Chapter 6: Sunday Dinner

The Rapoza table seated twenty, and it was full.

Cousins, ranch hands, aunties in good dresses, Manny's mother at the stove, and a platter of fried linguica piled a foot high.

There was bean soup and pork in garlic wine and a basket of my mother's sweet bread, shiny with egg wash.

Frank Rapoza sat at the head and beamed at me.

"Eat, cousin," he said.

"You're skin and bone."

"Thank you, Mr. Rapoza," I said.

"Frank," he said. "Always Frank."

He tore a piece off a loaf and held it up.

"Your mother's, you know. I buy two every Sunday. One for me, one for a friend."

"I know," I said.

"Thirty years."

He chewed and looked at me with small, shrewd, happy eyes.

Under the table, Manny's boot nudged mine.

I drank my water and did not look at him.

Dinner was loud.

The aunties argued about a christening, and the ranch hands teased Manny about his hat.

Frank told a long story about a bull that got into a church.

Everyone laughed.

I laughed too, because it was funny, and because I had the strange feeling that the whole performance was being done for me.

Then the plates were cleared, and Frank slid a thick envelope across the tablecloth.

"For your mother's window," he said.

"Twenty thousand. A gift."

"What for?" I asked.

"You're a smart girl," Frank said.

His voice stayed warm and low.

"All you do is be the Rapoza girl. Only the Rapoza girl."

"You stop seeing the Higa boy, and you tell the island he forced you."

"Did Mr. Higa send you a script?" I said.

Frank's eyebrows rose.

"If the Higa boy keeps hanging around you," he said, still pleasant, "he ends up in the harbor, dear."

"I don't want that. You don't want that. Do we understand each other?"

The aunties at the far end went quiet.

I pushed the envelope back across the cloth with one finger.

"Thank you for dinner," I said.

"I'll pass on the dessert."

Manny's hand slid onto my knee under the table.

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