Chapter 4: Not the Couch

By four in the morning the forger was on a night bus out of Brogary with an envelope of cash.

My phone held his whole confession.

My hands still wouldn't stop shaking.

Corrado stood at the boathouse window with his back to me, watching the black water.

"Page one," I said.

"What was in it?"

"I don't know."

"You do."

"I know what I think," he said.

"I won't hand you a guess about your own blood, Emanuela."

"When I tell you, you'll have paper in your hand."

It was the first time he had said my whole name.

I felt it somewhere low in my stomach.

"The cook made up the couch for you," he said.

"I'm not sleeping on the couch."

He turned around.

The yellow light cut across the scar in his eyebrow and left his eyes dark.

"My bed is upstairs," he said.

"The door locks from your side."

"I know."

"Then you should know what I'm asking," I said.

I crossed the room slowly and stopped close enough to feel his heat through his shirt.

"Nine days ago everyone I loved looked at a piece of paper and decided I was nobody."

"Tonight you looked at me and called me by a name."

"I don't care what it is."

"I want one man to look at me like I'm somebody, and I want it now."

His throat moved.

"That's anger talking," he said.

"It's me talking."

"Say it plain."

"I want you to fuck me, Corrado."

He didn't move for a heartbeat.

Then his hand came up and closed in the front of the grey sweater, and he walked me backward up the stairs.

His room was bare, with a narrow iron bed under the sloped roof and a window full of stars.

He kicked the door shut.

I tore his shirt open and heard a button hit the floorboards.

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