by Peter Orner
“Why,” Tonnio breathed. “Why?”
“Because you rip us off,” Popper said. “Because you don’t pay us for gas or for the wear and tear on our moms’ cars.”
Tonnio, solemnly, raised a bearlike arm, pointed to the door, and mouthed, as if he lacked the strength to say it out loud—there was only the sound of his betrayed saliva—“Go.” Popper was still holding the padded vinyl pizza warmer. He’d been waiting for his own delivery to come out of the oven, a half-pepperoni, half-mushroom, going to 1881 Groveland Terrace. Popper stood there holding his warmer. He wanted to take back the gallantry. It was Laveneaux, Tonnio, don’t you even recognize his handwriting? But Tonnio gently took the warmer out of his hands and gently pushed him out the door. The law must assert itself. Even the puniest mutiny must be quashed.
Outcasted, the suburban night, the pizzaless streets, his mother’s Chevelle—he drives to the lake. Under the parking lot lights at Cary Avenue Beach, he rolled down the window and listened to the slap of waves. At dawn, he didn’t wake to see the lights popping silently off like extinguished souls.
May 18, 1945
I can now tell you we have participated in the Okinawa campaign—some of the things we still can’t say, others you will just have to use your imagination—It was my first taste of a shooting war and I admit I was a trifle shaky—We didn’t take any fire ourselves, were about a mile offshore—but we were pursued quite smartly by some denizens of the deep so I had to do some fancy turning, and there is nothing more pathetic than an LST attempting evasive maneuvers—especially on a good black night—It’s funny how our idea of a beautiful moonlit night can change—At sea, when it’s so bright you can read a newspaper—that’s the time you hate the moon and pray for a cloud to blot it out—The Army guys, though, they love a bright night—then they can see the bastards crawling around—Everything is relative—depending on how far your own neck happens to be sticking out at any given moment.
THE BALLOON LADY
They bought dope in Humboldt Park beneath the giant equestrian statue of Thaddeus Kosciuszko. Their supplier was a woman who pretended to sell balloons. Well, she did sell balloons. She just made more money off dope. Thaddeus Kosciuszko was a great Polish hero of the American Revolution. George Washington called him our own Rock of Gibraltar. Had it not been for Kosciuszko, the redcoats would have overrun the fort at West Point, and Americans to this day would salute a queen and say aubergine (hey, that rhymes). Thank you, Kosciuszko. Manny and Popper disrespected your memory by purchasing dope beneath your horse’s raised left hoof, but considering that you and your deeds are largely forgotten by those who should remain forever grateful, maybe the fact that anybody repeats your name—Kosciuszko!—keeps you less dead a little longer.
The balloon lady? Gone now also. It’s possible that she got rich enough and retired. She was abrupt with a customer. The transaction had to be done fast. The balloon lady didn’t do change. If you gave her a twenty for a dime bag, she kept the ten. And you also had to buy a balloon, a couple of balloons, if you wanted to endear yourself to her. The balloon lady was of unfathomable age, not so old, maybe, but very wrinkled. She wore clown makeup and baggy pants with bells up and down the legs. Tall red boots. You could find her under Kosciuszko Tuesday through Friday. She liked a three-day weekend. She kept her dope neatly done up in Ziplocs. Homegrown, Mexican-grown, Costa Rican–grown. Panamanian Special. The balloon lady was made up like a clown, but her face never contorted into anything other than that one frozen smile, which was nothing at all like a smile. This clown was all business. Manny once said the balloon lady was an artist, that the getup, the unsmiling smile, the bells, the boots—all of it was a performance and another proof that what makes Chicago truly great is its people: Jane Addams, Sears and Roebuck, Harold Washington, Harry Porterfield, Roland Harper, Harold Baines, Reggie Theus, the weather guy who’s also a pilot, the balloon lady.
“Jim Tillman.”
“Who?”
“The pilot on Channel 7.”
“Exactly. Very great man. Jim Tillman.”
“How come you’re naming only black people?”
“You think Sears and Roebuck were black? They probably didn’t even let blacks in the store till—”
“So you’re black now?”
“Did you just notice?”
