Heart of the Old Country Page 2

  “What?”

  “Take a shower. It’s hot out today; take a shower.”

  “I take a shower every day. What’s wrong with you?”

  “Nothin’s wrong; it’s hot out. I wanna make sure you take a shower.”

  “So I don’t smell too bad around the garbage?”

  He hung up. Even at that age I should have known better. My father was very sensitive about being in the garbage business. He liked the Sanitation Department to the extent that he loved the politics, titles, and being involved with the union. But he was a real dandy. Never wore his uniform to work. He always left the house in a sports jacket and slacks, with the collar of a lightly perfumed shirt rolled down over the jacket. He carried his uniform—cleaned and pressed undoubtedly to military standards—in an opaque garment bag and changed at work. I never saw my father’s hands dirty. That impressed me as a kid, but later I realized he must’ve been deadwood to work with. He hated picking up garbage and hated being reminded that it was what he did. I think it was why he ultimately faked his injury.

  I caught a bus to South Brooklyn and got there around noon. The depot also housed the union offices and one day a week my father hung around doing shop steward business, which, as far as I could tell, meant doing nothing at all. Chuck Davis, “Chuckie D,” was my father’s partner. Two shop stewards per day were assigned to the union office on a rotating basis, and my father and Chuckie always got the same day. Chuckie was a black version of my old man, which was probably why they got along so well. He was heavyset, with a short, tight afro and a salt-and-pepper goatee. He was every bit the Beau Brummel my father was. It was a good thing they were both union reps, because if they ever had to work on the same crew, nobody’s garbage would get picked up.

  I’d been to the office once or twice before so I knew my way around. They had a big-boned Polish blonde out front who was a receptionist and secretary. Behind her desk was a doorway that led to an inner office with two more desks and chairs, where the reps conducted all that official union business, and a sofa, for the official union naps. The blonde waved me in and I found my father and Chuckie, as I’d expected, half-crocked. Chuckie was at his desk; my old man was sitting on the sofa. They both had paper cups with ice, and a bottle of Wild Turkey stood on the desk in front of Chuck.

  “Suzy,” my father yelled out to the girl, “bring us another cup a’ ice.”

  “Bring two,” Chuckie said, “one for yaself.” He winked at my father.

  They both got up and belched happy birthdays at me while simultaneously shaking my hand, slapping me on the back, and punching my shoulders. I was tense and embarrassed. They hunkered back down in their seats and Suzy came in with two cups of ice. She was chewing a fist-sized wad of Bazooka bubblegum and the sweet smell of it was so powerful that it cut through the bourbon stench that hung in the room.

  “You guys are makin’ it a real party,” she said. “Thanks for the invite. I was gettin’ a complex sitting out there alone.”

  “You never had a complex anything,” my father said, laughing. “We were just waitin’ for the birthday boy.”

  “Oh fuck you,” she said, giggling, then walked over to me with the cups and handed me one. I took it, then looked over at my father.

  “It’s okay,” he said, nodding to me. He turned to Chuckie. “I only let him have beer before.” Chuckie grunted approvingly. “I think we can let you try some good bourbon; just don’t like it too much.”

  Chuck reached over and filled my cup and Suzy’s. I was perched uncomfortably on the edge of my father’s desk, and Suzy was standing very close to me. She hadn’t stepped back after handing me my cup and she hadn’t said a word to me yet.

  “You ever tried bourbon before?” Chuckie asked.

  “No,” I said. My voice sounded a little hoarse. The smell of the liquor was mixing in my nostrils with Suzy’s gum and making me kind of nauseated. I had nothing in my stomach and I’d assumed I was coming here for lunch.

  “Well,” Chuckie said, raising his cup, “it’s a good day for firsts.”

  “Cheers,” Suzy said.

  We all emptied the plastic cups quickly and Chuckie refilled them, killing the bottle.

  The Wild Turkey wasn’t so bad going down. My old man seemed disappointed that I didn’t gag, but then I’d been lying about never having had it before. Just the one cup gave me a buzz, though. Chuck stayed on his feet after pouring the second round. He tossed his back before the remains of his ice could have begun to cool it. My father followed suit, then stood too.

