Chapter 4: The Third Step

I went out to the curb in my father's parka and my slippers.

The Buick had its engine running and the heater on.

A man in the front seat was eating a sausage sandwich out of wax paper.

I knocked on the window and he rolled it down two inches.

"Good morning," I said. "Who sent you?"

"Mr. Castaldi, miss." He swallowed. "He said to keep an eye on the house."

"Tell Mr. Castaldi that nobody follows me home," I said.

"Miss, it's not following, it's sitting."

"Tell him it's in the terms."

The man looked at me in real distress.

He put down the sandwich, started the car, and pulled out into the gray morning.

I went back in.

My father was at the window with his cup of tea and an expression of enormous innocence.

"Who is Mr. Castaldi?" he said.

"A patron," I said.

"Patrons don't have drivers."

"This one does. Eat your eggs, Tata."

That night I told Lucio what I had done, in the first quiet minute of the reading, before I opened the book.

He heard me out with his hands folded.

"Understood," he said.

"That's it?"

"It's in the terms."

I read for two hours.

At half past twelve I came out the front doors of the branch with my bag over my shoulder, and the sleet had started.

I drove my own car, a Honda with a bad heater, the four blocks to East 55th.

When I pulled into the drive, a tall figure was standing across the street under the one working streetlight.

He wore the charcoal overcoat and no hat, and the sleet was settling on his shoulders and his black hair.

I got out of the car.

"What are you doing?" I said.

"Keeping to the terms," Lucio said. "No one follows you home. So no one's in a car. I'm standing here."

"You're standing in the street," I said.

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