“The anxiety of youth,” says Joey, in apology. The air softens. The women turn back to their circle. Without quite acknowledging it, Sofia and Antonia move closer together. Antonia slides napkins into their rings one by one. Sofia is wiping the tarnish off of a pile of forks. Both of them perk up their ears to listen to the men’s side of the room.

“But, Pop,” says Uncle Legs, Rosa’s oldest brother. “All the Families are solvent right now. It won’t be like last time. We’re all doing good.”

“It won’t be like last time because this is not a pointless war,” says Joey. There is grumbling in response to this.

The Family cannot decide what to think. As Italians, they want to support Italy with their very breaths and bodies, though that’s been a complicated task for years and years of rumors about Mussolini’s new world order, and most of them are unsurprised that the economically devastated villages they and their families fled have fallen prey to this new evil. As immigrants, they are wary of war, and not sure whether to believe the whispers of inhumane atrocities committed against anyone not aligned with the objectives of the Third Reich. As Americans, they want badly to turn away from yet another European catastrophe, to disengage from the tangled knot of politics and culture dragging their cross-Atlantic cousin into the mire.

As businessmen, of a fashion, they are intrigued. Post-Prohibition finances have been shaky and uncertain, stumbling along thanks to protection payments from easily bullied restaurateurs and small shop proprietors—a flower shop known for beautiful and expensive wedding bouquets, a rug importer on Atlantic Avenue, a travel agency that plans the summer vacations of slightly lesser Rockefellers—but it’s not thriving as things did when wine was worth its weight in gold. War, they know, makes some things scarce. Things that can be procured, of course—if you know the right people, and for the right price. And, they realize, war in Europe means that people will want to leave. They will want to get somewhere. And they will need help—especially from a discreet group familiar with all the secret paths and trade routes east of the Mississippi along the Canadian border.

Rosa fills glasses with unfamiliar trepidation. At the end of the last war, Rosa met Joey, and the adrenaline of the whole world propelled them smoothly through their courtship; it filled the room when their conversation lagged; it made starlight and majesty out of the gray buildings that were their horizon. What could happen this time? she thinks, looking for Joey in the room. She is not interested in change. Her beautiful girls, her husband: Rosa is settled in.