The End by Salvatore Scibona

the sparrow mate with the crow, and so forth.”
    Ciccio came back into the dining room with a dish towel around his neck like a scarf.
    “Ciccio has been listening?” she said.
    “More or less,” said the boy.
    “Ciccio may now describe his opinion.”
    “Yesterday,” he said, “in the early paper I saw an update, like, how that most of the ones that defected were white guys. One of them who got out said the ones who stayed were sure there was going to be a Communistical revolution worldwide, even right here in our own country, like, in a few months. So they figured they’d just cool their heels in China and wait for America to go socialist.”
    “Your conclusions?” she said.
    “They want to betray the government of the USA but not the place of the USA.”
    “Very good. Now then”—she turned to Rocco—“my reading tells me that the sparrow and the crow cannot mate, as they are different species. However, mulattos, such as in the Caribbean they have many, demonstrate that black can mate with white and produce offspring. Therefore black and white are the same species and your metaphor has collapsed.” When the boy had come in she’d stopped speaking in English, but now she was switching from Italian to English and back again from one sentence to the next. “You are confusing physically impossible with morally repugnant. What you really meant to say when you said ‘mate’ was ‘live side by side with,’ which is distasteful enough.” A corner of the tablecloth was pulled taut by her twisted fingers.
    “All this time, you know, I’ve never been inside your house,” Rocco said abruptly.
    “Oh, that can’t be!” she said. “Oh, Mr. LaGrassa, I’m so ashamed. I thought at least—it can’t be!”
    “On the porch and in the garden a few times but not inside.”
    “I’m full to my eyes with regret,” she said. “I’ve never been in your house either.”
    The only untidiness about this room was that the window looked out on the peeling, mud-splattered eyesore that was the rear of his bakery. He had looked at his own reflection in the other side of these windows—while he had the day’s first smoke, early in the morning, when all her lights were out and the blinds were pulled—maybe each day for the last thirty years.
    “So what’s all this about, just curiously? What’s the occasion that today I am asked to come in?”
    There was a silence while she probably tried to put together the words of an apology for having believed at first what the newspaper had said about Mimmo. Rocco wanted to say it was a case of no harm, no foul.
    “The occasion?” she said, brightening. “Why, it’s your day off, naturally!”
    His streak was over. His secondhand suit was forty years old. He wore it carefully so that he could be buried in it.
    She refilled the glasses. “You’re in a position to judge, Rocco. Which is better, work or play?”
    He had assumed his visit was concluding, but now his glass was full again. His back eased into his chair. A band in the street could be heard amassing. Horns blared. Somebody was banging cymbals. Ciccio started playing a game with them before they knew what he was doing, and before they knew it they were playing along. Rocco recollected from his bottommost depths the pleasure of company, of talking when it didn’t matter what the topic was. Behind how many windows for how many years had others laughed and talked of nothing while he had organized his life to avoid them? He had been wasteful of himself—he had drained himself down the drain.
    “Hail,” Ciccio said, “bombs, volcanic ash.”
    “What is this?” Mrs. Marini said.
    “Birds that have heart attacks.”
    “Objects descending from the clouds!” Rocco said.
    “Oh, good, a game. My turn now,” she said. “The sun. A pumpkin. A twenty-dollar gold coin.”
    “Things that are orange,” Ciccio said.
    “You can do better than that, Costanza,” she said, slapping the back of her hand.
    “Gather