Through the open door above, he heard the staccato taps of Morse code as Hortense Mooney, the dispatcher, sent a telegram. Hortense’s hand, Nicky knew, was on the lever, her head bowed, eyes closed, as she remitted the code across the wires. She maintained a somber countenance when she received any message, whether it was a classified missive or a Kiddiegram. Careful not to disturb her, Nicky tiptoed into the office, hung the gate keys on a brass loop, placed his lunch quietly on the service desk, and slipped the tube off his shoulder. He snapped off the end cap and removed the long roll from inside. He unfurled the latest highway and interstate road map of Pennsylvania and pinned it over the outdated version on the corkboard.
Hortense Mooney had a routine. She arrived at her job every morning, Monday through Saturday, at 4:00 a.m., having taken the bus from her home to Chestnut Street. She climbed the long metal stairs of the fire escape at the back of the garage, unlocking the emergency door, and crossing inside through the upper bridge and into the dispatch office, she would remove her green felt hat with the long brown pheasant feather, place it on the file cabinet, and hang her tan corduroy car coat on the back of the door. Her lunch bag was deposited into her private drawer in the file cabinet, while her thermos of hot coffee went onto her desk. She was the only person, outside the Palazzinis themselves, who had keys to the garage. This wasn’t simply a matter of convenience; Dom trusted Hortense with his business, which meant he trusted her with his money, which meant he trusted her with his life.
Hortense Mooney was sixty-three years old. She had been hired as the dispatcher when Mike Palazzini was still with the company, and stayed on after he left, but it wasn’t an easy decision, as she got along fine with both brothers. Mike offered her the same position at Pronto, but Hortense had her reasons for staying with the operation on Montrose Street. She figured she’d stay until she retired. Her smooth skin, the color of dark chocolate, had not a wrinkle to indicate age nor a line that mirrored tragedy. She had a wide, white smile, all her original teeth, a fact she mentioned casually to strangers when they complimented them. Her sleek pageboy was done professionally every Saturday at Mrs. Johnson’s Curls & Q in the Negro section of northwest Germantown.
In her youth, Hortense had been known for her long, well-shaped legs that tapered at the ankles, though they were on the thin side by most standards. Her feet were also long and narrow in the extreme, and combined with her legs, they made her body look like it was perched on double L’s when she waited for the bus. This morning, she tapped them mindlessly on the floor as she worked, as though she were keeping the beat to a song only she could hear.
Hortense sent the telegram with three quick, staccato taps of the lever. She rolled her chair over to the typewriter and began to type, her long fingers stretching across the keys with ease. Nicky enjoyed watching Hortense type. She was quick: the ding of the bell meant that she was about to sling the carriage with force, which he found hilarious because it looked like she was slapping Jimmy Cagney across the face in a fight picture.
Nicky cleared a space on the desk, opened the brown bag, emptied the contents, and, using the bag as a placemat, laid out his meal upon it. He anchored the bag with his drink, a mason jar filled with cold apple cider.
Hortense looked up at Nicky briefly as he unscrewed the lid on the jar and the squeaks of the rivets broke her concentration. Nicky smiled apologetically at her before quietly unfolding the waxed paper around his sandwich as though it were velvet, the contents were emeralds, and he was a jewel thief.
Aunt Jo made a good sandwich. Not too much meat. There were three thin layers of spicy capicola, a glaze of sweet butter on the fresh egg bread, and a dill pickle wrapped separately so as not to make the whole meal soggy. The sandwich would fill Nicky up like nobody’s business, and before he ate it, he whispered a prayer as he placed a starched linen napkin over his uniform jacket. On the corner of the napkin, embroidered in blue, were his initials.
Aunt Jo still made Nicky’s lunch, did his laundry and mending, and would continue to take care of him in this fashion, as she had her own sons, until the day he married. Nicky was her sister’s only child; she favored him because he had lost his mother so young and was left an orphan. She couldn’t imagine how any of her boys would have endured such a loss, so she tried to make up for Nicky’s. Plus, Jo couldn’t resist her Italian nephew, with his all-American coloring—thick reddish-brown hair and blue eyes—and a smile that flashed like high beams on a Caddy as it passed on a one-way street at midnight. Besides, Jo was already raising three boys. What was one more, especially if he was good?
