Again my reply: Fair enough.

I leave my room and take the elevator to the Excelsior’s overly baroque lobby. Vincenzo spots me and meets my eye. I gently shake him off. He worries that he will miss my gratuity, but why should he suffer because of my somewhat hypocritical moral code?

I know Rome fairly well. I’m far from a native, but I have traveled here extensively. I head down the Via Veneto toward the American embassy. I make the right at the Via Liguria and wind my way to the top of the Spanish Steps. The walk is nothing short of delightful. I take the 135 steps down to the bottom and make my way to the famed Trevi Fountain. It is overrun with tourists. That is okay. I join them. I take out a coin and, using my right hand, I throw it over my left shoulder.

Too touristy a move for such a sophisticate as moi? Of course. But there is a reason certain activities become touristy, no?

My mobile phone rings. I hit the answer button and say, “Articulate.”

A voice on the other end says, “They are there now.”

I thank him and hang up. The walk to the shop on the Piazza Colonna takes me five minutes. This is Rome. Everything is old. Nothing has been redone. There is no pretense of updating, and I, for one, am thankful. The marble column in the center of the piazza, named for Marcus Aurelius, has stood where it is now since AD 193. In the sixteenth century, almost fourteen hundred years later, the then pope ordered a bronze statue of St. Paul to be placed atop the column.

History in a nutshell: Bye-bye, your god. Hello, mine.

A palace sits on the north end of the piazza. There is a fancy “galleria” on the east. “Galleria,” by the way, is just a snooty way of saying “mall.” The sporting goods shop I am looking for, with its small, tacky window display, is located right next to the tiny white church from the eighteenth century. There is a child mannequin wearing an AS Roma soccer jersey in the window. There are a variety of soccer balls and soccer cleats and soccer socks and soccer scarves and soccer caps and soccer sweatshirts.

In a word: soccer.

I enter. The man behind the counter is ringing up a customer. He pretends not to see me. I head toward the back of the store and up the stairs. I have never been here before, but I’ve been given pretty specific instructions. The door is in the back. I knock. The door opens.

“Come in,” the man says.

I step in the room and he closes the door behind me. He puts out his hand for me to shake. “I’m Giuseppe.”

Giuseppe is wearing a soccer referee uniform. He is going all in with this look. Not only does he sport the shirt, but he rocks the regulation black shorts, the matching socks pulled high, and a whistle around his neck. His watch is big and thick and probably doubles as a game clock.