Nicky had always been the extra boy, the pinch hitter, the fill-in when a kid didn’t show up, called in sick, or quit. He was the replacement, dutiful, cheery, and reliable. If he was good, he was allowed to stick around. Maybe that’s why he was so eager to try on someone else’s life for a while, to be Carlo Guardinfante. It hadn’t worked out so well to be Nicky Castone.
“Hey, you,” a woman’s voice whispered. Good Lord, does Cha Cha Tutolola lie in wait in the bushes every night? thought Nicky. He didn’t want to know, and he didn’t want to find out, so he kept moving. He remembered Rosalba was on the prowl. That’s when he began to move at a clip.
“Hey, don’t make me chase you.”
Nicky turned around. Mamie motioned to him before jumping back into the shadows. He ran to her.
“Do you have a car?” she asked.
“Yes. Si. Si.”
“Pick me up one block over, behind the rectory.”
“Dove è the rectory?”
Mamie pointed.
“Behind the church?” Nicky asked. “Chiesa?”
Mamie nodded.
“Promise me you will be there?” He was unable to bear the thought of one more goose chase at the end of which he would be nothing but plucked and cooked.
“I promise.” Mamie smiled, which intoxicated Nicky with a kind of desire he hadn’t felt since he first liked girls.
He broke into a sprint to retrieve the sedan he had parked in the free space in front of the Mugaveros’ house on Truman Street. After all he had been through, and all he had run from, at long last he had something to run to: Mamie Confalone, waiting for him behind the rectory. She might as well have given Nicky Castone that silver scrap of a moon.
* * *
Mamie settled into the front seat of the sedan. Nicky was so excited, he could barely drive. His fantasy had come true, and he didn’t know if he was made of the stuff to handle it.
“Why did you make me pick you up behind the rectory?”
“Because the only person who isn’t a gossip in this town is Father Leone.”
“Who cares what people think?”
“Obviously you didn’t grow up in a small town. Take a left up here.”
“Where are we going?” Nicky drove through the black night on a back road.
“Are you hungry?”
“Starving.”
“Me too. You can drop the accent.”
“This is the way I speak.”
“No, it isn’t. L’uomo che si dà fuoco viene bruciato. What did I just say?”
“Your Italian is terrible. No real Italiano could capisce.”
Mamie laughed. “You don’t speak Italian.”
“I speak-uh English when in America.”
“Let me translate for you, Ambasciatore. The man who sets himself on fire gets burned. Your accent is so bad, you couldn’t pass as a waiter in an Italian restaurant and take an order.”
“I bet I could!” Nicky dropped the accent.
“There it is.”
“All right. Here it is.”
“I like this much better.”
“You do?”
“The other accent sounds like a continental parlor snake.”
“Maybe that’s why Cha Cha and Rosalba are barnacled to me.”
“Could be. Or maybe they’re just barnacles. I knew you weren’t the real ambassador when you visited the factory.”
“Where did I trip up?”
“No Italian wears Florsheims.”
“My shoes!”
“Florsheim shoes are made in Wisconsin.”
“Right. I’m in dutch with the costumes. Do you think my regimentals look like the Penn State band uniform?”
Mamie laughed. “A little. Where did you get them?”
“A costume shop. At a theater. But there’s a tag in the slacks that says Woodwind.”
“It’s more than the clothes. You are nothing like the real ambassador.”
“How do you know?”
“I translated the letters from him for the town council.”
“What’s the real ambassador like?”
“He writes in a very somber fashion. The real guy is a real stiff.”
“You can tell from his letters?”
“You can tell everything from a letter. The words people choose are the colors they see.”
“That’s poetic. If you can teach me how to say that in Italian, I’ll put it in my speech tomorrow.”
“I don’t have time to teach you Italian.”
“They don’t seem to mind that I speak English.”
“That’s because we love anyone we think is important. And we admire anyone we think is famous. And right now you’re the closest we have to either.”
“I danced with fifty-two women last night. I have done my penance for the dupe.”
“You’re going to keep this up?”
“It’s over by noon tomorrow.”
“Why are you doing this?”
“At first, it was out of pity.”
“Why would you feel sorry for this town? The people are close, we have work. There’s no crime.”
“It’s something I felt.”
“It’s a wonderful place to live.”
“That’s why you don’t like outsiders. You don’t want to share.”
“It’s not that we don’t like them, we don’t trust them.”
“How about you?”
“I’m wary.”
“Are you going to tell on me?”
“I’m not a rat.”
“I didn’t think so.”
“What’s your name?”
“Nicky Castone.”
“Italian boy.”
“You’re surprised.”
“I wasn’t sure.”
“Mother’s side from Abruzzo and father’s side from Ercolano.”
“What do you do for a living?”
“I’m a cab driver, and I deliver for Western Union. I drove up here from Philadelphia to deliver a telegram. It’s in the glove compartment.”
Mamie opened the glove compartment and read the telegram by the dashboard light. She folded it carefully and put it back in its envelope. “Why didn’t you deliver it?”
