten?”
Her mouth opens.
Then she laughs again. “You are incredible.”
“It is a reasonable question.”
“No, it’s a Matteo question.”
“There is a difference?”
“An enormous one.”
Luca stands to clear plates before the conversation can become a public interrogation. Adrian takes two dishes from him without being asked. Nico follows with the water glasses. Sebastian gets up only after Luca puts a stack directly into his hands.
Claire reaches for her plate.
Luca takes it first. “Guest.”
“I can carry a plate.”
“I know. I am still carrying it.”
She gives up and heads for the terrace.
I last six seconds before following her.
The terrace is warmer away from the shade. Claire stops at the low wall where the lemon terraces step down toward the coast. Her camera is on a chair nearby, strap tangled around one leg.
She looks over when I come beside her.
“You survived lunch.”
“Barely. We started four minutes early.”
“I was worried about you.”
“No, you weren’t.”
“Not even slightly.”
The kitchen behind us is loud with Luca arguing that Sebastian is loading the dishwasher incorrectly and Sebastian arguing that a dishwasher cannot feel insulted.
Claire looks toward the sound and smiles.
“They’re good together.”
“They are intolerable together.”
“Same thing, sometimes.”
“Ten things.”
She exhales through her nose. “You were waiting to get back to that.”
“Yes.”
“At least you’re honest.”
“You made the list.”
“Eighteen months ago. I don’t carry it laminated.”
“You remember it.”
She turns toward me. “Most of it.”
I don’t believe “most” for a second.
“And you think the things on it are difficult?”
“I think they become difficult after someone thinks they don’t have to do them anymore.”
“That’s a different problem.”
“Matteo.” She gives me a look that says I have walked into something obvious. “You are exactly the man who would be terrible at this.”
I almost laugh. “Based on three days?”
“Based on the fact that you just turned my failed relationship into a systems question.”
“I did not.”
“You asked how many items and why ten before you asked what any of them meant.”
She is right, which is irritating.
Claire folds her arms on top of the wall.
“You’d look at the list, decide every item was basic competence, build an optimization strategy, and become unbearable by dinner.”
“Optimization strategy.”
“There would be categories.”
“There would not be categories.”
“Color coding?”
“Absolutely not.”
“A timeline.”
I say nothing.
Her eyes narrow with triumph. “There would be a timeline.”
“There is no evidence of that.”
“You counted seventy-three steps.”
“Once.”
“You checked your watch because lunch started four minutes early.”
“That was about accuracy.”
“You asked how to measure romance.”
“I did not use the word measure.”
“You implied it.”
She uses my own line from yesterday and knows exactly what she is doing.
I should let it go.
I ask anyway, “How many do you think I could manage?”
Claire studies me.
Her mouth curves, and she does not look away.
“Three,” she says.
“Only three.”
“I said you probably couldn’t survive three. That’s slightly different.”
Three irritates me immediately. I have no defensible reason for that.
Claire is smiling like she has already won something I did not agree to play.
Work is waiting.
Instead I ask, “What’s number one?”