Fiction in Commonweal

Although Italians were officially despised by the grownups in Paul’s Irish family, everyone seemed to have at least one Italian best friend.

He was digging in; he was tunneling down and closing up behind.

By the time Diego moved in, I was forty and Diego fifty, our marginal existences long established. We ranted about the torture regime he once fled. We danced tangos.

"And so say all of us," said one of the ex-rapists.