Girls like Alice.
The way Ben knowingly blinked at her, it was as if he already knew.
“You’ve become so proper, why?”
She said nothing.
“You want to be like the girl he left behind, the girl he left—for you?”
She flushed. “It’s not like that.”
“What is it like then?”
“Not like that.”
“So explain it to me, like I explained the Culebra Cut to you.”
“I’m just grown up, that’s all. Sicily is the child part of me.”
He shook his head. “You’ve taken deportment and speech lessons. You’ve learned how to dress, how to laugh, how to speak. You did it all to hide who you are.”
“Harry doesn’t much care for the loud Italian,” Gina told Ben. “For the flashes of my Old World self.” Except for the times he wanted nothing from her but her Sicilian flame. Oh God! Could there be one exchange this entire evening, just a merciful one, when she wasn’t recalling her husband after every sentence?
“I feel as if I should go visit him,” Ben said. “It seems wrong not to. We were such good friends. I want him to know there are no hard feelings. Do you think I should?”
“It might make him feel worse,” she said. “Point up the stark contrast between your freedom and his incarceration.”
“That’s true. But not to visit him even once …”
She agreed. “His mood is not great. It won’t be like your old times.”
“Few things are. And, why should he be in a swell mood? He’s in prison.” Ben sighed as they sipped their wine and buttered their bread. “What’s he reading nowadays? Maybe I can get you a book to take to him.”
“If it’s in Russian, then yes.”
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