“Sfogliatelle,” he said.

“You eat it hot, or you don’t eat it at all.”

It was still hot from the oven.

I stood by the window with the flaky shell crumbling onto the sill and ate every bit of it while he told me about his awning, which the city had come and measured in June and hadn’t written back about once since.

“Twenty-two years I’ve had that awning,” he said.