“I’m on the lam. The ambassador is in a hospital in New York City and I look like him, and my ex-fiancée’s father was on his way over to kill me with his bare hands and probably a weapon or two, so I jumped into the car and came here to hide out. You needed an ambassador, and I needed to be somebody else for the weekend, so here we are.”
“What about the colored lady?”
“Mrs. Mooney is a good person.”
“How did you get her to take part in your play?”
“I’m glad you see it as a theatrical endeavor. That’s how I’m looking at it, to avoid any kind of self-loathing.”
“Is Mrs. Mooney an actress?”
“She’s the dispatcher at the cab company where I work. There isn’t anything she wouldn’t do for me.”
“Make a right here. This is it.”
Nicky pulled in to Perelli’s Steaks, a small cinder-block building with a simple delivery window and a sign overhead. An Italian flag flew next to the American flag on the roof.
“You’re taking a guy from Philly for a steak sandwich?”
“You’re taking me. And these are the best steak sandwiches in the world.”
“I’ll be the judge.”
“Go right ahead. You’re the ambassador.”
“How do you like your sandwich?”
“Steak, mozzarella, peppers.”
“Make that two,” Nicky said to the man in the window. “Pick a nice table,” he told Mamie. Every table was free.
Nicky brought the sandwiches and two birch beers to the table. “You haven’t asked me if I’m married.”
“You’re not married.”
“How can you tell?”
“No married man would dance with fifty-two women in a row wearing a wool suit in a hot tent.”
“That’s the criterion?”
“And you don’t have the look.”
“I look like a bachelor?”
“You don’t look like a married man on the make.”
“You have men figured out.”
“What does that mean?”
“You know what they think, what motivates them, what they’ll do before they do it.”
“Just you.”
“I must be easy to read.”
“Transparent.”
“You’re very particular, aren’t you?”
“What did you hear about me last night?”
“The music was loud. The women were fresh. When they weren’t breathing in my ear, they were stepping on my toes.”
“Poor you.”
“You want to know everything they said?”
“Everything.”
“I know you’re a widow. How long?”
“Five years.”
“And you have a son named Augie. He’s a sweet kid.”
“Very. You saw him at the stand tonight.”
“I did. He’s high-spirited.”
“Very.”
“I know that you live alone with your son at 45 Garibaldi Avenue in the house that you bought with your husband before he left for the war. One lady thought you paid five thousand dollars for it, way too much, and another said you got it for three thousand, five hundred, and that was a steal. I know that you were the valedictorian of your high school class and that you once told a missionary priest asking for a special collection that he shouldn’t ask for money for the poor in Europe when there were poor people in Easton, Pennsylvania. You once belted a boy after mass after he told the boys on the baseball team you had kissed him when you had not. You are a respected forelady in the mill, strong but fair. Another lady said she wouldn’t be surprised if you owned your own mill someday. There’s a consensus about your heart. A few believe you haven’t gotten over the loss of your husband, and there are some ladies in town who think you never will.”
“That’s a lot of information.”
“The real estate information came from Cha Cha Tutolola.”
“She’s like the Stella di Roseto, except you get the story without getting ink on your hands.”
“Do you want to know anything about me?”
“It’s better if I don’t know too many details. That way, if questioned, I can’t lie.”
“I don’t think you’re in any danger.”
“It’s a federal offense not to deliver a telegram.”
“Who said I wasn’t going to deliver it? On my way out of town tomorrow, I was going to leave it in the Tutololas’ mailbox.”
“What a scandal.”
“That would shake things up.”
“At the very least. So tell me about you.” She sipped her birch beer.
“My mother died when I was a boy, and my father died soon after the Great War. I don’t have any brothers or sisters. I live in my aunt and uncle’s basement. They took me in when I was five. They have a cab company—that’s their sedan. I work at the Borelli Theater as a second job. Prompter. That’s the guy who feeds the actor his lines when he forgets them. I picked up a fare in Ambler, and the man died in my cab. I haven’t gotten over it. For seven years I was engaged to Teresa DePino, who is called Peachy. I broke off the engagement recently because I don’t think she loved me. And I want to love and be loved.”
“Maybe that’s why you’re posing as an important person.”
“I don’t care about adulation.”
“If you didn’t, why not pose as a bricklayer?”
“Because a bricklayer wasn’t invited to appear at the Jubilee, and I wasn’t asked to deliver a telegram to the United Bricklayers of Roseto. I am not ashamed of my job, I’m a hack. I’m not a snob.”
“Did Peachy know who you really were?”
“No.”
“So you can’t be angry at her.”
“She’s angry at me. I think she’d like to have me rubbed out.”
Mamie threw her head back and laughed. She hadn’t laughed so loud and so heartily since before Augie left for the war. Nicky Castone was so earnest, it hit her funny bone like a tuning fork.
“You’re laughing at me.”
“No, I’m laughing because you actually think she’d have you killed for leaving her.”
“She’s thirty-four years old. She’s a little desperate. Of course, she admits to twenty-eight, which is her prerogative.”
