“This is ridiculous!” Carmela cried out, trying to catch her breath. Piera cut a sudden turn downhill, passing their Zio Raimondo’s shoe shop. Then she jerked to a halt beneath the arches of The Old Spanish House, a high-walled diminutive fortress left by the sixteenth-century Spaniard invaders her islanders were so proud of.
“Just ask one of the Nugheddu girls!” Carmela said, trying to fight off her sister’s quick hands scrambling over the buttons on the back of her dress.
“I’m not asking any of those trollops from the next town!”
“Then tell the dancer’s partner to sit it out too, for goodness sake!” Carmela snapped, quickly reaching to catch her own dress as it fell over her slip toward the cobbles. “Piera!” she gasped, seizing her sister’s hands. “Have you lost your mind?!”
“I let you out of my sight for two seconds and you’re down an alley getting undressed!” a voice called out. The spidery silhouette of Carmela’s fiancé, Franco, crept round the corner. She yanked her dress up high over her front, covering as much of her body as she could, though the warm night air still brushed over her bare shoulders.
“Perhaps you can knock some sense into my sister!” Carmela cried.
“Impossible,” Franco replied. “She won’t let any man in spitting distance.” He leaned against the wall of the house that flanked the steps.
Piera didn’t mirror his grin. “Carmela’s got two minutes to save us from disaster,” she huffed, stuffing Carmela’s feet into the black underskirt and yanking it up. “Turn around!” Piera ordered, spinning her to face the wall, throwing a blouse over her head, and beginning to squeeze her into the bodice.
“This dancer’s half my size,” Carmela muttered.
“Not everyone’s been blessed with your curves. Take this shawl,” Piera replied, throwing it over Carmela’s shoulders and knotting it at the base of her back, “It’ll hide the gap at the back.”
Franco stood watching. Carmela felt her cheeks flush.
Piera whipped a scarf around Carmela’s head and began fastening it at the back of her neck. Franco looked her up and down. “I’ve never liked those old-fashioned head things till now.”
He sauntered down the last few steps and planted his lips on Carmela’s before she could brush him off.
“Franco . . .” she said, smoothing the embroidered apron Piera was wrapping around her so it would lie as well as it might.
“Piera’s almost my sister-in-law. Not the last time she’ll see me kiss you.”
“Not if I can help it,” Piera piped from the hem of Carmela’s skirt, where she crouched down to pick it out from under her square heels.
Franco smirked. “Tomboys make fine spinsters, Pie’.”
“That’s enough, you two!” Carmela said, feeling the heat of embarrassment and increasing nerves.
“Franco! Vieni subito!” a voice called.
The three looked up toward the steps.
“Cristiano?” Franco yelled up to his cousin as he came panting down toward them. Franco pulled away from Carmela. “What in God’s name?”
Cristiano stood, breathless and giddy with liquor. “You must come—the boys have got the Americans in a drinking competition. We’ll lose if you’re not there!”
Carmela willed Cristiano’s eyes to tear themselves away from her body.
Franco gave him a shove. “Where’s your manners, you cretin? That’s how you look at my fiancée?”
Carmela winced. She felt like a gormless mannequin wearing the wrong clothes.
“Come on, you imbecile,” Franco said, giving his cousin a kick as they set off. “You watch this, Carmela,” he called back with the malevolent bristle of an adolescent, “we’ll show those G.I.s what Sardinians are made of!” With that they bounded around the corner to inebriation.
Before Carmela could take a breath, Piera grabbed her wrist and led her in a gallop back up through the alleys. Their footsteps ricocheted off the thick walls of the houses, which huddled along the viccoli barely wide enough for a loaded donkey. They reached the main square just as it was time for the local troupe to begin their performance. The injured dancer’s partner moved toward Carmela and wrapped his arm around her waist. Before she could compose herself, she was spun around like a top, shuffling into the middle of the long line of dancers, hoping she didn’t look as much the deer before a hunter as she felt. She adored creating the costumes, and her deft work attracting admiration, but being the center of attention in this way was something Carmela loathed. The entire dance was spent holding one side of the skirt down with her thumb so that it wouldn’t ride up to her chest.
Carmela had watched every rehearsal, using the time in between choreography calls to give each of the performers their fittings, adjusting their costumes accordingly. By tonight, she was as familiar with the routines as threading a needle, though she had never planned to perform them. During the bridge, the dance mistress had chosen a few measures for the now-fallen dancer and her partner to perform alone while the remaining members of the troupe jigged upstage in a line. It was a scandalous departure from the military patterns of these traditional dances, and one Carmela had hoped to enjoy from the safety of a crowd.
Now she found herself led this way and that. The world whirred. She aimed to stare at a spot directly in front of her, to maintain balance in the fog, just as the dance mistress had instructed the dancers during rehearsals. Her eyes couldn’t focus with the sea of faces ahead of her. She lost her footing. Her partner would have almost spun her horizontally had he not had the forethought to shunt them into a retreat and rejoin the line—a measure too early. The troupe, counting in their heads, was thrown off beat. The remainder of the dance was a ramshackle version of what they had spent months preparing for. Carmela could feel the hot glare from the dance mistress on the sidelines.
As soon as the accordion wheezed its closing chord, Carmela fled the square, grabbing her own dress and retreating to the secluded changing spot. She didn’t wait for Piera. It was too painful to look anyone in the eye, even her own sister.
In the quiet, Carmela began to slip out of the costume she had spent hours making and back into her own. She brushed away embarrassment with each stroke of her ruffled hair. Why should she care what she looked like anyway? A betrothed woman had no place worrying about her appearance. Her job was to prepare for marriage, to portray a wholesome image to the world. To look good enough for a fiancé to invite her to be his wife, she supposed, but not so much that it would seem she chased attention elsewhere.
“Everything all right, ma’am?”
Carmela twisted around to the American voice, grasping the top of her dress and pulling it up to cover as much of herself as she could.
“Apologies, ma’am.”
She squinted up toward the steps, at the unfamiliar silhouette. The man’s voice was clear and warm, silky even, very different from the timbre Carmela was accustomed to hearing from the soldiers. Or perhaps it was her comprehension that had improved.
“I caught you running. I wanted to make sure I needn’t be chasing after someone on your behalf,” he continued, with a polite turn of his head away from her, signaling that he had noted her state of near undress. What must he be thinking of her skulking in the shadows this way? The fading light from an oil street lamp streaked across his eyes for a brief moment. “You can’t be too careful at these fiestas.”
“Yes,” Carmela replied, struck by something more startling than the blue of his eyes. She was half dressed down a darkened alley speaking English with a perfect stranger. He was a soldier, no less, and they weren’t well known for their manners. Despite all of this, she felt something peculiar in the presence of