Last Dance, Last Chance

recalled.
    Frank Rago belonged to the laborers’ union, Local 210, an all-Italian union, and it provided backup and friends. Like many other East Coast cities, Buffalo was—and still is—part Italian, part Irish, and part Polish, part African American with strong ethnic neighborhoods.
    Debbie and Carmine went to Maple West Elementary School, Mill Middle School, and Williamsville South High School, as did all their friends. At Christmas, their extended family got together—all the aunts and uncles and cousins—and Caroline Rago roasted a turkey and made two hundred raviolis.
    Their lifestyle changed dramatically when Frank Rago had a massive heart attack when he was only thirty-eight. Everyone was afraid he wasn’t going to make it, but he survived. However, he never came all the way back to the strong man he had once been. Debbie’s father was disabled and couldn’t return to the rigors of construction.
    Frank became a house-husband long before the concept was generally accepted. Carmine was grown and out of the house, and Frank stayed home to look after Debbie while Caroline worked full time at the mall. Their roles changed, but their family stayed as solid as the concrete that Frank had once poured. Debbie grew closer to her father because he was home taking care of her, unlike her friends’ fathers, who were at work all day. She accepted that there were luxuries she couldn’t have and that she wouldn’t have an easy ride to college. Instead, she had to work for spending money and bought her own clothes and helped her parents as soon as she was old enough.
    “I went to work when I was 16,” Debbie said. “I sold clothes at the mall, too—and then I got a job in a pharmacy. I was a pharmacy technician, and I stayed with Georgetown-Leader from 1975 to 1982.”
    Carmine grew up to be a very tall, husky man and went to work for the Niagara Falls Transit Authority (NFTA) as a bus driver. He was still protective of Debbie, even though she had a feisty personality and insisted she could take care of herself. Caroline and Frank Rago had done a good job raising their children despite Frank’s illness. They didn’t have a big house and financial security, but that didn’t matter. Their church and their extended family meant a lot to them, and to Carmine and Debbie, too.
    Debbie Rago was very pretty, with dark hair, huge eyes, and a great smile. She was five feet four and weighed only a little over a hundred pounds. Like all teenagers, she perceived flaws when she looked in the mirror, and she hated her nose, sure that it was too big, and unable to see how attractive she really was. Debbie dated only casually through her teens, and she had never fallen in love.
    After high school graduation, Debbie lived at home and paid her share. She was skilled at counting out pills, checking them to be sure they matched prescriptions, and dealing with customers. The Ragos were such a solid family unit that she had no particular desire to find an apartment of her own. There would be time for that later.
    Debbie was 20 before she met the man who seemed to embody everything she had ever hoped for—and more. On Friday and Saturday nights, her crowd of friends stopped in one bar or another, not really to drink but to socialize and dance and, hopefully, to meet someone special. It was a summer when young people were consumed with disco dancing, inspired by movies like Grease and Saturday Night Fever. Many years later, it was easy for Debbie to remember every detail of the night she met Anthony Pignataro. Their meeting followed the scenario she had carried in her head for years. It was like a scene from a movie.
    It was in early July, 1978. Debbie knew right away that Anthony was perfect for her. “I met him first in the parking lot of The Lone Star,” she recalled. “I was with a girlfriend and I was driving and I cut the wheel too hard and hit a wall—just grazed it a little bit. Anthony was watching, and he kidded me about my driving. He said I hit the wall because I was too busy looking at him.”
    In a way that was true. Anthony was “very good looking,” almost six feet tall, and Debbie was instantly attracted to him. He had a full head of hair and classic, balanced features, and she thought he could have been a movie star—he was that great looking.
    But he was dating one of her acquaintances, so technically he was off limits. Debbie stood at the edge of the crowd and watched Anthony a little wistfully as he