five
Saturday had become sacred for me and Rabbi. Before the Fadda household could fully rouse itself, we would already have our coats and boots set out, our scarves and gloves. We would slip out into the staircase, taking care on those creaking steps that would cause the children to emerge, bleary-eyed, from their bedrooms. It had happened, once. Zero had stumbled from his bedroom, followed us into the kitchen and nibbled at his toast while we had looked anxiously between him and the clock, its little black hands chopping off each second stolen from our time in Liberal.
Otherwise, we would hastily scoff porridge and guzzle orange juice and then, then, wrap ourselves in those scarves and slip arms into the sleeves of heavier coats, for the roads were clogged with clumps of half-melted snow, seeping grey around its edges where it soaked in the dirt of Kansas City. Out onto the porch for us, after that, churning gravel beneath hurried steps.
He would take off in a car and I would continue walking across dew-soaked grass, counting several blocks, until he would come and find me again, away from the prying Fadda eyes that normally followed us, away from Kansas City, away and away and away until the familiar sign of Liberal floated up before us like a mirage for a thirst-ridden man struggling through a desert.
It was this tradition that had made Saturday so special. It was all about clambering into his car and speeding off toward that town where no-one would recognise us. Nothing mattered but Liberal, so that even its name sparked lofty dreams of watching films with him in darkened theatres, walking through lush parks and sharing desserts while the sunset fell around us, draping itself like a curtain across its beautiful red-brick buildings, seeping us in pink and orange tones.
Sluggish drives back to Kansas City followed, but our dreams clung desperately to the bumper, dragging behind at each corner turned and each shortcut taken. Once again, we would pretend to return to the house at different times, ascending to that third floor where we would meet again, to read from whatever book we had chosen for that night, until it seemed that Joyce and Fitzgerald and Faulkner were all in that room with us.
Sometimes, I dozed, while he read, and in those moments of drowsiness, I thought I had been right to come to America. I had been right to hoist myself onto this great teetering ladder of immigrants, because Rabbi was on that rung right there with me. I had known it from the moment that I had met him and remembered it every Saturday that we had spent together since.
I supposed that was what had left me so embittered on the Thursday that Calamita came to me while I battered rugs on the porch. He told me that that Saturday was the engagement party for Josto and his sweetheart, so Calamita had called her, clicking his tongue against his teeth. He said that I would be required to help out with the planning and the party itself, but that I would be handsomely compensated for the trouble.
The sign for Liberal fizzled up into thick black smoke like the smoke that puffed and curled from his cigarette, before he dropped it, rubbed it beneath his shoe and strode off for a car idling at the curb.
I grabbed the brush and battered the rugs that little bit harder.
x
If it had seemed short notice to hold the party on Saturday when planning had begun on Thursday, then that was because it was short notice. Josto had been pressured into it, just like he had been pressured into purchasing a ring for Dessie, his bride. I caught whispers between the men and soon pieced together what had happened: Dessie had been sobbing on the telephone to Josto about a dinner-party she had had with some friends during which one of her friends had insinuated Josto did not care about her because he had not held an engagement party. Dessie brought up her father and how disappointed he was that Josto had not been more attentive to his daughter's needs.
From that point, Josto had told her that he would have the grandest party that Saturday. Then, he had hung up the telephone and ripped it from the wall. He had popped a blood vessel in his left eye in the rant that followed.
I had been left to sweep the flakes of paint torn from the wall along with the telephone. It was bridge night, and Mrs Fadda would have her friends around, which meant that chipped paint would not do. Rabbi came along with a small kit and set about painting the wall, because Mrs Fadda was disturbed by the shape of those blank spots. Maxia had taken her mother to her room, and no more had been said about it.
That left Rabbi and I to repair what had been broken.
He crouched with one knee pressed against the glossy floorboards, the other drawn against his chest. He dipped a paintbrush into a tin of maroon-coloured paint, then dabbed at the spots. It looked like blood before it dried.
"Fluffin' towels and ploppin' cherries on cakes," I told him. "That'll be it for me, at this bloody party."
"Consider yourself lucky." Rabbi inched forward to smear the paintbrush against another flaked spot. "Maxia will only ask you to stick around until she wants Zero put to bed. You'll be free then."
"What about you? When will you be free?"
He was quiet. "Not sure," he answered finally. "Lot to be done."
