Chapter 6 - The Way He Heard Florence
The manager had backed off but not far. I could feel her by the drink station, pretending to restack lids while she watched us in the side mirror above the soda machine. That helped and didn't help. Someone in charge meant he couldn't make a scene without witnesses. It also meant I couldn't afford one.
Matteo was still standing too close to my table. Close enough that the warm light overhead caught the ink at the side of his neck when he turned his head. He hadn't sat back down. He hadn't touched the tray either. The white cup with the yellow arch was sweating a ring onto the black plastic, and the little burger box sat closed, corners still sharp.
He looked at the table like it was beneath notice and then back at me.
"You said Florence," he said.
I kept my breathing steady. I'd learned that in a different room, how to keep my shoulders down when someone waited for you to fill silence.
"Yes," I said.
He let a beat pass. The bald man behind him shifted his weight, just a half step toward the aisle that led to the doors. Not threatening. Just placing himself where he could see both me and the windows.
"What did you study?" Matteo asked. His voice was lower now, not performing for anyone. He didn't glance at the food. His hands stayed empty at his sides.
There it was. The trap built to sound like small talk.
I picked up the edge of the tray with two fingers and wiped under it with a napkin. Condensation. Something to do with my hands that was still my job.
"A little language," I said. "A little literature."
That was true. Minimal and true. I didn't look up right away because I didn't want him to see me measuring each word before I let it out.
"Language," he repeated. He said it like he was turning it over. "You worked here after that?"
"I work here now," I said.
A small evasion. He caught it. A quick flicker at the corner of his mouth, not quite a smile.
He nodded toward the cup, the box. Still didn't touch them.
"You speak Italian in a fast-food dining room," he said. "That's a waste."
"No," I said before I could stop myself. "It's just a job."
He tilted his head. "Say job again."
I stared at him. The air conditioner kicked on above us, and a napkin on the next table lifted and settled. My ponytail moved against my neck.
"What?" I said.
"That word. Job. You said it different."
I hadn't realized I'd said anything different. My heart was doing that hard, flat thump against my apron strap. I tried to replay myself in my head. Job. I'd said job a thousand times taking orders, calling back to the kitchen. Nothing special about it.
"It's just —" I started, and stopped.
He waited. He was good at waiting. Most people who wanted power rushed to fill the pause. He let it sit there until I felt the need to fix it.
"I don't know what you mean," I said carefully, keeping my vowels flat, American, midwestern in a way I'd practiced for two years on drive-thru headsets.
"You rounded it," he said. "Dzhob. For half a second. Like you'd learned the o somewhere else first."
My hand stopped on the napkin. That was the detail. One vowel. One slip I hadn't even heard in myself.
The bald associate looked at Matteo, then at me. No change in his face, but his attention sharpened. He wasn't bored anymore.
I forced a short laugh through my nose and folded the damp napkin in half. "That's a stretch."
"Maybe," Matteo said. He finally reached out, but not for the food. He tapped one knuckle once against the light wood table, light, deliberate. "Or maybe you spent enough time there that it stuck."
I could feel the manager starting to move toward us, then thinking better of it. The lunch crowd had thinned. A kid dropped a fry box two tables over and his mom shushed him. The daylight through the big windows made everything too clear, the brick wall behind Matteo too red, his gray jacket too sharp against it.
"I studied for a year," I said. All I would give him. "It was a long time ago."
"Florence stays with people," he said.
I didn't answer that because there was no safe answer. If I agreed too fast, he'd ask what street, what professor. If I denied it, he'd know I was lying.
He watched my mouth while I stayed quiet. Not my eyes this time. My mouth. Like he was listening even when I wasn't speaking, waiting for the next word to give me away.
I became suddenly aware of every word sitting in my throat. How I was going to say sure, or excuse me, or your total, and whether the shape of it would sound wrong to a man who noticed that much.
I set the folded napkin down beside the tray and stepped half a step back, putting the corner of the table between us.
"Do you need anything else right now?" I asked. My standard line. The one the training video taught. My accent on that was perfect because I'd said it ten thousand times.
He noticed the retreat and the correction both. His eyes came back up to mine.
May you like
"Not yet," he said.
He didn't sit. He didn't eat. He just stayed there, close, patient, and I understood with a cold pull in my stomach that he wasn't trying to get me to talk a lot. He was trying to get me to talk a little, over and over, until one sound slipped again.