Nicky Castone had never been a bit of trouble.
He took a bite of one of the soft triangles, closed his eyes, and chewed, savoring the flavors of the sweet ham rubbed in hot spices. He hadn’t been an orphan who gobbled or hoarded; he was the opposite, moving slowly, as if to tempt anyone who shared a meal with him to take his food because it took him so long to eat it. It appeared he wasn’t interested in eating at all, but he was, he just never made his hunger obvious. Nicky accepted his portion and never asked for seconds. He felt sorry for people who didn’t know when to get up from the table.
As Nicky slowly sipped the sweet apple cider from the mason jar, he thought again about time. It had been on his mind a lot lately, when he’d realized that the years were flying by and taking him with them, as they’d taken his parents. At twenty-eight years old, Nicky had outlived both of them. Since his mother and father hadn’t been given the luxury of planning for a future and seeing their son grow up, Nicky decided to build his own life before it was too late.
It was time to set a wedding date with Teresa “Peachy” DePino, his fiancée of seven years. He had grown weary of the blistering looks from Peachy’s father when he casually put his arm around his daughter and her mother’s overly solicitous inquiries whenever he picked up his fiancée or dropped her off after a date. The extremes of hot and cold from her parents were giving Nicky a kind of South Philly fever that could only be broken by Father Schifalacqua signing them into the book at Our Lady of Loreto Church after a high nuptial mass.
Peachy had not pressed Nicky for a wedding date, but he knew how she felt about it. Whenever they went to Echo Lake for dinner and dancing, after she’d slurped down a couple of Mai Tai cocktails in coconut shells through a straw, she’d toy with the green plastic monkey decoration and wonder aloud about a home of her own with an artful aluminum C monogram on the screen door. She longed to collect the tiny paper umbrellas and circus animals that decorated her drinks and take them home to her children after a night out with their father, to show them that they were never far from her thoughts.
Nicky knew she had her dreams. But before he gave Peachy what she wanted most in life, he also knew he must come clean with her about where he spent his time when he wasn’t driving a cab for the Palazzinis. He had to. Honesty was the most important virtue to Nicky, not because he was intent on being good, but because the truth made life simple. He had seen what lies left unchallenged had done to his uncles, and he swore none of that would be visited on the family he would create with his own wife someday.
Dominic III tapped the horn lightly as he entered the garage below and Car No. 1 coasted into its spot. Nicky stood and looked out the office window and watched as his cousin opened the car door for his wife, who emerged from the cab with a bouquet of flowers.
“Elsa got her roses,” Nicky reported. “She ran out of them last night and was crying about it.”
Hortense shrugged. “Maybe she’s having another baby.”
“Or maybe she was crying because old man Sabetti didn’t remove all the thorns from the stems and she was stabbing herself into a stigmata.” Nicky watched as Dominic took Elsa’s hand. “Dominic and Elsa are still in love.”
“Those two are a good match.”
Dominic waved up to Nicky. “Ma’s making breakfast,” he called. “How do you want your eggs?”
“I’m good.” Nicky smiled and waved them off.
He sat down at the desk and took a small bite of the pickle and another of the sandwich.
Hortense made a face. “Why don’t you go across the street and let Mrs. Palazzini fix you something proper to eat? There’s no reason to eat your lunch at breakfast.” She adjusted her posture to upright as she sat. Her desk was cluttered with small bits of paper, a stack of black leather ledgers, an adding machine, and, in the center, a telephone system, consisting of one deep burgundy receiver, a board with four buttons that flashed, a hold button, and another to hang up. Hortense was the only thing in the office that didn’t light up, and the only thing that moved. “You have the strangest eating habits. The rest of the Palazzini boys eat regular. Why don’t you?”
Nicky shrugged. “Maybe ’cause I’m a Castone.”
