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  Tselel loaned him the money. And forty days later, her son informed her that banks don’t give loans to customers who already had a home foreclosed on.

  Then Tselel’s sister needed a short-term loan to pay her daughter’s college tuition. This one was a sure bet. The money would be returned as soon as her brother-in-law’s payout check from his company buyout cleared. Twenty-nine thousand dollars the sister requested. Once the buyout check cleared, the brother-in-law cleared out.

  The final blow came in the mail, which is why Tselel stopped reading it. Apparently, but not really, Tselel’s husband owned a second home in the Catskills. The place was being renovated to the tune of seventy-nine thousand, four hundred and twenty-nine dollars, according to the letter. She had seven days to make good on the debt. Otherwise she could lose the “million-dollar property to the highest bidder.” Tselel, not wanting to tarnish her dead husband’s reputation, wrote out a check and Fed Ex’d it to the Catskills.

  There actually was a home in the Catskills, and it once belonged to Tselel’s husband. But he’d deeded it over to his mistress when he found out he was dying. He’d always said he’d fix up the place. The other woman figured that making good on his promise was the least his widow could do.

  Once Tselel hadn’t a dime left to be swindled, she figured there was no reason to answer her telephone, open her door, or read her mail.

  Concetta didn’t know these things about the woman, but it was clear to her that something about Tselel’s life was amiss. She could have engaged her, instead of gawking from afar, waiting for a chance to steal her letters from Tselel’s mailbox.

  Using the woman this way is the closest thing to mean Concetta had ever come. It didn’t seem so at the time. Aoife’s letters and the ones from Girl-X and Holland were all that mattered.

  Mrs. Tselel’s mail tossing schedule was perfectly aligned with the delivery of the girl’s letters to Aoife at her address. Concetta retrieved them from the woman’s trash in the same way a child riffles through birthday presents until they reach the gift they’ve dreamed of all year. But she never opened them.

  The girls exchanged letters for years after they graduated from Saint Gabriel’s, including the ones to dead Aoife that were sent to Tselel’s address, even after Concetta was not around to collect them. They continued in the same rhythm that had measured their breaks from school, back when they were together, letters in winter and summer.

  Girl-X and Holland always assumed that Concetta had written the ones that came from Aoife. But she had not. Concetta comfortably accepted that the notes were in fact from Aoife’s heart and that in some way, which she chose not to rationalize, her friend had managed to scribe them in her afterworld and usher them into existence by way of the postal system.

  Later on, when each of the friends still alive had married, and had children and husbands to consume them, it was easier not being in touch. Holland, Concetta, and Girl-X, now women, knew there’d be no way to hide how imperfect their lives had turned out.

  Just the same, they’d all yearned for the letters since the exchanges had stopped. But none would lay pen to paper to reignite their correspondences until Aoife’s reached all three, just at the point when each needed them most.

  *“An Angel, Not So Much”*

  Concetta had met Sammy Rouledge in Brooklyn when she and two of her NYU classmates went looking for a place where they could buy beer without an ID. Sammy had been operating his Nick-Knacks-N-Snacks Restaurant on Rockwood, where early in the day you could pick up a sub with a side of fries and a Fanta, grape or orange, for $4.00. His dinnertime special was corned beef and cabbage with potatoes, or roast beef and potatoes (except for fish Fridays) for $4.25. And you had your choice of any canned pop or a hot cup of joe, and dessert, usually lemon meringue pie with a drizzle of cherry sauce across the top. Nobody ever bothered asking Sammy to hold the cherry sauce more than once. “For this price, you shut your mouth, lick your lips and thank God for an angel such as myself,” he’d blow at them.

  An angel: not so much. Sammy ran two numbers a day. He was a fair bookie, though, the kind who regularly contributed to the local kids’ sports team and “lost” grocery debts run up by elderly widows and low-paid working women with children and no husbands and hard-luck stories weighty enough to qualify for food stamps, rent assistance, or free daycare. He was beloved for his kindness, and the neighborhood counted on him to handle many of its problems. Like the time a seventeen-year-old drug dealer gunned down James Cuddie, who was across the street trying to talk a cop out of his second parking ticket in a day, and just happened to glance in the dealer’s direction. Sammy took care of that problem and made it known that he’d pay for both burials. Once he worked things out with the families, Cuddie’s and the pusher’s, Sammy staged a horse-drawn funeral procession down Bokeem to Rockwood and over to Sepher. Cuddie was interred at the Utopia Mausoleum and his murderer dumped at The Cemetery of the Forgotten, just in time to be lowered into an unmarked grave with three other criminals.

