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propped against the ink-stand was a small hand mirror into which he stared as he worked the point of a pencil along the line of his nose. He was counting his freckles. Last night he had slept with his face smeared with lemon juice: it was supposed to be wonderful for the wiping out of freckles. He counted, ninety-three, ninety-four, ninety-five … A sense of life’s futility occupied him. Here it was, the dead of winter, with the sun showing itself only a moment in the late afternoons, and the count around his nose and cheeks had jumped nine freckles to the grand total of ninety-five. What was the good of living? And last night he had used lemon juice, too. Who was that liar of a woman who had written on the Home Page of yesterday’s Denver Post that freckles ‘fled like the wind’ from lemon juice? To be freckled was bad enough, but as far as he knew, he was the only freckle-facedWop on earth. Where had he got these freckles? From what side of the family had he inherited those little copper marks of the beast? Grimly he began to poll around his left ear. The faint report of the economic effects of Eli Whitney’s cotton gin came to him vaguely. Josephine Perlotta was reciting: who the hell cared what Perlotta had to say about the cotton gin? She was a Dago – how could she possibly know anything about cotton gins? In June, thank God for that, he would graduate from this dump of a Catholic school, and enroll in a public high school, where the wops were few and far between. The count on his left ear was already seventeen, two more than yesterday. God damn these freckles! Now a new voice spoke of the cotton gin, a voice like a soft violin, sending vibrations through his flesh, catching his breath. He put down his pencil and gaped. There she stood in front of him – his beautiful Rosa Pinelli, his love, his girl. Oh you cotton gin! Oh you wonderful Eli Whitney! Oh Rosa, how wonderful you are. I love you, Rosa, I love you, love you, love you!
    She was an Italian, sure; but could she help that? Was it her fault anymore than it was his? Oh look at her hair! Look at her shoulders! Look at that pretty green dress! Listen to that voice! Oh you Rosa! Tell ’em Rosa. Tell ’em about that cotton gin! I know you hate me, Rosa. But I love you, Rosa. I love you, and some day you’ll see me playing center field for the New York Yanks, Rosa. I’ll be out there in center field, Honey, and you’ll be my girl, sitting in a box seat off third base, and I’ll come in, and it’ll be the last half of the ninth, and the Yanks’ll be three runs behind. But don’t you worry, Rosa! I’ll get up there with three men on base, and I’ll look at you, and you’ll throw me a kiss, and I’ll bust thatold apple right over the center field wall. I’ll make history, Honey. You kiss me and I’ll make history!
    ‘ Arturo Bandini! ’
    I won’t have any freckles then, either, Rosa. They’ll be gone – they always leave when you grow up.
    ‘ Arturo Bandini! ’
    I’ll change my name too, Rosa. They’ll call me Banning, the Banning Bambino; Art, the Battering Bandit …
    ‘ Arturo Bandini! ’
    That time he heard it. The roar of the World Series crowd was gone. He looked up to find Sister Mary Celia looming over her desk, her fist pounding it, her left eye twitching. They were staring at him, all of them, even his Rosa laughing at him, and his stomach rolled out from under him as he realized he had been whispering his fancy aloud. The others could laugh if they pleased, but Rosa – ah Rosa, and her laughter was more poignant than all others, and he felt it hurting him, and he hated her: this dago girl, daughter of a wop coal miner who worked in that guinea-town Louisville: a goddamn lousy coal miner. Salvatore was his name; Salvatore Pinelli, so low down he had to work in a coal mine. Could he put up a wall that lasted years and years, a hundred, two hundred years? Nah – the dago fool, he had a coal pick and a lamp on his cap, and he