7

I checked Dick Tracy, wondering how many locks he had picked with that icepick-pointed jaw, and I saw it was time to head home for dinner. Besides that my head hurt. Too much was going on inside of it, too many delirious, mysterious fandangos all bombarding my brain like it was some kind of run-down cargo spaceship being battered by swarms of pissed-off meteors because an article in Science Magazine had referred to them as “space debris.” I took a last wistful look around for Jane and then started to wend my way droopily home, always watchful, of course, as the shadows of autumn gathered deeper, for a sudden Baloqui sneak attack. Though as a matter of fact I was fond of the jerk. Being both Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, plus a touch of Trabb’s Boy in Dickens’s Great Expectations so relentlessly and quirkily deviling Pip, he had what most of us lack, which is vivid life, which I was practically certain beat vivid death, most especially when these scientists were constantly scaring us by insisting “vivid death” was where the universe was headed, though I suppose that when Miss Doyle heard the news, she said, “So?”

I chose an out-of-the-way route home that would take me past the “Supe” in the hope of maybe spotting Arrigo in the lobby and then somehow luring him out into the street, but, as it happened, when I got there he was standing out in front on a cigarette break. When he saw me coming toward him he froze for a second, his eyes wide and staring, then he flicked the cigarette into the street and tore back into the theater. Mr. Heinz was in the lobby at the time. He caught my eye, turned and stared at the auditorium door as it slowly and silently closed behind Arrigo, took another unreadable look at me and then lowered his head and shook it. So okay, so now I knew who was the real “eyewitness.” But what on earth had ever happened to Arrigo? Three years before on Halloween night a whole bunch of us had stopped in at Boshnack’s for a soda. Boshnack’s radio was blasting and he said to us, “Shhhh, boys! Be quiet, now! Quiet! Listen!” Well, turns out it was Orson Welles with his famous phony “Martian Invasion” broadcast on CBS radio which he did so well it sounded like it really was happening and all these building-sized Martian spaceships had landed in New Jersey and were spewing out death rays left and right and all of us were shivering in our skivvies, that is, all except one of us kids who shook his head and dismissively flipped his hand, sneering, “Ah, come on, you guys! It’s total bullshit!”

It was Eddie Arrigo.

Not to dwell on the matter, but in trying to sort out what had changed him, I would keep coming back to this one other time that we’d all come to Boshnack’s on a sweltering summer night with the demon of boredom clawing at its cage within us. Many years later, when I was struggling for a living in Southern California, I lived for a time in a low-rent apartment complex in Studio City called the Valli Sands where there would be late-night Bing Crosby sightings when he would come to visit his future wife, Kathryn Grant, and where the tenant list ranged from Clint Eastwood—then under contract to Universal Pictures for a hundred a week and doing “wild tracks” of Indian war whoops and such for his pay—to me, then a midnight-to-dawn United Airlines reservations agent, and to the guy in the apartment next to mine who sold Bibles door to door and whose daily big meal was a budget-friendly serving of cabbage boiled in vinegar and lots of brown sugar, whereas mine was a dish of Uncle Ben’s rice that I would cook in tomato sauce instead of water and then add sauted onions and a lot of salt and pepper. It was a dish I would serve at the occasional little ’dos to which I would invite a few residents of the complex. Clint and Maggie, his wife, were at the first such gathering, sitting across from me on a tiny sofa, Clint with his hands clasped tightly around his knees and already beginning his A Fistful of Dollars persona of silent and inscrutable staring, although the look was benign and full of both wonder and a touch of bewilderment, perhaps, about what he was doing on the Universal lot following the day that a studio executive pulled up to a Ventura Boulevard gas station where Eastwood was working as an attendant, took one look at him and offered him a studio contract. Clint had never given a thought to a career in movies. I learned this from Maggie. She spoke. Other than that it was a quiet affair.

But the next time, and times after that, were different as uninvited, struggling young actors showed up, including a young Jayne Mansfield, who was bubbly with a sweet-natured confidence in her future, and her husband, Paul, and their six-month-old baby. Of the three only Paul was quiet. He and Eastwood soon found each other and wound up in a staring contest over whose was the deeper silence. In the meantime, and finally getting to the point—because the crowds at these things were now straining my budget, and not wanting to be outdone by the burgeoning attendance at the Brown Sugar Cabbage parties next door—after hours of nightly experimentation, during which I would imagine myself to be Claude Raines in The Invisible Man, dripping chemicals from vial to vial, I found that mixing 7 UP and sauterne wine in a ratio of one-to-two will give you champagne for about four minutes. The inspiration for this great humanitarian discovery was an inevitable progression, I believe, from that previously mentioned fascinating night in July when the slender green bottle of Vanti Papaya that we handed to Arrigo was actually three parts Vanti and one part collective youthful piss.

