Following a long night of shake downs with Baldan, Desidério rolls out of bed rather late in the morning. The day's too far gone to call for a proper breakfast from the brasserie downstairs, but they have hot coffee all day and so Desi spends what constitutes as his morning sitting in the narrowing sliver of shade on the glorified ledge the apartment considers a balcony while drinking three cups of the stuff in succession with little more than two hardboiled eggs and a fat heel of buttered bread to accompany them.
He despises a cold breakfast.
To add insult to injury, he finds that as he sits there in the burgeoning heat of the day that he is still thinking about the absurd thing that scoundrel Something-Or-Other Rossi had said the night before. Which is silly. A man will say just about anything, even the most far fetched nonsense, when he is being held by his ankles over a long drop off a bridge. And in any case, it's generally not a good idea to take a gambler at his word even when one is not threatening to send him plummetting into the Viverna.
And yet.
Desidério drinks down the rest of his coffee. He makes no hurry about dressing or about the walk that sees him delivered back across the very bridge in question. And he certainly doesn't rush his way into his ex-wife's office, preferring instead to dawdle on the step of the little lending enterprise in order to press Nynona, the errand girl, for whatever news her sharp little ears have picked up. She's rewarded with a cigarillo from his polished case for it. Only then does Desi pass into the cooler shade of the old usury den.
He takes the direct route across the faded mosaic tiled foyer to the stairs, which he springs up two at a time to avoid being caught by the startled clerk calling desperately up after him, "Oh no, please, Messere Amanza! She is engaged with a client—!"
With that in mind, he doesn't bother to knock when he reaches the correct door. Desi simply lets himself in.
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He despises a cold breakfast.
To add insult to injury, he finds that as he sits there in the burgeoning heat of the day that he is still thinking about the absurd thing that scoundrel Something-Or-Other Rossi had said the night before. Which is silly. A man will say just about anything, even the most far fetched nonsense, when he is being held by his ankles over a long drop off a bridge. And in any case, it's generally not a good idea to take a gambler at his word even when one is not threatening to send him plummetting into the Viverna.
And yet.
Desidério drinks down the rest of his coffee. He makes no hurry about dressing or about the walk that sees him delivered back across the very bridge in question. And he certainly doesn't rush his way into his ex-wife's office, preferring instead to dawdle on the step of the little lending enterprise in order to press Nynona, the errand girl, for whatever news her sharp little ears have picked up. She's rewarded with a cigarillo from his polished case for it. Only then does Desi pass into the cooler shade of the old usury den.
He takes the direct route across the faded mosaic tiled foyer to the stairs, which he springs up two at a time to avoid being caught by the startled clerk calling desperately up after him, "Oh no, please, Messere Amanza! She is engaged with a client—!"
With that in mind, he doesn't bother to knock when he reaches the correct door. Desi simply lets himself in.