At eight fifteen, Eva came walking up the boardwalk. She wore a pale-blue dress that showed off her slender hips and long legs. Her breasts seemed to be fighting the fabric that held them in, pressing against it and tugging the buttons there slightly apart. She wore high heels. And red lipstick. And a silver bracelet hugged her wrist. When she came up beside him, Carmine smelled her perfume—a cloying, heavy scent.
They walked across the street and down two blocks to the best steakhouse in Coney Island. Eva slipped her arm into his comfortably, chattering the whole way there. She was a widow, she told him. Her husband had been killed three years ago in the war. She had come here alone, with no money, and they almost sent her back because she had pneumonia and lice and malnutrition. But she had convinced them to let her in, and she had been in Coney Island ever since. She was twenty-one years old, she said. “But I feel much older,” she added, averting her eyes.
Outside the restaurant, he took her by the arms and turned her so that she was facing him. He liked that she was tall and he could look at her, eye to eye.
“It’s my birthday,” Carmine told her. “Tonight we celebrate. We order the biggest steaks they have and we drink French wine—”
She was laughing now, and her cheeks were pink with excitement. “And we have the dessert at the end?” she said.
“Yes! The dessert at the end,” Carmine said.
Already, stars were popping out in the sky. When the restaurant door opened, sounds of people having fun shot through the air. Carmine pulled Eva toward him and kissed her right on the lips, quickly, boldly.
But she didn’t act surprised. She said, “Tonight we celebrate because the war is coming and men are dying and it is your birthday.” Then she reached up and kissed him, soft and long on the mouth.
She tasted like lipstick and onions, an intoxicating combination. Carmine prodded her mouth open and slipped his tongue inside and Eva responded with her tongue, teasing.
“I watch you, Hot Dog Man,” she whispered. “Every day for month of July. I watch you selling your hot dogs. So handsome. So strong. You are from where? Africa?”
He laughed, keeping his mouth on hers. “Italy,” he said.
“So exotic,” she said.
Then she straightened her dress and smoothed her hair. She took his arm again, and together they walked inside.
AFTER THE STEAK DINNERS and the bottle of French wine, and another bottle of French wine, and the desserts, and dancing together slow and close, after she ordered shots of vodka for them and he ordered two small glasses of anisette—“Too sweet!” she said, wrinkling her nose—they stumbled back out into the street, drunk and laughing.
“Ah!” she said. “It is ten forty-five and in one hour your birthday will be over and we will not be able to celebrate anymore.”
Carmine threw his arm around her shoulders and held her close to his side. “One hour and fifteen minutes,” he said.
“I have a bottle of vodka in my flat. We will toast your birthday,” she said.
They walked past other couples arm in arm, past men kissing women against the sides of houses. The air here smelled different, like cabbage and spices he could not name. Russian filled the air, a language like none he had ever heard before. Italian, Carmine thought, sounded beautiful. Like a song. This sounded like people clearing phlegm from their throats. Down an alley, up a staircase to the second-floor apartment, both of them tripping and stumbling and laughing at their drunkenness.
Eva had trouble unlocking the door, so Carmine took the keys from her and managed to open it. The apartment was small, just one shabby room with a few pieces of furniture, and then a second room behind it with a bed and a pole with clothes hanging from it. This was where Eva led him, pushing him gently down onto the bed.
“I get vodka,” she said.
She disappeared into the front room, and he heard her bang into something and curse. Carmine lay back against the pillows, which were surprisingly plump and soft. He liked the way his head sunk into them, reminding him of the fluffy clouds that he liked to watch float over the sea from the boardwalk. He told her this when she came back with the bottle of vodka.
“Goose down,” she said, leaning back against the pillows beside him. She opened the bottle and took a drink directly from it, then passed it to him.
“Now you have just one hour,” she said. “Then,” she rubbed her hands together, “done.”
Carmine took a big swallow of the vodka, and then lifted his head from the pillows to better look at her.
“You will kiss me now more, yes?” she said.
He laughed. “Yes,” he said.