The Shoemaker's Wife(108)

“And a hat.”

“Fancy?”

“Maybe.”

“I’m a very fancy girl,” Enza said.

“When did this happen?”

“There’s a gentleman who keeps taking me places. And now I can’t drink out of anything but Bavarian crystal, and if the caviar isn’t cold, I can’t eat it.”

“Poor you.”

“I’m afraid I’ll never see Hoboken again.”

“You can wave to it from the first-class cabin of the Queen Mary.”

Vito took Enza’s hand as they left the Met. He guided her west; Enza figured they were going to one of Vito’s favorite bistros in the theater district, intimate rooms with glazed brick walls, low lighting, and rare steaks on the table. Instead, he kept walking, taking her to the west-side docks at Thirty-eighth Street.

A massive construction site greeted them, a surface of gravel plowed smooth over river silt and mud. Dump trucks were parked by the river’s edge, while a cement mixer was angled near the street. There were stacks of steel beams, enormous wheels of tubing, bins of picks, and large shovels resting in wheelbarrows.

Enza waited on the ramp outside the construction booth while Vito ducked inside. Enza chuckled to herself. Vito was always planning an adventure. If he wasn’t renting out the Ferris wheel at Coney Island just for the two of them, he was taking her to speakeasies where the jazz was as smooth as the gin. Vito was a man who knew how to live, and he wanted everyone in his life to live it up. After a moment, Vito emerged with two tin hard hats. He handed her one.

She removed her hat and put on the hard hat. “You said it was fancy.”

“You wait,” he said.

Vito helped Enza into the outdoor elevator. He snapped the gate and pressed the button that would lift them to the top of the construction site. Enza held her heart as the elevator ascended up into the night sky. She felt as if she was flying, though Vito had a firm grip on her. Soon the panorama at her feet changed, and she looked out over New York City at night, rolled out beneath them like a bolt of midnight blue silk moire staggered with crystals.

“What do you think?” Vito asked.

“I think you’re a magician. You pull things from the ordinary and turn them into magic.”

“There’s something I want to give you.”

“I think this view is plenty.”

“No, it’s not enough. I want to give you everything. I want to give you the world.”

“You already have.” Enza rested her head on his shoulder. “You’ve given me confidence and adventure. You’ve given me a new way of being.”

“And I want to give you more—” Vito pulled her close. “Everything I am. Everything I dream. And everything you could imagine. It would be my purpose and joy to make you happy. Will you marry me, Vincenza Ravanelli?”

Enza looked out over the shimmering lights of Manhattan. She couldn’t believe she had come this far, and climbed this high. She thought of a thousand reasons to say yes, but she only needed one. Vito Blazek would make sure she had fun. Life would be a party. After years of taking care of everyone else, Vito vowed to take care of her. Enza had worked hard, and now she was ready to experience life with a man who knew how to live.

“What do you say, Enza?”

“Yes! I say yes!”

Vito kissed her, her face, then her ear, then her neck.

He placed a round ruby surrounded by diamond chips on her hand. “The ruby is my heart, and the diamonds are you—you’re my life, Enza.” He kissed her, and she felt her body weaken in his arms. “I would make love to you right here, if you’d let me,” he whispered in her ear.

“I’m afraid of heights, Vito.”

“Will you change your mind on the ground?” he teased.

“Let’s get married first.” Enza had traveled far from home, but her parents’ hopes lived within her. She was a proper young woman, raised in a religious home by pious parents. She would continue to follow their rules, even though she had earned the right to make her own decisions long ago. Enza believed there was a beauty in the sacraments that brought grace to living. She wanted a life of refinement and serenity, and certainly Vito, with his grand vision of the future, understood that. He believed Enza deserved the best because she was, without a name, education, or position, the embodiment of true elegance. Her natural grace had been born in her. It could not have been manufactured or bought. It simply was.

The crisp autumn air was cold and sweet, like vanilla smoke. High above the city, Enza was no longer the Hoboken factory girl, but a hardworking American woman of Italian birth who had risen to a new station in life, a climb not to the second floor on the service stairs but to the penthouse via the elevator.

Enza would marry Vito Blazek.

As a team, these two young professionals, one an artisan, the other a liaison to the talent, would continue to work at the Metropolitan Opera House, eat breakfast at the Plaza Hotel, and dance at the Sutton Place Mews. They had fine friends; they wore silk, drank champagne, and knew where to buy peonies in the winter. They were on their way up.





Chapter 21

A GOLD BRAID

Una Treccia d’Oro

As Ciro stood on the deck of the SS Caserta, the Atlantic Ocean was the color of green carnival glass. In the distance the depths turned a charcoal gray as the waves ruffled the surface in iridescent silver.