“Remember when you said you weren’t black, you were brown? Up in the attic of the mansion. You said you were more the color of wood than the color of oil.”
“Popper, I was eight.”
“I’m just trying to get a handle on where you’re going with this.”
“This is a completely dipshit conversation. Jane Addams wasn’t black, either.”
“What about John Belushi?”
“Okay, add Belushi.”
“And Fahey Flynn. Fahey Flynn’s a great Chicagoan.”
“Fine, Fahey Flynn. But not Mike Ditka.”
“No, never Ditka.”
“Fuck Ditka,” Manny said. “Anybody else you want to add?”
“Steve Dahl.”
“Fine.”
“And Frazier Thomas and Ray Rayner.”
“You want Garfield Goose also?”
“Yes.”
“Donahue?”
“That’s all right. But why the balloon lady?”
“Don’t you get it? She could just sell drugs. She doesn’t have to go through the whole rigmarole. She’s an artist. Think about it, every day she has to fill those balloons with helium. After a while even helium’s not that fun anymore.” Manny took his hands off the wheel and shouted, “To home, gentle steed!” Kennedy Expressway, four in the morning, driving snow streaking toward them in long white tails. “Popper, look out the back window.”
And they did, they both did, they both looked out the back window, at the snow chasing them, and they scrawled across three lanes and were about to slam into the guardrail when Popper, of all people, grabbed the wheel and righted them.
The balloons bobbing against the roof, those dull thumps, and Manny said, “Don’t you miss it?”
“What?”
“This. Us driving. The Kennedy merges into the Edens. Next exit, Peterson. Touhy, Dempster, Old Orchard, Tower Road… Bear right for 94 to Milwaukee. How come we never go to Milwaukee? Why doesn’t anybody ever go to Milwaukee? Does it even exist? If we never go there, does Milwaukee exist?” He leaned over and drove a little while with his forehead. “But anyway, it’s gone,” he said. “All of it. Milwaukee, too. Gone.”
“Dope’s making speeches.”
“Yes and no,” Manny said.
Kosciuszko was a hero. After he helped win the American Revolution, he went back to Poland to lead the fight of another one there. That rebellion lasted about twenty minutes. The Russians were meaner motherfuckers than the British. They threw Kosciuszko in prison, where he wrote that he regretted being alive, having so failed his country. Now, there’s a man. Chicago put up a statue of him in Humboldt Park. He rides a horse. He waves his sword. Chicago is full of such statues. Alexander Hamilton. Cervantes. Hugo. Goethe (pronounced Go-thee and don’t let any highbrow tell you otherwise). Churchill. Hildago. Dr. Greene Vardiman Black, the founder of modern dentistry. Because giants once walked the earth and Chicago saluted them in stone. Manny once said, Where’s Toussaint L’Ouverture, the greatest rebel since Christ? And he was right, Popper says now to himself, to nobody listening. Chicago, if Greene Vardiman Black, where’s Toussaint L’Ouverture?
PUBLIUS
Tonnio rehired Popper at Manny’s behest. He fired him again later. But they will always have this: Late afternoon, no orders in, just him and Tonnio in the kitchen and Popper sweeping up and at the same time helping Tonnio prepare for his citizenship exam. In the kitchen with those big black ovens and the cockroaches and the toppings trays and the neatly stacked ramekins and the walk-in freezer, where Manny and Popper used to do whippets with the whipped-cream cans. That quick and perfect five-minute shot of high. If he could have a little
of that high back—
Tonnio was always getting ready for the citizenship exam, although he never actually took it. The whole idea offended him. His adopted country didn’t know a thing about Garibaldi—but sure, sure, they eat my pizza, they love my pizza, and then they turn around and make me answer questions about a country that the sweat of Italian immigrants like me helped build in the first place. You know, we used to celebrate Garibaldi’s birthday in this country? Now they just give us Columbus, and what kind of Italian name is Columbus? Columbo, you cretins.
“Name the U.S. war between the North and the South.”
“The World Series.”
“Why did the colonists fight the British?”
“Tea.”