  No one shuddered at the untimely death of the underage thug. On Bokeem Street, lengthy jury trials for those everyone agreed guilty put too much stress on friends and neighbors. Instead, Sammy handled situations like this with the kind of swiftness and dignity that gave everyone a reason to at least be able to say, “What a lovely service.”

  But eventually, Sammy’s generosity and lavish digs outspent his profits, and he shorted Billy J a grand on the bookmaking. His carelessness was marked by a “black death” shawl, with six doll legs attached, signaling the horrific payment to be collected. Sammy and the boys disappeared shortly after. And though no one knew exactly what happened to them, they all knew why.

  Concetta mourned along with the others in the neighborhood, the ones down Rockwood, Sepher, but, mostly, right there on Bokeem, where Sammy and his family had lived in a three-story brownstone, flanked by a pair of painted lions adorned with grapevines and blood-red jewels.

  Sammy wasn’t around to clean up Mr. Giarizzo’s mess. And as Tito-G had rocked his dead mother, and he watched Red-eye Blue being coffined in a bloodied box, he wondered whose kindness might lay his mother to rest in at least as nice a way as Sammy had done for Cuddie and the pusher.

  The boy got his wish. Mrs. Giarizzo’s funeral was lovely and arranged without any hardship to the lone survivor. She’s resting, now, in a lovely Utopia Mausoleum vault. Mr. Giarizzo, of course, is keeping company with Cuddie’s pusher-murderer, and Red-eye Blue is buried beneath Momma De Luca’s flower box at the Palace.

  * The Prettiest Boy on Bokeem *

  Tito-G was in tenth grade when he dropped out of school. He had to. The other boys had caught on that he liked dressing up and figured he was gay. Two started a rumor that they’d seen him trading illicit favors in the school bathroom. Nothing happened, right away. Boredom, it seemed, was the only thing different about the day something did.

  One afternoon after school, a group of boys beat Tito-G so badly that an ambulance had to be called to collect him.

  Mr. Giarizzo, sitting at his son’s hospital bedside, warned him that he’d pay the boys to beat him again and every day until he stopped being gay.

  Tito-G knew that the promise of even a single dollar bill would buy him a miserable life at school. So he quit.

  Dejected, Tito-G hadn’t the will to plead with his father when he returned home from the hospital, after he’d been attacked. There’d been no illicit incident at school. He’d never even considered having a boy as a lover. But he did enjoy dressing up. Forfeiting his education left him plenty of time (during the hours Mr. Giarizzo was away at work) to strut about Bokeem in the Cinderella shoes his mother had “mistakenly” left in his closet.

  Imagine the bow-legged gait of a lanky boy, trying to steady himself on four-inch heels, his stout square toes bound in thirty degrees.

  The card-playing men outside the Palace howled the first time Tito-G tried his prance down Bokeem. It was shameful!

  He tried
, again, the next day, and the one after that, but he couldn’t manage his stride the way he’d imagined the princess had.

  Concetta had been watching from her window those days Tito-G stumbled down Bokeem in his fancy slippers. Shameful, indeed, she mused.

  Three pairs of fancy shoes and a bag full of blouses Concetta had stored away, along with two lavish dresses she’d managed to keep Michael from ripping to shreds. It was a good time to clean out her closet, she resolved.

  Concetta waited by her window one morning, hoping to spy Tito-G the moment he left his family’s apartment. When he did, she descended the steps from hers to the lower hallway, carrying a cardboard box on which she’d written Tito-G’s name across the masking tape she’d used to seal it. She opened the door just as Tito-G was passing.

  “Hey, do you mind tossing this box for me?” Concetta appealed to the boy.

  Tito-G was still trying out his fancy shoes and wasn’t sure he could handle the job of balancing a box, too. Even still, it would have been impolite to say, “No.”

