How sweet those cookies are against the strong, bitter espresso, and how good the hot coffee feels going down as the fog comes in and the night gets colder. Mary always keeps extra sweatshirts in the house, big thick sweatshirts worn pale by use and sun, and Danny goes in to get one for Terri, and decides he might as well take a piss while he’s at it.
Opens the bathroom door and there’s Paulie, Pam, and freakin’ Liam in there bending over lines of coke on the counter. They look at him like guilty kids and Liam says, “Oops.”
“We forgot to lock the door,” Paulie explains unnecessarily.
And Danny’s like, What, are you out of your freaking minds, doing blow in Pasco Ferri’s house? Apparently so, because Liam finishes snorting a line and holds the rolled-up dollar bill to Danny.
“I’m good,” Danny says. “Wipe your noses off before you come back outside, for Chrissakes.”
He forgets about taking a whiz, finds a sweatshirt for Terri and goes back outside and helps her get into it.
“Thanks, baby,” she says, and leans back against him. Someone has brought a mandolin out and is playing while Pasco sings a sweet, sad ballad in Italian. His voice comes out of the fog like it drifted across the Atlantic from Napoli—an old song from an old country that washes up on this New World shore like driftwood.
Vide’o mare quant’è bello,
spira tantu sentimento,
Comme tu a chi tiene mente,
Ca scetato ’o faie sunnà.
Guarda gua’ chistu ciardino;
Siente, sie’ sti sciure arance:
Nu profumo accussi fino
Dinto ’o core se ne va . . .
Pasco finishes the song and it’s very quiet.
He says, “Your turn, Marty.”
“Nah,” Marty says.
It’s a ritual. Marty demurs, Pasco insists, then Marty lets himself be persuaded into singing. While this goes on, the three come back from the bathroom—Pam in a sweatshirt now, still looking sexy as hell. She and Paulie sit down together; Liam comes to the opposite side of the fire and plops down next to Danny and Terri.
Then Marty sings “The Parting Glass” in his quavering voice.
Of all the money e’er I had,
I spent it in good company.
And all the harm I’ve ever done,
Alas! It was to none but me.
And all I’ve done for want of wit
To mem’ry now I can’t recall,
So fill to me the parting glass
Good night and joy be with you all.
How they had fought each other, these two immigrant tribes, for a place to put their feet. The Irish in Dogtown, the Italians on Federal Hill, toeholds carved out of grudging New England granite. The old Yankees hated the slick micks and greasy guineas, the bogtrotters and dagos who came to ruin their pristine Protestant city with their Catholic saints and their candles, bleeding effigies and incense-swinging priests. Their smelly food and smellier bodies, their incontinent breeding.
First it was the Irish, back around the Civil War, who filled the tenements outside the slaughter yards that teemed with packs of feral mutts prowling for offal and giving the neighborhood its name, Dogtown. The men worked the slaughterhouses, the quarries, the tool factories, making fortunes for the old Yankee families, then marched off to die in the war, and those who came back came back determined to claim a piece of the city. They came out of Dogtown and took the firehouses and the police precincts, then they organized the wards and voted themselves into political, if not economic, power, satisfied to run the city if they couldn’t own it.
Around the turn of the century the Italians came, from Naples or somewhere in Mezzogiorno, and fought the Irish. Two sets of slaves battling each other for the crumbs off the master’s plate until they finally figured out that together they had the numbers to take the whole table. They carved the city up like a roast beef, but were smart enough to leave the old Yankees sufficient slices to keep them fat and happy.
Oh, all the comrades e’er I had,
They’re sorry for my going away,
And all the sweethearts e’er I had,
They’d wish me one more day to stay.
But since it falls unto my lot
That I should rise and you should not,
I gently rise and softly call,
Good night and joy be with you all.
One night at the clambake, Danny saw Pasco Ferri reach out and touch Marty’s hand, and they both started laughing. Sitting there, full of food and wine, wrapped in the warmth of their friends and families, their children and grandchildren, they just laughed. And Danny wondered about the things they had seen, the things they had done to share that clambake on the beach.