Placing the brush aside, I stooped and reached out for the dustpan. "Is it that other family?"
He had told me about the Cannons. They were another family vying for territory that the Faddas has claimed for themselves, but there was even more contention because the Cannons were black. It seemed quite naïve of me not to realise what a difference that made, at first. I had thought that a rival family was enough of on its own merit, but it seemed even more of an affront than if it had been the Jews or the Irish back again. Perhaps it was the fact that I had seen signs in storefronts which, in bold letters, warned that no blacks, no Italians and no Irish were allowed.
Because of that, it had appeared to me that we were all three unwanted, in some manner or another. In any other situation, the fact that all three groups were so frowned upon might make such groups band together. Not here, because there was a ladder of immigrants, and there was also a separate ladder for those who had been born here, but were treated like immigrants anyway.
Rabbi and I balanced on the former, and the Cannons balanced on the latter. It was a strange land, this land of opportunity.
Rabbi closed the tin of paint. He set about scrubbing the brushes in a little carton of water that Maxia had brought him. The water swirled from pure, untouched clearness to deep red, turning darker and darker. It stained his hands. It reached his wrists. I remembered wet fields and turned quickly away.
"Is it them, Rabbi?" I prompted. "Should we be worried? With this party, I mean. Should we –…"
"Seen families come and go in this town, Ava." Perhaps he had understood that his own words suggested even the Fadda empire could crumble, so that he felt compelled to add, "Don Fadda has handled worse in his time. Nothin' to be worried about."
"All right. Well, I'll wait up for you," I said. "We can finish off Fitzgerald together. He writes beautifully."
"No. You stay in your room. Keep that latch down. If I can get away from the party, then I will, and you'll know my knock when you hear it."
The flakes were swept together in a pile, a neat little pile of dusted white. "All right," I said again. "I wouldn't finish it without you, anyway. More special, readin' it with you."
The shades had been drawn in the living-room. Sunlight touched the hall in slanted rays, trapping dust, dust that would cling to those little figurines in all the awkward places for me to clean, like the crook of their porcelain elbows and the rounded dip of their cowboy hats.
It was that light which caught the hollow of his cheekbones as he turned his head to look up at me, his eyes seeking out mine. Rabbi had the kind of eyes that told entire stories between one blink and another. I saw suspicion first, which was his natural state, for he had not been raised to trust on word alone. Then it thawed. I witnessed something like confusion, churning into a muted appreciation. Nothing spoken. Nothing confirmed.
It was only a feeling within me that it had touched him, that it had meant something, even I had not thought that it would. I had told him the truth.
"Supposed to be a new bookshop openin' in Liberal." Rabbi cleared his throat. "Could visit it, next week."
"I'd like that."
For the first time, Rabbi smiled. I almost missed it. It was half-hearted. It was shy. The door opened behind him; it was Antoon, herding the children into the house. Wind rolled through the hall, a sudden gust that blew away all the flakes that I had gathered.
Rabbi had dropped his smile. He was guarded, keeping his face turned from Antoon. He closed the tin of paint more firmly and lifted it. He sloped off toward the kitchen, out toward the shed in the garden.
The flakes were scattered. I held the brush. I set myself to sweeping them again.
Yet there was a smile on my lips, too.
x
The Fadda sisters sat together in the living-room, swapping strips of cloth and debating colour schemes. In an hour, Dessie would arrive with some friends to discuss the engagement party. Josto would not come around for more than a few minutes to kiss cheeks and appease Dessie, though it seemed he found the whole thing tiresome. He had said something like: 'let the broads sit around and yap about the colour of some cloth for as long as they goddamn want, so long as they don't try to make me choose between lavender and fucking turquoise. What a crock of shit'.
Antonio had been sent out at dawn for fresh, powered pastries that I was now setting on polished trays. I had squeezed oranges and sliced apples and dusted crusted pies with sugar. There was not a spot of my apron left without stains from crushed raspberries and chopped strawberries.
Soon, I heard familiar footsteps stepping slyly into the kitchen. It was Calamita, his hands clasped in front of him. Neither of us spoke. I simply nudged toward him one slice of apple pie, wrapped in a napkin, which he would bring to Don Fadda, who had a sweet-tooth that would not quit.