“Right, and also high taxes, because they didn’t have self-government, and because the British Army stayed in their houses, a practice known as billeting. For some reason this really pissed people off. People didn’t want any soldiers crashing on their couches. Who wrote the Federalist Papers?”
“Dante.”
“James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay. Or you can just say Publius.”
“Who?”
“You know, like a band. The three of them, they’re Publius. John Jay was Ringo. How many judges on the Supreme Court?”
“The fuck do I care.”
“It’s an odd number.”
“A hundred and thirty-seven.”
“No. Less.”
“Hold on a minute,” Tonnio said, and looked at Popper as if seeing him for the first time. It could almost be said that Tonnio, who had seen it all and said so, hour after hour, was, this time, floored.
“There’s only nine judges,” Popper said. “What’s wrong? They’ve got more in Sicily?”
“The boy doesn’t know how to sweep,” Tonnio said.
Popper shrugged. He was afraid Tonnio was going to tell him another story of toil, about his grandmother in Ragusa who buried five children dead of malaria, but instead Tonnio showed him. He stood behind Popper and put his right hand toward the top of the broom and his left just slightly above the middle. Keep this elbow loose. See? And row the boat, row. Don’t be afraid to bend the bristles. And they swayed like that for who knows how long, rowing, rowing, Tonnio’s stomach like a pregnancy, like a fresh little citizen, pushing against Popper’s back.
THE LIGHT AT DONNY’S
Seymour still wears his white duck pants. Gently, he rattles his Scotch. That always round face, those few remaining strands of hair that scribble across the top of his head. They’re out. They’re at Donny’s. Bernice, her face made up, her huge chorus girl eyes, those eyes that always got her noticed.
They’re alone in a booth toward the back.
They don’t talk much. It doesn’t matter. All that counts is they’re at Donny’s. They wait for their tortellini soup. The Rhapsody Inn, Highwood. Anybody who’s anybody calls it Donny’s. It’s not a club and Donny takes no reservations. Doesn’t matter if you’re a bum or Ron Santo—you wait for a table at Donny’s.
That was always the beauty of the place. A real democracy. Thank God for Highwood. An oasis, for decades one of the few places to get a legal drink on the parched North Shore. And Donny presided. There was order to the universe. You waited at the bar till Donny came and tapped you on the shoulder: Follow me. Donny wasn’t a big man, but his hair was—a towering froth of bouffant. Took a man with powerful friends to wear his hair like that.
Seymour! Bernice! Where have you been all my life? I haven’t seen you since Tuesday. What? You cooking slop at home?
All those laughs. It used to be you could measure your life in those roaring laughs.
The soup’s still to die for, and the Steak in Marsala is still thick as a radial tire. Donny had a simple notion—make the food decent and serve a lot of it. Then charge up the wazoo for drinks. They used to come here with the Pearlmutters, with Morton and Nita Bernheimer, with Richard and Doris Pinkert, with Myron and Phyllis Skulnik. And they’d hold court in one of the big semicircular booths up front and laugh and gaggle, talk business, children, politics.
Years pile up. Divorces. People fall out. People go bankrupt, to jail. Saturday nights now you stay home and watch television. And Donny’s kind of swank isn’t that swank anymore.
Tonight, the place is mostly empty.
Seymour! Bernice! You two still kicking around? It’s a miracle. I could have sworn I dropped dead myself last month.
And Seymour raises his head and laughs at the ceiling. And Bernice reaches for Donny’s beringed hands, and Donny squeezes and Bernice squeezes, and for a moment there’s nothing like it. To be seen, to be known by Donny in front of a crowd even if the crowd is a decade back in your mind. She thinks of the smoky reddish light, how it used to slowly drift.
Donny always did give Bernice a second look. He liked Seymour, everybody liked Seymour, he was all hail-fellow-well-met, but with Bernice there was always something more, even secretive; Bernice Popper kept her own counsel and Donny liked that in a woman. Plus, it added to the mystery of his place.
“How come you still got your figure, Bernice?” Donny says, quiet in her ear.
Bernice pulls away and only answers with her eyes. Because only the real talented ones ever enjoy the fun of going to seed. And yet here was a man who could still make her feel like that one moment she’d get after hours of dancing—that brief surge in her heart. That was all she was ever after.
