The Commission
The envelope came to the office on a Tuesday, which was already wrong. The ministry sent its tenders by email these days, with a PDF and a deadline and an automated acknowledgement that called you *Gentile Architetto*. Paper came only for things someone in Rome still considered personal. Giulia turned the envelope over in her hand twice before she slit it, and when she saw the address she set down her coffee with the care of a person who has understood that something in her day has already changed.
Faro di Monteriggi. She had to look it up on the wall map, behind her drafting table, where the Ligurian coast bent east of Sestri Levante and began its run of small forgotten promontories toward La Spezia. There. A pinprick between two coves she had never visited. The letter was from a functionary she had met once at a conference in Turin — a man with careful hands and a wife who painted — and it was not quite a tender. It was an invitation to submit, warmly worded, with the particular Italian phrasing that meant *we have already decided but must perform the ritual of choosing*.
The photograph was clipped to the back with a paper fastener, not a staple. Giulia appreciated that. She slid it loose and held it under the desk lamp.
The lighthouse stood at the end of a low rocky spur, whitewashed to the first band and then stone the rest of the way up — locally quarried, she could see