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feeling now as he conjured the sounds of her voice and the smells of her body. She was unique to him because no one or anything had ever gripped and twisted him into such a strange and frightening shape before, like some dopey swain with iron balls and a bleat built-in to voice and glance—a thing that brought laughter to the world. By dancing past him she had removed him unfairly from his husk as a powerful chief, a man who walked anywhere with plopping heavy feet if he chose to do so, but toward whom all others stepped lightly and with deference. She had risen from beneath the surface of time—which he had always controlled, beyond (perhaps) growing a bit older each year, but never seriously so—summoning his wistful lust and confounding his plans. She had frozen him in time: he was wearing the head of a much older man like a mask covering the face of a boy her age. She was too young, she was too beautiful, or whatever it was she was that was doing all this to him. He could not discern who and what might be mocking him.
    Paddy West had set world’s records for caution in his time. With him it had never been a matter of moving when the road ahead had been cleared. It was his fixed policy to refuse to move until the road ahead had been paved, brilliantly lighted, and a golden city settled at the other end of it. Then, with an armed police escort before him and behind him, he would be on his way. But this girl was beyond these rules. He spoke in a choked voice to Vincent Stoppaglieri, a Brooklyn contractor, seated at his right. “Who’s that girl?” He kept his voice bored. It was a polite inquiry, as though he had decided he must show some interest in the events of the evening.
    â€œWhicha one?”
    But she was gone. “Oh. Ah. She’s gone now. She was dancin’ wit’ Joe Corrente.”
    â€œAh. The daughter. Please.”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œShe’sa go onna terlet, she’sa think she makes candy.”
    â€œI don’t get your drift, Vinnie.”
    â€œShe’sa too good for thisa kinda place. She’sa gung to be big balleto dance.”
    â€œWhat’s that?”
    â€œBalleto is how they dance inna opera.”
    â€œThey dance in the opera? All this time I thought the opera was singin’.”
    â€œMosta they sing. Some-a time they dance. Whenna they dance, they dance balleto. It’sa nice.”
    The daughter came haughtily past again. It wasn’t a big ballroom. Each time she passed the large mirrors at each end of the room she seemed to renew herself by drinking in deeply of her image as it floated past, and Paddy put it down to filial excellence that a girl should so savor a dance with her unbeautiful father. Young men attempted to cut in, but she froze them more rigidly than if she had asked them to wait just one moment until she could get the head of Medusa out of her purse. Her father sweated and looked miserable. Neither he nor the girl smiled or spoke to each other. Helpless, Paddy watched her leave just before half-past ten, and beyond the one casual inquiry to Vincent Stoppaglieri he didn’t ask about her again and let the evening go on as though he had (properly) forgotten her.
    He led the grand march with Mrs. Carlo Fratelli, wearing the old, reliable blank expression on his fifteen-inch-long face. After that he made the speech he always made, a paean to all Italians in America, the greatest Americans of them all. Then he went home to his house in Oliver Street and sat up until dawn to think things through in his methodical way. He reached the conclusion after some hours that the only thing in his favor was that the girl was Sicilian and might therefore carry enormous family feelings and do whatever her father asked her to do. Jesus, the girl looked like she was about twenty-two years old, for Christ’s sake.
    He did not have time for mooning. Dick Croker was the new Leader, and it was the year the Hall had to