Evan Hunter - Streets of Gold

One of those celebrations was sponsored by the local Republican Club, and was announced in the newspapers (including Il Progresso , the Italian-language newspaper read by all literate Italians in the ghetto) as:

Francesco awakened on the morning of the glorious Fourth to the sounds of the Agnelli children arguing in the room next door. He quickly checked under his pillow to make sure his shoes had not been spirited away and pissed into, and then glanced sleepily at the clock on the chair beside his bed. This was to be the most important day of his life, but he did not yet know it, nor would he come to know it for a long, long while.

I must get out, he thought, I must go back . He thought that every morning and every night, and yet he continued to work on the subway, and he continued to return to this dreary room in the apartment of the iceman and his family. There seemed little reason for Francesco to remain in America. He was more heavily in debt now than he had been on the day he’d arrived, and seriously doubted that he could ever repay all the money Bardoni had advanced to him. The weekly bite on his pay check had drastically reduced the amount of money he could send home to Fiormonte each week. He was weary most of the time; his bones ached from the labor he performed, his mind reeled from the babble of sound assaulting him most of his waking day. And now that Pino had defected, now that Pino had announced his intention to marry Angelina Trachetti and stay here in this barbaric land, where was there any sense in persisting? Was a man to be governed by his stomach alone? He would go back to Italy, he would return home. But each time he thought of returning, he was faced with new and seemingly insurmountable problems: where would he get the money for the return passage? Bardoni again? And how would the family survive in Fiormonte (where conditions were even « worse now) if he returned? Whatever pittance he sent them from America was more than he could earn at home. Ah, miseria, he thought, and got out of bed, and put on his pants and his shirt.

The oldest of the Agnelli children, who had been picking up English in the streets, said, “Hello, cock-sucker,” as Francesco went through the room with his shoes under his arm. The door at the end of that room led to the bedroom of the paterfamilias and his wife, Luisa. Francesco eased the door open gently. The iceman had already gone to work, no rest for the weary on this Fourth of July, with picnics and celebrations all over the vicinanza . Luisa was alone in the bedroom, asleep in the double bed, one arm curled behind her head, hairy armpit showing. The sheet was tangled around her ankles; her purple-tipped boobs and dense black crotch were fully exposed. For a wild and frightening moment, Francesco considered hopping into the rumpled bed with her, as the iceman had feared he would do all along. The room stank of sweat and semen and cunt; Giovanni had undoubtedly enjoyed ’na bella chiavata before heading out to cool the beer and soda pop of half the neighborhood. Francesco stood at the foot of the bed and silently contemplated Luisa’s breasts and crotch. She turned in her sleep, thighs opening to reveal a secret pink slit that seemed to wink lasciviously. Is she awake? he suddenly wondered. Is she flashing her pussy in invitation? And was surprised to discover he had an erection. He hurried out of the room. If Luisa was beginning to look good to him, it was most certainly time to go back to Italy. But how? Ah, miseria, he thought again, and went into the kitchen, and sat on the floor, and put on his shoes.

The kitchen was hung with the iceman’s blue work shirts, drying on a clothesline stretching from the wall behind the wood stove to the wall across the room, behind the washtub. It was in this tub that the family washed their clothes and also themselves, though not with the same frequency. A makeshift wooden cabinet had been constructed around the tub, serving as a countertop for scrub brushes and yellow laundry soap, drinking glasses, a blue enamel basin speckled with white. There were no toothbrushes; neither the Agnelli family nor Francesco had ever learned about brushing their teeth. A single brass faucet poured cold water into the tub, the plumbing exposed and bracketed to the wall. Wired to the cold-water pipe was a small mirror with a white wooden frame. A gas jet on the wall near the tub, one of four in the room, provided artificial illumination when it was needed. It was not needed on this bright July morning; sunshine was streaming through the two curtainless windows that opened on the backyard of the tenement. (I know every inch of that apartment. When I was growing up in Harlem, twenty-five years later, my grandfather lived in a similar railroad flat. Except for the by-then defunct gas fixtures, it had not changed a hell of a lot.) Francesco went out into the hallway to the toilet tucked between the two apartments on the floor, and shared by the Agnelli family and the people next door. Because of his erection, he urinated partially on the wall, partially on the toilet seat, partially on the floor, and then carefully wiped up wall, seat, and floor with a page of Il Progresso , which he ripped from a nail on the door. He pulled the chain on the flush box suspended above the toilet, stared emptily and gloomily into the bowl for several seconds, his hand still on the chain pull, and then went back into the Agnelli kitchen.

Luisa was at the tub. She was wearing only a petticoat and washing her armpits with the bar of yellow laundry soap. Their conversation was entirely in Italian.

“Giovanni’s gone to work,” she said.

“Yes I know.”

“Ah? How did you know?”

“I passed through your room.”

“Ah,” she said. “Of course. And you noticed.” She glanced sidelong at Francesco, and then took a towel from a wooden rod nailed to the cabinet door. Studiously drying her armpits, she said, “I’m sending the children to my sister’s. She’ll feed them breakfast.”

“Why?” Francesco asked.

“It’s a holiday,” Luisa replied, and shrugged.

“Then I’ll go to Pino’s,” Francesco said. “He’ll give me breakfast there.” He paused. “So you can be free to enjoy the morning.”

“I’ll make breakfast for you,” she said.

“Thank you, but...”

“I’ll make breakfast.”

The two oldest Agnelli children burst into the kitchen, fully dressed and anxious to start for their aunt’s house, just down the block. Luisa gave the children a folded slip of paper upon which she’d scribbled a message to her sister, and kissed them both hastily. The oldest boy grinned at Francesco and said, “Goodbye, cocksucker.” In the other room, the baby began crying.

“He wants to be fed,” Luisa said, and again glanced sidelong at Francesco as she shooed the children out of the apartment. Francesco listened to them clattering noisily down the steps to the street. “Good,” Luisa said. “Now we’ll have some peace.” She smiled at Francesco, and went to fetch the baby.

Francesco stood near the door to the apartment. Was he really about to be seduced by this pig of a woman? Was this how he was to lose his virginity? The stirring in his groin was insistent. In another moment, he would be wearing his second flagpole of the morning. And in another moment, if he was not mistaken, Luisa would carry young Salvatore into the kitchen, where she would bare her breast to his ferociously demanding mouth. Given his own appetite of the moment, Francesco doubted he could resist shoving the tiny savior away from that bursting purple nipple and usurping the little nipper’s rightful place at the breakfast table. He argued with his hard-on, and made a wise decision.