We cross Ninth Avenue and the market is laid out in front of us. There’s an old metal Coke sign hanging from the canopy over a booth just ahead with a wooden rocking horse below it, and in the booth across the row, I see vintage clothes hanging on racks. Suddenly I feel like a kid in a candy shop. I’m not much of a shopper, but for some reason, vintage stuff gets me all giddy.
We walk all the way to the end to get a feel for the place, and it’s packed full of people wending between the booths, same as we are.
“So I guess this isn’t exactly undiscovered either,” I say, lifting a vintage black fedora off a hat rack and trying it on.
“But you are discovering new things,” Alessandro says, gesturing to the hat.
“Old things,” I counter, looking at myself in the mirror on a table next to the rack.
He moves behind me and smiles into the mirror from over my shoulder. “Old things that are new to you.” He gives the back rim a flick and it drops over my eyes.
And I realize that’s him—something old, from before, that I’m discovering all over again. I lift the hat off my head and drop it on his, taking the opportunity to really look at him. My eyes devour his face; from the dimple at the tip of his chin, over his full red lips and his straight nose, up the curve of his cheekbones to those amazing gray eyes, where my gaze stalls. He’s so similar to the boy I knew, but so different.
When I realize we’re just standing here staring at each other, I clear my throat. “The gangster look works for you.”
I lower my eyes away from his to the table and they fall on a pair of white silk gloves—the kind they used to wear that go up past your elbows. “Oh my God. These are so cool.”
Alessandro pulls the hat off and puts it back on the rack. “Try them on.”
I slip one glove on and turn my arm side to side, admiring how the white silk pops against my mocha skin. “I have to have these.”
“Then you should buy them,” he says with a smile.
I bring them over to the vendor, a woman with tattoo sleeves. “Nice ink,” I tell her when I notice the pattern is mostly vines and butterflies.
“Thanks,” she says. “Back at ya. Does that go all the way around?” she asks, looking at the butterflies at my left collarbone.
I lift the hem of my sweater, exposing the trail of butterflies over my right hip. “To here,” I say, pointing lower, at the front of my hip under my jeans. I flick a glance at Alessandro and see him looking at my ink. There’s something in his gaze, like he wants to reach out and touch the butterflies on my hip, that sends a pulsing ache through my belly. Will I ever tell him what they mean? That he was the inspiration? Probably not. I force myself to breathe. “So, how much for these?” I ask, holding up the gloves.
“Twenty,” she says.
Stick my hand in my bag and fish for money. I come out with a fistful of bills and count them. “I’ll give you thirteen.”
She looks like she wants to counter, but after a beat she smiles. “I like you, so okay.”
I hand her money and slip the gloves into my bag. “Thanks.”
“You come on back. We’re here every week,” she says, pocketing the cash.
I can’t stop the smile. “I will.”
Alessandro grasps my elbow and veers us toward a hot-dog cart. “Do you still eat hot dogs?”
“Sure,” I say a little warily. Did I eat hot dogs before? There’s the tickle of a memory, but I can’t get a grasp on it.
He buys two hot dogs and two Diet Cokes and we go to the condiment counter, where he loads one with mustard and relish, then hands it to me. As I watch him squirt catsup on his, the tickle is there again, and then it all comes back in a rush. It was a few weeks after Alessandro and I’d started sleeping together.
“That is just wrong in so many ways,” I said as he sat next to me at the dinner table, the catsup bottle making farting sounds as he squeezed the last of it onto his hot dog.
He looked up at me and a smile curved half his mouth. “Don’t knock it till you try it.”
I scrunched my face at him. “I am never trying that. Catsup on hot dogs is gross.”
“You’re gross,” a whiny female voice said from across the table.
I looked up, and the white girl, Trisha or Hannah, was glaring at me. She was pressed into Lorenzo’s side, and I couldn’t see what her hand was doing, but it was moving in his lap. Lorenzo smirked and tore a hunk off his hot dog with his teeth, then chucked the rest at Alessandro. “You want my leftovers, bro, take them.”
Shame nearly choked me.
But then, so subtly that no one else noticed, Alessandro wove his fingers into mine under the table and made everything okay.
“Hilary?” he says, pulling me back to the present. He’s moved away from the counter toward a bench. “Would you like to sit?”
I nod and move with him, sinking into the seat before my knees give out. “Thanks . . . for the hot dog.”
He nods slowly. “Are you okay?”
I shake off the memory and try to pretend I haven’t lost my appetite. “Yeah. This is fun.”
His eyes scan the market. “It is. We’ll have to put this on our list for re-dos.”
“Re-dos?”
His gaze finds mine and he smiles. “For when we’ve seen everything else.”
“Re-dos,” I say with a nod. “Sounds like a plan.”
His eyes slip to the open collar of my sweater. “Tell me about your tattoos.”
I take a bite of my hot dog. “What about them?”
“I couldn’t help noticing the other night that there are a lot of them. Do they have some significance?”
At the memory of him slipping on my jacket on opening night, I shudder. “They just remind me to stay free . . . to follow my own path.”
He fixes me in his intense gaze. “I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about my path over the last year. It’s not always as clear as you hope it’s going to be. I feel like I’ve spent my whole life adrift.”
I nod, ’cause not too many people know that better than me.
He stares at his hot dog for a minute. “When our grandparents brought us to Corsica, Lorenzo was all I had left. We were supposed to look out for each other . . . have each other’s backs.” He rakes a hand through his hair and his gaze drifts out over the vendors. “I let him down. When he needed me, I wasn’t there for him.”
“You can’t blame yourself that he got himself killed, Alessandro.”
His tormented eyes find mine. “I can. I do. I could have stopped him. If I’d stuck by his side . . . if I’d had his back . . .”
“You’d be dead too,” I finish for him. “You weren’t going to change him. Lorenzo did what he wanted to whoever he wanted and didn’t give two shits about anyone else.”
His hard expression cracks and he drops his forehead into his hand. “But I’m just like him. I thought the Church could save me. Surrendering my life to the priesthood . . . it was my sacrifice . . . my way of atoning for past sins. But then I met Lexie, and she turned everything on its head. She brought out all my impulsiveness—my lack of self-control. No matter how hard I tried to pretend that everything was fine and I belonged in the priesthood, when I saw how easily I was drawn off course, I couldn’t deny the truth. I was there for the wrong reasons. I thought if I wrapped the beast in God’s clothing, maybe that would tame it. I was wrong. It’s still here, deep inside me. Nothing has changed.”