by Lizz Lund
“Anyway, there’s not too much more for either of you to do here now,” Daley said. “The building’s landlord’s been contacted and he’s sending extra security, so the offices can get aired out. I suggest you examine for any missing contents tomorrow, once we get the air cleared out here. It’s not too safe health-wise as it is,” he finished, looking at me – or, more precisely, my forehead – meaningfully.
I looked at Bauser, who was gently banging his head against the wall by the water cooler. I sighed and took out my pain killer prescription. “Want some?” I asked.
“Sure,” he said.
I gulped a couple, and Bauser pocketed his for later. Probably for when he had a brewski at home.
“Need a ride home?” he asked.
“Yeah, but I have to hit the dry cleaner’s first,” I said.
“Vito?”
“Yup.”
We said thanks and goodbyes to the volunteer fireman and Daley, who very kindly tried not to guffaw at our predicament. It’s one thing to wish your office went up with the flaming bag of shit. It’s another to have to tell your boss that that’s what happened.
We went silently and sullenly back down the seven flights of stairs. We got to the street and schlepped away together from the police barricades and into the parking garage. There we took the elevator to the top level, where Bauser always parks his 1995 Aspire (“It aspires to be a car.”). Some people like to park their expensive cars away from others to avoid scratches and dings. Bauser parks far away to avoid co-workers.
After Bauser removed a few dozen sci-fi paperbacks, old gaming CDs and leftover Buddy Burger wrappers and coffee cups, there was some room for me to sit down. I perched down on the front seat and nestled Vito’s bag on my lap. Oddly, I felt better. Maybe it was the fresh air on the rooftop. Maybe it was escaping work early on a Monday afternoon. Or maybe the meds had kicked in. Even though I knew I’d have to re-lock and load the blame/burden thingy argument tomorrow with How-weird, for now I was free.
Bauser put on his mirrored shades, threw in a Ramones ‘Best of’ CD, and we started off. We trundled down the exit spindle of the parking garage and Bauser carded our way out. He hung a left and let me out on Prince Street in front of Lickety-Split Laundry. As usual, I wasn’t looking forward to dealing with Mrs. Phang. But this time, since the meds were working, it didn’t feel like such a big deal.
I walked into Lickety-Split Laundry with Vito’s bag. No one was there. This was odd. After a few moments of waiting, I rang the bell on the counter. I figured this would piss Mrs. Phang off, but I knew better than to just dump Vito’s dry cleaning and run. I looked out the window. Bauser was waiting in his Aspire, bobbing his head up and down to the Kinks. Or the Romantics. Whatever.
A nice, short, preppy looking redhead appeared. “Good afternoon, may I help you?” she asked me pleasantly.
Um. Okay. “Who are you?” my meds let me blurt out.
“I’m Annie,” she said, beaming.
“Where’s Mrs. Phang?”
“Oh, she had to step out for a while.” Annie smiled, exposing endless miles of Kansas-stretched porcelain teeth.
Methinks I smelled a rural farmland rat. Mrs. Phang probably hadn’t ‘stepped out’ since 1954. And I never noticed a ‘Help Wanted’ sign in the window, either.
“Can I help you today?” Annie smiled at me.
“Uh, yeah… sure…” I said, and handed over Vito’s ticket for pick up.
“Just a minute!” Annie squealed, and ran the dry cleaning hook thingies through their paces. Which was weird, since Vito’s shirts always came in a box. He never got back hanging goods. Annie stacked up an assortment of collar shirts, Hawaiian shirts and golf shirts on the hanging bar. She smiled and said, “That’ll be $63.65.”
Okay – this was definitely weird. Clearly Annie hadn’t been broken in by Mrs. Phang to know that Vito’s a regular, because she wanted payment from me and not Vito. I guess it was the meds, but I wasn’t into any static. I gave Annie the $63.65, and took the clean shirts. “Do you have anything else you’d like to drop off?” Annie asked me.
“Oh, no, thanks… this is just my boxing gear,” I lied, indicating the gym bag full of Vito’s stuff that I still needed to drop off.
“Thanks! Come again! Have a happy day!” Annie called out after me.
I stood by the side of Bauser’s Aspire, and banged on the window for him to help let our dry cleaning passengers in for a ride. I tossed Vito’s gym bag alongside them. “Everything okay?” he asked.
“No… weird,” I said honestly.
