Two hotel security men went outside. They found Dio still sitting against the wall with his eyes closed. One of them crouched beside him and said quietly that he had been invited inside as a guest.
Dio opened his eyes slowly. He looked from one guard to the other without speaking. His eyes moved carefully between them, the way a man looks at strangers when he has learned over many years that sudden kindness is usually followed by something else.
Then he nodded and stood up carefully, the way old knees rise after carrying a man too far for too long.
Inside the hotel lobby, a staff member brought a white shirt from the lost-and-found box in the back office. It was several sizes too large for Dio’s thin frame, but he put it on without complaint and tucked it in as neatly as he could. Someone found a pair of old loafers left behind by a guest months earlier. His trousers were still torn at the knee, but a staff member brushed them down as best she could. Another combed his white hair neatly back from his forehead.
Then the guards walked him quietly through the lobby, into the ballroom, and seated him at table seven.
