THE END OF AN ERA
As I come close to the end of my long, victorious journey, I’m still joyous -having snagged the job at The Fox Hole! Approaching my house, I see my cousin, Skinny, come across the street walking their German Sheppard, Heidi, in front of his house, across the street. He has his baseball glove on, and is tossing a baseball in the air repeatedly. I can’t wait to tell him my whole story. I’m so overwhelmed with excitement that I run to catch up to him.
“Skinny! Skinny! Holy shit, man, you’re never going to believe what happened today! I got a job, man.”
Whap! Whap! He pounds the baseball loudly into his glove.
“At the Fox Hole! You know, that Mafia restaurant on the other side of town!”
Whap! Whap! Whap!
You should see this place man- the guy that owns it - has all these Frank Sinatra pictures all over the place and -
Whap! Whap! Whap!
My eyes keep watching the ball pound into his glove, and it’s so loud and annoying, I can’t even hear myself talk.
“Do you gotta do that, man?!” I finally yell, irritated.
“What?”
“With the baseball! I’m trying to tell you something.”
Whap! Whap! He starts looking towards Floral Street. Finally, I grab the ball out of his glove.
“Hey, gimme the ball!” he retorts.
He keeps lunging for it, as I hold it away from him.
“C’mon, man - I’m telling you about -"
“Oh my God! he yells - what happened?!"
He points to the street. I turn around quickly to look, and he grabs the ball from my hand.
“Dickweed!” We got a game around the corner with Turski and them! They’re waiting for me!"
"Yeah, but I’m trying to tell you-"
“Good, I’m glad you got it- tell me after the game!”
With that, he turns, walks up the front steps with Heidi, and shuts the door. I look down, and pick up a baseball card he must have dropped. Sparky Lyle. The door slam shut.
A stinging pain rushes through my heart so quickly and sharply, that I almost fall down. Like a line drive to heart.
I don’t exactly know why, but this job at the Fox Hole, is going to change everything, somehow. I don’t even know if I want it to happen, but I feel, suddenly, like a part of my life is over. Skinny and me had been inseparable for years, we shared everything - everything. But for the last couple of months, there’s been a gradual distance between us. All these visions and memories of me, Skinny and Ricky watching Creature Features and eating Cocoa Puffs on Saturday morning. Endless baseball games on Floral Street. The clubhouse. Breaking into Daniel’s house. All these things flash through my mind. My emotions do an abrupt 180. Man, it is painful. I feel tears involuntarily forming in the corners of my eyes, even though I try to hold them back. I put the Sparky Lyle card in my pocket, and walk across the street to my house.
THE CELEBRATION!
So I ACED that interview - and I am PSYCHED! I will now be working at The Fox Hole in two days!
As I make my way downstairs to the bathroom, I can feel that pressure in my shoulders and neck that I needed to put on my best hard guy act. Now I want to let it out. The rush makes me feel like a ball in a pinball machine. I want to ricochet off the walls too. I want to light up the fuckin’ room. Ding! Ding! Ding! Free game!
When I get to the bathroom, I look under the stalls, to make sure nobody’s in there.
“Yeah! Holy shit! Yeah! Motherfucker! Motherfucker! You did it! Son of a bitch!” I get down on that cold white tile floor, and run off thirty push-ups, just like that. I get up all flushed and red, and the memories, the trapped, constricted feeling of oppression flush over me. Of not having any money to do anything, having to listen to my father’s badgering, and Jack the Barber’s nonsense. Everybody trying to impose their shit on me- it all comes flooding back, as I look at myself in the full-length mirror. Spontaneously, almost unconsciously, I morph into my boxing stance, and start shuffling.
“Overhand left-ooh- jab, jab, jab with the right- to the body- to the body-
You can’t hurt me- you can’t hurt me- straight left to the head- again- again- oh- he scores heavy! Ok, shuffle! Dance-dance-that’s right- float like a butterfly, sting like a bee! Right uppercut- left hook to the jaw- ugh- ugh- ugh! Vicious combination to the body! Oooh- he’s hurt, he’s hurt, he staggering- he’s going down! 10-9-8-7-6- he’s out- KO! Ho! Ho!”