Before Calamita took it, he reached out and plucked a strawberry from a bowl. I watched him, unable to continue cutting and chopping. He swallowed the strawberry and delicately wiped the reddish juice from his mouth. He took the slice of pie. His gaze lingered on my throat, then lifted to my face.
In his cool manner, he said, "Thank you, Ava."
"You're welcome."
Off he went, his gait disinterested and slow. I waited until he had left to drop that rag. Though I had not realised it fully, his presence had wound me tight, like a spring coiled and coiled until it could hold itself no longer and sprung apart. Calamita had an aura about him, one that lingered whenever he left. Once he was gone, I always felt myself on edge, like I had burst from a nightmare and sweat still beaded at my temples. He had never done anything to frighten me, but it was there, bubbling, promising to come to fruition if I dared look away from him.
x
The living-room was stuffy, like almost all of the rooms in the house. Dessie and her friends were late by twenty minutes. The sisters sipped at their tea, glancing at one another conspiratorially. The table was decorated in treats for Dessie. I stood aside, awaiting the ring of the bell, because this apron somehow marked me for housekeeper, nanny and doorwoman all at once. I was like Rabbi, whose role blended into whatever was required of him from one moment to the next, so that we both seemed made of putty, moulded between warm palms.
"Trust Josto to pick a girl like Dessie," Alma said drily. "All this food will go to waste."
Lidia scoffed. "You think a girl like Dessie really needs more food?"
"Before my wedding, I ate nothing but sliced carrots," Maxia added. "Dedication, they call that."
Finally, it came: a flurry of cars at the curb out front. The sisters rose, brushing off crumbs and smoothing out creases. It was Dessie who led the pack, appearing on the porch with shrill apologies. Cheeks were kissed; gifts exchanged, slim bottles of wine that were given to Antonio to pour while coats and scarves were placed into my arms, collars lined in rich fur that matched the print on the pockets.
Dessie Gillis towered over me in both height and temperament. She was brisk. She peeled off her coat, layering it atop all the others. Without knowing it, I had become a part of the furniture. Perhaps it was my skin, flushing into a floral pattern that made me blend into the wallpaper. Whatever it was, she breezed right past me without the slightest sign that she had noticed me. Her friends followed. I took their coats, too.
While one stepped into the living-room, she linked arms with the redhead beside her and said, "Do you see that? They trust an Irishwoman with the coats. Wouldn't happen in my house, I can tell you that much."
x
Eventually, the women were soon readying themselves to head out. After passing coloured scraps of cloth around, the scheme of the engagement party had been decided: beige and gold. It had seemed a whole lot of nonsense to me, but then a lot of the stuff wealthy folk did seemed tedious. While the women waited for their cars and the sisters continued entertaining them, I scooped up forgotten flutes and crumb-coated plates.
In the hall, I heard Maxia say: "Oh, it was no trouble, really. I love baking and the pies take so little time. I can make more for you anytime."
x
Later, I brought Rabbi a slice of apple pie, wrapped in a napkin like I had done for Don Fadda. It was the second time that I saw his smile, brief and uncertain as it was, trembling at the corners like he was not sure how to hold it in place.
I sat with him in his room. He ate in slow bites, listening out for the birds. He could recognise most of them, now. He whistled to them like old friends. There would be thunder that night, he warned me. He was right. It came sharp and frightening. It drowned out the birds, sent them scattering for shelter. Still, Rabbi left his window open. The clouds turned black and sour. Thunderclaps rang out loud and violent.
I looked at his coat, hanging from the stand in the corner of his bedroom. I looked back out the window. This time, there was a dampness in my eyes.
x
At dawn, I rolled out of my own bed and brought scissors to the bathroom. I preferred to cut my hair myself, chopping it each month. I stood in the bathroom, pulling at hair which had grown an inch longer than I liked. I was fond of the shorter cut that brought it to my jawline, although it would mean foregoing a braid. I pulled a strand down, held between two fingers pressed tightly together, snipping and snipping.
The sink filled with these parts of me. I snipped and snipped, awkwardly angling myself to ensure that the back was even, though the mirror was a little too high. I stood on tippy-toes, turning this way and that. I could not tell what it looked like all that well.
"Ava?"
Lowering the scissors, I opened the door and found Rabbi on the landing. He was somewhat dishevelled, his hair left unparted in its usual style. His shirt was loose. He had pulled on his trousers, but he stood barefoot. The light slanted from the window behind me, bringing out his paleness. I liked the faint circles beneath his eyes. What a strange thing to admire, I thought, but admire it, I did. I wished to reach out and trace the pattern of him.
