Diego nodded once and moved away.
That evening Elena arranged dinner. The full table, the kind she maintained as a principle, where silence was considered a failure of effort and conversation was compulsory. He sat at one end. Elena at the other. Seraphina somewhere in the middle, between Diego and one of the Madrid contacts Elena had invited without explanation, because Elena did not explain her decisions.
She navigated it the way she navigated most things. She asked questions that made Elena talk, which was the most reliable way to manage Elena. She disagreed with something Diego said about the northern neighborhoods and was specific about why, which made Diego update his expression in a way that indicated he had revised his prior assessment upward. She ate and listened and contributed without performing. The table moved around her easily, which was not a small achievement with this particular collection of people.
