She called him to dinner. A minute later he walked in, looked over the spread. “You shouldn’t have gone to this much trouble,” he said, acting magnanimous.

Eliana looked up at him, bridling her temper. She picked her words carefully. “I wanted to do something special for you.”

“You shouldn’t have troubled,” he repeated as he sat down.

She watched him for a moment as he picked at his food. “Did you already eat?” she asked.

“No. Well, just a snack. I had to get gas and I picked up a hamburger at the Autogrill.”

She wanted to scream. Instead she just quietly sighed.

“Where’s Alessio?”

“He’s in bed.”

Without comment, Maurizio cut a thin strip from his steak, raised it to his mouth.

“He waited for you. You promised him you’d play soccer with him.”

“I didn’t promise him. I told him if I was home in time.”

“It’s the same thing to a child.”

“They are not the same things. Someone should teach him that.”

“I think you are.”

For the rest of dinner the only sound coming from the table was the conflict of silverware against porcelain. Maurizio, not oblivious to her anger, complimented her cooking. His gesture was met with silence and he resigned himself to her sullen companionship.

American women are crazy, he thought. She works all day to make me a meal then sulks through it.

Eliana finished eating before him, put her dishes in the sink and then went upstairs to her studio. She picked up Maurizio’s coat from the back of the sofa as she passed by.

As soon as she was out of the room, Maurizio pushed back from the table, took the bottle of wine and went into the living room to watch the soccer game. He shut the door and lit a cigarette. Because of Alessio’s asthma, Eliana had forbidden him to smoke in the house, a regulation he regularly flouted, as much on principle as desire. “A single man has no master,” his unmarried colleagues derided him. A woman shouldn’t be telling a man what to do in his own house. Still he limited his smoking to two rooms, the living room and the bedroom.

In spite of Eliana’s silent treatment, he was content. He had eaten well. Twice, in fact. Drunk well. His team, Fiorentina, was playing well for a change. Eliana was sulking about something, but that was predictable, he thought. The reentry ritual was one they had been through a hundred times before. He had it down to a science. Eliana would sulk for a while; then she’d blow, inevitably launching into a tirade about how little time he spent at home or why he hadn’t bothered to call her. He would let her blow off steam; then he would remind her of how fortunate she was to be so well provided for and the sacrifices and loneliness his life on the road required. He might even throw in anecdotes of his business associates who made him look like husband of the year by comparison.