EVERY TIME BELLA EXPLORED the local terrain, she discovered something new and amazing.
Brooklyn, she found, offered the very best of everything.
The best place to buy vegetables and fruits was a little stand over in Brighton Beach. That’s where she got her onions, peppers, and garlic; strawberries and blueberries when in season; and always a pinch on the cheek by stand owner Carlo Pietronini.
When Lolly wasn’t fishing off the Steeplechase Pier, it was always Ciro’s Seafood for crabs, cockles, shrimp, and every kind of local fish.
“What are you gonna make today, Miss Sin City?”
“Linguini con vongole!”
Major Markets Prime Meats offered the finest cuts of pork, veal, and beef. Jimmy always threw in a little something extra, a couple of soup bones for the crew or some breakfast patties for Minnie.
Often, after a busy morning doing the day’s shopping, Bella would pop her orange parasol open and twirl around the Coney parks.
Steeplechase Pavilion, where sunlight blazed through the glass panels, sending solar stars dancing and spinning among the rides.
Or Luna Park with its wild animal exhibits and waterslides.
She was always shadowed on these little outings, or so it seemed.
Sometimes, while kicking her bare feet along the water’s edge on the crowded beach, her belly would start wailing, and there he would be.
Hero the Strongman.
Peekaboo! I see you!
Silently bobbing in the waves.
Just out of reach.
Sometimes with Oui Oui.
But mostly alone.
She often caught him staring behind a spinning carousel or peering through clouds of cotton candy.
Once, while she was sitting in the balcony of the Shore Theater during a Shirley Temple double bill, the flickering lights caught his strong silhouette standing in the silver-tinged darkness.
“Why are you following me?”
He never said a thing.
Just like her mamma.
“Why won’t you speak to me?!”
It wasn’t long before he started appearing in her dreams.
In one of them, he sprouted out of the dirt in the middle of the cow fields behind Robertson Scale factory like one of her papa’s tomato plants and started howling.
In another, he held her in his strong arms and asked her to marry him.
In another, he appeared hanging on a cross in Saint Anthony’s, holding a baby and singing,
Lullaby, lullaby, lullaby, ooh,
Who will I give this baby to?
Lullaby, lullaby, lullaby, eee,
I will keep this baby for me!