“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