Carmella Commands
Carmella, and new awkwardness of mind or hand in Nicolo.
Something was happening, but he could not explain it.
Something was happening to Carmella, like her latest trick of saying nothing and looking elsewhere when she was through with a quarrel. He could not understand it, and it irritated him. It was nothing, he knew, that Doty Street had taught her.
To Carmella, it was a new and secret triumph. Where she had learned it, she could not have told. Mrs. Barrington to Miss Sargle at the settlement house, perhaps. Perhaps out of the American ether.
There were a few such afternoons that summer, bitter and sweet by turns. But increasingly Nicolo found himself enmeshed in his business.
“Sorry we can’t go,” was Nicolo’s usual greeting.
“But you need it,” said Carmella.
“Need it? Hell!”
Afterwards Carmella realized that she had committed a tactical error when she told Nicolo that he needed anything.
He was of her own breed and generation.
She should have known better.
[138]
