She had never played a trumpet in her life. She did not say naturally. She put the cold brass mouthpiece to her lips and blew into it with every bit of breath she had, and what came out was not a note at all but an enormous, cracked, honking bray, like a goose being sat on, which rang off the cinderblock walls of the parish hall and brought Rocco DeLuca running to the wings, and Filomena Teixeira after him, and half the ladies' guild after her.
And on the other side of the blanket, Nicky DeLuca began to laugh, and stood up, and reached up and pulled the clothesline down, and the Walls of Jericho came down in a heap of gray wool around their feet.
He kissed her then, or she kissed him; afterward, neither of them could agree on which, and they argued about it all the way down Atwells Avenue. It was not a careful kiss. It went in like it didn't care whether it broke. In the wings, Rocco said, "Oh, gross," and Filomena said, "Shh," and Nonna Rosaria, who had come up the stairs more quickly than anyone would have believed, said loudly that he was no Clark Gable but he would do, he would do.
It was still raining when they came out onto Atwells Avenue an hour later, a soft, fine, almost warm rain, and the lights of the bakeries and the social clubs were smeared gold on the wet street, and the arch over the avenue with its bronze pinecone glowed in the dark like a promise somebody had forgotten to take back. She had the tape in her coat pocket. He had his fedora on, because he had forgotten to take it off.
"So," he said, turning his collar up. "Let me ask you something."
"Ask."
"Bus. Coffee. Doughnut. Splice. Play. Trumpet." He counted them off on his fingers. "Is this technically our second date?"
"Third," said Theda. "The store counts."
"The store counts?"
"We held hands over a box. Mrs. Teixeira was a witness."
"And New York?"
She looked up the long wet avenue toward downtown, toward the river and the Biltmore sign and the train station, toward the whole bright, uncertain spring.
"Ask me on Monday," she said. "I'll tell you the truth."
"Sure," said Nicky DeLuca. Just once. And she knew that he meant it, and took his arm, and they walked down the hill together in the rain, carrying the only copy of the movie between them, rewound.