He saw the scissors. He saw the shed parts of me in the sink.
"Almost finished," I told him. "Is it even?"
I spun around in front of him, shaking out my hair for him to judge. I waited for a word, a sign of some kind. But I heard only the pad of his feet against the tiles of the bathroom as he stepped into its cramped space, reaching around me to take the scissors for himself.
His touch was a feather, dropped from a goldfinch flitting between branches, tittering out for us to hear him. He brushed stray clumps of hair from my shoulders, caught in the bunched folds of my gown, fluttering to the ground. His hand met my nape; my nape now hot and prickling beneath him, as if I suffered a fever, burning up, soon to melt before him. His hand continued, reaching around to cup my jaw and angle my head ever so slightly.
Giddiness rose from within my belly, stirred with each snip and turn of the scissors. I was sheered, made clean, lighter somehow.
"Even," he said. It was finished. "Looks good. You do, I mean. You look nice, is what I'm sayin'."
The words had come out lamely, though sincerely, because he was simply unaccustomed to kindness. I turned to him and smiled, cheeks aflame.
"Thank you, Rabbi."
I saw that his own hair had gotten longer, unruly for him, so that he stuffed it beneath his caps. So the question flew from me, blurted out, in the hope that I might cling onto that moment of touch between us: "Shall I do yours?"
x
There was a new paraffin heater in his bedroom. It was boxy and shone in a pretty brown shade. It guzzled blue petrol that brought out the redness of its wire, sizzling warmth seeping across the otherwise cold floorboards. If heat rose in this house, it stopped somewhere on the second floor. The rooms in the attic could be crisp-cold, unrelenting, pushing up through our soles, into the marrow. No jumper could take out that cold from us.
Rabbi had brought the two chairs to the middle of the room; one was for him to sit and the other had been laid out with a razor and the scissors, because he cropped his hair and kept it shaven underneath, right above the nape. He had taken off his shirt. He wore a vest which showed his arms, sinewy and bare. His shoulder bore scars.
He asked, "Have you much practice, cuttin' hair like this?"
"I used to do it for my brother," I told him. "Had it a little like yours. He had an undercut, but his own hair was the same length, all around."
"I don't cut it like that. Looks too much like my father had it. Makes me think – makes me think I look like him, sometimes. Don't want that. So I never cut it that way."
The chair creaked underneath him as he straightened, rubbing at his nose as he sniffed, his eyes faraway. I caught the agitated bounce of his leg. I set a hand on his shoulder and squeezed once, reaching for a comb to brush through his hair.
"Then we won't cut it that way," I said gently.
The bouncing ceased. There was something intimate in snipping and brushing off those curling black strands that landed on his shoulders. I had not seen him so denuded of covering. His shirts normally had high collars. His sleeves were long, cuffed at the wrists. Here he sat, open and plain.
"I like the heater," I said. "You'll be nice and snug."
His head turned, not enough that he could see me, but enough that his jaw cut cold silver against the light.
"Winter is rough in Missouri," he said. "Damp. Thought if we'd be readin' in here, we'd need it."
How delicious it was to hear that word: we. It made me hum like the red wire of the heater, to touch and know him then like I did, to know that he laid his nape bare for me and trusted me not to turn that blade against him like all others in his life.
I parted his hair for him, once I had finished. Like me, he seemed lighter for it. He pulled an old shirt from the line strung up in his room, buttoning it to the collar. His hat was left on the frame of his bed. He liked the cut, I could tell. He reached for his old, battered coat, shrouding himself. He was covering himself up, like he almost always did, pulling the coat around him, cloaking his frame. But I had seen him.
I had seen him more clearly than I ever had in all the time that I had known him.
x
And I thought that I liked him. I liked him, which soon became a whisper to myself of saying I like-liked him, the way that schoolgirls whispered it, their hands cupped around the ears of other girls to hide the words. I mouthed them to myself, in my bedroom, in the mirror. I tied the apron around myself in the kitchen and thought it. I stirred tea for Mrs Fadda and thought about it. I cut the crust from sandwiches for Zero and thought about it. All throughout these chores, I thought about it, mulled it over, and found it to be true.
x
Calamita had come to find me, slinking, prowling, like a cat out for cream. Numbness filled my calves as soon as he told me that Don Fadda wished to speak with me, sure that I had done something wrong and I would be fired. I followed Calamita into the garden, which was decorated in white gazebos and rounded tables. Josto had hired caterers and planners, all of whom wandered about the garden with arms laden in dishes and name-cards.