  “Just a minute, Ma’am,” he answered, while wresting his feet from his mother’s shoes, so he could climb the stairs to Concetta’s building.

  “My feet are little larger than your mother’s,” Concetta told the boy as she handed him the box. “You’ll notice that my arms are longer, too,” she said.

  When Tito-G saw that Concetta had written his name on the box, he knew the exchange was just a diversion, but he wasn’t sure the reason. He abandoned his Cinderella shoes right there on Concetta’s steps and hurried to a secret place he’d discovered the last time he’d escaped his father’s wrath.

  A beautiful chiffon dress in dark grey. Three beautiful pairs of shoes in satin and supple leather—red, taupe, and a lovely chartreuse in his size. And a matching blouse for each. Tito-G was ecstatic!

  Right there in the ally, Tito-G dressed himself anew in a lovely satin blouse, with matching red shoes. Then, he strutted himself back out on Bokeem like a peacock in full bloom.

  The card-playing men were so glad to see that he’d finally perfected his high-heeled stride that they welcomed him to their game and handed him his very first cigar.

  The boy reclined into his place at the table and took his first draw. Then, he let out the most spectacular “O” and looked up at Concetta, who was standing, again, at her window, and he smiled.

  Tito-G never had the chance to get close enough to Concetta to thank her, not before the most miserable day in his life. And that wasn’t the right time. So every day, and mostly only when he was sure Concetta could see him, he’d let out a spectacular “O” in her honor.

  * Who Will Sing for Concetta?*

  Since the day of Mrs. Giarizzo’s funeral, Concetta had dreamed of the time when they’d carry her body away from Bokeem. She hoped her service would be as beautiful. There’d have to be music, of course; how else would they know it was her? She’d held back one fabulous dress, chiffon with satin trim, when she’d given Tito-G his new wardrobe. It would be easy to find, hanging right below the safe box, where Michael Pianto kept important documents, including the insurance policy purchased against her life.

  Michael Pianto was neither to love nor harm Concetta. That was the deal. It seems he’d forgotten. Since Michael was paid monthly for his services, the insurance policy was only to offset his losses should Concetta’s life be unexpectedly cut short before the end of the terms of the agreement. Mrs. Pianto knew her son was impatient and worried he’d opt for the quicker payoff, which she knew wouldn’t turn out well.

  When Concetta sang the Saturday morning after All Souls Day, Momma De Luca decided she’d had enough.

  “No more, no more, no more!” she chanted at Frankie, and took up a determined pose, standing wide-legged in front of the Palace.

  “Shush.” Frankie tried to quell her outburst.

  “No more shushing,” she gritted.

  “Then bring it down,” Frankie begged. But Momma De Luca refused to cooperate anymore.

  “Ao no hói!” Momma De Luca exploded. “Ao no hói!” What a terrible thing! she kept repeating in her Hawaiian speak.

  Concetta’s song wafted in the background, and Bokeem Street surrendered and quieted. And then Momma De Luca called out, “Look up there and see what that man is doing to her!” But no one but Tito-G had ever looked up before, and the neighbors continued to keep their heads down.

  If anyone had ever looked up during the many beatings before, they would have seen it for themselves, the thing they knew but couldn’t bear to know: the thrust and blows and clanging, wild and offbeat yet fully orchestrated. Orchestral, yes!

  If they’d looked up any day Concetta’s il dolce suono prettied the air, they would have witnessed Michael Pianto’s conducting and Concetta on her knees, singing what she dared not say. So high-pitched, the words were inaudible. So rhythmic, it coaxed a body to sway. And, yes, the people on Bokeem and Rockwood and sometimes all the way down to Sepher had swayed all those years, and that Saturday, too. But they’d never looked up—not until Momma De Luca demanded that they did, pleaded, even dared her own Frankie to raise his eyelids above the many drinks he’d shared with Michael Pianto and the times Maria Pianto shook her finger at his seven-year-old self and reminded him to be a good and quiet boy in church.

  Lives lived without confrontation seemed to be fading in those moments.

  There was no Sammy Rouledge to fix things. None of Tito-G’s O’s to distract. Just Momma De Luca, pleading. Michael Pianto, conducting. Concetta, singing.

