The Unfinished Angel Read Online Free

up in the tower, me and Zola, smashing figs. We watched her father as he packled in the garden below. Zola says, “Angel, Angel, I will tell you about a boy. Would you like that?”
    Truly, I have no grand interest, but it is a lazy day and so I say, “Tell away.”
    Zola licks fig juice from her fingers. “There once was a young boy with nine brothers and sisters. His family lived in a crowded, crumbling house at the bottom of a hill. There was never much food to eat in that house with all its children, but one day his father brought home a box of chocolate-covered cookies. Have you ever eaten a chocolate-covered cookie, Angel?”
    â€œMe? No, no, I don’t eat cookies.”
    â€œOh, but they are supremely delicious!” Zola says. “So the papa of the young boy brought home a box of chocolate-covered cookies, and he proudly set them on the counter and went upstairs to wash.”
    â€œUh-oh,” I say, because I know this is not a good thing. I can see what is coming. I have been around awhile.
    Zola puts her hand out dramatically, as if she is stopping the wind. “Now the little boy knew not to touch the cookies. He knew that his papa would later open the box and allow each child to take precisely one cookie. Oh, Angel, how the boy longed for those cookies. He could hardly bear that he would have just one. He wished his father had never brought home the box at all. It was too awful to think of having to wait for the cookie, just one cookie, and that would be all.”
    At this point, Zola sighs and pauses, contipilating the sad situation. “Oh, Angel, the little boy snatched the box of cookies and fled to the basement and ate the cookies, all of them. He could not stop himself. They were so good, so perfectly delicious, so, so, chocolate.”
    â€œI knew it, Zola. I knew he would eat those cookies.”
    â€œYes, Angel, yes. Later, the boy confessed, of course, because he was an honest boy, and he got a whipping.”
    â€œI was afraid of that, Zola.”
    â€œYes, well. That is that. But now the boy is a man, and in his house he has a desk, and in his desk is one deep drawer, and in that one deep drawer he keeps mounds of chocolate: chocolate bars, chocolate candies, chocolate cookies! So many chocolates!”
    â€œI understand this, Zola.”
    â€œAngel, any time of day or night he can select a chocolate something, but he does not make a pig of himself. Why do you think he keeps all those chocolates hidden in the drawer when he does not gobble them up?”
    â€œAh, Zola, ah. This I have seen! So many peoples have the secret drawers—or sometimes closets or boxes—and they have the little somethings in them. I am not talking about collections, like coins or knickle-knackles. I am talking about stashings of food or strange things—like Signor Rubini, you know him? The square man from up the hill?”
    Zola presses her fingers to her lips. “The one who sits on the red bench, with his wool cap in one hand and his cane in the other?”
    â€œYes, yes, that’s Signor Rubini. He has a secret drawer, and in it he has dozens and dozens of pairs of navy-blue socks! Is true. He cannot wear so many, but he needs so many because when he was a child he was always cold, especially his feet, and now he has the secret stash of socks for, for, how you say? For insurance, maybe?”
    â€œAh,” Zola says. “Aha! Insurance!”
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    I had forgotten the chocolate-drawer story of Zola’s until I see Mr. Pomodoro open a deep drawer in his desk, and inside, what do you think? Chocolates! Boxes of chocolate-covered cherries and chocolate-covered almonds. Chocolate cookies and chocolate bars, stacks of them. Mr. Pomodoro opens the drawer, gazes inside, and removes one chocolate-covered cherry. He eats it slowly.
    I have already seen what Zola keeps in the top drawer of her desk. She keeps rocks: jagged rocks, smooth rocks, big