Arrigo took a sip or two, and then judged it to be “a little bit off,” so he handed it to Boshnack who, after a test sip, shook his head and agreed, “It’s not right.” It was soon after that, is what I’m saying, that Arrigo started making up incredible stories. Connect the dots. I mean, I had to suspect it was the atomically altered Vanti Papaya that had somehow altered Eddie, although old man Boshnack had sipped at it too and the only bizarre effect it seemed to have was that the very next day he cut the price of chocolate Hooten bars from two to one cent and a Hooten with nuts from three to two. A little strange. Maybe Boshnack’s immune system fought the thing off and he only got a touch since the price of egg creams stayed the same. But then who knows? It could even be that Eddie found out what we’d done and was slyly and secretly eating his cookies as he showed us that revenge is a dish best served not only cold but maybe endlessly as well.

Right after my encounter with Arrigo at the Supe, I doubled back to Second Avenue and as I passed the Chinese laundry who do I see but “Upright” Olsen in what looked like a pretty heavy argument with one of the laundrymen, probably the owner, and then two others came out from the back and were yammering and mad as hell and right away I saw another of my front-page headlines:

And below it the subhead:

I hurried on before Olsen could turn and see me and then afterward say the whole thing was all my fault because if I hadn’t missed the last three meetings he wouldn’t have had to transfer his annoyance with me to the Chinks by raising their protection fee from seven to ten percent.

You can prove almost anything you want if you want to.

Pop had cooked Peruvian shish kekab for dinner with a side of corn and boiled potatoes, and as we ate, our little curve-topped Philco radio was booming out the Saturday shows that began at five o’clock with Kay Kyser’s Kollege of Musical Knowledge (“Make way for Her Nibs, Miss Georgia Gibbs!”), and then Bob Hope, Fred Allen and The Hit Parade, which played the top fifteen songs of the week; and, of course, The Lone Ranger, which in every single show had the Masked Man declare to some badass, “You’re not hurt! I only shot the gun out of your hand!” What I achingly longed for was right after that to just once hear a moan and the thud of a body falling to the ground. Pop loved The Lone Ranger, and the Red Skelton Show even more because of Skelton’s running character “The Mean Widdle Kid” who every week made Pop smile and chuckle with delight at his “If I do, I get a whippin’,” and then after a pause for wicked thought, “I dood it!” Pop was so pleased that I could imitate the voice of the kid to a tee and at random times he’d smile and say, “Joey, doing for me now ‘I dood it!’” It tickled him so! And when I’d done it he’d look down and shake his head and start to chuckle just the way he always did at the name “Baby Snooks” or the voice of his favorite newscaster, Gabriel Heatter. Imitating radio voices was the reason I was popular in school, though later on in my high school years when I discovered I could do a really chilling movie werewolf cry, it was a whole other opposite story inasmuch as not anyone, not even Pop, would ever dream of saying, “Joey, doing for me now scary werewolf call,” most especially on a Sunday in Central Park while we’re watching all these honking, ungrateful seals being fed and complaining like they’d just been harpooned when a fish didn’t score a perfect strike into their mouths as if the City could afford to hire Whitlow Wyatt, the Brooklyn Dodgers star pitcher, to come down there every day at two o’clock to throw flounder straight into the mouths of a bunch of glistening, spoiled little shits.

“What you do today, Joey?”

I shook my head as I chewed and swallowed, and then finally answered Pop, “Not much.”

“Me too.”

Yeah, sure: just busting his hump with that hot dog cart.

I thought of Jane:

“Be good to your father. He loves you so much.”

How could she know such a thing? Were her mom and dad friends with the Pagliarellos? Or was it just a pretty easy guess?

“Something wrong, Joey?”

“What do you mean, Pop?”

“You face. You thinking hard about something.”

I stabbed at the potato with my fork.

“No, nothing, Pop. Really. Just regular.”

“Could be this girl who buys spaghetti for you, Joey?”

“Ah, come on, Pop! I’m okay! I mean, really! I’m fine!”

Pop kept studying me, chewing on the stem of his briar pipe. He wasn’t buying it and I knew it. I was thinking about scads of things: Jane Bent and Mr. Am and the Asp and Baloqui, plus this sense of unreality that would drop over me at times like a Faraday cage reconfigured to block out time, and now and then I would feel, however distantly and through a veil all too freaking darkly, that events were repeating themselves! Not just moments, but in blocks of months—even years! It wasn’t déjà vu, it was déjà everything! At times I even knew what was coming next! Very rarely. But like now. The radio. The Hit Parade. A new “bonus song” about the Lone Ranger:

I knew the words before I heard them!