  “Looks like we’re dry,” he said. “That’s no way to run a birthday party. Poor planning, right Chuck?”

  “Piss-poor planning, man. No wonder this union’s going down the fuckin’ toilet.” They both laughed.

  “We’re gonna get another bottle an’ bring back some sandwiches. You two drink slow; this stuff makes you loco.” He and Chuckie left, giggling and wheezing.

  The situation was fairly obvious.

  “How long...”

  “About an hour,” Suzy said, smiling at me as she unbuttoned her blouse. “Plenny a’ time.”

  I made myself throw down the second bourbon. I remembered hoping she’d spit the gum out.

  I couldn’t work myself up to getting angry with my father about it, but lunch left me somewhat depressed. And concerned, of course. If sex made me feel this way, then maybe I was a psycho and would end up a fag or a priest. I thought that the experience would completely destroy my excitement over my upcoming date, which would have to be a letdown now. I was relieved to discover I was wrong. My night out with Donna Vitale was filled with all the thrills and awkward moments that someone without my hour’s worth of worldly experience would have gone through. When I walked her home that night I got a kiss. So I had a first, then a first.

  Funny thing, though, my memory of Suzy, the chunky sofa gymnast, didn’t do anything for me. But Donna, in her hallway that night, with one kiss, could still get my dick stiff as a diamond drill. Just went to show what Gina knew. I was a goddamn romantic.

  She emerged from the shoe store then, remarkably carrying only two small bags. She tossed them over the seat into the back as she climbed in and slid over next to me.

  “What’s the matter?” she asked, resting her hand on my thigh, perilously close to that memory hard-on. “Whatcha thinking about?”

  “What am I thinking about?” I yelled, pushing her hand away. “I’m thinking about where the fuck I’m gonna park this car when we get to Ninety-fifth Street. Do you see this traffic? If you could drive I wouldn’t have to do this shit.”

  She put her hand back in her jacket pocket and moved to her side of the car, sullenly staring straight ahead. I turned the radio on. Loud. If I hurried, maybe I’d catch the last inning.

  Chapter

  3

  The following Monday morning three things were fighting for my attention: pain, the dream, and the telephone. The dream, unfortunately, was being edged out. It involved Lisa from the paint store and was erotic in nature. I tried to keep it but the ringing became more and more intrusive. Eventually I realized I was awake. With consciousness came pain, ebbing in slowly at first, but soon swallowing me completely. I reached out and grabbed the phone.

  “Mikey. Seven o’clock.”

  “Oh God, no,” I moaned.

  “Up, Mike. Let’s go. You up?”

  “I’m up.”

  “You’re not up.”

  “I’m up, I’m up.” I wasn’t up.

  “Come to the window. Wave to Stix.”

  “Lou, I can’t come to the window. I’m in the kitchen. I’m making coffee.”

  “You don’t know how to make coffee, you lying prick; come to the window. Wave to Stix.”

  “Okay. Hold on.”

  I swung my legs around and rested my feet on the floor. My stomach started to shimmy and I had to remain perfectly still for a few seconds. It subsided. I tried standing and then, tentatively, walking. At the window, I pulled
the shade up and sunlight streamed in. The effect on me was vampiric. Across the street on the opposite corner I saw the scarecrow outline of Johnny Stix waving his hand slowly over his head like he was signaling aircraft. I inched the window open, stuck my hand out, and shook it weakly. He saluted, then turned and walked around the corner. I collapsed back on the bed and snatched up the receiver.

  “Okay?”

  “Okay. Stix seen you. You’re up. Now c’mon, let’s go. I got two guys out and Manhattan calls are gonna start rolling in. Come make some money.”

  “You don’t need money when you’re dead.”

  “That’s what you think.” He hung up.

  I put my left arm over my face and lay still. By doing that I managed five more minutes of relatively passive pain before I hiccuped, and felt the shaking and throbbing begin. This was a bad one. No solid food today, I thought, bracing myself. I raced down the hallway, bounced violently off the bathroom doorjamb, and made the bowl with two seconds to spare. It pays to train.

