One Hit Wonder

by Charlie Carillo

  I pointed at a short gray horse with powerful-looking legs. To me the horse seemed to be brimming with energy, bright-eyed and strong. Also he wore the number three, my lucky number.

  My father chuckled. “First of all, he’s a she. A filly. And no, she’s not much good. They probably just threw her in there to fill out the field.”

  “I like the look of her.”

  “She hasn’t got a chance, Mick. Don’t waste your money.”

  “Maybe just two bucks. Not to win, to come in third.”

  “We call that ‘show.’”

  “Yeah, to show. I’m gonna bet her to show. What the hell.”

  My father shook his head. “You’re a real dreamer, aren’t you?”

  “Lynn used to call me that.”

  “You dream about her, don’t you?”

  I swallowed. “Every night for about twenty years.”

  He nodded, not surprised. “Well, let me tell you what I think. You get paid tomorrow, right? So you take your money and go to the bank and open an account. I hear they got one really nice teller. You go to her window, you see what happens.”

  I was too stunned to speak. I swallowed the rest of my beer as my father stared at me.

  “You’da made an ass of yourself if you’d gone bangin’ on her door tonight,” he continued. “Gotta cool down before you make your move. Also, you don’t want to meet her on her home turf. The bank’s neutral ground. You got a better chance on neutral ground.”

  “Is that why you kidnapped me tonight?”

  “Kidnapped? That’s a little harsh.”

  “But that’s why you brought me here, isn’t it?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “This place. This is your turf, isn’t it, Dad? You wanted to get your point across on your turf.”

  He fought to hide a smile. “I brought you here so we could win some money, kid. Come on, let’s go to the window.”

  My father bet first. I was startled to hear him say, “Fifty on Mahogany Flash to win.”

  Fifty bucks! Did my mother have any idea that he bet this big? He answered my unspoken question by turning his head and muttering, “Don’t mention this to your mother.”

  Still numb over the size of his bet, I slid two singles under the window and placed a bet on Merry Legs to show. Even the clerk seemed to be grinning at my foolishness. The horse was a 75-to-1 long shot. I was wasting two bucks—a subway ride I wouldn’t be taking, a hot dog I wouldn’t be eating.

  At post time the odds on my horse had increased to 82 to 1, while a flurry of last-minute bets narrowed the odds on my father’s horse to 10 to 1. If he won, he’d have five hundred bucks.

  The race began. Everybody around me was on their feet and yelling, nobody louder than my father. It hit me that I had never before heard him express enthusiasm of any kind, and here he was, jumping up and down and screaming for a stupid animal to run fast.

  I barely glanced at the track. I couldn’t take my eyes off my father. He was alive. He looked twenty years younger, strong and passionate and hot-blooded.

  I felt my eyes mist up. I was sorry that this was what he needed to feel this way. He’d been robbed. He’d never had a real passion. He did what he had to do, good old Steady Eddie, and he wasted his steam and his cream on the horses.

  I was lucky, compared to him. At least I’d written my song, and tried to write others. His only thrills came from laying bets on overbred creatures who were put to death when they broke a leg. How had he ended up with such a life?

  It was so sad that I wanted to run out of that place, but suddenly his arms were around me in a bear hug that hoisted me off my feet. Belmont Park exploded with noise, and his stubbly cheek scraped my face like sandpaper.

  “We did it, Mick, we fuckin’ did it!”

  “We?”

  He pointed to the board. Mahogany Flash had won, and who the hell should have come in third but a long-shot loser named Merry Legs.

  My father had won five hundred bucks for his fifty, and I would pocket sixty-eight dollars for my deuce.

  I was still locked in his embrace. It felt as if he might never let go.

  “The DeFalcos rule!” he shouted to the sky. “Oh, baby, we rule!”

  And for those few minutes, I guess he was right. If this was all he had, I wanted him to savor it.

  We stayed for three more races. I didn’t bet again. My father lost his next two bets but won on the third, so he was a few hundred bucks ahead on the night by the time we hit the road.

