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cafés and social clubs, which the Italians tolerated because these donkeys from Albania kept Latinos from overwhelming Arthur Avenue and turning it into a second South Bronx.
    The Albanians never bought property. They rented from Italian landlords and didn’t interfere with the local mob bosses. These donkeys had become the enforcers of the Neapolitan social club, which had dominion over Arthur Avenue and the Belmont section of the Bronx. But Belmont was a landlocked island surrounded by the Latino wild men of Tremont and Fordham Road. It was the natural barriers of the Bronx Zoo and Quarry Road that kept the wild men away from Belmont—Arthur Avenue was hard to find—and also the Albanians, who had their own wild men. Their chieftain was Lord Lekë, and he held sway over Bathgate Avenue, at the ragged edge of the old Italian neighborhood.
    It was this Albanian wild man who coveted Angela, had seen her in the market, had thought of kidnapping her, but didn’t want to bring an earthquake to Arthur Avenue. So he sent out his spies on a reconnaissance mission. They discovered her with that jailbird, Robertson, who was a complete outsider, having grown up in Montana or some other place that didn’t really exist in the minds of the Albanians. Lord Lekë and his clan sucked him deeper and deeper into their gambling dens, offered him access to their own harem of whores, and then put the screws on him. Either Robertson signed Angela over to his clan or Lekë would send him to live with the snow leopards in the Bronx Zoo.
    â€œBut Miss Angela is not a cow,” the jailbird tried to reason. “And I cannot sign her over to you, Lord Lekë.”
    â€œBut you could persuade her about my charms. . . . She doesn’t have to live on Bathgate Avenue. All she has to do is visit me once, and I will cancel your debt.”
    Despite his fears, Robertson couldn’t present such a proposal to Angela. All he could do was twist his pieces of wire into some miniature of Lekë’s long nose and winter cape. And Angela, who’d been through the medieval rites and rituals of prison life, understood right away.
    â€œThat Albanian bastard thinks your markers are also mine, and that he can paw me whenever he wants.”
    Robertson didn’t say a word. His eyes practically disappeared inside his skull, and Angela knew that he would either fall into his own mad oblivion or run away. But he didn’t run. And one morning he failed to show up at work. Angela found him across Quarry Road, at St. Barnabas. His face was a mask of bruises. And Angela couldn’t see much else under his hospital gown.
    She started to cry. “Why didn’t you run home to Montana?”
    â€œMy home is in the Bronx,” he said, “with you.”
    He’d continued his wire menagerie on the night table near his bed. Leopards and rhinos, ostriches and giraffes, like the inhabitants of some new Noah’s ark. She visited him every evening after work, sat beside him, and after having sworn to herself that she’d never knit, sew, or cook for a man, she knit her balding knight a sweater. But St. Barnabas couldn’t hold him forever.
    So Angela did what she had to do. She couldn’t have gone to the Neapolitans at their club, because she was a Latina and a little freak who liked women as much as men. She’d never been to Bathgate Avenue before, though it was five minutes from the market where she worked. She’d seen the Albanians at Dominick’s; they always occupied the last two tables, always ate alone; they brought their own cotton napkins, their own knives and forks, and if one of the Neapolitan lords entered the restaurant, they would salute him with their wine glasses and return to their incredible gluttony. Dominick’s had no menus, only markers on the wall. But each Albanian went through Dominick’s secret repertoire of pasta dishes, each had a salad meant for five, and