Free Streets of Gold by Evan Hunter

return home. But each time he thought of returning, he was faced with new and seemingly insurmountable problems: where would he get the money for the return passage? Bardoni again? And how would the family survive in Fiormonte (where conditions were even « worse now) if he returned? Whatever pittance he sent them from America was more than he could earn at home.
Ah, miseria,
he thought, and got out of bed, and put on his pants and his shirt.
    The oldest of the Agnelli children, who had been picking up English in the streets, said, “Hello, cock-sucker,” as Francesco went through the room with his shoes under his arm. The door at the end of that room led to the bedroom of the
paterfamilias
and his wife, Luisa. Francesco eased the door open gently. The iceman had already gone to work, no rest for the weary on this Fourth of July, with picnics and celebrations all over the
vicinanza
. Luisa was alone in the bedroom, asleep in the double bed, one arm curled behind her head, hairy armpit showing. The sheet was tangled around her ankles; her purple-tipped boobs and dense black crotch were fully exposed. For a wild and frightening moment, Francesco considered hopping into the rumpled bed with her, as the iceman had feared he would do all along. The room stank of sweat and semen and cunt; Giovanni had undoubtedly enjoyed 
’na bella chiavata
before heading out to cool the beer and soda pop of half the neighborhood. Francesco stood at the foot of the bed and silently contemplated Luisa’s breasts and crotch. She turned in her sleep, thighs opening to reveal a secret pink slit that seemed to wink lasciviously. Is she awake? he suddenly wondered. Is she flashing her pussy in invitation? And was surprised to discover he had an erection. He hurried out of the room. If Luisa was beginning to look good to him, it was most certainly time to go back to Italy. But how?
Ah, miseria,
he thought again, and went into the kitchen, and sat on the floor, and put on his shoes.
    The kitchen was hung with the iceman’s blue work shirts, drying on a clothesline stretching from the wall behind the wood stove to the wall across the room, behind the washtub. It was in this tub that the family washed their clothes and also themselves, though not with the same frequency. A makeshift wooden cabinet had been constructed around the tub, serving as a countertop for scrub brushes and yellow laundry soap, drinking glasses, a blue enamel basin speckled with white. There were no toothbrushes; neither the Agnelli family nor Francesco had ever learned about brushing their teeth. A single brass faucet poured cold water into the tub, the plumbing exposed and bracketed to the wall. Wired to the cold-water pipe was a small mirror with a white wooden frame. A gas jet on the wall near the tub, one of four in the room, provided artificial illumination when it was needed. It was not needed on this bright July morning; sunshine was streaming through the two curtainless windows that opened on the backyard of the tenement. (I know every inch of that apartment. When I was growing up in Harlem, twenty-five years later, my grandfather lived in a similar railroad flat. Except for the by-then defunct gas fixtures, it had not changed a hell of a lot.) Francesco went out into the hallway to the toilet tucked between the two apartments on the floor, and shared by the Agnelli family and the people next door. Because of his erection, he urinated partially on the wall, partially on the toilet seat, partially on the floor, and then carefully wiped up wall, seat, and floor with a page of 
Il Progresso
, which he ripped from a nail on the door. He pulled the chain on the flush box suspended above the toilet, stared emptily and gloomily into the bowl for several seconds, his hand still on the chain pull, and then went back into the Agnelli kitchen.
    Luisa was at the tub. She was wearing only a petticoat and washing her armpits with the bar of yellow laundry soap. Their conversation was