“You have an answer for everything. Tell me this.” She fed paper into the roller on the telegraph machine. “If you eat your sandwich at breakfast, what do you eat at lunchtime?”
“I don’t.”
“You don’t eat between six a.m. and six p.m.?”
Nicky nodded.
“That isn’t good for your organs.”
“Who says?”
“Everybody from your doctor to the men that run the United States Army. How did you win the war with such terrible eating habits?”
“Courage.”
“More like luck. Three meals a day. It’s what the body requires.”
“Not mine.”
“It’s not going to end well for you.”
“Don’t worry about me, Mrs. Mooney. It’s worse on the body to be pressured to submit to some arbitrary schedule than it is to deprive it of food on some general one.”
“You eat like you’re four years old. It’s time to eat like a man.”
“Maybe I need a wife to look after me.”
“You need something. That’s all I know.”
“Ever since Nino got married, the house is packed like a stuffed cabbage. And it’s only going to get tighter. Mabel is expecting, Elsa has little Dom, who will soon be walking, and any time now Lena will make an announcement. My cousins are replenishing the earth, and they need the space to do it.”
“Where will you go?”
“There’s a new development on Wharton Street. They built a whole city block of two-family houses. Real nice too. Two floors. Linoleum on the kitchen floor and wood parquet in the living room. Bay window in the front. You get a porch and a backyard and a basement. There’s a space in the street to park out front. ”
“But you don’t have a car.”
“Not yet. But I’ll get one.”
“And just where are you going to get the funds to purchase all of this?”
“I saved up. Aunt Jo banked my rent since I got back from the war. I’ve already got the down payment and I’m gonna get a loan from the bank for the rest. First National has a low rate for vets.”
“You don’t say.”
“Good deal, right?” Nicky said.
“Your Aunt Jo’s very smart, saving up that money for you. Not many aunts would start a house fund for a nephew.”
“She wasn’t saving it for me to move out, she was hoping I’d move Peachy in. But there’s no way Peachy would live with the Palazzinis. She’s an only child. Can’t see her living in the basement. She wants her own place.”
“So it’s all settled.”
“Once we set the date.”
“You’ve been engaged so long, that proposal almost turned from a promise into a pipe dream. You know, I’ve been wondering if it was ever going to happen.”
“Well, it will. Peachy DePino will be my wife. ”
“It’s none of my concern.”
“Your opinion matters to me, Mrs. Mooney.”
“Then take my advice. Keep your business and pleasure separate. Have you met Mr. Mooney?”
“Only once.”
“And that was an accident.”
“Because you keep your business and pleasure separate.” Nicky toasted Hortense with his apple cider before taking a sip.
“Now you’re learning. You would have never laid eyes on him if he hadn’t had to come and get me when I fainted that time. I’d probably still be lying on that greasy floor down there if it wasn’t for you.”
“Somebody would’ve noticed,” Nicky said.
“Maybe,” Hortense said, not meaning it. “Eventually somebody would have noticed the phone wasn’t answered and the telegrams weren’t sent or received and then and only then would there have been a search for my mortal body.”
“Mr. Mooney was very nice.”
“He can be,” Hortense said, though it had been years since she had a warm feeling for her husband. He had good qualities, but over time he’d become critical and occasionally unkind. Hortense had learned to tune him out like the office radio when the boys switched the station from her favorite blues to pop.
“Did Mr. Mooney change?”
“Every husband is nice at the start, if that’s what you’re asking. Everything is fine until you disagree or start asking questions when prior to that, you didn’t have any. So being agreeable when planning a wedding or a honeymoon isn’t an achievement, that’s just somebody behaving a certain way to get what they want from you. A person’s true nature emerges over time.”
“I’ve been seeing Peachy since before the war,” Nicky said, rearranging the pencils in the cup on the spare desk. “We’ve been true blue for seven years.”
“That doesn’t mean you have to marry her.”
“Don’t have to. Want to.” He pulled his wallet from his back pocket and flipped it open to a picture of his fiancée.