Between the lattice-patterned fences wheeled into the garden to separate it from the neighbouring gardens, I spotted Don Fadda. He stood at the end of the garden in slacks and a jumper, which would soon be swapped for one of his rich suits.
Calamita strode alongside me. Grass crunched wetly beneath his leather shoes. It had rained throughout the night and left the ground muddy in places. I had already heard Maxia arguing with the planners about stepping-stones that might salvage it. Soon, Dessie would arrive, and I wondered if I would even be around for it.
Don Fadda turned upon Calamita calling out to him. I could feel it coming: Ava, I am afraid your time here has finished…
"Leave us, Calamita," Don Fadda said.
Calamita plucked a toothpick from his pocket and settled it between his teeth before he did what he was told. I felt his stare lingering; my throat pricked red-hot. Then, he was gone. I awaited alone with Don Fadda. Though, really, men still lapped the garden, despite all the preparations for the party. The caterers looked at them much like I had, in the first weeks, ogling those rifles and revolvers glinting against the budding light.
Don Fadda seemed not to care all that much. He was looking up at the trees, singing notes of crinkled yellow and red leaves.
"What do you think of it, Ava?"
I followed his eyes, squinting at the branches. There was a new birdhouse bolted against the trunk. Nearby, there was a thin cylindrical feeder dangling from a strong branch, bobbing and twirling. Starlings sought it out. The mud shifted and spread under my shoes as I stepped closer.
It surprised me and touched me all at once. He was not firing me. Instead, he patted my arm.
"Rabbi tell me that you like the birds," he said. "This, we have in common. Oh, I used to sit here when the house became too loud for me. This was when we first come here. The kids screaming, wife not happy. Too much work to be done. I came and sat and watched the birds. It tell me that the world cannot truly be ending if the birds are still flying about like they do. The birds knew me, came to sit on the bench and eat what I brought for them. Now, they don't know me. I become too busy for them to know me. Kids still screaming, wife still not happy."
"But the birds are still flying."
"But the birds are still flying," he repeated. "Come, sit with me."
Together, we sat on the stone bench, where he had once sat with Rabbi and where he had once sat a long time before that. I tried to imagine a much younger Don, alone in the garden, one afternoon; it would be a little more bare, this garden, without men and guns. Behind him, a window left ajar would let out the sound of the kids squabbling and Mrs Fadda scolding them. I saw the puffing smoke of his cigarette, blown from his lips. He would sprinkle the ground with crumbs, or perhaps a kind of feed specially for the birds. The starlings would come. He could count them. It was a faraway time.
The preparations were made around us. Champagne flutes were placed on pressed cloth, bouquets were fluffed and placed at the centre of each table, cards with names squiggled in posh calligraphy were carefully laid at each seat.
The starlings swooped overhead, uncaring of warring families, unbothered by the faint screeches of the sisters from the bedrooms, unaware, too, that Josto loathed his bride. It was simpler for the birds. I thought of how beautiful it would be, to swoop upward in a billowing gust of wind, higher and higher, until it seemed there was nothing but swirling clouds all around; higher, higher, until there was nothing but a pure, eternal lightness.
"So the birds are flying," Don Fadda said. "No heaviness for them, no sorrow. Finally free."
x
From the windows in the kitchen, I watched the party. Josto toasted his wife and his in-laws. Dessie's father was a pale man with a permanent frown. Josto curled from a kiss that Dessie placed on his lips, feigning a smile. He was dwarfed by his bride. Dessie left her flute coated in the print of red lipstick, a colour that I had not worn before, and which had been seen as scandalous in Dublin. I piled dirtied plates together and dreamt of the pictures that I saw with Rabbi, remembering those film stars with lips painted that colour too, dressed in lavish gowns.
I was still lost in that fantasy of dressing like that myself when two Italians stepped into the kitchen, their cheeks printed red from too much wine, passing in slow drunken steps toward the hall that led to the front of the house.
"Irish, right?"
