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“Olive oil, actually.”
She laughs, waits for the correction, and finds me at ease inside the answer. “You’re serious. Olive oil.”
“Imports, mostly. Fashion and cosmetics when they behave. My family’s name is on a foundation that funds a fellowship two floors above where you probably work.” I offer my hand. “Lupo Sartorre.”
“Lupo.” She takes it. Her handshake is a doctor’s, firm and brief and used to being the steady one. “Like lupine? Wolf?”
“Family name. We ran out of saints.”
She snorts at that. “And what does the olive oil business want with maintenance-phase outcomes, Mr. Sartorre?” She asks it smiling, and behind the smile she’s working, and I could watch her work for a very long time.
“Personal interest.”
“Personal interest.” She turns her fresh glass by the stem, studying me over it. “You’re going to make me ask follow-up questions.”
“I’m counting on it.”
She smiles then, the real one, the one the four hundred people upstairs didn’t get, and settles in on the stool, a woman who has decided the evening just improved.
Veda Sartorre. The name walks into my head without knocking, tries a chair, and stays. I’ve been told I have a habit of deciding things about people before they’ve been consulted. That’s only because other people are slow at making decisions. If they were better at them, I wouldn’t have to slow down at all.
But for the future Mrs. Sartorre, I’ll take my time.
3
VEDA
Three drinks in, and I’ve learned the following about Lupo Sartorre. He reads oncology journals for pleasure. He thinks most people waste his time and forgives them for it some of the time. And he has never once looked away first. Not when I caught him staring at my mouth. Not when I stared back.
The bar has thinned to stragglers and the bartender’s patience. Somewhere upstairs, four hundred colleagues are asleep or pretending to be, and tomorrow they’ll board flights and forget my keynote by the layover. My fear is spent. But the adrenaline is still there. Loud. Nagging, in fact.
Lupo’s been three moves ahead all evening, and instead of feeling managed, I feel seen. Managed would have sent me to bed alone an hour ago.
Somewhere around the second drink, I tried to solve him out loud. “Import lawyer.”
“Insulting.”
“Retired athlete who bought a vineyard.”
“Warmer, and also insulting.”
“Fine. A man who owns exactly one business book and has never opened it, because people keep handing him what he wants before he asks.”
He tipped his glass at me, and that was the whole confession. He sits back, pondering for a beat. And then, “You check exits when you sit down. You rehearsed your speech to a mirror. And you play an instrument. Tell me it’s a violin.”
“Can’t tell you that.”
“No?”
“You said liars are boring, and I don’t want to bore you. Piano, since eight years old.”
The night bounced back and forth like that until I had a good buzz going and ordered fries to slow myself down. But now it’s late, and we’ve arrived where we’ve been headed since he sat next to me.
“So. I have a follow-up question,” I say.
“Try me.”
“I’d like to. Your room or mine?”