I fall to my knees, my arms raised in victory. The Champion! Yes! I blow kisses to the crowd. The roar is deafening, as they chant my name. I pull out my pick from my back pocket, and it instantly becomes a microphone. Now, I am being interviewed by Howard Cosell.
“When did you know you had him, Champ?” I ask in my best Howard Cosell style impersonation.
“I knew - I knew - I had him in the tenth, Howard (I gasp between panting breaths, exhausted from the vicious bout) he had nothing left, he…”
All of a sudden Salvatore, one of the other brothers, walks through the door, looking at me like I’m a fuckin’ lunatic.
“Um… hey, Salvatore! What’s up? Just-just- combing my hair.”
I put the pick back in my pocket, and rush out of there, the glory of victory temporarily aborted.
When I walk outside, I’m strutting now, strutting like Rooster, the pimp from (the TV show) Baretta. This neighborhood, which only forty-five minutes before, had seemed so fucking foreboding, now I actually find it quite charming, almost quaint.
I breathe in the greasy air from the various Kentucky Fried Chicken and White Castles, intermingling with the fumes spewing from the Romerowski Brothers factory smoke stacks. Breathe it in deep, and now it’s kind of pleasant. Even refreshing. I just break out loud into Summer Wind, snapping my fingers, as I bop through the streets.
I pass by the three old black guys sitting on milk crates in front of Willie’s Barbershop, still in the exact same position as before, arguing loudly about which one of them had had sex with Josephine Baker in France, during WWII. All of a sudden, they stop in mid-sentence, when they see me coming by.
“What? What that crazy-ass fool be singin'?”
Sound like that got-damn Frank Sinatra shit! You know he jacked that shit from Duke!”
As I pass by them I smile, tip an imaginary cap, and say, “Top a’ the mornin’ to ya,” in my best Irish brogue.
They all look at each other, eyes wide open and pissed off.
“Hey! Hey! You- you- wanna get somebody kilt wit' that shit! Half-stepping fool!”
“Wiggling’ an’ jiggling like he done lost his got-damn mind!”
But nothing could faze me now. It’s like I’m walking through Disneyland.
THE INTERVIEW
So there Joey is - in the middle of an extremely foreboding interview in the darkened Fox Hole - sitting right across the table from Big Tommy, the owner, while he finishes up his veal parmegana and Campari and soda.
“You like Frank Sinatra?”
“Um-yeah - yeah (I vigorously nod), my father listens to him all the time. He’s got every one of his albums.”
“What’s ya favorite song?”
I frantically search my memory. I mean, I didn’t really listen to Frank Sinatra! I’ve heard it all my life- but it isn’t my music. Finally, I blurt out - Summer Wind!
I hope I made the right choice. He finally looks up at me, and for a long time.
“Summer Wind, huh? Awright, sing the first couple of lines fuh me.”
I look at him for a minute- and then smile. He’s joking, right? I mean, he can’t be serious. Finally, Tommy Boy nudges me with his elbow.
“Sing.” He threatens.
I go back in my memory. I’d heard that song probably, like, 1000 times, but I can’t remember any of it now. Finally, I know I just got to wing it.
“The Summer Wind came blowing in
From across the sea
It lingered there to touch your hair
And come walk with me
(I look at him to see if that’s good enough, but he waves at me to keep going.)
All summer long, we sang a song,
And then strode that golden sand
(Now, I’m getting into it. I start snapping my fingers)
Two sweethearts and the summer wind
Like painted kites, those days and nights
Went flying by-
The world was new underneath the blue umbrella sky –“
“Awright! You come in tomorrow, after school. You get paid cash every week. Tommy Boy’ll show you around. I got only two rules- show up on time - and don’t steal from me. You steal from me - I’ll cut yuh fuckin’ balls off, and eat ‘em fuh dinner.”
“Capece?"
“Yeah,” echoed Tommy Boy.
When Tommy Boy and his brothers finally finish showing me around the kitchen, I ask him if I can use the bathroom.
