Liam answered on the first ring.
This told me something. A man who answers on the first ring at this hour has been awake, has been sitting with his phone in his hand or close enough to his hand that the first ring was sufficient, which meant he had been waiting, which meant the waiting had been deliberate and not comfortable and he had not tried to make it comfortable by sleeping or by doing anything else, had just sat with it the way you sit with things when sitting with them is the only honest available option.
"Matteo," he said.
His voice was different from the phone call in Paris and different from the Rome apartment. The Paris call had carried the warmth, the performance of it, and then the real thing underneath when the performance dropped. The Rome apartment had carried the exhau
