THE NA-NA SURPRISE!
So, this is the day after my sad realization with my cousin Skinny, when I am totally shocked by my meeting with Na-Na, who had rescued me from certain death at the hands of David White and the Orange Face brothers - because I had a mustache.
That next morning in school, I’m wandering down the hallways, all pumped up. I’m ten minutes late for Mr. Knapp’s English class, but I couldn’t care less. I’m giddy, my heart’s crammed with visions of Esperanza, and how I’m going to go up to the beauty salon, right after I get my first paycheck, or cash, or whatever, from The Fox Hole. I’m gonna buy some new black clothes, bring Esperanza my picture I drew of her, and I’m just going to impress the hell out of her. Man, I feel like literally anything is possible now! I am so ready! I’m just walking around like this, totally wrapped up in my ambitions and fantasies, when all of a sudden a hard slap on my shoulder that almost bowls me over, blows me out of my daze.
My first impulse is to swing, but immediately, I hear a voice behind my ear.
“Yo, Strong!”
”Hey, Na-Na, man, what’s up?”
I totally play off the pain, even though my shoulder is throbbing like hell.
“Yo Strong, come wit’ me, man,” he says slowly, still wearing that same menacing scowl, and his sharpened umbrella. He looks straight ahead, makes no eye contact, and keeps his hand clamped tightly on my shoulder, as he steers me down the hallway. The deranged look on his face offers me no clue as to if this is a friendly gesture, or if he wants to mutilate me. We continue down the hall. Now, a single stomach-tightening thought explodes into my head.
Oh shit! Maybe…what if – what if - he found out somehow, that all my stories about going down on my babysitter when I was 12, and the ménage a tois, and all the other sordid sex stories…what if he found out they were all bullshit?! That my mustache had nothing to do with being strong?! Busted!
Oh my God! He knew I had made a fool out of him, and in front of Warbush, too! I’m sure he had murdered other people for far less. Frantically, I go through thousands of excuses and scenarios I might use to extricate myself from this horror. I feel the sweat pouring down my forehead and chest. The halls are empty as we walk down them. We descend a flight of stairs, past Mr. Delroy’s print shop class, further down past Mr. Barche’s wood shop class, all the way till we arrive downstairs to the basement. Somehow, I have to get myself together; I can’t let him see me sweating and scared, even though I feel my legs start to buckle.
“Whassup, Na-Na - where we going?”
"Nothing, man,"
Past the janitor’s room, past even the boiler room - where nobody ever goes. The florescent lights flicker on and off, generating a constant eerie humming sound. It’s like some dank, evil laboratory. He turns me left into the darkest and most silent side of the basement, and we stop in front of a locker. His locker. How the hell does he get a locker down here? What did he do - strangle one of the janitors for it? He looks around for a minute or so, sniffing and rubbing his nose with his sleeve. Then his eyes focus on me. He looks me over real hard. My mind goes blank; I’m way past being able to think. It’s just overload. He opens his locker up, and reaching deep inside it, pulls out a manila envelope. I’m done. I’m sure it’s a gun, and he’s going to execute me right here, without even saying anything. Somehow, I kind of just let go. Just kind of leave my body, and resign myself to a brutal death. But as he unfolds it, I see there is no way it could be a gun, it isn’t bulky enough. Maybe it’s drugs? Maybe he wants me to run drugs? He very carefully unfolds it the rest of the way, and looks at me again. But this time it is different. There is a certain softening in his eyes, a bizarre mixture of a kind of vulnerability, anger, and suspicion. He hesitates a second, then he takes some papers out of the envelope, slowly handing them to me.
They’re drawings! Really intricate drawings - done in black and red ink. Things aren’t connecting in my mind yet. I’m somewhere between being numb, and throbbing. Why is he showing me these drawings? What the fuck is going on? Wasn’t he going to murder me for lying to him? It takes like half a minute to realize that no - he isn’t going to kill me. An unbelievable wave of relief washes over me as I look at these drawings, and do another complete emotional turn around. I become hooked in, fascinated, totally into them. Amazing drawings. The first one shows a black woman and man in a dilapidated bedroom, both half-naked, on a broken down bed. The guy is rangy and muscular, and has his hand raised like he had just hit her, or is about to hit her. The woman cringing, her arm in front of her face in self- defense, blood running from her mouth. There’s a little boy at the doorway, standing there in a raggedy T-shirt and pants, which are way too big for him. Tears running down his cheeks. He holds a sharp piece of wood in his hand. But it’s the expressions on the faces of the people that are so life-like, so heart breaking. Full of expression. The rage and fear - but beautiful in its sheer savagery. Almost like it’s in 3D. Whoever had done this had totally captured it! Nailed the souls of these people, even though the style - the technique - is pretty rough.
Another one shows an older black woman, maybe a grandmother, big and chunky, with grey hair, on her knees on the street, rocking a dying teenager, his shirt covered with blood. She was screaming and crying, as two white policemen stand in the foreground, one with a drawn gun. The anguish on the grandmother’s face…man, it is so real. You could actually feel it. It goes on like this, drawing after drawing, street scenes, cops, pimps, and prostitutes. All so starkly brutal, yet so intricate, and detailed in their vividness. Then it hits me. He had drawn these! Holy shit! This guy - this maniac - is a freaking artist! This seems so impossible, but it’s right there in front of me. I’m stunned. I don’t know what to say to him.
"Na-Na…these are- fucking- great man - I –"
He doesn’t look at me, as I hand him back the drawings. I believe I see a sense of pride though. Seriousness, as he carefully and meticulously folds them back in the envelope.
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.