Dinner that evening was different from the dinner the night before.
The night before had been the three of us, Antonio at the head of the table with his dark eyes and his quiet authority and the specific, weighted atmosphere of a man conducting a final assessment of a person he had not previously considered worth assessing. That dinner had been significant and had known it was significant and had conducted itself accordingly, with the particular formality of a meal that was also something else, that had an agenda beneath the food and the wine and the pleasantries that everyone at the table was aware of and none of them named directly.
Tonight was different.
Tonight it was just the two of us because Antonio had eaten earlier, Madame Leticia had told me this with the neutral delivery she
