“We aren’t going to get footage of her in the classroom?” Rivera’s tone made it clear that this wasn’t really a question but the opening salvo in a battle.

“And they’ve got an editing suite—” Tony began, and then stopped, entranced by what he was reading. He thrust the fax sheet under her nose. “We can’t rush out of there, Ang. It would be the death of us if we took shortcuts on this one.”

Angie shot him her sharpest look. “You mope, when have you ever known me to take a shortcut?”

“So we won’t be back here in September,” Tony said. “Admit it.”

One thing Angie prided herself on was knowing how to pick her battles, and this one, she could see very clearly, was well and truly lost. She nodded. “Okay.”

Rivera did a shimmy that made her earrings dance while Tony rushed to the windows. He leaned out over Washington Street and bellowed. “So long, Hoboken!”

Rivera touched Angie on the wrist and she jumped. “Angie, Zula Bragg asked for us.”

“She did,” Angie agreed.

“So what’s the problem?”

“No problem,” Angie said, producing her biggest, brightest, falsest smile. “Not a problem in sight.”

Tied to the Tracks was located in a warren of small rooms over An Apple a Day, the diner that belonged to Angie’s parents. The advantages of this arrangement were substantial: they paid rent only in those months when they had the money to do so, and food was always available in abundance. The disadvantages were small by comparison. Ten-gallon cans of tomatoes stacked in every corner, boxes of pasta, crates of eggplant: these were things she could live with. Angie repeated that to herself as she went downstairs an hour later, hoping to slip out without being noticed. At least for now; at least until the signed contract was in the mail.

“Give it up, Angie,” her father’s voice boomed as she opened the door to the street. “I got your lunch plate right here waiting for you.”

They all turned to look at her. The regulars along the counter, her mother at the cash register, her aunt Bambina picking up an order at the window, three dozen other faces she saw pretty much every day of her life. Angie went to eat the lunch her father had dished up for her.

Tommy Mangiamele was a long twist of a man with a shock of white hair neatly plastered to his head from a middle part, a great hooked nose, and liquid brown eyes that missed very little of what went on around him. He slid into the booth across from his daughter and put his coffee cup in front of himself.

“So what’s all the dancing around? I thought the ceiling was going to come down on our heads. Bad for business, noise like that.” He wiggled his eyebrows to make sure she wasn’t taking him seriously.