Free By the Rivers of Brooklyn by Trudy Morgan-Cole

happy that she dressed again and went to the counter with only the briefest of glances up the stairs, to the forbidden hallowed chambers, cool and quiet, where the rich women shopped for bargains and tried them on in private dressing rooms. Usually when she came to Loehmann’s, she was eaten up with envy, with the desire to go upstairs, to be among the wealthy, to know what it was like on the other side.
    â€œWhat are you thinking about?” Tony asks as the song ends and they sit down at a table.
    â€œI’m thinking about being rich. How I’d like to be rich.”
    Tony laughs, a big round laugh. “Yeah, me too! Old man Romano, he says to me, ‘You know, Tonio, you ain’t gonna get rich pushing my cart down the street, you know.’ And I could tell you the same thing, Rose. You ain’t gonna get rich working in no boot factory. Specially when it pays less than the five and dime.” He frowns: he disapproves of her quitting her job and going to work in the factory. Rose can’t explain why she did it. She knows it doesn’t fit his image of her, a girl on the go, on the up-and-up, with ambition and plans.
    It doesn’t really fit Rose’s idea of herself either, and she actually liked the shop better, but she got bored with it. She isn’t really a girl on the go. She’s the girl who’s got to go, a girl who gets restless and itchy and bored and does dumb things like giving up a half-decent job and taking a much worse job for no good reason.
    Tony leans across the table and takes her hand. “Rose, my beautiful Rose,” he says. “I love you, Rose. You know what? I’ve been doin’ a lot of thinking. I want to get married. I want to settle down and have beautiful babies with you. I don’t care if I ever get rich. Will you marry me, Rose?”
    Rose does not stand up, scream or run. She feels something unaccustomed and soft in her chest, because after all this time she has begun to care about Tony, in a way. So she tries to make it easier, which is always a mistake.
    â€œTony, you don’t know what you’re saying,” she says. “Your family, your sister…they all want you to marry some nice Italian girl. Not someone like me. We don’t have the same…background.”
    She sees the darkness cover his eyes and knows she has scored a point. It wasn’t just a stab in the dark. She knows this to be true. She can read it off Marcella, his sister, like she is the front page of the Brooklyn Eagle .
    â€œLet’s not talk about it right now, Tony. We’re having fun. Let’s just leave it at that.” The band swings into a livelier number. “Come on, dance with me, Tony.” Rose stands up, swaying her hips, holding out her hands. Tony frowns. But she gives him a little smile and he comes toward her, responding to her invitation even as she’s pushing him away.
    It’s America, where every man can be a millionaire. And any girl can be a millionaire if she meets the right man. It happens all the time in the movies, in magazine stories. The poor but pretty young girl wins the rich man’s heart, and next thing you know, she’s shopping on the top floor of Loehmann’s. I can get there , Rose figures. All she needs is to meet the guy, and get rid of Tony along the way. It shouldn’t be hard.
    She keeps Tony dancing till long past midnight, hoping he’ll be too tired to propose to her again. He’s a lot of fun, and she’d like to keep on dancing and having a good time with Tony till she meets her rich guy. It would be better if she didn’t have to come out and say, “Tony, I’m not going to marry you ever, so get lost, okay?”
    He doesn’t mention it again. When the band finally plays their closing number – “Stardust” – he holds her close and whispers, “I love you,” in her ear, but nothing more. He helps her into her light