"All right," she said, because that was in her mind, too.

And then he looked at her again, thoughtfully. "Eduardo said I was a fool because you weren't my girlfriend."

"Did he?" Annarita said. Gianfranco nodded. She wagged a finger at him. "If Eduardo wants to tell you how to run your railroads, that's one thing. If he wants to tell you how to run your life, that's different. It's none of his business, you hear?"

"Si, Annarita." Gianfranco sounded more subdued than usual. "But you know, it might not be so bad."

She almost laughed in his face. Only the thought that she'd keep on seeing him at breakfast and supper every day held her back at first. Her family and the Mazzillis needed to be able to get along with each other if they could. Because they'd shared so much for so long, though, they did have some notion of what made each other tick. Yes, Gianfranco was a year younger than she was. But there was more to him than she'd thought, even if it came out in his game and not in something really important. He might not be her very first choice for a boyfriend, but she realized she could do worse. A couple of years earlier, he would have been an impossible object. These days…? She looked at him with new eyes. No, he wasn't so bad.

She tried not to let any of that show. She didn't want Gianfranco getting a swelled head. That would make him impossible. All she said was, "Well, we've both got other things to worry about right now." He just nodded, which was a point in his favor.

Annarita found out how right she was when she came out of Russian that morning. She ran into Maria Tenace on the way to her next class. No, that wasn't how it happened. Maria was lying in wait for her outside Comrade Montefusco's door, and waved a newspaper in her face as soon as she came out.

"Did you see this?" Maria shouted. "Did you?"

"If you don't get out of my way, Maria, you'll see stars, 1 promise," Annarita said.

The other girl paused for a moment, then decided Annarita wasn't kidding and backed up a step. That was smart, because Annarita would have loved an excuse to knock her block off. But Maria kept waving the paper. "Did you see the Red Banner? Did you see what's in it?" Her loud, shrill voice reminded Annarita of the noise a dentist's drill made.

"What's in the Red Banner, Maria?" Annarita asked resignedly. She paid as little attention to the Party newspaper as she could. Any newspaper was full of propaganda, but the Red Banner stuffed it in the way a sausagemaker shoved ground meat and spices into a salami casing.

"Here. See for yourself."

Maria pointed to the story she had in mind. CAPITALIST PLOTTERS ARRESTED IN ROME! the headline screamed. The article said the Security Police had seized seven men and a woman on suspicion of trying to undermine Marxism-Leninism-Stalinism. They were accused of planning to set up a corporation to enrich themselves and grind down their workers. And they were supposed to have got their ideas from playing games at a shop called The Conductor's Cap, a place that sounded an awful lot like The Gladiator.

When the Security Police came to this wicked den of iniquity, they found the proprietor and his henchmen fled, the story said. Their capture is expected momentarily, for they cannot hope to escape the aroused forces of Socialist justice.

"You should have listened to me." Vindictive pleasure glowed on Maria's face. It bubbled in her voice, like noxious gas bubbling up in swamp water.

Even if she knew what she was talking about, her attitude disgusted Annarita. "Why should anyone listen to you, Maria?" she asked.

"Because I was right!" Maria exclaimed.

"A stopped clock is right twice a day. Nobody pays any attention to it anyway," Annarita said.

She got what she wanted-she made Maria angry, too. It wasn't pretty. It was scary, because Annarita could see Maria putting her in a mental card file. Subversive, the card said. Reactionary: Capitalist sympathizer. Those were the cards that spawned denunciations, all right.

"Go ahead. Have your joke," Maria said now. "But they'll come after The Gladiator, too. And do you know what they'll do then? They'll come after you. And do you know what else? I'll be glad!"

She stalked off, as well as anyone so dumpy could stalk. People stared from her to Annarita and back again. Annarita tried to laugh it off. But laughter didn't come easy, not this time.

Five

Gianfranco heard about The Conductor's Cap from Annarita the next morning. "It might be a good time to stay away from The Gladiator for a while," she said. "If the Security Police do crack down, you don't want to be there when it happens."

"Why? Do you think they won't get my name?" Gianfranco said. "Not likely, not with the time and money I've spent there. Besides, I hope I know who my friends are."

The look Annarita gave him said she might be seeing him for the first time. "That's… brave, Gianfranco," she said after a long pause. "It's brave, but how smart is it? What can you do for your friends if the Security Police are feeding you truth drugs or beating you with rubber hoses or doing any of the other wonderful things they do?"

He shivered. He couldn't help it. Stories about what the Security Police did to people were limited only by the storyteller's imagination. The worse they sounded, the more likely they were to be true. So everybody said, anyway. Gianfranco didn't know whether what everybody said was true, but he didn't have any reason to doubt it here.

Maybe my jather could keep me safe, he thought. Plenty of Party officials' children stayed out of trouble when other kids without connections ended up in deep. But if he got arrested on charges having to do with capitalism, would the Security Police care whose son he was? He didn't think so.

And he didn't think he ought to rely on his father here anyway. "All I've done is play games and read books," he said. "How bad can that be?"

"As bad as the Security Police want to make it," Annarita said, which was bound to be true. "Don't do anything silly, that's all."

By the way she talked, he half expected to see Security Police vans in front of Hoxha Polytechnic to carry off all the students who ever went into The Gladiator. No vans there. Everything seemed normal. Everything was normal. He had an ordinary day. He didn't butcher his algebra quiz, but he didn't think he aced it, either.

As soon as the closing bell let him escape, he headed for the Galleria del Popolo. It had started to drizzle by then, but the glassed-over roof held the rain at bay. He bought a couple oi biseotti and a Fanta to keep his own engine steaming while he played at The Gladiator.

Only one thing wrong-the shop was closed. When he tried the door, it was locked. Looking inside, he didn't see anybody. He went to the leather-goods shop next door. "Where is everybody?" he asked a man setting out wallets.

"Beats me," the fellow answered. "They never opened up today."

"It sure looks empty in there." Gianfranco remembered what had happened to people who played at The Conductor's Cap down in Rome. Worry in his voice, he said, "They aren't in trouble, are they? I mean, the Security Police didn't come for them or anything?"

"Not that I know of. What would the Security Police want with a game shop, for heaven's sake?" The man laughed to show how silly he thought that was. Gianfranco wished he thought it was silly, too. The man went on, "Scusi, per piacere, but I have to put these out." He reached for more wallets.

Get lost, kid. That was what he meant, even if he made it sound more polite. "Grazie" Gianfranco said, and mooched out of the shop, his hands in his pockets. He stood there on the sidewalk, staring at The Gladiator. It was as if the place would magically open up if he just stared hard enough.