Emma Who Saved My Life Read Online Free Page B

they could make something of themselves, married Milanese, then took on America, Ellis Island and all that, settled in New Jersey, then Indianapolis as of the last generation, her hometown. Catholic guilt? “Nah,” she’d say, “I wish I had been brought up stricter—I’d have an excuse for being so screwed up. I went to a suburban Catholic church, never confessed anything, went to mass at Easter and Christmas.” Any longings for the Old Country? “What old country?” she’d ask. “New Jersey? I wish I had had a richer ethnic upbringing—it’d give me an excuse for being so screwed up. My folks tried hard not to be Italian—I can’t speak Italian worth beans. Some people here in New York get fish on Fridays and Grandma telling folk tales and Grandpa drinking grappa after mass, and all that, but nyehh, I had Indianapolis and shopping malls, Girl Scouts, all kinds of Americana and crap.” Difficult childhood in conservative Indianapolis? “Not really. It’s a nice place, a nice boring place. I was too boring back there to mind it. But I’m interesting now. Sorta wished I had grown up in Little Italy, the mean streets with all the passion and drama.” We looked at each other and simultaneously said: “It’d give me an excuse for being so screwed up.”
    â€œDo me a favor,” Emma was saying, “and fire me—do me a big fat goddam favor and fire me, get me outa this place, willya do that for me? You think I like seeing people come in here all the time, DYING for a pizza, hungry, starved for pizza, and take a pathetic look at this garbage and whisper, gee, let’s go someplace else, it doesn’t look very good here? Hey, and don’t walk away while I’ma talkin’ to you!”
    Baldo came back from the kitchen: “You’re talkin’ to me?”
    â€œYeah I’ma talkin’ to you.”
    Baldo locked Emma in a big embrace, a cloud of flour flying up from the apron: “You gonna apologize ’bout my pizza, ey?”
    â€œHands off, hands off—you mess me up like you mess up your pizza…” Both were laughing at this point. “You gotta meet my roommates,” she said, fighting him off. “This is Lisa, this is Gilbert.”
    Baldo tipped his silly Italian pizza-chef’s hat to Lisa. “Her I seen before here. Pretty face, I remember that. You—” He meant me. “—You I don’t know. You livin’ with these two? You are? A baby like you? Gonna be nothin’ left of you, sonny boy. This one’ll kill you—” He recommenced his tickling attack on Emma who was now armed with a garlic shaker.
    â€œHow ’bout a faceful, huh? Get your hands away from me. I think it’d be nice if you gave my friends a pizza slice. It’s Gil’s first slice of pizza in New York. Not that this shit is pizza.” She dodged another lunge of Baldo.
    â€œFree slice?” he cried, slapping his forehead, looking to the ceiling, beseeching the gods. “What am I? The return of Mayor Goddam Lindsay? I look like Welfare to you little gurl? Scuze me but the soup kitchen is that way to the Bowery, ey?”
    We got three free slices and they were terrible, but even bad New York pizza is better than a lot of good things and I was happy to be eating a slice of it, walking along the East Village, down St. Mark’s Place, where the trendy, filthy, fashionable and wretched all meet and intermingle to this day (“very NYC,” as Lisa would say), with Lisa on one side of me, Emma on the other. Wow, Gil in New York with TWO WHOLE WOMEN!
    â€œLet’s get drunk,” said Emma, holding her hands to her face. “God, my hands have permanent pizza smell. I go to sleep smelling this stuff—I dream about oregano. Every night, pizza dreams, like Disney—little pepperonis jumping on my pillow, the Dance of the