  When we got home my mother was asleep, and the kitchen was spotlessly clean.

  “Told you she’d clean it up, didn’t I, Mick?” He patted my cheek. “You have fun tonight, or what?”

  “It was good, Dad. Thanks.”

  “Tomorrow after work you go and see her, all calm and collected.”

  “Right.”

  “Be careful you don’t daydream on the job, thinkin’ about her. You work with power tools. Don’t wanna lose a foot, or a finger. The girls don’t go for maimed guys.”

  “Good night, Dad.”

  He went outside for his last smoke of the night.

  I went to my room and lay in bed, thinking about the deposit I was going to make at Lynn’s window the next day. It would be sixty-eight dollars more than it would have been, thanks to a long shot named Merry Legs.

  But Merry Legs was a sure thing, compared to the long shot I was about to play.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The bank was a sweet little place, a gingerbread house with bars on the windows, bars that hadn’t been there when I was a kid. It was here that I’d made my very first schoolboy nickel-and-dime deposits in an envelope with a picture of the winking Wise Old Owl on it. Save when you’re young, no worries when you’re old….

  Whatever happened to that bank account? It was something to wonder about as I went up the path, past knee-high hedges and an immaculately trimmed little lawn.

  Upon entering I felt the shock of the air-conditioning on my sweaty self. Hardly any customers were around. It was fifteen minutes to closing time.

  And there she was.

  She was seated at a barred teller window, as this bank lacked the suspicion and the sophistication to switch to bulletproof glass. She was busy going over the day’s receipts and had not yet looked up. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail, the same way she’d worn it when she was a kid.

  Butterflies bumped around in the cavities formerly occupied by my kneecaps. Somehow those legs of mine took me to her window. I stood at the bars like a man visiting his wife in prison.

  “May I help you?” she asked, still not looking up.

  That voice. If a brook could speak…

  I pushed my pay envelope under the slot with a trembling hand.

  “I’d like to open a savings account. Or maybe you could chuck this money in a wheelbarrow for me.”

  She looked up, and the sight of those sea-green eyes made me swallow a sob. Her eyes narrowed in puzzlement, widened in wonder, and finally settled into the same saucy green beams that haunted my dreams.

  “Oh, my God, it’s you.”

  “Hey, Lynn. Long time.”

  She sat up straight and shook her head. The ponytail flicked from shoulder to shoulder.

  “That TV show of yours,” she said, “was by far the worst program I’ve ever seen.”

  I was startled, stunned, amazed, and not surprised. Back in the day, I never knew what she was going to say, except that it was always going to be the truth. Nothing had changed.

  I nodded. “That’s why it only lasted three episodes.”

  “Three too many, if you ask me.”

  “Who’s asking you?”

  She smiled, then laughed. I was laughing, too, all the way from my soul. It’s a funny sound, laughter in a bank, echoing off the walls and vaults, and neither of us could stop for what seemed like years.

  But actually, it was only minutes. And speaking of minutes, there were only a few of them left until closing ti
me, and Lynn Mahoney used them to open a savings account for me. She was all business as she slid a shiny green passbook under the bars, my deposit neatly recorded on its first page.

  “Can I walk you home, Lynn?”

  She nodded, her eyes shiny with sudden tears. “Sure, Mickey. Been a long time since anybody walked me home.”

  Elbows tight to my rib cage (the better to cover my stinking armpits), I walked along the streets of Little Neck with Lynn Mahoney for the first time since 1988. It was a walk I’d walked a million times in my dreams, a walk I’d never expected to make again.

  Neil Armstrong’s heart wasn’t beating as fast as mine when he walked on the damn moon.

  I was foolishly, ridiculously, breathlessly happy. Amazing, considering we hadn’t so much as shaken hands. So far this felt like just another in an endless series of dreams. In those dreams I always ran to her and gathered her up in my arms, but in reality I was afraid to touch her, afraid that if I did she’d burst and vanish like a soap bubble.

