Free The Queen of the Big Time by Adriana Trigiani

June.”
    “I can’t wait to go to college. What is it like?”
    “Well, college is very hard. You have to study all the time. Or at least I did.”
    “I don’t mind studying. I’ll do whatever it takes to become a teacher. I think that teaching a child how to read is the most noble profession there is. Better than a nurse or a housewife. Better than any other job.”
    “There aren’t a lot of girls in college, you know.”
    “That’s their problem.” I wave my hand, indicating the girls hovering around the dance floor. He laughs again. “What’s it like to live at school, where everyone has the same ambition? What’s it like to be around people who think like you?”
    Renato smiles. “You may have just said the very thing that I liked best about being away at school. I liked the people I met and how they loved to learn as much as I did. But there’s a problem with it. When you come home, you don’t fit anywhere.”
    “That can’t be true!”
    “Look around. We’re quarry miners and farmers and butchers and bakers and factory workers. There’s not much of a need for a poet around here.”
    “You’re wrong. Just because we work outside with our hands doesn’t mean that we don’t dream. We need words to describe our deepest feelings and music to lift us out of the quiet and into a place of inspiration. The Italian people have always found art in the mundane. My mother can milk a cow, but she also makes lace. It’s as perfect and delicate as a spiderweb. See?” I show Renato the hem of my skirt. “And Papa, he plows the field, but he also listens to the opera, and believe me, he understands music with the passion and knowingness of an educated person.”
    Renato doesn’t say a word, he just stares at me.
    “I shouldn’t ramble on so,” I apologize.
    “No, no, that’s all right,” he says, but he looks peevish.
    He must think I’m stupid. I’m a flippant farm girl who gets crushes on men far too old for her and then blathers on at them about art while standing in a silly pink dress with juvenile sleeves. This sophisticated man can see right through me. The only true knowledge I have comes from books, not experience. I am outclassed by Renato Lanzara, and now I know it for sure.
    Luckily, I see Chettie across the room and walk toward her without saying “excuse me” or “good-bye” to Renato. Why bother? He’s more than done with the know-it-all girl from Delabole. But then I feel a hand on my arm. Suddenly, I am not walking to my friend; I’m in the arms of Renato Lanzara, who spins me around the dance floor like the old mop I practice with in Papa’s barn. I do my best to keep up, but he is very quick, and I’m new at this. As we whirl around, I catch the faces of Chettie, Elena, and Mrs. Ricci in a blur, who smile at me as though I am dancing well. I know I’m not, though; I am moving through the music, but I don’t belong in it. I’m only fifteen and Icouldn’t even talk my mother into dolman sleeves. I have no business on this dance floor with the most handsome man in the room! How I wish I were twenty-one.
    “Thank you,” he says as the music stops, depositing me in the same spot he found me. He disappears into the crowd like a vapor.
    “Oh my gosh!” Chettie pulls me aside. “You danced with him! You’re the first girl he talked to out of everybody. And the Calzetti girls are here from Martins Creek. The men always go to them first.” Chettie looks over at them, and there they are, five sophisticated sisters in cloche hats, split tunic dresses, and shiny stockings, one more alluring than the next. “But not Renato. He went for you!” Chettie is more excited than I am after the first dance of my life. “What did he say? You were talking a long time.”
    “He talked about college … and poetry.”
    “Poetry?” Chettie sighs. This is better than anything she’s read in Modern Screen .
    “Yes. He writes poetry:
“ ‘Never the time and the place
‘And the