His mother frowned. Mr. Benenati with his sharp caterpillar mustache and Mrs. Benenati with her stooped posture had always been wonderful to me. Despite my lack of . . . well, anything, really. I’d never questioned why previously. For the first time, I wondered just when Nicolo told them he wanted me. Maybe only me. I ought to have been able to swallow the idea by age fifteen. Instead I thought with vague terror of diapers and drudgery.
Picking up a knife, I started disrobing onions. Already planning my escape route. Grateful that I had one. But first, I wanted to learn what Mrs. Benenati knew.
“Nicolo won’t spill what happened at the station house,” I said softly as my friend vanished to clean his reopened battle scars. “One of those Corleonesi from the alley was Tommaso Palma, but I don’t know about the other. Do you?”
A pleat appeared above Mrs. Benenati’s nose as she folded eggs and water into the flour. “He was new to the city, sweet one. But the whole Palma clan takes their orders from the Boss of Bosses—and my Giorgio has refused to cast his hard-earned money to pigs for months now. People look to him! Even when the Family arrived at our door, my son was protected and they met instead with the Angel of Death, by God’s grace. And the question of bail? Dismissed! A kind eye is watching out for us.”
I recalled Mr. Salvatici, with his machete mouth, and disagreed.
“These Family thugs, Alicia, they are cowards. Counterfeit, arson, gambling, trade, and now our horses. Despicable—I say before heaven that they should all drop dead where they stand.”
She wasn’t kidding. A new scheme had been hatched by the Family, one cartmen and delivery makers found particularly uncivil. Step one: demand money. Step two: demand money or your horse will be a feast for flies. Step three: execute the horse. I recalled a year previous, Nicolo and I happening upon a Palermo man weeping over the stiffening hulk of his mare. My friend, his affection for animals considered, had leaned on the nearest brick wall and heaved his protest on the litter of cheap black cigar ends.
“I don’t see how you stand up to them,” I answered, still fishing. “Why doesn’t Mr. Benenati pay, like everyone else?”
She bestowed a quick smile. “Nobody, you were sprung from New York soil—the wind in the Old Country never weathered you. But the Benenatis are Neapolitan. We do not lie down and allow Sicilian garbage carts to run us over.”
The sound of boots tattooing the stairs struck both of us dumb. I swiveled with the knife in hand, and Mrs. Benenati shouted for Nicolo. He emerged with bandages wrapped over his split fingers just as his friend Nazario wrenched the door nearly off its hinges. Our old companion’s face was as grey as the local milk stretched with chalk water.
“Merda,” Nicolo breathed.
Nazario’s mouth worked, but silently.
“Tell me.”
Nazario shook his head, blinking in horror at the uncooked feast. His curls were wild as a briar patch, and he wouldn’t look at Mrs. Benenati.
Look at her, I thought, my heart crumbling in my chest.
Look at her so I know that everything will be all right.
* * *
—
An hour later, I fell, flung an arm at the wrought-iron outside Mr. Salvatici’s hotel on 110th Street, and missed. Improbably though, I missed the stone steps as well.
“Whoa! Here, miss, just hold on. Breathe in, now. You’re not down for the count by a long shot.”
The world was awash with stuttering lights. My stomach burned. I tried to blink away the faintness and found there were lean, muscled arms under my knees and rib cage. Next thing I knew, my wrists brushed the furred velvet of a lobby chair and a glass of brandy rested against my lips.
I’d been frightened before. Grief-struck and heartsick too.
Never like this.
“That’s the ticket, darlin’.”
I forced my eyes open.
The young colored man who’d kept me from falling sat on his haunches. He wore a maroon bellhop uniform with a cap strapped to a neatly shorn head. Maybe Nicolo’s age, with a broad, elegant nose, humorous cinnamon eyes with friendly bags beneath, and lips that curled up at their edges even when, as I’d later learn, he wasn’t smiling at all. He probably wasn’t then. While darker by far than mine, his skin was still lighter than plenty of Sicilians’. It didn’t even occur to