Seymour hollers, “For crying out loud, Donny, why don’t you cash out and move to Sarasota? You don’t need to stick around just for us. Bring me a Scotch.”
“Fuck Sarasota,” Donny says.
But it’s true. Donny’s worn out, too. The act has just about run its course. And he could have retired eight times over with what he’s socked away. He always preferred cash. In the salad days they’d roll the tax-free paper money out the back door in a wheelbarrow. Now even the light’s worn out, Bernice thinks. It sags, bloodless, across the walls. It no longer floats. Still, some nights you get in the Cadillac and you go out. You go out. What’s the alternative?
CHICAGO AND NORTHWESTERN TRACKS
Waiting for the midnight train. Manny and Popper lying on their stomachs on the huge corrugated sewage pipe in the ditch between the tracks and the bike path. Sometimes they’d howl at the trains like coyotes, but that night they were quiet. It was about the light, the green gloom of the late-night trains, and how there were always a few people, bobbing heads, asleep, pale-green cheeks pressed flat against the glass.
Manny’s an emergency room doctor in Seattle now. Sometimes he calls from work and leaves messages on Popper’s voice mail. He saves the messages. For months and months, Popper saves the messages, listens to them, but he rarely calls back. He rarely calls anybody back. Hey, Popper, want to hear about a broken arm? And he’d hold up the phone so Popper could hear the chaos, the moaning. How about a gunshot wound? Psychotic break, anybody? Listen, seriously, Popper, where have you been and why don’t you ever call me back?
“Something else just occurred to me,” Manny said, though he hadn’t said a word in half an hour. Neither of them had. They were waiting for the train.
“What?”
“It’s apropos of nothing, really.”
“What?”
“My mother thought moving here would give us a better chance, you know, being around the children of rich kids like you. Now look at me. Look at us. My feet are asleep. The 12:22’s late again.”
“You think we won’t make good?”
“No, that’s the problem, we probably will. The suburbs work, it isn’t that they don’t. That’s what’s so disgusting. What are you pondering? You look pondery.”
“Gina Amalfitano.”
“What about Gina Amalfitano?”
“I slept with her last Saturday. I’ve been holding it in, savoring it.”
“Damn, Popper, even in your imagination, Gina Amalfitano’s not unimpressive. Not unimpressive at all. Describe.”
“L
ike butter. She whispered to me in Italian.”
PETTY IS LORD
The crowd whoops, swoons. The man himself emerges from the smoky purple light. Behind him lurk the Heartbreakers. The crowd awed into reverent silence.
Good to be back in Wisconsin, yeah—
He gazes at the crowd. With love. With respect. Has there ever been a human being more comfortable in his own skin than Tom Petty? What an amazing gift, to actually be able to stand yourself. And then he does it. Petty plays the opening notes of “The Waiting.”
“The Waiting” live. Got to be the greatest moment in Popper’s entire life. It’s like anthemic.
Alpine Valley is an artificial bowl of grass in the middle of a cornfield. Earlier that night, during the opening act (’Til Tuesday), Popper had licked acid off a postage stamp and has spent much of his time trying to climb out of the bowl. He is as screwed up as he is lost as he is sweaty. He’s a total ecstatic sweaty mess. Where’s Manny? Didn’t I come here with Manny? He’s sweating so much he’s thrown his shirt away. But when “The Waiting” begins, there is nothing but the song, and he believes in the song. Petty is lord. I will always be alone. I will always stink like a pig in my aloneness. Popper can’t really see anymore. Tank-topped girls, he cross-eyed lusts. All those perfect tits jouncing to Petty as he screeches. Oh don’t let it kill you baby, don’t let it get to you. Popper picks up a half-eaten hot dog and rams it in his mouth. Raises his arms to the music—the music—before his tranced feet ungrip the grass for good.
May 22, 1945
Of course there are so many factors in war, so many contingencies, that it’s really difficult to predict—who, 10 months ago—could have foreseen the German collapse on any other basis than wishful thinking—but the thing happened—Sometimes, nobody, not even the enemy himself, knows how close the end is—