“Let her go,” Nicolo ordered. He said it almost calmly. “I’ll tell you one time. Not again.”
“Get off me, you fat bastardo!” I cried. “I’m leaving anyhow.”
“The hell you are!”
I’ve often puzzled over what would have happened if Mr. Mangiapane hadn’t been staggeringly drunk. Stupid and loutish as the man was, he liked his own flabby hide as much as the next stupid lout. And throwing me around in front of Nicolo Benenati was as good as waving a red flag in front of a bull.
So quickly I nearly missed it, Nicolo’s hands closed around Mr. Mangiapane’s throat. Mum screamed. My elbow buzzed as the blood cascaded back. Ezio shouted creative profanity. Nicolo’s brows distorted, unrecognizable, spine rippling as he bent our landlord backward over his own bar. It was like watching a snake lunge at a gopher. Savage. Terrible.
Magnificent, I thought, chest swelling.
“Say it again to me,” Nicolo hissed. “So I’m clear. You’re selling Alicia tonight? To one of your filthy johns?”
Our landlord couldn’t answer. Or breathe.
“Topolina,” Nicolo addressed me, “is that what this figlio di puttana* just said?”
“Yes. Nicolo, stop, you—”
It may have been the three days in lockup. Too many bruises. Too many growls of filthy dago from the worst cops. But Nicolo didn’t listen to me.
He bared his teeth and howled.
Eventually, Ezio and Mum and I managed to peel him off Mangiapane. But not before our landlord’s hysterical yells and the crack of bones splintering brought half a dozen or more Harlemites hurtling through the door. The tableau at the end of the debacle was Mangiapane in a whimpering heap, Mum attempting to mop his leaks with dish towels, Ezio cursing, and an audience of locals muttering dark portents. Nicolo was the only soul looking at me, of course. He stood there panting. His shirt collar rent, his knuckles reopened. One streak of grey light cut over his brow like a sword poised to strike. Everyone fell still as New Year’s morning. For a community well used to violence, it was a strange, uncertain hush. It took me a moment to understand why.
Because I was staring straight into the lightning strike, and it was staring at me, and I was looking at love, and everyone else was looking at death. If there had been doubt before, now they all thought he was the murderer of the two Corleonesi. Nicolo swept his gaze over the room. For the first time in his life, he wasn’t a magnetic misfit. He had knifed two cagnolazzi in cold blood, bribed or bullied his way out of the station house, and nearly murdered my landlord in his own saloon.
A twenty-block radius of Harlem tonight would be talking about Nicolo before the pasta was on the table.
* * *
—
We hurried through darkening streets, my tiny sack seized in Nicolo’s fist, suppertime vegetal steam from the packed tenements drifting around us like savory fog. My friend muttered continually, which wasn’t at all like him.
“What happened at the station house?” I badly wanted to know.
“How long has that waste of skin been after you to turn whore?” he returned with grim fury.
“It’s a Raines hotel, Nicolo, are you serious? Since I sprouted titties.”
“I’ll kill him.” His white teeth flashed.
“What would the point be? Anyway, you almost did!”
“I don’t know why you stopped me.”
“Because you aren’t a killer!”
“And you aren’t a puttana.”
“Exactly what else do you think I’m fit for, Nicolo? An heiress, maybe?”
We’d arrived at his door on 106th Street, and Nicolo trotted up the stairs. “Smart of you to pack your bag. You suspected something? That’s my girl. You’ll stay here with us.”
“No, I’m going—Nicolo, wait!”
Listening to me, it seemed, was a lost art where Nicolo was concerned.
The Benenati kitchen burned like a petite sun, its long wooden worktable straining under eggplants, mushrooms, carrots, cheeses, fish staring with mouths agape. Mrs. Benenati, a small woman with steel wool curls, stood at the end of the altar dropping sacrificial eggs into a volcano of flour.
“Alicia! Bene, you found her. Come and say hello to me, my lovely girl.” Looking up at us as I kissed her cheek, the little matron gasped in fright. “Nicolo! What’s happened now?”
“I had a talk with Mr. Mangiapane.” The obsidian glitter that had shone so darkly at the Step Right returned, but my friend blinked it away. “When’s dinner, Mamma? Christmas?”
“Hush, you rascal, all your aunties and uncles are coming and we’ll have a midnight supper celebration when your papa gets back. What’s the matter with