Chapter 7: Every Word

The inspector came on Tuesday at eleven forty, right before the lunch rush.

He was a soft man in a city windbreaker who wouldn't look at my mother.

He spent four minutes in the walk-in and two at the slicer.

Then he taped an orange sign on our front window.

CLOSED BY ORDER OF THE DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC HEALTH.

"For what?" my mother said. "For what?"

"Temperature log irregularities, ma'am."

"I've kept that log for twenty-six years."

He didn't answer. He got in his car.

The lunch line read the sign and went across the street to the pizza place.

My mother sat down on the step stool behind the counter, and I watched her get old in front of me.

I took off my apron.

"Where are you going?" she said.

"To get our sign off the window."

Caravello Holdings had the top three floors under the roof.

The receptionist tried to stop me. I walked past her.

Tiziano's office was at the end of a long glass hallway, and the door was open.

He was sitting on the edge of his desk with four men around him in good suits, all laughing at something.

They stopped when they saw me.

"Meghan." Tiziano's whole face lit up. "Guys, this is Meghan."

"Take it off," I said.

"Take what off?"

"The sign. On my mother's window. You sent a man to close us."

One of the suits looked at his shoes.

Tiziano spread his hands. "I'm a landlord. I don't control the Health Department."

"You control a guy in a windbreaker who couldn't look my mother in the face."

He grinned at his men. "You see? You see what I mean?"

He slid off the desk and came over to me.

He stopped close. Closer than he'd ever stood in my life.

He smelled like expensive cologne and a little like the helicopter, fuel and leather.

"I could make a call," he said, low. "I know some people at the city. They'd come back out, look again, find out it was a mistake."

"Then make it."

"Friday," he said. "Dinner. You and me. One dinner."

"And the sign comes off."

"And the sign comes off Saturday morning."

I looked at the four men in suits. Every one of them knew exactly what this was.

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