“Oh.” Cha Cha was enlightened.
Rocco turned to the crowd. “Friends, thank you for coming to welcome our guests. Now, if you would please allow us to get them situated and on with the plans of the day, we’ll see you all at the Cadillac Dinner.”
The crowd cheered. Nicky and Hortense walked to the car.
“It’s not smart to stay in a private home. They’ll trip you up,” Hortense said under her breath.
“You’re safe.”
“But you won’t be.” Hortense looked over at the porch, where Rosalba was perched on the railing like a hungry buzzard eyeballing her prey.
*
Capri Fashions was one of thirty blouse mills scattered through Roseto, tucked unobtrusively between the houses. The mills’ facades were painted the colors of the homes, soft white, pale blue, and coral. The signs on the entrance doors were not industrial but artful; the factories were named after family members—Carol Fashion Company, Kay Ann Sportswear, Yolanda Manufacturing Company, Cascioli Mills, Inc.—or combinations of the owners, names, including Mikro, owned and operated by Michael and Rosemarie Filingo. Still others described the final product: Perfect Shirt.
Nicky stood outside the Capri factory with Rocco. “Your town, it is-uh prosperous.”
“Since the war, we’ve had a boom.”
“You have brought felicita to Roseto. You must be-uh populare.”
“I won the popular vote, if that’s what you mean. But my victory is conditional. Success has many fathers, but failure has a stench. I’ve lived through that too. You hold your nose and push through it.” Rocco opened the door, and Nicky followed him inside.
The factory was abuzz with the steady drone of fifty sewing machines operating at full speed. Filaments from the fabric floated in a gray haze in the air. Electrical cables as thick as hemp crisscrossed overhead, providing power to the rows of machines separated by a main aisle.
At each sewing machine was a woman, an operator, who swiftly and skillfully sewed pieces of a garment together, performing her particular job on a blouse with urgency. When it was completed, she handed it off to the operator next to her, who added her expertise to the garment until the assembled blouse made it into the bin at the end of each row.
A runner bundled the blouses by the dozen with a ribbon, and wheeled them down the main aisle into finishing, which was in full operation at the far end of the massive room. Clouds of white steam obscured the workers in finishing as they pressed the blouses.
“Anything like this in Italy?”
Nicky shook his head.
“A lot of women in this world, and all of them need clothes,” Rocco said practically.
Nicky watched the operators as they focused on their sewing. Their speed was matched by their dexterity.
“The faster they go, the more money they make. If you’re determined, you can do pretty well,” Rocco said.
It was hard not to be caught up in the excitement of the enterprise and the precision of the operation. The women were beating the clock, working at a furious pace, their ambition laid bare. The process was mesmerizing, and Nicky appreciated a moment to observe instead of working hard to sell his accent. His mind was on the machines until a woman appeared at far end of the factory floor.
She might have been Nicky’s age, or a little younger. Her light brown hair grazed her shoulder and was curled under neatly, but it fell out of her barrette and across her face when she turned to check the contents of a bin. She carried a clipboard, which she referred to as she moved. The visitors were far enough away that they couldn’t hear what she was saying, but they could see that she acted like a coach, giving a directive to each row of operators at their machines, who would nod in agreement but not look up from their work. As she worked her way down the floor, she stopped to instruct or encourage with the focus of a conductor of a seasoned orchestra.
Nicky watched her walk; the buzz of the machines became music. She was an opera, not a minuet or a ritornello but the bravura of it, the swell of the overture, the transfixing aria, the lively intermezzo, and the emotional finale. She seemed to be coming through a garden, as she wore a dress made of some soft fabric covered in tiny pink roses, belted at her small waist and buttoned nearly from the collar to the hem, skimming her classic curves like the robe on mythic Helena or Nicky’s favorite Hollywood beauty, Lana Turner. It was warm in the factory, and a few of the buttons at the collar were undone.
Her face had the look of the women from the rocky shores of the Mediterranean, seaport towns like Santa Margherita and Sestri Levanti, places Nicky’s nonna had spoken of when he was a boy. This woman held the colors of the sand in her hair and the sea in her green eyes. The woman’s full cheeks and lips were familiar to him. They had never met, but somehow he knew her.
“Who is she?” Nicky asked Rocco, his voice breaking.
“The forelady.” Rocco motioned to her to join them. “Mamie Confalone.”
Mamie Confalone. Nicky committed her name to memory.
“This is Ambassador Carlo Guardinfante from Roseto, Italy. Can you believe it? He made it.”
Mamie extended her hand to Nicky.
“You are-uh in charge of da factoria?” Nicky said in his best Italian accent.
“Just the floor.”
“Mamie is fluent in Italian. She was going to accompany you around Roseto during your stay. Mamie, you’re off the hook. The ambassador wants to speak English.”
“Well, too bad, there goes my Italian.”
“Maybe you could help me with my English.”
“You don’t need any help. You speak English in a way I’ve never heard it before.”
“You see, therefore, I need-uh your help. I could always use-uh more, come se dice, practice, Miss Confalone.”
“Missus Confalone,” Mamie said with a smile, and went back to work.
“Come, Ambassador. I’ll show you the cutting room.”
Nicky followed Rocco through the factory, but he had no interest in seeing the cutting room or the finishing department, or watching the shipping crew fold the blouses into cardboard box after cardboard box that would be stacked and loaded onto the truck that would transport the shipment to the garment district in New York City.
Nicky wanted to find a corner to be alone and mourn. He had, at long last, met the only woman in the world who had everything he was looking for; she’d come to him wrapped in roses. But he was too late. Mrs. Mamie Confalone was already taken.
*
“I hope you’ll find these accommodations sufficient, Mrs. Mooney,” Cha Cha said nervously.
“This is very nice. Thank you,” Hortense said, removing her gloves.