Flavia looked up from her battered paperback at the clock above the alcove where the proprietor was busily crafting raw pizzas beside the maw of the oven. One of the two waiters reappeared, the skinny Stan Laurel lookalike. He regarded her quizzically.
‘Ready to order?’ he asked, when Flavia did not react.
‘I’m waiting for someone.’
And he was more than twenty minutes late, she thought, as the waiter sidled off. It had been absurdly naive to imagine that he would come at all. Her relationship with Rodolfo had been intense, diverting and instructive, but she had never allowed herself any illusions about the ultimate outcome, even before he started acting in this strange, angry, icily controlled way. But with his university career in ruins, there was no longer any reason for him to remain in Bologna, or with her. That was what he had been hinting at last night, taunting her with lying about her origins and then refusing to sleep with her. As for this evening, he simply wouldn’t show up, leaving her to get the message. But she already had.
She glanced up hopefully as the door opened, but it was a stranger, as tall and austere in appearance as her own dead father. Flavia finished the chapter she had been reading and then consulted the clock again. The thirty minutes grace she had allowed Rodolfo had passed. She put on her coat and headed for the door.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said to the fat waiter, who was serving two pasta dishes to a nearby table. ‘My boyfriend just phoned to say he can’t make it.’
Ollie inclined his head sideways in a way that could have meant anything or nothing.
In the street just outside, she literally ran into Rodolfo. He dropped the duffle bag he was carrying and kissed her on the mouth.
‘Everything’s all right!’
They returned together to the table that Flavia had vacated, the only one free now that half of the rest had been pushed together to form a large rectangular area seating about a dozen, presumably for a group that would arrive later. Rodolfo stowed the nylon bag in the corner and then, in a breathless rush, told Flavia that he had been to see Professor Ugo in hospital, had been readmitted to the course, and could finish his thesis and graduate.
‘That’s wonderful,’ said Flavia coolly. ‘Then what?’
Rodolfo shrugged.
‘Come the summer, I’ll want to go back to Puglia, at least for a while. My father says he needs me, although who knows how long that will last. Anyway, I’m sick of this damned place. Afterwards we’ll see.’
Flavia nodded vaguely.
‘What’s the weather like in Puglia?’
‘Ah, much warmer than here! The people too.’
She pointedly did not respond.
‘And in Ruritania?’ he asked with a self-deprecating smile.
‘The weather in Ruritania? It doesn’t exist.’
Rodolfo took her hand.
‘I’m sorry, Flavia. I was so angry about what had happened, almost insane, and I took it out on you. I apologise.’
There was a silence.
‘What’s in the bag?’ Flavia asked at length.
‘Oh, just some clothes Vincenzo asked me to bring him. Apparently he’s going to be away for a while and couldn’t get back to the apartment. The reason that I was so late getting here is I had to go back and pick that up after visiting Ugo.’
He smiled at her.
‘Anyway, enough about all that. Let’s talk about us.’
‘Us?’
‘Will you come with me to Puglia?’
She gazed at him for at least a minute, levelly and without the slightest expression.
‘As what?’
Rodolfo mimed exaggerated shock and horror, silent film style.
‘As my fidanzata, of course! They’d stone us both to death otherwise.’
Stanlio manifested himself at the table.
‘Two margheritas with buffalo mozzarella,’ Rodolfo told him, not breaking eye contact with Flavia. ‘And a bottle of champagne.’
‘…a bottle of spumante,’ the waiter repeated, writing on his pad.
‘No, not spumante. French champagne.’
The waiter looked doubtful.
‘I could get some from the bar down the street. But the price…’
Rodolfo produced a well-stuffed designer wallet, an evidently expensive item that Flavia didn’t recall having seen before.
‘Is irrelevant,’ he said.