It was the shorter of the two men who had spoken to me. His suit was half-finished, it seemed, a blazer forgotten where it had been draped over a garden chair and his tie lost to the wind. His sleeves were rolled to his elbows. I had seen him bouncing a little girl in his arms earlier, delighting her each time that he dipped her low against the ground and swept her high toward the skies.
"Irish," I said.
"Tell us, then," the other said. "Are you Irish girls loose? Now that the German girl is gone…"
Both of them burst into laughter, stumbling out to the hall. I stared after them, cheeks burning, hands cramping awkwardly around the plates. The muffled chatter came from the garden, where guests still milled around. I looked between each of those faces, hoping for one that was familiar to me.
Neither man had finished off that sentence, but it looped around within my head: now that the German girl is gone…
x
Soon, the night unwound itself into a handful of guests still standing around in scattered groups, waiting for their cabs or settling into their own cars for the quiet drive to their homes, somewhere in this sprawling city. In the hall on the second floor, I leaned against the wall and watched Zero brush his teeth, humming to himself. He had been allowed to stay up well beyond his bedtime, chasing his friends between tables, tasting wine, swiping icing from slices of cake left unwatched, icing which was still crusted around his mouth.
I grabbed a tissue and dampened it, wiping it off. All the while, he babbled about the games that he had won, until his eyelids drooped and he stumbled to bed. I brought him his favourite figurine of a black stallion and tucked it into his hand.
Rising to the third floor, I found that Rabbi had closed his door, but there was light seeping from underneath its frame which told me he was there. Then I heard murmuring, low and subtle and masculine. I switched on the bulb overhead the landing, which cut off those voices. I reached for the handle of my bedroom, hoping that I might make myself scarce, but I heard footsteps, creaking floorboards, no more murmuring.
Rabbi swung open his door. Relief filled him at the sight of me. Who had he imagined he would find there, in my place? He had imagined something worse, because his eyes slid to the side and he looked along the staircase like he thought there might be someone behind me, lurking, hoping to hear what was evidently meant to remain between Rabbi and his guest.
"Ava," he said. "Didn't expect to hear you."
"Sorry," I blurted out. "I was only goin' to my room. I didn't mean –…"
"Ava, please, do not apologise." Don Fadda appeared behind Rabbi, swirling whiskey in his glass. He swallowed it in one gulp. "I come to see Rabbi, to talk about different times. Memories. Old men like me, we become sentimental this way. I bother him too long. Enough now, my boy. I let you rest."
Awkwardly, I pressed myself against the door of the bathroom to let Don Fadda squeeze past on that tight little scrap of landing. The staircase creaked and sighed beneath him. He bid us a goodnight in his own tongue, once at the bottom, his face shrouded in an orange-toned light from the bathroom. He hummed to himself, a gentle lilting tune. I glanced up at Rabbi, whose own face was half-hidden on that threshold. I could make out his mouth, his sharp jaw.
"It was very kind of you," I said. "The birdhouse and the feeder."
In the dim light, it was hard to tell if that was a blush or a stray patch of that light from the hall below that warmed his pallor.
"Only told Don Fadda you like listenin' to 'em. He suggested it."
"Still kind of you, Rabbi. The birds'll appreciate it, too."
He lingered. "D'you want to finish Fitzgerald then?"
I smiled. "I was hopin' you'd ask."
x
With shoes kicked off, I rested my stockinged feet on the windowsill. I slumped in the chair that I had marked as mine in his room. I held The Great Gatsby in my lap and read aloud the last few lines for him. He listened, though outwardly, it looked as if he was merely staring off through his window into the darkness of the night.
The trees were lit in a ghostly hue from the lanterns strung around the garden. In the morning, those lanterns would be taken down. The chairs would be folded, tables unspooled of cloth, until the garden looked like it always had. For now, there was still drunken singing. Italian folk-songs, Rabbi had told me; their lyrics spoke of hardship and love and I could not speak Italian, but I could understand those things just fine.
"Tomorrow," I read, "we will run faster, stretch out our arms further…And one fine morning –…"
The pages were yellowed and oddly coarse beneath my fingertips. It was a battered old copy that Rabbi had found someplace. I continued to read until the words dripped off into blankness and there was no more to be done but to close the cover. I left the book on the ground beside me, one foot tapping out the rhythm of a new song drifting toward us from the garden below.
