Neri put the banquet photograph on the desk before he offered me a chair. I recognized the edge of the dais, the curtain pulled crooked behind it, and my own shoulder beside Bruno's. Paolo was not in the group. For weeks I had been telling men what happened after the room broke apart. Here was the welcome I had helped give before it did. Neri flattened a curling corner with his thumb. I remained standing, because sitting would have brought my face closer to the small, comfortable smile I wore.
'You don't look confused,' he said. I told him a man could smile while making a mistake. He tapped Bruno's sleeve. The two of us stood close enough to appear acquainted, though the image could not say what I knew about him then. I remembered turning him toward the room after waiving the wrong card. I had done that freely. Neri slid the print across the desk, and I stopped it before it fell. My fingers left a damp mark on the margin. I laid it flat again without trying to rub the mark away.
I had come to demand that he stop recruiting replacements for Paolo's delegation. Neri asked what right I had to dictate admissions after my own performance. It was the question I had hoped he would not ask in front of anybody else. The office door stood open; a steward was sorting accounts in the adjoining room. I walked over and asked him to join us. Neri leaned back. 'Bring everybody,' he said. I fetched a second steward from the landing rather than let the first become the only man who heard.
The second man came reluctantly, still wearing his outdoor coat. I told them I wanted a new assembly, with Paolo present in his proper place. Neri turned the photograph toward them. He said I had admitted Bruno and then deserted my post, leaving others to answer for a disorder I helped create. Neither assertion was false. I said so. The first steward looked up sharply. I had already acknowledged the mismatched card when I brought back Paolo's token. This time I added that I had made the entrance easy for Bruno, not merely failed to prevent it.
Neri asked whether I now meant to deny standing beside him. I picked up the print. For an instant I wanted to split it across our joined shoulders. Instead I handed it to the steward in the coat. It showed the room at one instant, I said. It did not show who had taken Paolo away, who had struck Aldo, or what Bruno had intended when he came through my door. Paolo's absence from that patch of floor did not explain his disappearance. My presence beside Bruno did not clear me of admitting him.
The steward set it down carefully. 'Then what are we supposed to decide?' 'Who gets to speak for Paolo's club. With Paolo there.' Neri rose and pulled the desk drawer open, making both stewards turn. He took out a list of proposed workers and spread it over the blotter. The banquet contract would not wait forever, he said. Men wanted wages. I moved the list aside far enough to leave a bare place between us. I would answer before the clubs for my door, including what I had knowingly overlooked. I would not sell that answer for an appointment.
Outside the office, the stewards argued on the landing while Neri remained behind his desk. I stayed by the stairs. One wanted no meeting until tempers cooled; the other said replacement delegates would settle the matter without any meeting at all. Below us, two workers began disputing a delivery, their voices carrying up the stairwell. I went down and helped shift the obstructing crate into the passage. By the time I returned, the stewards had stopped arguing. The man in the coat asked whether I could bring Paolo through a hostile entrance without another disturbance.
I said I could bring him, but could not promise for every man waiting outside. That answer nearly ended the discussion. Then I offered to meet each crew separately and ask for a passage neither controlled. Neri called from the office that I was volunteering other men's patience. He was right, and I would have to obtain it. The stewards agreed to reconvene only if both crews could bring their delegates safely inside. I wrote down the condition, not a date. Before leaving, I looked once more at the print on the desk. I left it whole and went to find the men whose restraint I had offered.