“It’s downstairs,” he mumbles, in between long drags of his Marlboro. Then he looks at me with this weird look. I knew there was something crazy about his eyes, and now I realize what it is. They look like a dog’s eyes! They’re ice blue, like an Alaskan Huskies, and he has olive skin. It’s bizarre. It’s the kind of look, like, when a dog eyes you quizzically, but if you go near him, you don’t know if he’s going to bite your face off - or lick you.
“Hey, don’t be late tomorrow,” he grunts threateningly.
THE FAMILY
Even though I’m scared shit, I somehow know that I am on the precipous of a brave new world, and although I am somewhat dismayed at the rather ordinary appearance of The Fox Hole, I know it is gravely important for me to follow through!
I open the door, and walk into a dark hall with a maroon velvet carpet. And all these pictures of a guy in a sergeant’s uniform, standing with Dwight D. Eisenhower, or General Patton, or whoever it was. Being presented with these medals. To the left of the pictures, is a big plaque that reads – America, Love It or Leave It.
It’s dark and there’s nobody around, so I yell out hello a couple of times, but no one answers. I wait a couple of minutes and knock on the door… once… twice…still nothing. I feel the anger and frustration building up in me. I’m just about to turn around and leave, when this rough-looking character answers the door.
He’s got a deep scar running down his nose to the middle of his cheek, like somebody had once torn his nose off, or something. Even more startling, he has a huge butcher knife in his hand, and his white kitchen shirt is splattered with fresh blood. Yet, his thick black hair…that’s perfectly coiffed, in a pompadour-type style. He appears to be in his mid-twenties. I immediately jump back.
“Yeah? Whaddya want?” He demands in a thick Newark-Italian accent.
“Hey, how ya doin’?” I throw out my chest, and try to make my own Brooklyn accent as pronounced as possible. I put out my hand to shake, but he just looks me over disdainfully, a cigarette dangling from his lips.
“Whatddya want?”
“I- um- yeah- I’m looking for a job.”
“Yeah? Who sent you? Louie?”
“No- nobody- I just came over myself.”
“Yeah? (looking me over) What kind of work you lookin’ fuh? We don’t need no waituhs.”
“No- no- no- I’m looking for- you know- maybe- dishwasher?”
“Dishwashuh, huh? You got any experience?”
“Um- well- I- uh wash dishes at my house a lot.”
“Hey, don’t be a freakin’ wise-ass, OK? (He lights up his cigarette) I’m gonna see if my father’s around. Stay right here. Don’t move.”
With that, he slams the door. I wait for about five minutes, debating whether to escape with my life right now, when he reappears.
“Awright- c'mon- follow me.”
I gasp as we enter the restaurant. It is a shrine to Frank Sinatra. There are literally hundreds of pictures of him! And they are all autographed with inscriptions like-
“To Tommy - knock ‘em dead." Frankie
And his song, My Way, is playing on the juke box.
As I gawk at all the pictures, Guido leads me to a booth. Sitting there - is maybe the scariest older guy I have ever seen. He has a gigantic upper body. Huge shoulders, big neck and head, but a really skinny bottom part, with baggy pants. He sits there eating a meal of veal Parmesan and Italian bread, drinking a Campari and soda. He doesn’t say a single word, and doesn’t look at me. It’s dark.
“Don’t say nuthin’ ‘til he talks to ya,” says Guido.
I nod.
After he finishes another forkful of veal Parmesan – he grunts in a deep, rocky voice.
“Siddown.”
I sit immediately.
“What’s yuh name?” He still doesn’t look at me.
“Joey- Joe.”
“Joey what?”
“Joey Montaperto-“
“Montaperto- (he uses the Italian pronunciation) good… I thought you was a spic for a minute. You wanna job?
“Yeah, I- “
“Tommy Boy! (He yells), we need another dishwashuh?”
Tommy Boy comes back to the booth.
“Yeah, Pop, yeah. That other douche-bag walked out on us yesterday. I almost fuckin' broke his neck.”
Long silence.