Free The Saint of Lost Things by Christopher Castellani Page A

upper lip. “I have to hear you first. Can you play me something now, very quick? Live music is a tremendous idea, something I’ve thought about many times. We have a record player and a few albums, but that’s it, and the same opera songs over and over get under my skin. I can’t pay you, though, not right away. Maybe later, if the customers like it—”
“I don’t care about money,” Julian says, already squatting on the floor in front of the open case. “I just want a change.” He pulls the straps around him and with his sleeve wipes the sweat from his forehead. He takes Mario’s place in the corner. He tests the keys.
“How about this: the nights you play, we give you dinner and lunch on the house,” says Mario. He moves to the end of the bar and refills his glass. “Of course, I’ll have to talk it over with Gino before anything is decided. He’s not an easy man to convince, so—”
“I understand.”
“Do you know ‘Serenata Celeste’? I love ‘Serenata Celeste.’”
Julian nods. He plants his left leg firmly in front of his right, lifts his head, and begins.

5

The Dream of the Princess
A T WORK , M R. GOLD lingers at Maddalena and Ida’s station. He sits at the edge of the table and taps his yardstick on the warped linoleum floor. He asks them about their family traditions and records the details in the little notebook he keeps at all times in his shirt pocket. “I am a student of the world,” he tells them. “Everything interests me. I want to understand all the many cultures in my shop. For example, you say you will serve seven types of fish on Christmas Eve, but why seven? Why not three or six? And is there any significance to the types?”
Maddalena waits for Ida; Ida waits for Maddalena. Neither of them knows. All Maddalena can say is that the seven fishes have been prepared for generations in Italy, since long before their grandmothers were born, and that it probably has something to do with Jesus. Still Mr. Gold nods and scribbles in his notebook.
With Gloria gone, Stavroula has an entire table to herself. Queen Stavroula, Ida calls her. She mutters in Greek as she stretches and rests her foot on Gloria’s old chair; she spreads the stockings she’s sewed across the length of her station as if to air them out. She removes her earplugs to eavesdrop on Mr. Gold and the Italians, and every once in a while interrupts them with a snort or a sigh. Todayshe says, “In my country, we take a sprig of basil and tie it above the fireplace, to keep away the hooved ones, the Kallikantzari—”
“Is that so,” says Mr. Gold, blandly.
Maddalena has been taught that Greeks are good people, like Italians when it came to keeping their families close, but that you’d never want them to cook for you. According to Antonio and Papà Franco, they care more about dancing and poetry than cleaning their kitchens. But there is no dirt under Stavroula’s fingernails, Maddalena has noticed, and more than once she has witnessed her vigorously washing her hands in the bathroom. Still, made with dirty hands or clean, the contents of Stavroula’s lunches turn her stomach: yogurt oozing through a cakelike ball of ground beef, chunks of soggy eggplant on which she squeezes a browning lemon.
“I should write a book,” says Mr. Gold, over the whirr of the machines. “In Poland, I would have been a professor of literature, like my father and uncle.”
“A professor!” says Ida. Since the competition, she has taken every opportunity to fawn over her boss.
“My problem is I’ve seen too much,” Mr. Gold continues. “Too many horrible things. No one would want to read about them. Compared to where I’ve been, this shop is paradise.”
“Ask me how many books I’ve read in my lifetime,” says Ida.
Mr. Gold raises his eyebrows.
“None.” She beams at him. “On sewing I have focus, but I can’t concentrate on words for more than five seconds. Even when I was a girl. My sisters and brothers were all