And suddenly he released her.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Forgive me.”
And turned and ran up the beach.
She saw him stopping at the end of the path beside the house, saw him picking up his shoes. He looked back toward her once more and then vanished around the side of the house.
Her lips burning, her thighs quivering, she heard his car starting and listened to the sound of its small engine fading in the distance.
The card on the bottle of Moët Chandon read:
Till next time,
Andrew
Michael found what he was looking for that morning, in an Italian-language newspaper called Il Corriere della Sera. The paper on his desk was yellowed and fraying; the date on it indicated that it was almost twenty-nine years old. Accompanying the article, in a plastic pocket fastened to the scrapbook page, was a typewritten English translation attributed to someone named Jenny Weinstein, more than likely a Bureau secretary.
Oddly, the article wasn’t about Anthony Faviola — who was mentioned in it only once, and then as a rising young building contractor — but was instead about his father Andrew, the American-born son of Andreo Antonio Faviola and Marcella Donofrio Faviola, both immigrants from the town of Ruvo del Monte, Provincia di Potenza, Italy. Michael had no idea where this town might be. He continued reading.
The article celebrated two concurrent and virtually simultaneous events. The first of these was the fiftieth anniversary of the bakery Andrew Faviola had owned and operated on the same street in Coney Island ever since the death of his father some twelve years earlier. The second event, occurring three days after the bakery’s anniversary, was the birth of Andrew’s third grandchild, the first grandson presented to him by his son Anthony, “a rising young building contractor.” The child had been named Andrew, after the subject of the article, his proud grandfather.
There was a picture of Andrew holding the infant namesake in his arms. It was summertime and the grandfather — fifty-two years old at the time, according to the article — was standing in his shirtsleeves before the plate-glass window of a shop called Marcella’s Bakery. The baby was wearing a white unisex shift and little white booties. Even at that tender age, the kid’s jug ears were clearly visible.
The article explained that the shop had been named by Andreo Faviola in honor of his wife, who — at the time the article was written — was eighty-four years old, “God bless her,” Andrew told the reporter. This meant that Topolino was a great-grandson of the woman who...
Topolino?
Michael almost spilled his morning coffee.
... woman who sixty-five years earlier had made the long and arduous journey from a mountaintop village midway between Bari on the Adriatic and Naples on the Tyrrhenian. The elder Andrew...
... explained how his namesake had come by the nickname “Topolino.” His mother still spoke broken English, although she’d been an American citizen for well on sixty years now, and when she saw the infant in the hospital for the first time, she turned to her son and said, in Italian, “Ma sembra Topolino, vero? Con quelle orecchi così grande!”
Which translated into English as “But he looks like Mickey Mouse, isn’t that true? With those big ears!” The article went on to explain that Mickey Mouse was as popular in Italy as he was here in the United States, and that the old lady was using the name affectionately, since — as anyone could plainly see — the child was extraordinarily beautiful with the same blond hair and blue eyes as many of the region’s mountain people.
Topolino, Michael thought.
Mickey Mouse.
Later Anglicized and bastardized to Mick-a-lino.
Lino.
What goes around comes around, he thought.
Poor but honest Italian immigrant comes to America around the turn of the century, opens a bakery shop which his native-born son, Andrew, inherits when he dies. Andrew in turn has a son named Anthony, who becomes “a rising young building contractor,” and in turn sires two daughters and a son, subsequently named Andrew after his grandfather and nicknamed Topolino by his great-grandmother.
Andrew Faviola.
The “Lino” his father had chosen to succeed him if/when he ever fell from power.
Andrew Faviola.
The student who’d made weekend visits from UCLA to Las Vegas, where he supervised his father’s gambling operations when he wasn’t being “a favorite of the town’s chorus girls and a big roller at all of the casinos.”
Andrew Faviola.
Who nowadays had to be consulted before a jackass gambler could be let off the hook.
Andrew Faviola.
Who was maybe running the whole damn show now that his father was locked away in Kansas.
It was nine a.m. on the thirtieth of December, two days before the new year. Michael picked up the phone and dialed his boss’s extension.
2: January 11–February 17
He was waiting for her when she came out of the school.
It was a bitterly cold day, the sky overhead a dull gunmetal gray, a blustery wind sweeping ruthlessly eastward from the Hudson. It was only four in the afternoon, but it seemed as if dusk had already fallen.
Sarah pushed through the doors, pulling on her gloves, a red woolen hat yanked down over her ears, a matching muffler wound about her throat. She’d been back on the job for a week already, her tan was virtually gone. She normally walked a block east to the IRT station on Sixtieth and Lex, took the local uptown to Seventy-Seventh, and then walked from there to the apartment on Eighty-First, altogether a fifteen-minute commute. She was starting for Lex now when he cut diagonally across the street toward her, popping up in front of her much as he had on the beach in St. Bart’s.
“Hi,” he said.
In the split second before she recognized him, she thought she was being accosted by one of New York’s loonies. And then she realized who he was, and knew in that moment that his appearance here was not an accident, he had sought her out, he was here by design.
“What do you want?” she said.
“I have to talk to you.”
“Please go away,” she said.
“I want to apologize for...”
“There’s no need to apologize, just go away, please, just leave me alone.”
They started to cross Park Avenue, the light changing just as they reached the center island, where the wind seemed somehow fiercer. They waited in silence until the light changed again. He fell into step beside her, adjusting his longer strides to hers, and they; began walking together toward Lexington Avenue.
“Do you know what movie she said that in?” he asked.
“No. Who? What movie? What are you talking about?”
“Garbo,” he said.
“No, I don’t. Listen, I’m on my way home, I’m a married woman, I have a daughter...”
“Grand Hotel,” he said. “‘I want to be alone.’”
“I do want to be alone,” she said. “I don’t know why you came here...”