The restaurant was in Bethlehem, on a side street off Main, and the woman at the door said Reservation under what name the way a woman at the door of a fifty-year-old Italian restaurant in eastern Pennsylvania who had been doing the same job for thirty of those fifty years said it.
"Marchetti. Seven o'clock."
She looked at the book. Found the line.
"Back booth?"
"Back booth."
"Right this way, sir."
She led him through the front room — two tables of older couples, three tables of a sales conference of some kind, a four-top of a Bethlehem family celebrating something with a layer cake on a stand — and through the swinging half-doors into the back room, which had four booths along the wall and one round table in the middle and was, at seven-on-the-nose on a Thursday in late September, entirely empty except for Elena Moretti in the booth at the far end with a glass of red wine in front of her and a book she had set face-down on the table.
He slid in across from her.
"Vincent."
"Elena."
"You took 78 the slow way."
"I took 78 the slow way. Got off in Easton. Switched. Came up 412."
"Through Hellertown?"
"Through Hellertown."
"I went through Quakertown."
"You took 309."
"I took 309."
"Smart."
"Tommy?"
"At a diner in Allentown. He's three turns from here. He's got the Star-Ledger. He'll be at the diner the whole time we're here. I'm calling him from the pay phone at the host stand at nine forty-five."
She nodded.
The waiter came. He was a man in his sixties in a white shirt and a black vest who knew the menu by heart and did not pretend the menu was harder than it was. They ordered. Veal for him. Pasta with crab for her. A bottle of the same Brunello he had brought to her his first dinner at his house — the Brunello she had laughed about at his sink because he had remembered the brand from a single offhand comment she had made on a Tuesday in March. She raised an eyebrow at the bottle. He shrugged. She did not say anything but she did the small thing with the corner of her mouth she did when she was filing something for the next conversation.
They did not talk about the work for the first forty minutes.
They talked about her sister's wedding, which had moved again, from October to November, because of a problem with the venue's roof. They talked about a movie she had seen with a friend at the multiplex in Edgewater the previous Sunday that she did not entirely recommend but had not entirely disliked. They talked about the foreman's daughter at Rutgers, who was doing well, and the foreman's bad knee, which was doing worse. They talked about A.J. Soprano sitting on the curb in earphones the day his sister had left for Columbia, which Elena had not been present for but which she had asked about three times since, because the image of A.J. on the curb in earphones had stuck with her for reasons she could not fully articulate and that Vinnie did not press her on. They talked about Eddie Sciorra and the hard hat. They talked about Joe Verrazzano and what Sal had done for him in 1979.
The veal came. The pasta came. The Brunello breathed in its glass.
She set her fork down at the back-end of the meal.
"Show me."
He pulled the folder from inside his jacket. Slid it across the table.
She opened it.
She read the way she read — left thumb at the top of the page, right index finger tracking, lips moving for the line items but not for the percentages. The folder had four pages this time. The first page was the consolidated revenue summary for the year-to-date through August thirty-first. The second page was the breakdown — five buckets now instead of three. Waste hauling. Hotel. Newark construction lot (pre-revenue). Verrazzano construction (one month, partial). Bank and miscellaneous. The third page was the percentage summary. The fourth page was the year-end projection.
She closed the folder when she was done.
She put both hands on top of it.
"Forty-two percent."
"Forty-two percent."
"You were at thirty-five in May."
"I was at thirty-five in May."
"In four months you moved seven points."
"Hotel went live. Verrazzano kicked in for a partial month. Newark RFP came through August twenty-eighth. That's a big chunk."
"You won the Newark thing."
"We won the Newark thing."
"You didn't tell me."
"I'm telling you."
She nodded slowly. Took her hands off the folder. Took her wine. Drank a quarter of it. Set it down.
"Vincent."
"Yeah."
"I had a meeting on Tuesday. I want to tell you about it. I have been thinking about how to tell you about it for two days. I'm going to tell you and then I'm going to ask you a thing. All right?"
"All right."
"My supervisor pulled the Hudson file off my desk on Tuesday morning. He did it without asking. He put it on the desk of the woman next to me. He came around to my side of the partition and he said Elena, I need to talk to you for a minute in the conference room. I went into the conference room. He shut the door. He said I'm gonna get to the point. There's a name in that file you have a personal connection to. I'm not going to tell you which name because if you don't know which name then I'm protecting you by not telling you. Three people in this office know. I'm one of them. I'm taking you off the file. I'm not putting you on the next file either, because I don't know yet if the next file is going to have the same problem. I'm putting you on the Bergen County thing for ninety days. We're going to talk about your career trajectory at the end of the ninety days. I want to be straight with you — I'm not going to ask you to resign. I'm not going to ask you to recuse formally on paper. I'm going to do this administratively, off the books, because I have known you for four years and I trust your judgment, and I am asking you, in this room, with this door closed, to trust mine. If at any point in the next ninety days I think you can come back to the Hudson side of the work, I will bring you back. If at any point I think you can't, I will tell you, and we will have a different conversation, and we will have it the way two professionals have it. Do you understand what I'm telling you, Elena."
She stopped.
"I said yes."
He sat very still.
"I said yes, I understand, and he said Good, and he stood up and he opened the door and I walked back to my desk. I sat down. I picked up the Bergen County binder that was on the corner of my desk because someone had put it there during the meeting. I have been working the Bergen County thing for two days."
He put his hand on the table. She put hers on top of it.
"Elena."
"It's not as bad as it sounds. It's not — it's not great. But it's not a recusal on the record. It's not a — it's not a formal black mark. He did me the dignity of saying it out loud without saying it on a piece of paper."