“Come on, you thinking very hard, Joey. Tell me what about.”

I said, “Homework, Pop.”

What should I have said? I see the future? There are lies that don’t exactly rend the fabric of the universe.

Pop got up and cleared his plate, then came back to the table with a bottle of Schlitz, his favorite beer. He liked its faintly salty taste. I kept eating and he kept on studying me thoughtfully. Meantime, the Hit Parade was still going and now after “Hi-Yo Silver, Hi-Yo” came “The Three Little Fishies”:

Pop turned a blank look to the radio.

Number 3 on the Hit Parade.

I heard a rumble of thunder and then a burst of heavy rain sloshing down against the window panes so loud that you couldn’t hear the song, an event that I’m certain St. Thomas Aquinas would have cited as a “Sixth Way” of proving God’s existence. I started to brood about maybe this was some kind of warning that we ought to start thinking about building an ark in case the “Hut Sut Song” ended up at Number 1:

I said, “Pop, do you pray?”

He was hoisting the Schlitz to his lips when he stopped and looked across the little table at me. “Do I pray? What kind question, Joey? Yes. Yes, I pray. Not with words. With my heart. Be always good to people, Joey. That is prayer.” Looking aside, I just nodded and said quietly, “Right.” Pop was big and very strong and there’d been times when he’d prayed with his fists, but I didn’t think it was such a hot idea just then to mention it or how he once broke a would-be mugger’s arm and then another time the nose of some high school football hero talking trash to a little old lady on account of she’d told him to shut his mouth when he’d called out to a girl in the rumble seat of a car that was stopped at a traffic light, “Hey, you wanna screw?” If I’d asked him what maiming had to do with kindness, I knew he’d just tell me that of all his humanitarian acts these two were possibly the kindest of all inasmuch as, “From now on they be good, Joey. Right?” He took a swig of the beer and then looked me in the eye. “Something wrong, Joey. Tell me. Tell your father.” Which is when my unconscious mind must have decided to run to the front of the bus, grab the driver by the shoulders and shake him awake.

“Be good to your father, Joey.”

The setup couldn’t have been better.

I put on a hangdog face and looked aside.

“Ah, it’s nothin’, Pop. Really.”

“No, is something, Joey. Tell.”

I shook my head and murmured, “No, Pop. No. It’s so selfish.”

“I not care. It’s alright, Joey. Tell. I give you anything.”

“Pop, you’ve given me enough, so just forget it. Okay?”

“No, not okay. I want to know. Now I worry.”

I looked up into his big chestnut eyes. He was scared.

“Oh, no, Pop! I don’t want you to worry!”

“Then must tell me, Joey! Tell!”

“You won’t get mad?”

“No-no-no, Joey! No!”

“Ah, geez! I just hate myself for asking!”

“Asking what, for God’s sake?”

“I need a favor, Pop.”

“A favor? Dot’s all?”

“It’s something big and that’s all I’m going to say.”

Pop buried his face into arms that he’d folded on top of the table and, utterly exasperated, said nothing. A sigh got lost in the wool of his sweater.

“Sheesh, Pop, if it means all that much to you!”

“I waiting,” came the muffled and hopeless murmur.

“I want to sleep in the living room. There. I’ve said it.”

For a couple of seconds Pop didn’t stir, but then he looked up, his wide brow furrowed with incomprehension as he suddenly exploded, “What?”

“See? I knew you’d get mad, Pop! I knew it!”

“No, not mad! Only not understanding, Joey! Why?”

I said, “The fights.”

And then I launched into a story that would have made even the most hardened white tiles in our bathroom, which had seen about everything, weep as I spoke of the loneliness of the long-distance bedroom sleeper, and how I’d be scared by “funny noises,” like these creaks and little spooky tap-tap-taps in the ceiling, and most times I couldn’t sleep on account of I’d be thinking so hard about the Health Club fights I was missing, not to mention having windows that didn’t look out to darkness but out to the street and familiar sounds: cars passing, punches and curses—anything but tap-tap-tap! All a steaming heap of cow-flop, of course, but there was no other way to give Pop what he needed and deserved: a real bed with a downy mattress.

“Do not cry, Joey. Please.”

I rubbed a knuckle at the corner of my eye.

“I won’t.”

“Couch not comfortable, Joey.”

“Not for me, Pop. I’m smaller,” I told him.

Well, he studied me for quite a little while until he turned toward the faint sound of jukebox music as someone either entered or left the Health Club. Then he turned back to me and said, “Okay.”

