Keeping mine short had an additional advantage, that of convincing dangerous souls that they were dealing with a streetwise lad, not a fragile young lady. I’d had to insist that he keep his woolen cap on that night, especially since I kept his hair cut close to his scalp, just like my own, the better to keep down the lice and fleas. He had a talent for deceit and adored the Game he’d have gone barefoot if I’d let him, just for the effect. Pathetic and adorable, able to melt any heart-save mine, of course. He was wrapped in a hole-pocked horse blanket, because the Game made it necessary for him to look as pathetic as possible. Six years old at most, blond as a German weaver, and thin, a sprinkling of freckles across his nose and cheeks, his head too large for his body, his pale faintly blue eyes too large for his face.
He looked like a cherub then, Tommaso did, though he was emphatically not on the side of the angels. Impatient, I stopped and turned around to see Tommaso addressing someone’s front door. “Wake up! You can’t sleep out here tonight!” “Paolo!” he called out, in that piping baby voice of his. We were barreling down a side street with tall narrow houses crammed side by side, uninterrupted walls of stone and stucco on either side of us, when Tommaso yelled something that finally made me slow. Our chances of cutting a single fat purse were better there I wanted to be home and warm fast as a blink. I didn’t make our usual stop at the Fico Tavern, where the marks were plentiful if not wealthy, but headed straight for the Buco Tavern instead.
I ignored him, of course, and increased my pace until he was too breathless to complain. Because of the cold, I walked so fast I may as well have been running Tommaso gasped and whined because his little legs couldn’t keep up.
So out we went, Tommaso and I, onto mostly quiet cobblestone streets in the pale blue light, the moon huge and glorious in a clear star-riddled sky, the air perfectly still and burning where it touched my exposed face. I would have stayed inside if we hadn’t been out of food and coin, or if the moon, whose light I could never bear to waste, hadn’t been full. The night I was caught with my hand in a gentleman’s pocket-the night my life completely changed-it was burning cold, so bitter I’d never felt anything like it before or since.
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