“It’s borrowed.”
“And thinks he can come to a little factory town and make a fool out of the working people? While you’re scheming to make yourself rich and important and use our women for your own perverse pleasure, we’re paying for it. You know what that does to the working man? It makes him want to revolt. You’ve made a fool out of me, out of my position. You made a spectacle of yourself in that ridiculous uniform. I opened my home to you. And you thank me by doing a little shimmy shake on the dance floor with my wife. Cha Cha has her faults, but she’s a good woman, and she’s stuck by me for more years than you’ve been shaving. There is no negotiation. There is nothing to talk about.”
“I know it may seem like I did this for a selfish reason, and that is partly true. I work at the Borelli Theater in Philadelphia, and I was eager to step into the shoes of someone else. I’m an actor.” A bell went off in Nicky’s head, a slight ding, not a gong. He admitted a truth he had not fully accepted, not even to himself.
“What’s your excuse?” Rocco asked Hortense.
“I’m colored.” Hortense closed her eyes again and pulled the brim of her hat over her eyes.
“I want to make it up to you and to Roseto. The ambassador has a specific need, and he came here in the hopes of getting help, and the person that he was planning on asking for that help, a man named Funzi, is not who he thought he was.”
“Another one!” Rocco threw up his hands.
“Roseto Valfortore needs a road from the top of the hill, three miles down, to the bottom of the hill. It’s the road that your parents traveled when they left to come to America. It’s the road that the Rosetani take when they go to Rome to trade or to Naples to work. It’s the most important road in the province.”
“So?”
“With your help, I think we can build the road. You heard I was to marry Peachy DePino—”
“The skinny one?”
“Skinny as six o’clock,” Hortense mumbled.
“I ended our engagement for reasons I had hoped would remain private. I’ve been saving to buy a home for seven years, and I had put money down on a place which I will no longer be needing, so I’d like to give the funds to the ambassador for his road. He’ll need manpower and a builder, and maybe more funds, but I believe he came to the right place. You take care of each other here, and they’ve had a hard time over there. Will you allow me to make amends? I want to make this right. I will make this right.”
A gentle breeze floated through the bars of the window. The room fell silent as Rocco mulled the proposal, until Hortense snored, having fallen asleep in her chair. Before Mamie could reach over to shake her, Hortense let out a loud snort, waking herself up. Startled, she looked around at the faces. “Forgive me. I got a malaise.”
*
Nicky, Rocco, and the ambassador were tucked in a booth at the Marconi Social Club on Garibaldi enjoying a second round of scotch neat like three buddies in a rowboat on a fishing trip that had gotten no bites. It was all about the conversation and the booze.
“Go on, do the accent,” Rocco prodded Nicky.
“I-uh bring to you on this vee-zeet.”
“Terribile!” Carlo laughed.
“We had no idea how lousy he was with the Italian until you showed up.” Rocco signed the bill.
“Rocco, do we have a deal?” Nicky asked.
“What deal?”
“You’re going to send a crew over to Italy to build the road.”
“Oh, that.”
“Come on.”
“What are you going to do?” Rocco’s eyes narrowed. “I should send you over there to bust rock.”
“I’m making the deal. And I’m impoverishing myself.”
“All right. All right,” Rocco agreed. “We will come and build your road, Ambassador. And this zsa-drool will pay for it.”
Rocco shook the ambassador’s hand. Nicky placed his hand on theirs. They had a deal.
*
Hortense was waiting outside the Marconi Social Club on Garibaldi when the men emerged from the club.
“Can we leave town now? Please?” she begged Rocco.
“You may go.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Rocco and the ambassador walked up Garibaldi toward Truman Street as Aunt Jo and Uncle Dom rolled up in the cab.
“Let’s blow this burg,” Dom said.
“Are you all right?” Aunt Jo asked.
“I’m broke,” Nicky told her. “But I’m fine.”
“You got your life, your limbs, and your mind. Count your blessings.” Hortense adjusted her hat.
Nicky heard the familiar clop of Peachy’s heels, followed by the click of Connie’s dress shoes and Al’s wingtips behind him on the sidewalk. The DePino rhythm section.
“They’re coming,” Hortense said and sighed. “I told you that bar crawl was a bad idea.”
Peachy stood before her ex-fiancé with her hands on her hips. “Nicky, I’m going to give you one more chance.”
“Peach, I don’t need another chance. And when you’ve prayed about this, you’ll be grateful I didn’t give you one. You’re a good girl. You don’t love me. You just want to be married.”
“That is love to me, Nicky.”
“It isn’t to me. It’s paperwork.”
“It’s a holy sacrament.”
“With paperwork. I don’t want to get married.” Nicky turned to the DePinos. “And I don’t owe her anything.”
“He doesn’t, Al,” Dom agreed.
Nicky continued, “And I don’t owe you anything, Mr. DePino. Or you, Mrs. DePino. I’ve washed your car every Saturday morning since I returned from the war. I cleaned your gutters every fall. I installed your storm windows, cut the linoleum and laid it in your kitchen, and poured the concrete for your carport. I tried to be a nice fellow to your lovely daughter. She was more than I deserved but she never made me feel that way. I’ve been respectful and polite. Forgive me for taking so long to realize the truth. And I regret that it took me all this time to make a decision. But that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t make it. And it doesn’t mean I made the wrong one.”
Al DePino grunted. “We put down half on the hall.”
“I’ll reimburse you.”
“I don’t want your dirty money.”
“Then why did you bring it up, Mr. DePino?” Hortense was losing patience. “You either want the down payment back, or you don’t. Now which is it?”
“I want him to understand what this cost us.”
“Tell you what,” Hortense riffed. “You take that hall and throw yourself . . . Mrs. DePino, how long you been married?”
“Thirty-eight years.”