“Oh, thanks, Pop! Thanks! Oh, wow!”

I did everything but slobber and kiss Pop’s hand.

He still seemed to be thoughtfully appraising me.

“You go out tonight, Joey?”

I said, “No, Pop. Too much rain. I’ll do homework.”

Sister Joseph had assigned us to write fifteen hundred words on the topic “Why St. Francis of Assisi Talked to Birds but Not Fish.”

“Try to make it original,” she’d said.

Pipe stem in his teeth, Pop nodded and said, “Good boy.”

I went back to my dinner feeling happy as Larry. Pop got up with his beer and walked over to a window where he stood and looked out at a fall of rain so heavy it seemed almost on the verge of violence. “Tonight they fight inside,” he said quietly. “Too bad.” Then he turned to me and smiled mysteriously and in a flash I saw the painting and the caption:

Peruvian Male Mona Lisa with Beer

These were mists I couldn’t penetrate.

Ever.

Later that night while still doing my homework—I had narrowed the saint’s disinterest in fish, by now, to a single species: carp—Pop came out of the bedroom in his pajamas, gave me a hug and then went back inside and closed the door. A second later he opened it a crack and said, “Joey?”

“Yeah, Pop?”

“There is woman at school she really having green hair?”

“Where’d you hear that?”

“Then is true?”

“Yeah, it’s true. Pop, who told you about that?”

He said, “Tony. Tony Pagliarello. What her name, Joey?”

“Doyle, Pop. Her name is Miss Doyle.”

“I want to meet her.”

What was this?

I said, “Why?”

He wasn’t looking at me now, he was staring just over my shoulder with this faraway look in his eyes. I couldn’t tell what it was. Maybe sadness? Fond remembrance? Both?

He said softly, “Tony say to me she crazy.”

Then he mutely turned away and closed the door.

I slept on the living room sofa that night and it wasn’t that bad except I dreamed I was deep in the Amazon jungle desperately searching for something important even though I had no clue as to what it might be or what these Hari Krishna bozos were doing there cavorting and dancing in a circle all around me while they’re shaking and slapping at their tambourines while chanting over and over again, “What a schmuck!”

Never mind. I slept deeply and oh so well.

I woke up to church bells ringing. Not St. Stephen’s, though. Farther off. I sat up and scratched at my chest through my red-and-white striped pajamas while I looked out the window and could see that it was still coming down in buckets. Big stretch. Big yawn. No sound from the bedroom. Pop must have still been asleep and dreaming that he’d died and gone to heaven. I got up and was padding toward the kitchen for some juice when I happened to look down through a window to the street across the way and saw a woman in a fisherman’s yellow raincoat and hat standing holding an umbrella. She was staring up at the window and when I stopped and stared back she started happily and excitedly smiling and waving to me. Then my heart jumped a little because she sort of resembled Jane, I thought. But then I saw she was older, in fact a lot older. She quit waving and blew me a kiss.

“Joey?”

I turned my head. Pop had cracked open the bedroom door. He was looking kind of down. Almost cranky.

“Yeah, Pop?”

He shook his head, looking even more troubled.

“I am sorry, Joey, very, very sorry, but I cannot sleep in bedroom. I cannot. I do not know what is cause. Maybe noises like you say. I do not know, Joey. Habit, maybe. Something. I have to sleep again on couch. That’s alright? Maybe now you should be always leaving bedroom door open. When they fighting very loud you still be able to hear. It’s okay, Joey? Sorry. Very sorry.”

“Yeah, that’s fine, Pop. No problem.”

“I know.”

So what was that?

I watched him peering out at me as he slowly closed the bedroom door, and then I turned to look down at the woman below on the street. But she was gone. Vanished. Not in evidence. I even opened the window and leaned out into the rain, looking this way and that, but there wasn’t any trace of her. Drenched, I shut the window and went on into the kitchen where I poured myself a glass of orange juice and then stood with my back to the icebox, sipping and thinking about the woman blowing me a kiss. There were lots of crazy people in Gotham. Two days before there was a girl walking past me on Second Avenue shouting “Government!” over and over at the top of her voice and not sounding all that terribly pleased. My mind went to Pop and the sleeping arrangements, and, Oh, well, I tried, I thought. I tried. At least that was something. But then as I was lifting the juice to my mouth again, all of a sudden I stopped as I remembered something: Was that a sly smile that I’d seen on Pop’s face when I was watching him close the bedroom door? Now I heard the grinding of a faucet handle being turned and then water running hard in a bathroom sink, and looking off I smiled faintly and nodded as, “Oh, yeah,” I softly murmured. “Oh, yeah.”

Peruvians. Who among them could you possibly trust?