“Great,” Bauser shrugged, and did an illegal u-turn back to Orange Street and drove to my house.
Bauser backed up into my mini-ski slope driveway. I guess he figured it was easier to maneuver a potential head-on collision than rear-end my neighbor across the street. He pulled up, grated all the gears on his emergency brake, and parked. I sat there for a moment, apprehensive, and leaning forward. I wondered idly who else might wander out from my house at me.
After listening to a final soulful chorus of the Ramones (“Hey, ho – let’s go!”) Bauser shut off the engine, and helped me lug Vito’s dry cleaning into the house. I had a moment of panic, half anticipating Vito to accost me for his laundry on our conjoined front porches. Or worse yet, open my front door and let me into my own house, as usual. But luck was finally on my side: neither happened. I stepped into the front hall and sighed and itched my konked noggin with dry cleaning hanger. Bauser followed. I took Vito’s 75-pounds of dry cleaning and stashed it inside the hall closet, along with his gym bag. Lucky for Vito I only have one coat.
Bauser’s good with cats, and better with dogs. Especially his own dog, Jim, who is a three-legged Irish Setter. Bauser adopted Jim from the animal shelter a couple of years ago. Don’t ask me how or why Jim’s minus a leg. Some things you just don’t want to know.
Vinnie ambled up to Bauser – always happy to meet another fella – and grll’d, “Hullo,” to him, and rubbed against his legs. Upstairs, Marie shrieked. The usual.
“What happened to Vinnie?” Bauser asked, examining his oddly cut fur.
“Moths,” I answered.
I opened my fridge for inspection. “I have one beer, some limeade and a Box O’Burgundy,” I offered.
“Beer’s cool.”
“Okay,” I said, and gave Bauser the last beer. I poured a mug of wine for myself.
Bauser scritched Vinnie and then offered to give him his dinner – Fishy Scales and Piggy Tails – while I zipped upstairs to give Marie her seeds and sips. I came back down, we turned on the tube, and plotzed. We probably looked like an old, disinterested married couple. Don’t get me wrong. I like Bauser. And vintage punk rock is okay. But Bauser? Bauser’s a great guy, but, hey – he’s Bauser. Which is okay, because he feels the same way about me.
We settled on a pizza order – how many times now had I had pizza in the last few days? I’d lost count – and waited. I switched on the food network channel for distraction.
The doorbell rang, and Bauser and I got up to pay our halfsies for our pizza delivery. But on the stoop, instead of the pizza guy, we found Aunt Muriel and Vito. With Ma. There were several startling discoveries about this vision, not the least of which was answering my own doorbell. Usually, Vito does that. Also, I wasn’t expecting Ma to visit. She stood silently on my porch texting her office BFF all about it.
Aunt Muriel’s gaze quickly took in Bauser: single, male. “My gracious, Mina, I’m so sorry! We didn’t realize you had company!” she cried giddily. A vision of various high school productions of ‘Glass Menagerie’ sprang into my head and I was singularly grateful Aunt Muriel hadn’t declared, “My, a gentleman caller!” She was also costumed to play a part; she sported a wide orange headband. I suspected she was hiding her charred bangs.
“Hi, Ma,” I said.
Ma hugged me, examined my forehead and checked the email on her Crackberry. Clearly she wasn’t
too happy about having a grand-noggin. I wasn’t too happy that she wasn’t the pizza guy. But we hugged and stood there.
“Hey, Toots, you gonna let us in or what?” Vito asked affably.
“Oh, sorry,” I said, grateful for the consumed pain meds, tet-a-nish shot and mug o’Merlot. I shot Bauser a warning look. He replied happily by slurping his beer and returning to his pillow on the floor, and flipping the channel over to the sports network.
Vito ambled into the hallway with a large, foiled casserole pan. Ma wheeled in a small, metallic overnight bag. She reminded me about Ethel’s and Ike’s upcoming visit, and our planned familial Lancaster rendezvous – which, of course, I’d completely forgotten. She handed me a pack of swatches. Then she and Aunt Muriel frowned at my walls. Vinnie rubbed happily against Aunt Muriel, since she was now his official pepperoni connection.
“I have some things for you in the car,” Ma said to me, looking up from her email. I sighed and started to go out the door. Vito ‘tut-tutted’ me and brought Ma’s stuff in: several shopping bags, a box from the liquor store, several bottles of good red wine, and a cooler.
