28. Matteo
MATTEO
Elena from communications says, “There is one option you are going to hate.”
“I already hate the introduction.”
“That saves time.”
I am in my study at Bellamare with a contract open on one screen and Claire’s message open on the other.
Can we talk four days from now, at four? Just us. I want one honest conversation.
I have read it enough times to know where every comma is. That seems excessive even for me.
“What is the option?” I ask.
Elena sends a link. A business magazine wants a comment about Bellamare and offers to clarify that Claire Bennett had an established photography career before anyone linked her name to mine. The correction is accurate. It also puts Bellandi around her name again.
“No.”
“I assumed.”
“Then why send it?”
“Because the editor offered it, and because declining without showing you would be me deciding what you should know.”
Fair. I read the offer once more.
“They can write whatever they were going to write about Bellamare.”
“And Claire?”
“No comment. No background. No correction from us.”
“There is a version where it helps her.”
“I know.”
Elena is quiet. I close the link.
“She did not ask me to help her career through my media team.”
“I know.”
“And if we make her work part of a Bellandi response, I repeat the same problem with better wording.”
Another pause.
“That sounds expensive.”
“It is a magazine article.”
“I meant emotionally.”
I look at the other screen. Four days from now has become two.
“I am not discussing that with you.”
“Good. I would be terrible.”
“You would be fired.”
“For being emotionally supportive?”
“For trying.”
She laughs once.
“I’ll decline.”
“Thank you.”
“And Matteo?”
“Yes?”
“I am not telling anyone why.”
I lean back.
“Good.”
The call ends. I do not message Claire or send her the link.
The link stays open for a few seconds. Elena could make the correction cleaner than the original article before lunch.
I know which background note she would send and which person would call the editor.
I close the tab instead. At eight twenty-one, it is over. I have spent longer choosing lunch.
At ten, Sebastian walks into my study without knocking. He is carrying a tennis racket.
“No.”
“You do not know why I am here.”
“You are holding sporting equipment.”
“That is prejudice.”
“You want me to play tennis.”
“Yes.”
“No.”
“You used to like tennis.”
“I still like tennis.”
“Then excellent.”
“I am working.”
He looks at the closed laptop on the table beside me. I look at it too.
“That is unfortunate.”
Sebastian leans the racket against my desk.
“What are you doing at four?”
“Today?”
“No. In seventeen years.”
I stare at him. He grins.
“Today.”
“Nothing.”
“That answer used to frighten you.”
“It still does.”
“Good. Tennis.”
I look at the calendar. The blank hour I left two days ago is still there. Five thirty is also blank. I could play. The realization is irritating.
“One set.”
“Two.”
“One.”
“Best of three.”
“One.”
He points at me. “This is why nobody negotiates with you for pleasure.”
“You are still here.”
“I enjoy suffering.”
He leaves the racket. I move no calls. A minute later, I put the racket by the door. I lose six games to four because Sebastian has spent fifteen years pretending he is worse at tennis than he is.
“You hate this,” he says when we walk off the court.
“I hate losing.”
“You also hate that you did not check your phone for forty minutes.”
I reach for the towel on the bench.
“I checked once.”
“Twice.”
“You were serving.”
“I saw you.”
“You should focus on your own game.”
“I won.”
I throw the towel at him. He catches it against his chest.
“That is progress.”
“No one asked.”
“I know. I just wanted to be irritating.”
“That is the first honest thing you have said today.”
He hands the towel back. Neither of us mentions Claire. I am grateful enough to let him keep the racket. At lunch, Luca puts grilled fish in front of me and asks whether I want potatoes.
“Yes.”
He gives me potatoes. Apparently that is all either of us needs to say. Adrian is reading something on his phone. Nico has a call in fifteen minutes and is eating too quickly. Sebastian tells everyone I have become violent on the tennis court.
“You threw a towel,” Nico says.
“At my face.”
“At your chest.”
“My face was emotionally involved.”
Luca points his fork at him. “Eat.” Sebastian eats.
I look at the empty chair that has stopped being accidentally set for Claire.
No one follows my eyes. After lunch, I go back to my house.
Claire’s paperback is still on the table.
I pick it up. The receipt is still between pages one hundred and forty-two and one hundred and forty-three.
Two coffees. One pastry. For several seconds, I consider taking the book to Ravello when we meet.
It belongs to her, which would make taking it reasonable.
It would also give me an excuse to arrive carrying something from us.
I put it back on the shelf. A florist in Ravello once sent arrangements to one of my hotels every Friday.
I could have flowers on that terrace before Claire arrives without making a call myself.
The thought lasts perhaps three seconds.
Claire would probably ask whether someone died.
More importantly, she would have to walk around them before she could sit down and ask what she came to ask. I leave the flowers wherever they are.
At three ten, I stand in front of my wardrobe and reject a jacket for being too formal.
Then I reject myself for thinking about this at all.
The meeting is in two days. I am choosing clothing forty-nine hours early.
Excellent. I close the wardrobe. Four minutes later, I open it again because the linen shirt I want is hanging behind the jacket.
I take the shirt. This is allowed. Probably. At three twenty, I make coffee and catch myself saying the first sentence aloud.
“At the beginning, I thought...”
I stop. The kitchen is empty. I put the cup down. Five minutes later, I try again while looking for a document in my study.
“I did not understand...”
No. At four, I am standing on the terrace with both hands on the stone wall.
“I should have known...”
Still wrong. Every version begins with the part that helps me.
I did not understand. I should have known.
I was trying to remember. I had already fallen in love.
