When the bill comes I read it. I fold ten times the amount into the leather billfold.
She finds me at the coat rack, near the door, in the time it takes me to pull on my jacket. The billfold is in her hand. The look on her face is not embarrassed, not flattered. It's the look of someone who has done arithmetic and arrived at an answer they don't want to accept.
"This is wrong," she says.
"It's correct."
"The bill is forty-two euros. This is considerably more than forty-two euros."
"I'm aware."
She holds it out. "I can't take this."
I look at the billfold, then at her. "Why not?"
She opens her mouth. The answer she wanted to give doesn't quite arrive. She closes it. Something shifts in her expression, not quite frustration: more like someone losing an argument they thought they had.
"It's not appropriate," she says finally.
"It's a tip. It's entirely appropriate."
"It's excessive."
"That's a matter of opinion."
She looks at me for a long moment. I can see her working through it, the objection she can't quite land on. She's not doing what people usually do, which is take themoney and thank me and consider it a story to tell later. She's genuinely bothered, on some principle I can't fully see yet.
"I don't want to owe you anything," she says.
There it is.
"A tip isn't a debt."
"At this amount it feels like one."
I study her face. She's serious. Not performing wariness, not playing a game. She means it.
"Take half," I say.
A beat. "Half is still unreasonable."
"Take half and consider it unreasonable. The other half goes to the kitchen."
Something in her expression shifts, the calculation adjusting. She looks down at the billfold, then back up. "That's acceptable."
"Good."
She turns back toward the restaurant. I push the door open. The Saturday street is loud and bright, a crowd moving alongthe waterfront, a vendor shouting the price of something from a cart. My driver is double-parked twenty meters up.
I walk toward the car.
At the door of the restaurant, I don't look back. I don't need to. I know she's watching, the way I know most things: not because I checked, but because I've learned to read the feeling of someone's attention the way other people read the weather.
I should have gotten her number.
But don’t worry, I'll be back.
Back at the office, Enzo is waiting with the Esposito file.