Rabbi brought the heater closer. It hummed between us. I rested my hands on my stomach. Like I always did, I fell into that dream of a house, one so much warmer than this house, naturally warm from those who lived within it, without need of a heater. It was a house that I shared with him.
A schoolgirl whisper. Something I dared not say aloud.
There was a shout from below. Glass crashed. It seemed there had been a drunken scuffle, but it quietened soon enough. The music struck up again. It was a good thing that the Faddas kept the police in their pocket. Anywhere else, the police would come knocking for a racket like that so late at night. The folk-songs had faded to a beat much more intoxicating.
"Sounds like a Gatsby party," I said. "We should have a dance."
Rabbi turned his head to me. "Never danced. No good at it."
"Never?"
"Never."
"Then how would you know how good you are?" The heater billowed its warm soft breath against me, lulling me into a calm, sedated easiness. "I went to dances. In Dublin, mind. I was terrible."
"Stepped on a few toes, is that it?"
"Oh, worse than that. I couldn't talk to the boys. Went scarlet. Stuttered too much. I kept to one side with my friends. Even when they were paired off, I stood there like a real dummy. Couldn't hack it. Wish I had tried, though. Seems a waste, not to dance when you're young."
He was watching me. "All right," he said."
"What?"
He rose from his chair, pushing it aside. "While we're young."
I stared up at him. "What?"
"Are you turning scarlet?"
The scoff that came from me was a poor attempt at stomping out the wildfire of my heart thumping and thumping. I had been messing around, not at all thinking that he would ever agree to a dance. I stood, nudging my chair away as well. He was an awkward man, gangly at times, graceful in others.
I rested a hand on his shoulder, the other reaching to wrap around his. He kept a tame hand on my hip, higher than needed, like he was afraid to offend or scandalise me. It was a swaying that we started, a gentle tick-tock of our hips back and forth. Neither of us wore shoes and our dancing was nothing like the raw frothing swing that we had seen in dark-lit theatres with pictures flashing ahead of us.
But it was fun. How wildly fun it was, silly and childish, to move back and forth in tandem; me, laughing, him, looking not to crush my feet with each step. And what did it matter to me, what those foreign words meant, floating up from the garden to find me?
These birds were flying.
x
Stood on the landing, that little slip which separated his bedroom from mine, I felt as if he had walked me home from a proper dance, through damp streets. But it was nothing like that. We had missed Liberal. I had not tasted even a drop of wine throughout that party but felt myself light-headed and strong nonetheless, so I leaned forward and pecked my lips against the corner of his mouth, a daring move, a boldness that that schoolgirl never had at those old dances in Dublin. I pulled back. He did not follow, but his eyes watched mine. There was that suspicion pooled there, before it melted away and he saw that I had meant it – that I liked him.
He cleared his throat. It was him turning scarlet, now. Not me.
"Goodnight, Rabbi," I said.
"Remember the latch, Ava," he said.
There was a commotion that following Monday. It began in the office, where Don Fadda had gathered the men, including Rabbi. There had been grumblings and mutterings passed between them once the meeting had ended. Rabbi had slipped out last, moving into the kitchen where I cleaned. I had the strangest sense that he was waiting for something.
Don Fadda summoned his wife. The office door was closed. Minutes ticked by. Then, there was screaming, and the fight bloomed ever louder.
I looked at Rabbi. "What is it?"
"They'll be swappin' Zero," he told me. "Takin' in the Cannon boy. How it goes, 'round here."
But his eyes were not focused on me or the sisters, who had come to hover in the hall and wait for their mother to emerge. He was watching the birdhouse, through the kitchen window, and I suddenly wondered if he was holding onto a dream of his own.
x
a/n: hey guys, sorry for the double notification. i separated each section using an asterisk, posted it, then saw fanfiction just doesn't allow that as a separation tool (my bad). on ao3 you can just edit, but ff still doesn't allow that. sorry! i was taking a small break but i always try to keep up writing. i am as in love with rabbi's character as ever. in the ao3 tags, i said slow burn too for this story (more of a guideline than strict rules, right?), and i've been trying to keep rabbi as in character as i can but i felt a wee peck was earned lol. hope you can all agree. now we're heading into season 4 territory and soon satchel will be joining us. gaetano too! very excited. anyhow if you're reading this i hope you are doing well and hanging onto the sporadic posting schedule i have! stay safe guys and all the best!- zed