pared food for her sons on the new stove of which she was afraid, but they were in and out so much it was hard to anticipate their mealtimes; and her eyes being no longer good enough for sewing, she spent her time puttering about their living quarters overhead or in a corner of the kitchen where she would be out of the way, preparing vegetables and such—things that didn’t require keenness of sight or attention.
The room itself she would not enter, though from her accustomed corner in the kitchen she could on occasion watch the boneless sophistication of the saxophone player and the drummer’s flapping elbows, and years ago she had heard the noise they made. But that was long ago and she had forgotten it, and now she accepted their antics as she accepted the other changes, associating no sound with them at all. Joe had several automobiles now: big noticeable ones, and he used to try to persuade her to ride in them. But she refused stubbornly always, though it was a matter of neighborhood comment, how good the Ginotta boys were to the old lady.
But Joe, with his shrewd taciturn face and his thinning hair and his shirt of heavy striped silk smoothly taut across his tight embryonic paunch—Joe, standing with his head-waiter at the desk, paused in his occupation to glance down that room with its every modern fixture, its tiled floor and lights and mirrors, with commendable pride. With the quiet joy of ownership his gaze followed its mirrored diminishing tunnel and passed on to the discreetly curtained entrance beneath that electric sign, that ultimate accolade of Americanization, flashing his name in golden letters in rain or mist or against the remote insane stars themselves; and to his brother slanting his damaged hat defiantly, turning in beneath it.
Joe held his sheaf of banknotes in one hand and his poised