“Absolutely.”
“How old are you?” Nicky asked her.
“Twenty-seven. But when you’re sad, you’re a hundred years old and not a day younger.”
* * *
Nicky drove Mamie back to her house. They didn’t say much on the way back from Perelli’s, but it was a comfortable lull.
“This is your house?”
“This is it.”
He whistled. “You got a deal at five thousand.”
“We paid twenty-five hundred.”
“A steal.”
“Have to be careful when you listen to gossip.”
“Good night, Mamie.” Nicky smiled at her. He placed his hand on the car door, to open it, but instead he faced her.
“I was going to try to kiss you. I thought about it on the way back.”
“You did?”
“But I don’t ever have to kiss you. I never have to hold you. I never have to spend another minute with you because you took a ride with me, and you gave me your time. You laughed at my jokes, and you were kind and beautiful to look at, and you didn’t judge me. So, for me, you’re a perfect girl, and this has been a perfect night, and now I have a perfect memory.”
Nicky got out of the car, opened the door for Mamie, and extended his hand. She placed her hand in his and rose out of the car effortlessly, in the way that a woman will when she’s graceful and probably a good dancer and she hears a phrase of music that fills her with a desire to move to it.
Mamie stood looking at Nicky as she decided exactly what she wanted from this wonderful night. Nicky had made it plain what this evening had meant to him, and now she knew. Mamie placed her hands on Nicky’s face, pulling him close, and kissed him.
8
Nicky had delivered enough telegrams to enough houses to notice that every home, and therefore every family, has a scent. One house might smell like wet wool, another like creamed corn, and yet another like lemon oil.
Mamie Confalone’s home had the scent of anise and vanilla, the plain cookies shaped like half-moons that anchored every holiday cookie tray and appeared on the saucer of espresso like an additional cup handle. Nicky wanted to share this observation with Mamie, but couldn’t quite form the words; there was no opportunity to do so, between the urgent kisses exchanged in the dark at the foot of her stairs and the utter lack of thoughts in his head.
She slipped out of her leather shoes, which had a slight heel, a bow, and a strap. Nicky tried to remember what they were called—he knew they weren’t Mary Lous, but that it was close. His mind was racing because he couldn’t believe Mamie Confalone had invited him inside. His body was keeping up with his emotions, and yet he was in a state of disbelief that his heart’s desire had actually manifested into a real-life experience, and that something wonderful was going to happen that he had wished for from the moment he first saw Mamie Confalone.
Mamie took his hand and led him up the stairs. The sway of her skirt was rhythmic as she moved. The skirt was made of a fabric covered with flowers—most of her clothes were—but in this instance there was a sheer overlay of blossoms, leaves, and vines on some kind of material underneath, which might have been satin, since it had a shine, like the inside of the petal of a flower.
When they reached the top of the stairs, a ceiling fan was circulating slowly overhead, not from electricity but from the movement of the night air. He unbuttoned the bodice of Mamie’s dress, and it fell away effortlessly, like a veil.
She stepped out of her dress; it cascaded to
the floor. Mamie invited him into her bedroom and pulled him toward her and onto her bed.
There was no moon, but the streetlight outside her window helped him see. He had never seen a woman this way before; there was always draping, or an article of clothing, or more, but Mamie was a work of art, her gentle curves sculpted of fine marble and her skin as soft as Trussardi’s most delicate silk.
As she removed his shoes, he looked around her room, lovely, simple, and uncluttered. It had a high ceiling, higher, it seemed, than the sky itself. There were windows on three sides, and they were open, the sheers fluttering in the breeze.
The bed was made with a simple cotton coverlet, cool to the touch and soft, like Mamie. She laughed when one of Nicky’s socks was stubborn on his foot, and he laughed when she finally removed it, tossing it over her shoulder with such force it went out one of the open windows.
They were old lovers who had just met. There was a history and yet they weren’t burdened by one. They made love not in discovery but in familiarity, a knowingness that comes from time, which they had shared so little of but had not wasted either.
Mamie, at long last, was young again.
Nicky held the warmth and tenderness of her so close, he was no longer afraid that he would always be alone. She kissed him, her hair grazing his face, then kissed his neck and his hands before resting on her pillow. Nicky pulled her close.
“Do I have to go back to the Tutololas’?”
“You’re a guest. It would be rude.”
“They have the worst accommodations in the country.”
“That bad?”
“I almost died over there. If suffocation didn’t get me, a Christmas star would’ve sliced my head open, or Rosalba would have pounced and sucked the breath out of me like a cat. Did I mention the Capodimonte? Everything in the room has eyes.”
“Tomorrow is the finale of the Jubilee. I think you’ll be safe until then.”
“I have to give a speech.”
“And then home to Philadelphia.”
“Or Italy.”
“That’s imaginary.”
“True.”
“Have you ever been?”
“I stopped on my way home from the war. I never wanted to leave, except I missed Philadelphia.”
“Which branch of the service were you in?”
“The army. Served four years.”
“Where were you?”