  Half an hour later I staggered around the corner to Big Lou’s, my sociology textbook under one arm. I’d recently taken to carrying a schoolbook into work now and then, but as yet I hadn’t found any reason to open it. Though I would have denied this to anyone who asked, I was already feeling that college held little attraction for me and that it was more the idea of school that had been appealing.

  My shift started at eight, so I thought I’d have a few minutes to pull myself together. As soon as I walked in, the glare from the naked bulb that hung over the card table caught me at just the right angle to set off a small explosion in my head, and I thought I might lose it again. I knew I’d be blinking the image off my retinas for the next twenty minutes.

  Lou’s had been there, in one incarnation or another, for as long as I could remember, and it still looked like a place you’d use temporarily while setting up a real car service. Painfully cheap, pale green woodgrain paneling had been thrown up over the crumbling plaster walls, which showed through at the seams and corners where the particleboard was starting to crack and disintegrate. There had never been a shade or fixture over the light that hung from a wire, and what chairs and tables there were seemed to be of the sort that get older and older without ever achieving the charm of antiques. In contrast to all this was Lou’s desk. It was stunning and ridiculous at the same time. It easily occupied a third of the floor space in the store, and looked like a football field done in mahogany. He’d bought it some years back from one of the rip-off furniture places on Atlantic Avenue downtown, and they had to remove one of the storefront windows to get the damn thing in there. Lou sat behind it, booking three-dollar calls and ordering pizzas, all the time acting like a nineteenth century railroad baron.

  When he saw me, he began struggling out from behind the desk and reaching in his pants pocket at the same time, which meant I was going to be sent out for coffee. Lou was massive, and watching him try to get around his desk in a hurry in the close quarters of the store was usually amusing. He stood about six two and weighed well over 220. He wore his curly black hair fairly long and had a woodsman’s bushy beard. The overall effect inevitably invited jokes about Lou Albano, the old-time professional wrestler. Big Lou didn’t mind at all. He seemed to like it. Sometimes, after a few drinks, he’d hang rubber bands from his beard like Captain Lou used to do before a big match. Then he’d take turns holding everyone in the bar in headlocks, including the women.

  Lou always ran a tight ship at the store, but I had the feeling that Tony, being neighborhood poobah, was a little embarrassed by his kid brother. He didn’t seem to think Lou was serious or presentable enough for a right-hand man, someone who could be groomed to fill his shoes. Even though Tony was fairly young, I occasionally wondered who would take his spot when he retired or died.

  I was trying to maintain my equilibrium in the doorway when Lou got over to me and handed me five dollars.

  “Go around the corner; get some coffee for the guys. It’s on me.”

  “Lou, I’m dying here. Nicky didn’t go? Where is he?”

  “Shades didn’t even have money for gas this morning. Anyway, he went to King’s Plaza. He won’t be back for an hour. C’mon Mikey, before we get busy.”

  Mornings, Nicky was broke about half the time. The way you could tell was that if he had money in his pocket, nobody else could buy breakfast. Coffee, rolls, even an egg sandwich; whatever anybody wanted, Nicky had to pick up the tab. It got annoying but it was just the way he was. “Nigger rich,” Little Joey called it. Joey managed to come up with an anti-black sentiment to cover just about every character flaw known to man. I got a big kick out of him pacing the store, pulling on his dick, and spitting in the corners, all the while lecturing me about what a bunch of animals spades were.

  Four drivers were playing brisk at the card table in the back. Fat Sal was partnered with Danny, a born-again Christian who only drove seasonally when he was laid off from his job at an air-conditioning place. They fought so loudly that sometimes I thought they had to be playing different games.

  “Leash, you cocksucker, leash! You unnerstan’ English? LEASH!”

  “I got no leash. You take a load or I throw trump.”

  “Big trump?”

  “Enormous.”

  “Throw the load.”

  Danny threw the load and it was picked up immediately by the other team.

  “Your mother’s cunt,” Sal said, and threw in his hand.

  “You said throw the load.”

  “That’s cause you got no goddamn leash, you useless fuck.”