“Wow, your family’s cool,” Bauser smiled.
“Not cool; catered,” I auto-replied. Genetics forbid anyone in my family to travel without a picnic.
Ma and Aunt Muriel unpacked the shopping bags and in minutes my countertops were covered with various kinds of gourmet cheeses, olives, deli meats, nuts, crackers, Absolut, Grey Goose, Chivas Regal and few bottles of a nice Syrah. There was also an assortment of new little bowls as well new sheets, a wine bottle opener and throw pillows, courtesy of Ma and her savvy shopping. What can I say? What Ma sometimes lacks in communication skills she makes up for in retail.
Vito’d plunked the huge casserole on top of the stove. While Ma and Aunt Muriel unpacked and admired the prizes Ma’d brought for me, I lifted up the foil on Vito’s casserole to take a peek. There lurked a kaleidoscope of ground beef, onions, clumps of condensed soups, ziti noodles, shredded American cheese and beans. These were topped with an undiluted can of tomato soup, Velveeta slices and what looked like either kielbasa or a large Gardner snake nested in the middle. I gulped, thankful that Bauser and I had placed the pizza order.
Vito clapped me on the shoulder, as I let the foil back down to shroud the dead casserole. “Looks pretty good, huh?”
“Great,” I lied.
“Hey, I know I’m only a lonely widower,” Vito said, looking soulfully over at Aunt Muriel, who continued to ignore him, “but I know how to learn a thing or two. I got the recipe for this right off the Internet!”
“Hey, that’s really great, Vito,” I said. Since my curiosity often outranks my sense, I asked, “What is it?”
“Johnny Mazarotti’s – a la Vito Spaghetti!”
Ma and Aunt Muriel froze in their tracks and stared at Vito. They looked like Bambi’s Great-Gramma deer in headlights. “Johnny Mazarotti’s’? I haven’t heard that name since Karen Dervish, right, Mu?” Ma said, getting faintly puffed up and sentimental.
Mrs. Dervish was one of the gals who guided Ma along the pearl-stringed ropes of Ridgewood in the early 60s, when being snobby was intensely in vogue. Ma and Mrs. Dervish might not have been best-buddies, but they both belonged to the Mother’s Mafia. I found out about this after I snuck my first cigarette and got slapped upside the head with Ma’s wooden spoon.
“What’s that for?!” I had wailed.
“For smoking!” Ma gritted back at me.
“How’d you know?” I cried.
Ma leaned in, and answered quietly, “Mothers know everything.”
I believed that for a very long time. Until graduation prom when I found out that Mrs. Dervish’s daughter, Alicia, had finked on me. Alicia willingly dressed in matching mother/daughter outfits with Mrs. Dervish until her freshman year of college. A couple years after college graduation, I heard that she’d moved out from her parents’ home to do environmental work with unshaved legs in an even more unshaved section of Vermont, where I suspected she smoked other things besides tobacco.
“Oh, we haven’t had Johnny Mazarotti’s for a thousand years!” Aunt Muriel shrieked, clearly trying to not offend Vito but severely amused.
“Hey, these are Johnny Mazarotti’s a la Vito Spaghetti!” Vito beamed.
All at once, Ma and Aunt Muriel fell suddenly silent. Since I had already witnessed the raw makings of the impending offal, I wondered how much Zantac I had. Especially with Ma sleeping over. But Aunt Muriel’s a real trooper. She asked politely, “Oh, is this your own version, Vito?”
“Yup!” Vito smiled. “Ya sees, the ways I figured it, the secrets not just in the noodles, but in the secret ingredients!” We looked at him, smiling hopefully, and willing the secret ingredients not to be something too awful. Except I already had a pretty good idea. “Kielbasa, pork ‘n’ beans, potato chips, and my secret creamed garlic barbeque sauce! I made it myself!” Vito winked. I looked blank. “The sauce, I mean.”
I gulped. Apparently the damage was far, far worse than I’d imagined.
The doorbell rang and Bauser sprang into action, clearly awakened, and sobered by the thought of creamed kielbasa barbeque casserole. “Pizza!” Bauser sang. “I got it, my treat!” Obviously Johnny Mazarotti had made an impression on him, too.
Vito looked down sheepishly. Aunt Muriel frowned at me. Ma sucked on an olive. “Sorry, Toots; I should have figured you’d have your own dinner plans,” he said.
