“Yes we could,” I said.

“But we’re not going to.”

Inside, the referee asked, as they’re required to, whether there was any reasonable prospect of reconciliation.

Luca looked at me.

He looked at me for maybe three seconds, in a room with a stenographer in it, and I understood that he was not asking me to stay.

He was asking me to say it in front of a person with a title, so that afterward he could tell people that he had wanted to try.

“No,” I said.