  She was even more beautiful than before, those chipmunk cheeks having melted away to reveal high cheekbones. I was delighted to see that her black pantsuit was bottomed off by a pair of black Reebok cross-trainers. She may have become a buttoned-down banker, but she was still ready to run.

  What to say? My brain was a logjam of thoughts, and my mouth quivered as if I were about to burst into tears.

  “I’m sorry about your brothers,” I finally said. “And your father.”

  She nodded, did not falter or break stride. “I’m sure ol’ Donna told you I wasn’t there for the funerals.”

  “She might have mentioned it.”

  “Well,” Lynn said, spreading her arms to indicate the limitless grandeur of Northern Boulevard, “I’m here now.”

  My heart sank. I’d never once heard her say anything even remotely sarcastic, until this remark.

  “Yeah,” I replied numbly. “Me too.”

  “I can’t believe you’re back with Mr. Flynn.”

  “He’s the one who told me you were back.”

  “Yeah, well, nothing ever changes around here, especially the gossip. And as gossip goes, I’m pretty hot stuff, aren’t I? The coldhearted bitch who ran off like a tramp, back home at last.”

  “Nobody’s saying that.”

  “They’re thinking it, Mickey. Can’t say I blame them.”

  “They’re also thinking about a one hit wonder who’s back sleeping in his old room.”

  We walked two blocks in absolute silence. How was it possible there could be nothing more for us to say? I had to say something, anything, and suddenly I did.

  “Did you ever get to Italy?”

  Lynn seemed puzzled. “Italy?”

  “When we were kids we used to talk about saving up to go to Italy. You wanted to see the museums….”

  “Oh God, I forgot about that!”

  My heart sank. How could she have forgetten about Italy? It was part of the reason we’d fallen for each other!

  “Florence and Rome and Venice,” I persisted. “You were going to—”

  She waved her hand, as if to erase an unpleasant memory. “Mickey. I remember now. No, I never made it to Italy. Never even got a passport.”

  “So where…”

  I let the question tail off, realizing she didn’t want to talk about the paths she’d taken after she ran off.

  “Did you ever go to Italy?” Lynn asked.

  “No, but believe it or not my song made it over there. ‘Giorni Di Zucchero.’”

  “Is that ‘Sweet Days’ in Italian?”

  “Actually, the literal translation is ‘Days of Sugar.’ They got some spaghetti-bender to croon it. Didn’t sound half bad.”

  “It’s a beautiful language, Mickey. Probably the most beautiful language in the world.”

  “Why’d you ditch me that way?”

  I had to ask her like that, flat-out. She quickened her pace and I did the same to keep up.

  “You gonna answer me, or what?”

  “You got a pretty good song out of it, DeFalco.”

  “Fuck my song. Why’d you leave?”

  “It had nothing to do with you.”

  “Oh, well, that’s a relief.”

  “Mickey. Please. Be nice.”

  “Nice? You run off on me twenty years ago and now I’m supposed to be nice?”

  We were practically jogging. Lynn refused to say anything.

  “You know,” I said, “every time I performed it, wherever I was, I looked for you in the audience.”

  She slowed down to a regular walk. It took her a moment to catch her breath.

  “That’s crazy.”

  “Maybe, but it’s true. I had this stupid idea that you’d come to see me if I was anywhere near wherever the hell you were hiding, and drop in for a backstage visit.”

  “I wasn’t hiding.”

  “Well, whatever you were doing, I always hoped you’d show up to hear me sing.”

  She shook her head. “I’m not a concert person.”

  “Funny, neither am I. But being the performer, I sort of had to be there, you know?”

  She kicked a pebble. “Didn’t have much luck with your other songs, did you?”

  “Nah. They sucked. I only had one passion, so I only had one song.”

  “I guess Mick Jagger and Bruce Springsteen have a lot of passions, huh?”

  “They’re pros, Lynn. I’m just a guy who had his heart broken and poured it out in a song. It made me rich for a little while and famous for a few months but it didn’t bring you back. Which I guess is what I hoped it would do.”