Oh, good grief. “Well, I did when it was only me and Bauser! Hey, this is great!” I smiled. “Now we can have olives and pizza as – ummm… – appetizers, and have the Johnny Spaghetti’s as our main course!” I said.
“Well, hey, sure… great!” Vito beamed.
Dishtowel tucked neatly into his waistband, Vito turned on the oven. I don’t know what I did in my past life, but clearly Vito sought to make sure I got served in this one. I looked over at Ma and Aunt Muriel for sympathy. They were too busy clawing inside their purses and clandestinely divvying up the various Rolaids, Beano and Mylanta they had between them. But I also got ‘the nod’. I’d done the right thing by Vito.
So we also divvied up a lot of pizza, olives, gourmet cheeses and nuts for the first course, along with a generous amount of ’frothies’ in the blender. Bauser stuck with his beer, tenderly fingering the pain pill I’d given him earlier like a talisman. I sighed and checked on Vito’s casserole corpse in the oven.
I came back into the living room, and it looked like old home week. Ma and Aunt Muriel were cozily tucked up together on the sofa sipping frothies, while Vito was squashed happily inside the little side chair, with Bauser lying contentedly across the living room rug at his feet, looking a lot like his Irish Setter. Vinnie came in and perched happily in Aunt Muriel’s lap, and noshed on a pepperoni slice she ‘assured’ me she wouldn’t give him from her pizza.
After we chatted for a while and the smoke alarm went off, I took the Johnny Mazarotti’s out of the oven and opened up the screen door. I set out some plates and forks and napkins for our buffet. I put the hot dead casserole on the stovetop, figuring a public viewing was safer. I’d have a private service with the remains afterward.
While we ate, Bauser and I filled everyone in about EEJIT, Buy-A-Lots and the flaming bags of feces. Typical supper talk. I finally started to feel like my house was homey. Even while Vito insisted on giving us his recipe:
Johnny Mazarotti ala Vito Spaghetti
· Large package dry extra wide egg noodles
· 2 pounds ground beef
· 2 large onions, chopped
· 10 garlic cloves, minced
· Vito’s Secret Garlic BBQ sauce
· 2 pounds garlic Kielbasa
· 4 cans pork ‘n’ beans
· 1 can condensed tomato soup
· 2 cans condensed cream of chicken soup
· 1 hunk sliced Velveeta
· 1 package cream cheese
&nb
sp; Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease the inside of a baking dish with Crisco or lard.
2. Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Add egg noodles and cook. When done, drain and set aside.
3. In a large saucepan over high heat, brown the ground beef, onion, garlic. Mix in the cans of pork ‘n’ beans (don’t drain), Cream of Chicken soup and cream cheese.
4. Smooth a layer of Vito’s Secret Creamed Garlic BBQ sauce on the bottom of the baking dish. Place half of the cooked egg noodles on top. Layer with half of the bean and meat mixture and half of the Velveeta slices. Salt and pepper to taste, then repeat the layers with the remaining cheese as a top layer. Cover all with canned tomato sauce. Place 2 large kielbasa – whole – lengthwise on top of the casserole. Push into the center of the casserole, so partially ‘hiding’ but still exposed. Top with smashed potato chips, if desired. (Vito desired)
5. Bake in the preheated oven 30 minutes, or until the cheese is completely melted and the surface is hot and bubbly.
6. Take Bean-O. Then serve.
Finally, after some old-time MGM re-runs, Bauser went home. Vito followed behind. “Oh, I guess you got kind of busy to take care of my dry cleaning, what with the fire and all,” he said nervously.
“No actually, Vito; Bauser dropped me off and I picked it up,” I said, happy that I remembered and wasn’t going to disappoint him. I opened the front hall closet door, and displayed the plethora of hanging dry cleaning. “Ta da!” I sang.
Vito looked at me like feathers had sprouted from my ears. “What’s this?” he asked.
“Your dry cleaning. Which I paid for, by the way,” I offered with frothie induced enthusiasm.
“Whaddyamean you paid for it?”
Somewhere in the dim halls of my remembery was the idea that getting Vito’s shirts on hangers – and paying for them – was weird. But what the heck – it’s only dry cleaning, right?
“Look, Vito, there’s a new girl there… she probably just didn’t know you have an account… it’s no big deal. After all, you’re good for it, right?” I joshed.