"That's — Elena, that's a thing he did for you because of who you are. Not many people get that."
"I know."
"You all right."
"I'm — I'm tired. I'm not all right yet, but I'm going to be."
"What did you want to ask me."
She held his hand on the table.
"I'm going to ask you a question. I'm not asking it for an answer tonight. I'm asking it because I want it sitting between us, on the table, so we can both look at it for a while. If the answer is later, the answer is later."
"All right."
"You're forty-six percent legitimate by Christmas. Maybe fifty. You're projecting a clean half by the end of next year. You and I have been telling each other two years for the last six months. Two years until we stop hiding. What I want to ask you — what I want to put on the table — is: in those two years, are we — are we putting the rest of our life on hold until then, or are we — are we starting it now, in the version of it that's possible now."
He did not answer for ten seconds.
"What does starting it now look like."
"It looks like — it looks like, on Saturday next week, when you come back to me with whatever Carmela Soprano had to say to me, the answer I give the two of you is the answer I would give the two of you if we already had — if we already had the thing we're going to have in two years. It looks like, if your friend in Verona tells the next man who calls his old number, That place was sold, the new owner is Vincent Marchetti, his fiancée is a Hudson County prosecutor, the second half of that sentence has the word fiancée in it. It looks like the next time we drive past a house in Glen Ridge that's for sale that's the wrong house but it's the right kind of house — we don't drive past it the same way. We slow down. We write the address down. We tell ourselves, not yet, but soon."
He closed his eyes for one slow breath.
He opened them.
"Elena."
"Don't answer."
"I'm not answering. I'm telling you the only thing I'm telling you tonight, which is — yes. The answer is yes. To all of it. I have been waiting six months for someone in this booth to say it first because I had decided I had used up enough of your patience asking you for things in the last year. I was — I was going to wait until December. Possibly January. I had a — I had a small thing in a small box at the back of the sock drawer."
"Vincent."
"I'm telling you because you put it on the table. That's what putting a thing on the table does. The other person has to look at the thing on the table also."
"You — there's a thing in a sock drawer."
"There's a thing in a sock drawer."
"How long has it been there."
"July."
She did the laugh that came through her nose.
She wiped under one eye with the back of her wrist. Did not let go of his hand.
The waiter, who was a careful man, did not come over.
She picked up the wine. He picked up the wine. They held the glasses across the table without clinking them.
"Vincent."
"Yeah."
"I want you to make the rest of those two years be two real years. Not two years where we are pretending to be on hold. Two years where we are doing the actual thing, in the actual way it can be done, and where the end of the two years is a — is a transition, not a beginning."
"I will."
"Say it the other way."
"I'm making them two real years, Elena. Starting tonight."
She nodded.
She squeezed his hand.
They finished the bottle.
She did not order champagne. She did not say to the future. She did not need to. She paid for dessert in cash from the leather wallet she carried at the back of her purse, the one she had bought when she was a 2L at Seton Hall and had refused to replace because the leather was finally just starting to be the color I wanted it to be. The waiter pretended he had not noticed who had paid. The Brunello bottle went home with the empty bag the restaurant kept under the host stand for diners who wanted to take the last of their wine.
In the parking lot they stood at her car for two minutes before she got in.
"Saturday."
"Saturday."
"You'll pick me up at noon."
"Noon."
"And Vincent."
"Yeah."
"That thing in the sock drawer — leave it there. For now. I don't want it on Carmela's deck on Saturday. I want it at a table the two of us have set for ourselves, in a room neither of us is having to perform in. You hear me."
"I hear you."
"December's good."
"December's good."
She kissed him. She got in her car. She drove out of the parking lot onto Main Street and turned south toward 78.
He stood at the curb for one more minute after her taillights had gone past the second traffic light.
The phone at the host stand inside the restaurant was a pay phone. He went back in. The host woman pretended not to know he had been gone. He dropped a quarter in. He dialed the diner in Allentown.
"Yeah."
"Tommy. Forty minutes."
"Vinnie."
"Yeah."
"You all right."
"I'm fine, Tommy."
"You don't sound fine."
"I'm fine the way a man is fine on a Thursday night in Bethlehem Pennsylvania at nine forty-five PM."
"All right, Vinnie."
He hung up. He went out the front door of the restaurant. He stood in the parking lot under the awning with his hands in his coat pockets, listening to the traffic on Main Street, watching the lights in the upstairs window of the apartment building across the way blink off one by one as a woman who did not know him went to bed.
Forty minutes later the Cadillac pulled up.
He got in the back.
"Tommy."
"Where to."
"Home."
"That's it."
"That's it."
The Cadillac pulled out of the parking lot. Tommy took 78 East. The radio was on the country station from Allentown that drifted in clear at this hour and would stay clear until somewhere west of the Delaware Water Gap. Vinnie watched the white line on the asphalt come at the Cadillac and pass under the Cadillac and disappear behind the Cadillac. He thought of a small box at the back of a sock drawer. He thought of a house in Glen Ridge he had not yet seen. He thought of a daughter who was, at this minute, in a dorm room in Morningside Heights, probably awake, probably on the phone, probably homesick in a way she would not admit on the phone but would admit to her mother in October.
He thought of a man at a kitchen table who had told him they change everything, and was right about it, and was wrong only about the order.
The Cadillac took the bridge at midnight.
He was home by twelve forty-five.
He went to the sock drawer.
He opened it.
The small box was where he had left it.
He took the box out. Looked at it. Did not open it. Set it on the dresser. Closed the drawer. Looked at the box on the dresser for a quiet minute.
Then he picked it up. Opened the drawer again. Put the box back where it had been. Closed the drawer.
December.
He turned out the light.
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