Tom Rachman - The Imperfectionists

"Learn to delegate."

"Who to?"

"I beg your pardon?"

"To whom," she corrects herself. "I thought I'd delegated to you. Aren't you supposed to be helping me?" She means this but must convey it as jest-he is an institution here, and she can't risk alienating him.

"I was delegated to be in charge of these." He shakes a packet of hard candies at her.

As she closes her glass office door after him, a few staffers in the newsroom glance over, then look away. It's strange to be the boss, knowing they discuss you, doubt you, resent you, and-since they are journalists-complain, bitch, and moan about you.

Her BlackBerry rings. "Menzies," she answers with a sigh, "why are you phoning me? I'm right here across the room." She raises her hand.

"Sorry, sorry-didn't see you. Can you come over? We need you."

She obliges.

That night for dinner, Nigel makes osso buco.

"Smells wonderful," she says, arriving home later than promised, as always.

Their apartment off Via Nazionale is spacious enough for an extended family but houses only the two of them. It is thinly furnished, as was her intent, with chrome chairs in the living room, granite in the bathroom, a gas range and matching overhead fan in the kitchen. In each room, the only decoration is a giant black-and-white photograph framed in the center of the wall. Each is obliquely themed to its room, so the kitchen contains a huge photo of cooks stuffing dumplings at the Luk Yu Tea House in Hong Kong; the dining room has a gargantuan picture of empty tables at El Bulli on the Costa Brava; the salon shows the interior of Skogaholm Manor in Stockholm; and in the bathroom is a vast photograph of the crashing sea off Antarctica.

"Glass?" He pours her one.

"What is it tonight?"

He displays the bottle, then reads the label: "Montefalco. Caprai. 2001." He thrusts his nose into the wineglass.

She takes an unceremonious gulp. "Not bad, not great," she says. "You must be starved. Sorry I kept you. Can I get us some water?"

"Allow me, pasha."

Nigel, an attorney-at-rest since they left D.C. more than two years earlier, thrives on this life: reading nonsense on the Internet, buying high-end groceries, decrying the Bush administration at dinner, wearing his role of househusband as a badge of progressive politics. By this hour, he's normally fulminating: that the CIA invented crack cocaine; that Cheney is a war criminal; that the September 11 attacks were conceived by agents of Big Oil. (He talks a lot of shit about politics. She has to smack him down intellectually once a week or he becomes unbearable.) This evening, however, Nigel is restrained. "Good day?" he asks.

"Mmm, yeah, not bad." She's amused-he's so transparent. He has clearly done something and is writhing about it. That English girl-Nigel and she had been meeting weekly to discuss the failure of the left. Then, abruptly, he stopped mentioning her. To Kathleen's knowledge, the left hasn't stopped failing. Presumably, an act occurred.

And yet, savoring her osso buco, tickled by his mendacious face hiding in a fishbowl wineglass, she cannot bring herself to care terribly. If it is a full-blown affair, she will be angry-such a development would jeopardize their situation. But this doesn't have that feel. He is more a skulking fornicator, not a marriage-busting cheater. If Kathleen ignores the matter, what happens? It will seep away.

At work the next day, her desk phone rings.

"Hi there-it's me again."

"Sorry, who is this?"

"Kath, it's me."

"God-Dario, I didn't recognize you."

"I wanted to invite you to lunch. Forza Italia will foot the bill."

"In that case, definitely not," she says. "No, I'm kidding-I'd love to. But I'm insanely busy. I told you, I don't get lunches, tragically." Then again, she thinks, a contact with Berlusconi's people could be useful. The Prodi government is bound to fall, meaning early elections, at which point having ties to Dario could prove handy. "But it would be nice to meet up. What about an early aperitivo?"

They meet at the Hotel de Russie garden bar, a courtyard of shaded cafe tables upon sampietrini cobblestones, as if this were a private Roman piazza for the use of paying guests only.

"If you misbehave," Kathleen says, studying the drinks menu, "I'll order you the Punjab health cocktail: yogurt, ice, pink Himalayan salt, cinnamon, and soda water."

"Or how about the Cohibatini?" he responds. "Vodka, Virginia tobacco leaves, eight-year-old Bacardi rum, lime juice, and corbezzolo honey."

"Tobacco leaves? In a drink? And what is corbezzolo honey?"

"Boringly," he says, "I'm taking the Sauvignon."

"Boringly, me too."

They close their menus and order.

"Odd weather," he remarks. "Almost tropical."

"Sitting out in November-not bad. I think I'm in favor of global warming." She resolves to stop making this fatuous remark, which parachutes off her tongue anytime someone mentions the climate. "Anyway, nothing more boring than talking about the weather. Tell me, how are you?"

Thin-that's how he is on second sight. He wears a mauve tie and a spread-collared shirt that hangs on his shoulders as if upon a hanger. His countenance-naive and affectionate-is the same, and this makes him younger somehow.

"You're not the same," she says.

"No? Well, that's good. Imagine if I was unchanged after all these years."

Unchanged: this is how she thinks of herself. Fresh as ever at forty-three, legs long and strong under the business slacks, tight midriff under tight waistcoat, lustrous chestnut hair with only a couple of strands of gray. She takes unearned pride in her looks. "So funny to see you again," she says. "Kind of like meeting up with an old version of myself." She asks about their old friends and his family. His mother, Ornella, sounds as cold as ever. "Is she still reading the paper?"

"Hasn't missed a copy in years."

"That's what I like to hear. And Filippo?" she asks, referring to Dario's younger brother.

"He has three kids now."

"Three? How un-Italian," she says. "And you?"

"Only one."

"That's more like it."

"A boy, Massimiliano. Just turned six."

"So, married, obviously."

"Massi? We're waiting till he turns seven."

She smiles. "I mean you must be married."

"Yes, of course. And you?"

She caricatures her domestic situation, rendering Nigel as a comic subaltern, as is her habit. "He feeds me grapes most evenings," she says. "It's part of his duties."

"That must suit you."

"Depends on the quality of the grapes. But hang on," she says. "I still don't have a sense of what's going on with you."

"I'm well, very well at the moment. I did have a rough patch last year. But that's over. The family weakness." By this, he means depression, which afflicted his father, ultimately ending the man's career in diplomacy. The ambassador's breakdown in 1994 came the week that Kathleen left Dario. "They were good about it at work," he goes on. "Say what you will about Mr. Berlusconi."

"And how is your father, incidentally?"

"Well, sadly, he died about a year ago now. On November 17, 2005."

"I'm so sorry to hear that," she says. "I really liked Cosimo."

"I know. We all did."

"But your problem wasn't as serious as his used to be, right?"

"No, no. Not nearly. And they have much better medicine these days."

They taste their wine and glance around the garden bar-its potted lemon trees, a discreetly burbling fountain, the leafy escarpment climbing to Villa Borghese Park.

"I asked to meet up for a particular reason," he says.

"Ah, the ulterior motive-are you going to fob off some Berlusconi puffery on me now?"

"No, no, nothing to do with work."

"But I do want to hear about Il Cavaliere," she says. "I'm dying to hear what it's like working for such a fine man."