  It was the truth, a truth I was learning myself as I spoke it.

  Lynn sighed. “You’re amazing.”

  “Why?”

  “The way you hang on.”

  “I was in love with you, Lynn.”

  She cocked a single eyebrow at me, the left one. I’d forgotten how she could do that.

  “Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t I hear that you got married?”

  I felt myself blush, waved her words away as if they were so many pesky gnats. “That was a mistake.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Did you ever get married?”

  “Mickey. Come on. I can barely stand to live with myself.”

  We headed down the street leading to the Mahoney house, a street I’d carefully avoided since my return to Little Neck. There were things I had to know before we reached that damn house.

  “You’re not going to tell me why you did what you did, are you, Lynn?”

  Her shoulders sank. “Aw, Mickey, please. I can’t explain it. I was a kid. I had a wild streak in me. I just had to get out there in the world.”

  “Come on. Something happened. Tell me what happened.”

  “Nothing happened. I got sick and tired of living in a house where my parents didn’t even look at each other. The climate of misery gets to you after a while, you know? So I split.”

  “Where? Where did you go?” Why did you leave me?

  She hesitated. “Lots of places,” she finally said. “Maine. Seattle. San Francisco.”

  “How’d you get by?”

  “I got by.”

  “You were going to teach art history.”

  She shut her eyes, shook her head. “Oh, God, I can’t believe you remember that.”

  “I remember everything. So do you.”

  “Yeah. That’s the problem. Be great if we could forget things, wouldn’t it?”

  “I don’t want to forget what we had!”

  “Mickey. Shh.” She put a finger to her lips, as if I were an excited schoolboy who’d gotten too loud in class. She jerked a thumb over her shoulder. “You’ll wake my mother.”

  We were in front of the Mahoney house, a huge, ugly redbrick structure fronted by a lawn where the Captain had knocked me on my ass that time. Now it was a garden of waist-high weeds, and the ramp the city had built on the stoop for the Captain’s wheelchair was in a state of collapse, t
he lumber buckled and warped from the years and the weather.

  “Christ, Lynn, this place needs a little work.”

  “Think so? I kinda like it like this.”

  “Why?”

  “It annoys the neighbors.” She smiled for an instant, a flash of the way she used to be, wonderfully naughty without malice.

  We were standing at her front gate, the same place we used to stand to kiss each other good night, but now we weren’t even touching each other. We were like two archaeologists visiting the ruins of an ancient love temple.

  “How’s your mother?” I managed to say.

  She shrugged. “It was a pretty serious stroke.” She looked at her watch. “I have to relieve the day nurse, Mickey. She gets cranky if she misses her bus.”

  She extended her hand for a formal shake, arm out all the way, fingers tight together like the slats of a spite fence. I could have cried. Then again, it was an opportunity to hold her hand.

  So we shook like two lawyers, a bony and bloodless squeeze of two hands that used to lace fingers at the movies.

  And then, just as my heart was about to break in a million pieces, she let go of my hand and hesitated before reaching up and poking my upper lip with her forefinger.

  “Still refuses to behave, that lip of yours,” she murmured.

  I tingled where she’d touched me, allowed myself to feel a glimmer of hope. “I want to see you, Lynn.”

  “You will. I’m around for a while.” Until my mother dies…. She managed a weak smile. “We’re neighbors again, Mickey.”

  “That’s not what I mean.”

  She sighed. “You know, even after all these years, you’re still—”

  “Stop. Shut up. If you tell me I’m still a nice boy I’ll have to kill you.”

  She shrugged. “Then I won’t. But you are.”

  “Ask Rosalind Pomer if I’m a nice boy. She’ll set you straight.”

  “Who’s Rosalind Pomer?”

  “Nobody.”

  “Then I’d have a hell of a time asking her, wouldn’t I?”

  I could think of nothing more to say. She actually lifted her hand and waved to me, as if she were on a train that was pulling away.

  “See you around, Mickey.”

  “Will I see you around? Do you mean that?”