  Sal laboriously stood and paid off the other team. Anybody who played partners with Danny paid off double if they lost because he didn’t gamble. If you won, you won double, but I didn’t see where the incentive was for Danny to put his heart into the game. He didn’t drink either. He was probably allowed to screw his wife, as long as he didn’t enjoy it.

  I took the coffee orders and left. When I got back the calls were coming in. I dropped off the coffees, took mine with me, and went to work.

  By early afternoon I felt almost human. The calls had slowed to a nice steady pace with about a half hour between each run. I was resting with my eyes closed, listening to Danny preach loudly at Sal.

  “God’s not gonna care that you had a heart attack behind the wheel in the Battery Tunnel. He’s not gonna care that you couldn’t get to confession in time.”

  The phone rang. “Car service,” Lou barked, before he had the thing halfway to his mouth.

  “He’s not gonna care that you meant to straighten out; that you didn’t know you were gonna die.”

  Lou hung up. “Mike,” he said, “that was Shades. He’s stuck in Sheepshead Bay. Emmons Avenue just off the belt. He wants you to give him a boost.”

  I knew that would kill the rest of the afternoon. I paid Lou my commission and put my jacket on.

  “When you die, all that counts is the state of grace you’re in right then.”

  I walked out and turned to pull the door closed behind me.

  “You see, when you die... when you die...”

  “When you die,” Sal screamed suddenly, leaning into Danny’s face, “God says Fuck You.”

  Shades was sitting in his car reading an old TV Guide when I arrived. I pulled a U-turn and parked nose-to-nose with him for the boost. It wouldn’t take at first, so we left the wires hooked-up and let it charge for a while. Finally it turned over.

  “All right,” I said, letting my hood drop. “I’ll follow you back in case it goes dead again.”

  “I don’t want to take it through the street. I’m gonna run it back and forth on the highway a few times to let it take a charge.”

  “What am I gonna do? Follow you?”

  “Come with me. Leave your car here. I’m not gonna stall out on the highway, man.”

  We ran Nicky’s car up and down from Sheepshead Bay to Starrett City about six times, then rode back to where my car was parked. Nicky killed the engine and
started it three or four times just to make sure. Having done all those important, intelligent things, we left both cars there and went to Joe’s Clam Bar for dinner and a few beers.

  We both had salmon, and an order of raw little necks as an appetizer. Nicky had a shot of Johnny Walker, but I stuck with beer until some real food arrived. My father had told me years earlier that hard liquor caused raw clams to congeal and harden in your stomach. I didn’t know if it was true or not—or even why that would be a bad thing—but the image was disgusting enough to keep me clear of the combination.

  “Cutting back?” Nicky asked.

  “Just till I get something solid in me.” I was too embarrassed to mention my father’s clam theory.

  “Lou say anything about my commissions?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “He says don’t worry about it. You can even up when you see him. And he said the last one is on the house, because you broke down.”

  “No shit?” Nicky brightened visibly. “I guess that’s another round on me. Lou is all right. Too bad his brother’s such a scumbag.”

  “Tony?” I was a little surprised. “I didn’t know you didn’t like Tony.”

  “I didn’t say I didn’t like him. I said he’s a scumbag,” he said evenly.

  “He seems all right to me.”

  “Yeah, he’s a fuckin’ prince. You weren’t too thrilled he took the television from that poor fuck with the kids.”

  “That’s collecting,” I said, suddenly sounding to myself like my father. “It’s just the nature of the game.”

  “Then the nature of the game,” Nicky said, shrugging, “is being a scumbag.” He popped a sauce-drenched clam into his mouth.

  While I thought that one over, the waitress arrived and set our dinners down. If taking that television made Tony a scumbag, just what did it make us? It was the first job I’d ever been asked to do for Tony, and as far as I knew, the first for Nicky as well.

  We’d been approached by Lou to pick up the set from a guy down the block who owed money. I never found out if it had been a gambling debt or a loan, but given the gentleman in question it could easily have been either. Lou came to us with the same solemn look and tone of voice he used for anything more important than sending out for coffee, and asked if we could do Tony a favor. He explained that this poor guy was out of work and had made an offer, and that Tony was generously accepting the TV as payment.