  CRESCENDO/diminuendo/

  CRESCENDO/diminuendo/

  CRESCENDO/diminuendo

  “Where is Tito-G, anyway?” Frankie yelled out nonsensically, as if the boy could quell the madness, before he dared to look up and make the phone call.

  * Buried Burdens*

  The funeral was held yesterday. Just as there had been with the pusher and Mr. Giarizzo, there was a processional down Bokeem and along Rockwood, before Michael Pianto’s casket was dropped off at The Cemetery of the Forgotten.

  Maria Pianto was devastated. Her son had been everything to her. And she’d dedicated years trying to make him change, begged him. She’d been right all along. Michael’s temper was out of her hands. And Sammy could never be trusted to ignore Concetta’s abuse. Maybe she’d spend the rest of her life mourning. Nevertheless, for one whole day, the first in recent memory, she could be prideful about the boys she’d helped grow up right on Bokeem.

  Mrs. Pianto didn’t follow Michael’s procession to the cemetery. This is Bokeem tradition. She’d be warmed, instead, by the kind words of friends long separated when her shame walled between. She rested a moment, Mrs. Pianto, and enjoyed the banter of joyful nothingness around here. And when she was ready, she rallied her circle of friends and headed inside the Palace, where she handed Momma De Luca a note.

  “Pass this on when the time is right,” she said. Momma De Luca just smiled and tucked the note in her bra strap.

  Momma De Luca added another bouquet of plastic flowers to her garden, while Frankie and their boy kneaded, tossed and panned enough pizza to feed the hungry mouths that lined Bokeem—for a buck a slice, of course. And when the horses’ clatter faded, the card games resumed. But not before Tito-G got off three spectacular O’s. He was joined by Concetta, who’d taken a seat next to him at his family’s shrine. Her two boys, much older, now, but still cuddly, pitched marbles in front of Tito-G’s old place.

  Inside the Palace’s kitchen, Sammy Rouledge laughed when Anita Remita bragged about how she’d been the one who concocted a rumor that Billy J, the man responsible for all their troubles, was a snitch, which is why he turned up missing. Frankie couldn’t swear on the news right away—the reason he hesitated to make the phone call and tell Sammy to come out of hiding and save his wife.

  “Things always have a way of getting fixed around Bokeem,” Sammy laughed to himself. Then he turned back to the stove and gave hefty stirs to the well-worn pots, one full of cor
ned beef and cabbage—with potatoes, of course—and the other filled with roast beef and potatoes.

  Momma De Luca laid her best napkin on the counter next to the stove and reminded Sammy to wipe the sweat from his brow. Mrs. Pianto’s note slipped from between when he lifted it to his face.

  “What a lovely service,” she’d penned. Sammy smiled.

  He may have been the one to put Michael down. But, it was Michael himself who’d orchestrated his own demise.

  Concetta, hearing the story of how the nasty rumors about her came to be, forgave Anita for all the lies that had caused her despair.

  So much had weighed on Concetta the five years before Sammy and the boys returned home. A year since she’d rescued her letters, and she still hadn’t read them, though she was comforted by their presence.

  The evening never quieted. And the women, even the old ones, couldn’t resist the dance given from the lifted grief around them. They were sorry they’d shunned Concetta, and told her so and more, sharing one story after another of a secret shame they’d hidden to explain why they hadn’t interfered with her troubles. And their eyes lifted, as if some joy had slipped between indifference and tugged at their comfortably deep compassion.

  "And in those moments, Concetta could see Aoife’s beautiful hazel eyes among those of the women around her. She’d always known, just as Holland and I had, that the one missing had never left us. And just like all those times that Aoife had taken in Holland’s demons when we were together at Saint Gabriel’s, she has absorbed the worst of our hardships since her passing, too. Her letters are proof. How else could we have survived the times since?"

  * CHARACTERS FOR BACKGROUND MUSIC*

  Concetta’s Family

  Mr. Ferrari, m. Mrs. Ferrari (Concetta’s parents)

  Sammy Rouledge, m. Concetta

  Bokeem residents

  Frankie De Luca, m. Momma De Luca