Hortense felt for the reading glasses that dangled around her neck on a silver chain. She held them up to her eyes, peering critically at a cheesecake shot of a very slender Peachy—too skinny, in Hortense’s opinion—on the beach in Wildwood Crest. Peachy was so thin, the leg openings on her one-piece bathing suit stood away from her scrawny thighs, which looked like two straws floating in a vanilla milkshake.
“That’s my Peachy,” Nicky said proudly.
“I remember. She came in here once, a few years ago, with her parents. They rode in the sedan.”
“That’s right. They went to visit relatives up in New Haven. Wanted to impress them.”
Hortense nodded. “She had her own mind. Told everybody where to sit in the car.”
Nicky put the wallet back in his pocket. “I like feisty.”
“Until you don’t.”
“What does that mean?”
“You’ll get tired of the very thing you love about her.”
Nicky was used to Mrs. Mooney’s pronouncements. This time, however, he wasn’t going to let her ruin his mood. “I’d like you to get to know her. I’ll bring her over to your house sometime.”
“The last thing I need is a couple of Italians disrupting my street. Folks would run around in circles like Henny Penny.”
“You could make us dinner.”
“Not going to happen, Mr. Castone.”
“Even when we set the date?”
“Not even then.”
“I want you to come to the wedding.”
“We’ll see.” Hortense made the possibility sound like a flat no.
“You never come to our parties.”
“It wouldn’t be comfortable for me or for you.”
“Because you’re colored?”
Hortense nodded.
“You use that as an excuse for everything,” Nicky said.
“Well, look at me. It happens to be true. Besides, boundaries make a life. Rules make a day. Structure matters in three arenas: society, architecture, and girdles. Anything worth building needs bones.”
“I’m not asking you to build the Main Line Bridge, I’m asking you to come to my wedding.”
“And I told you I can’t.”
“I consider you part of my family.”
“Well, I’m not.”
Nicky laughed. “You’re a heartbreaker.”
“I was once,” she said wistfully. “I know a little bit about romance and marriage. I wouldn’t stay away from your wedding just because of my color, though that’s a factor. And it’s not because you all are Catholic and I’m not, though that can be a factor.”
“What is it, Mrs. Mooney?”
“I won’t say.”
“Why not?”
“I only go to weddings when I believe they’ll stick.”
Nicky’s face fell. After a moment, he asked, “Do your feet hurt?”
“Why do you ask?” Hortense looked down at her shoes.
“You must be in some terrific pain, or you wouldn’t be taking your bad mood out on me. If I didn’t know better, I’d say you didn’t want me to be happy.” Nicky rolled up the napkin, catching the crumbs, and dusted the desk with the napkin before putting it back into the lunch bag.
Hortense didn’t see a grown man before her, but the boy she remembered in his youth. Nicky Castone was her favorite of the Palazzini bunch, even though no one had ever asked her to choose. She sighed. “It’s not that. Forgive me. I have been surly lately. I don’t know what it is, I find fault with everything. I got a malaise. It just showed up unannounced like the bunions that arrived on my forty-second birthday. If you must know, everything hurts. I’m at that age. It’s probably a good idea not to tell me any happy news because I’ll find some way to pull it apart thread by thread until you’re left with nothing but an old rag where you once had a yard of fine silk. That’s just me. I’ve seen too much and I know too much, so I’m a little bitter, I guess.”
“Just a little,” Nicky said quietly.
“Love, well, that’s a fragile romantic dream, a journey that begins in a humble rowboat for two. You set sail when the water is calm, and later it turns choppy as the wind begins to blow and a storm kicks up and you realize there’s a big hole in the bottom of the boat that you didn’t see when you got in, but now you’re out in the middle of the ocean and you’ve started to take on water and it’s dark, there’s thunder and lightning, you didn’t pack any food, or a flashlight or a horn, all you got is love, and it’s not enough. You’re going to sink. You turn on each other. You forgot why you got in the boat in the first place. All you saw in the beginning was the endless blue and the bright sun and each other and you were blinded. Love is a doomed journey with all the good stops up front.”