Joey tastes the memory of savagery on his tongue as the car arrives at the end of the docks. He nods to the driver in the rearview mirror, opens the door, and exhales into the wet blast of summer air. Saul follows.
They turn away from the river, where they can see men carrying lengths of pipe, sheets of wood, bags of concrete; some being loaded onto a barge and some being taken away. The ingredients for a city: for a blinding half-second, Joey can feel his own body, hands dusty and gripping under loads of iron, stone, wood.
Joey and Saul enter a crumbling building that overlooks the docks. It is blessedly cool; it is gray and looks like a Roman ruin, like it might fall down, or like it is half-finished, and it stands alone in the industrial wasteland and haphazard shacks at the western edge of Brooklyn.
Saul and Joey climb metal stairs to the third floor, and Joey knocks twice at an unmarked door. “Come in,” a man says from inside. They enter.
Tommy Fianzo sits at a desk in the middle of the room, adding figures on scratch paper. He does not look up when they come in. He says, “You can put it on the table,” and gestures with the tip of his pencil.
Joey tips his hat to the top of Tommy’s head. Saul has never seen him act so deferent. Joey pulls a thick envelope out from an inner pocket in his suit and puts it on the desk near Tommy, gently, as if he is trying not to disturb the air in the room.
“It’s full?” Tommy has still not looked at them.
“Of course,” says Joey. He stands still for another moment, and then turns to leave. Saul twists to follow him.
“This is your Jewish friend?” asks Tommy Fianzo, as Saul and Joey hold the door open.
“This is Saul Colicchio,” says Joey. “Sofia’s husband.”
Tommy stands and looks Saul in the eye. He stretches out a hand and Saul, quiet still, face unreadable, reaches forward to take it. “Pleasure to meet you,” says Saul. “Sir.”
“It’s Signore,” says Tommy. He turns his attention to Joey, and a slow smile begins to open across his face. “Eli Leibovich is going to shit himself when he hears about this.” The Jewish boss with whom the Fianzos had had a casual rivalry for years was not known for taking what he saw as cultural defection lightly.
Joey gives Tommy a wry, twisted smile of his own. “I know,” he says.
Back in the car, Joey turns to Saul and says, “You were great back there.” Saul has said a total of one sentence since he met Joey. He has already learned that if he is quiet, he is told more. And that if he is told more, he has more power.
“Anytime,” says Saul.
“That will be your job someday,” says Joey.
“That envelope?” asks Saul.
“That relationship,” says Joey.
Antonia spends the early weeks of her pregnancy developing a pattern by which she can measure time. Wednesdays with her mamma, where if Antonia is lucky, she can convince Lina to walk with her for half an hour in the sun, and where Lina has started slipping small dried beans and bundles of herbs into Antonia’s pockets—for fortune, she says. For strength.
She spends Fridays at the butcher, the good vegetable shop, the bakery on Columbia with the softest bread.
Antonia cooks: big, lavish meals that strain their creaking dining table. Four courses just for the two of them. Paolo brings her flowers. He doodles on napkins in restaurants and brings her pictures with love notes written in his unmistakable handwriting. They are constantly presenting each other with gifts—look, this meal; this clip for your hair. Their home life is a choreographed waltz. Paolo is as quiet as Antonia except when he is frustrated or impatient and then he is explosive, rage boiling inside of him, and Antonia recognizes this energy from Sofia and knows how to soften it, how to soothe it.
On Sunday afternoons, Antonia goes to visit her mamma before dinner at the Colicchio apartment. Lina has draped herself so completely in long loose blouses and community legend that she is almost unrecognizable. Antonia regards Lina from a distance. There are moments she is sympathetic to her mamma, who has done what she needed to while surviving cataclysmic loss. But more often than not, Antonia feels separate from Lina. She feels judgmental. If I were in your shoes, she thinks, I would have survived better. I would have parented better. I wouldn’t have needed to become the neighborhood witch to move on. Even Antonia’s forgiveness of Lina is tinged with slight superiority, a see what I can do despite everything. She does not admit any envy of Lina’s freedom, and she does not acknowledge, even to herself, how much she still craves Lina’s attention, how weak-kneed her mamma’s quiet voice can make her feel. But when Lina palms Antonia’s belly, looking for her baby’s kicking feet and pushing hands, Antonia feels, like she did when she was five, as though she might expand and float away without Lina to hold her down.