"So—" He started but found he had nowhere to go. The Godfather could not be lied to, and Arty knew that their differences weren't the point. The point was his old reluctance, which had lately risen up like a dormant disease, making him withdraw, making him jittery, glum, guilty in his desire to be lonely.
"Ahty, can I say somethin' ta you? Don't be a putz. You love this woman. You light up when she's around, you take joy in things, which, due respect, doesn't seem ta be what you're best at on your own. Ya let 'er get away, believe me, you're gonna kick your ass about it the resta your life."
Arty took a deep breath. The turned soil had a faintly minty smell, you had to be close to the ground to smell it. "You say that like someone who knows, Vincente."
"I know," the old man said. "I know."
'Tell me about it," said the ghostwriter.
The Godfather had been bent over too long now; the hinge at the bottom of his spine was starting to complain. Still kneeling, he slowly straightened at the waist, balled his fists above his scrawny buttocks as he strained to arch his back. Yellow sunshine poked through the parting strands of his old straw hat. He took the red bandanna from around his neck to mop his face. "Sometime," he said. "Sometime I'll tell ya."
"And about the fig tree," Arty said, "the one you piled the linoleum and tires on."
Vincente gave the echo of a smile from sixty years before.
"And about nightclubs in the forties," said the writer. "And Havana in the old days. And old cars—Stutzes, Packards. And about the code of honor back when it really was a code, a way to live. We still have a lot to talk about, Vincente."
The Godfather said nothing, just knelt there in the warm imported soil. His tangled brows rolled down like awnings, his black eyes slipped away as distant as the hopes and errors of desperate youth, and he listened to the rustling fronds that made an island sound, Latin, like maracas.