“Rather. Who knows what she is or where she came from?”
To all of this and much more Juno moved on in haughty disregard. At the mouth of the Alley of the Moon she was greeted with profit-receiving deference by her landlady, Luigia the Garlic Woman, who handed her a letter. Bertino’s writing! Seated on the bed in her darkling cubicle upstairs, she read the missive, which was postmarked Jamaica, Long Island:
Cara Juno: Did I kill him? Address Post Office, Jamaica, Long Island. B.
For a moment she sat staring at but not seeing a gaudy print of the Sistine Madonna that hung in a faint shaft of light. Then she sprang up and hurried down the narrow staircase to the restaurant. Seated in the place on the long bench that Signor Di Bello occupied when Bertino broke up their little meeting, she called for writing materials and penned these lines:
Caro Bertino: Your uncle is very low. Will write soon. J.
As she carried the letter to the red box on the corner her stoical face gave no token of satisfaction felt by reason of the simple but clean solution of a vexed problem which Bertino’s letter had supplied. Ten minutes later she stood in the doorway of Signor Di Bello’s shop.
“Ah, angelo mio, welcome again!” was his greeting. Then with an air of secrecy: “But sh——! sh——! Not a word here. That boy! His ears are very large and his tongue is long. Every word we said before he heard. Come, let us go for a promenade.”
They crossed to Paradise Park and mounted the broad staircase to the pavilion where the band plays, and took seats in a corner apart from the gabbling women and their swarms of yellow children. Without ado she came to the point:
“My answer is ready. I will be your wife.”
“Joy!” he cried. “But it must be at once. Within the week. The next Feast of Sunday.”