Every sentence is true, and every one puts the helpful facts first. Claire asked for one honest conversation.
She did not ask for the most defensible version.
I go inside. On the desk is a legal pad. I turn it facedown.
I can hear her laughing when I finally admitted the lower road was wrong.
I can see the look she gave me over a glass of water I moved six inches instead of five.
I want another morning where she reads beside me and forgets her charger under my table.
I want to know her Japan dates. I want far more than one conversation can promise.
None of that belongs in a prepared opening. I put the legal pad in the drawer.
At four eighteen, Luca sends a message to the group.
DINNER SEVEN. NOT OPTIONAL.
Sebastian replies with a photograph of the tennis racket and the words ABUSE VICTIM.
Nico sends: deserved. Adrian sends nothing.
I stop reading the chat. Claire would have asked who won.
I would have said Sebastian. She would have looked delighted by the information, then asked whether I was pretending not to care.
I know the exact expression she would use.
I miss being wrong in front of her. I think that part might be new.
Maybe not. Ravello. The lower road. The dishwasher.
The gallery chair. The photograph with Luca’s hand in the edge of the frame.
Claire never seemed to enjoy perfection as much as she enjoyed catching the point where it failed.
I used to think that was because she liked annoying me.
It was partly because she liked annoying me. The rest I am less certain about.
I can survive not knowing. Even that sounds rehearsed.
What I actually have is less impressive: no notes, a bad night’s sleep, and the knowledge that I may say the wrong thing first. At dinner, nobody asks about the meeting because nobody knows there is one.
I have not told them because it belongs to Claire and me before it belongs to Bellamare.
Luca complains that Sebastian has cut bread incorrectly.
Sebastian says bread cannot be incorrect.
Nico demonstrates that it can. Adrian takes the piece they are arguing about and eats it.
For the first time in several days, I laugh before realizing I am doing it.
Luca notices. He does not smile at me. He keeps cutting bread.
The next morning, I wake at six twenty-eight, make coffee, and take it outside for ten minutes without rehearsing a conversation.
At minute nine, I realize I have been counting the minutes.
Nine minutes of not rehearsing and I still turned coffee into a timer.
I go inside and work. By noon, I have answered nineteen emails, approved a staffing change in Milan, rejected a renovation budget in Florence, and moved nothing on tomorrow’s calendar.
At two, my assistant asks whether I want a driver for Ravello tomorrow.
The question is ordinary. I have used drivers for years.
“No.”
There is a pause.
“Do you need a car left for you?”
“I’ll drive myself.”
“All right.”
An explanation rises. I keep it. At five, I check the weather for tomorrow.
Clear until evening. I close it before I can check traffic, reopen it ten seconds later, and decide knowing whether the road is physically closed does not count as emotional regression.
The road is open. I close the browser. The meeting is at four.
I know the drive takes twenty-two minutes without traffic and thirty-one if the lower road backs up. I plan to leave at three.
Then I change it to two forty-five. Then I change it back to three because arriving seventy-five minutes early is not a personality trait I need to defend today.
The next day, at two thirty-eight, I am ready.
The linen shirt is the only part I planned.
I take my keys and leave everything else alone.
Her paperback is on the shelf. I leave it there.
At two fifty-nine, I walk out of the house.
At three twenty-six, I park in Ravello. I am thirty-four minutes early.
This is a compromise. The cultural room is quiet at this hour.
The public gallery space is closed between events, but the side door is unlocked exactly as Claire said it would be.
I push it open. A narrow corridor leads to the back terrace.
There are four iron chairs around a small round table.
Nothing has been arranged for us. Good. I choose the chair facing the door, then move to the one beside it because Claire would notice exactly that kind of thing.
By three thirty-one, my phone is facedown on the table.
I consider ordering coffee from the café across the lane.
Claire may want coffee. She may not. A waiter passes the open side door carrying three espressos and a bottle of sparkling water.
I think about Claire’s double espresso, then remember it is four in the afternoon and she would insult me for forgetting her own caffeine rule.
I nearly smile. The next nineteen minutes pass in scooter noise, a metal clatter somewhere inside, and me knowing almost exactly how much time is left without checking. At three fifty, I check anyway. Ten minutes. There is a message from Sebastian in the group chat.
If anyone asks, I have always supported friendship tennis.
I leave Sebastian unanswered. Claire has not messaged. Four minutes later, I almost send one myself.
I’m here.
It would be normal. It would also make her arrive into my waiting.
She chose the time. She can have the first word.
I put the phone in my pocket. A few minutes later, footsteps cross the corridor.
A woman carrying a stack of folded linens appears in the doorway, sees me, and says, “Buon pomeriggio.”
“Buon pomeriggio.”
She disappears. I feel ridiculous. At four exactly, nothing happens. Two minutes later, I look toward the door and make myself look away. She is not late. At four oh three, I hear footsteps again, and this time my body knows before I do. Claire appears with her camera bag over one shoulder.
Of course she brought it. Her hair is tied back badly.
There is a faint mark of ink along the side of her hand.
She is wearing flat sandals with backs. A smile almost gets me.
I manage not to let it. She stops when she sees me.
For one second, neither of us moves. Then Claire walks onto the terrace.
“Hi.”
“Hi.”
Her eyes go to the empty table. Nothing has been arranged for her. I stand. She takes the chair across from mine. I sit again. Her camera bag goes on the ground by her foot. Claire looks at me. The rehearsed openings are gone. I start with the part I least want to say.
“At first,” I say, “you were a challenge to my ego.”