But Angelo’s favorite outing was going to the movies. The movies weren’t expensive. They’d watch the Keystone Kops, and Charlie Chaplin, who’d settled in America and switched from stage to screen. They’d see D. W. Griffith’s great stories over and over. From the moment that the organist started to play, Angelo’s face would become rapt. He also had an amazing memory, and he could name every movie his favorite stars had performed in, and facts about their performances and lives in the way that other kids could remember baseball scores. He followed the careers of Mary Pickford and Lillian Gish with special devotion.

These stars, however, seemed to be the only women in Angelo’s life. Salvatore liked going out with girls, and one day he wanted to marry, but not until he’d saved up some money. In the meantime, once a week, he’d make a visit to the old Tenderloin District, around Broadway in the Thirties. There were plenty of prostitutes in Little Italy, but he preferred to keep this part of his life private. Uncle Luigi knew what he did, and always cautioned him to be careful. “Do you know,” he told him, “they made it so difficult for our troops to get rubbers in the war that nearly three-quarters of our boys caught something?” He even told him where he could buy the rarer latex ones. Salvatore took precautions. As he told his uncle, with a shrug: “Whores cost money, but it’s better than going crazy.”

Salvatore wasn’t sure why Angelo had so little contact with women. Perhaps he was too shy. Salvatore wondered if he ought to do something about it, but Uncle Luigi advised him to leave well alone.

What worried Uncle Luigi was not Angelo’s leisure, but his work. When Salvatore had become a bricklayer, Angelo had quietly joined him, and whether or not it was thanks to the weights he still worked out with, he had grown into quite a wiry young man, so he could handle the physical labor without difficulty.

“But he shouldn’t be laying bricks,” Uncle Luigi would protest. “He has talent.” Uncle Luigi might have abandoned his foolish dream that Angelo should be an architect, but there were other things the young man could be: a house painter, a decorator, something at least where he could use the gifts God gave him. It seemed, though, that Angelo preferred to work with his brother. Yet he’d never stopped drawing. Salvatore might go out to a bar after supper, but Angelo would stay at the kitchen table, occasionally reading a book, but usually drawing. And at these times, his young face would take on a look of concentrated intensity. Sometimes, coming home early, Salvatore had entered the room and stood for several minutes beside Angelo while he was drawing before Angelo even noticed that he was there. Uncle Luigi had taken some of the drawings, framed them and sold them to customers at the restaurant. But his attempts to persuade Angelo to take orders for pictures from customers had so far gotten nowhere. “I get paid for laying bricks,” he told his uncle with a smile, “and then I can draw what I like.”