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“I can’t help you, Henry. I am sorry.”
“It’s a good hourly rate. No more than twelve hours a week.”
“Not interested, but thank you.”
He stared back through my screen, his pause strategic and mildly irritating. Henry used salesman tactics to extract what he wanted from people, and he knew when to pounce. None of that worked with me.
I stared back at him from my corner of the Taverna, where I took his Zoom call. His eyes moved over what he could see behind me — whitewashed walls, wooden beams, the edge of a window where the afternoon light was doing something he’d never see in midtown Manhattan.
“Will you do it for me as a friend?”
“You are my boss, Henry.”
“Boss, yes. We are also friends.”
“I am on a sanctioned sabbatical.”
“For a year… yes. I know. You keep telling me.”
I glanced up and smiled at Valentina when she slid a coffee beside my laptop on her way to deliver another to Nonna Rosa.