One Hit Wonder

by Charlie Carillo

  “Yo, yo, where dat Mickey DeFalco at? Get your ass up here, white boy!”

  In the commotion that followed I grabbed Roz by the elbow, hauled her into a small bedroom and slammed the door behind us.

  “That’s the surprise, huh?”

  “Didn’t you like it? They’re friends of Deron’s! Aren’t they great?”

  “What the hell do you want me to say?”

  She pointed toward the loft. “Do you realize how big those guys are? TFN is on the rise, Mickey! I know their agent and I suggested your song to them! Aren’t you the least bit excited?”

  “It doesn’t matter what I think! None of this does me any good! It’s not my song anymore!”

  “Let me work on that.”

  “I don’t want you to work on anything.”

  She stared at me, sized me up, shook her head. “You know, man, you’ve got a real attitude. It’s like you want to fail.”

  “Don’t analyze me.”

  “You are the poster child for denial.”

  I stepped toward her. She suddenly seemed terrified. “Rosalind, why are we kidding ourselves? Why are we out on a date? We don’t date, we fuck. Want to get down to it? Huh? What do you say we stop this bullshit and get back on familiar turf?”

  I grabbed her arms and pulled her down to the mattress. She let out a howl and gave me a knee in the balls that made my ears ring. She raced from the room, slamming the door behind her.

  I had to wait a minute or two to let the pain recede. When I was able to get to my feet I noticed that the bedroom window led to a fire escape, and that’s how I left the party, zigzagging my way down three flights of rusty ladders as TFN launched into another song, loud enough to loosen the bricks from the mortar.

  The walk to the subway sobered me up. I had no idea of what was going to happen next. I only knew that I’d started weeping, and I couldn’t stop all the way back to Little Neck.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  It couldn’t go on like this. I was going to have to go somewhere, anywhere, just to be by myself, but my funds were limited, to say the least.

  They were limited because I’d given away all my dirty money with Lynn. Her big idea! All I had left was the money I’d put in the bank, those few minuscule deposits I’d made at Lynn’s window.

  I got up to go to work as usual on Monday morning, trying to ignore the big freeze emanating from my mother at the breakfast table. My father had already left for work.

  “You’re very quiet lately,” she said.

  The unspoken part of that sentence was “and I’m very worried about you, and I cannot live like this for much longer.”

  She was right. I couldn’t pull this kind of crap while I was living under her roof. I gulped my eggs and rushed to work.

  Despite my stupor, I was stunned by one thing—for the first time, I got to the garage before Patrick, the perpetual early bird. Without Patrick around, Flynn had nobody’s balls to bust but mine.

  “So, Mick, how goes the latest chapter in Little Neck’s all-time love story?”

  “It’s actually the last chapter. She dumped me.”

  Flynn’s eyes widened. “Jeez, I thought it was goin’ good.”

  “That makes two of us.”

  Minutes later Patrick came trudging along, lunch bag in hand.

  “Latest you’ve ever been,” Flynn remarked. “Why you mopin’, Patrick?”

  “I’m not moping!”

  “It’s in your face, kid.”

  Patrick studied his shoes and sighed deeply. “I might not be going to Purdue.”

  “Get adda here!”

  Patrick looked the boss in the eye. “I mean it, Mr. Flynn. All of a sudden it just…doesn’t feel right.”

  “Ahh, get in the truck, both of you.”

  We sat as we always did—Flynn driving, me at the passenger window, Patrick between us. Flynn shifted the loose, grinding gears as we approached a hill.

  “This is all about Scarlett, ain’t it?”

  Patrick wouldn’t answer, but his moist eyes and tight lips told the story.

  “Hah! I knew it!”

  “Lay off, Mr. Flynn.”

  “What do your parents say?”

  “They don’t know. Yet.”

  “They’ll pop a gut if you bail out.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Mickey, talk to him.”

  I shrugged. “What can I say? I didn’t even finish high school. If he doesn’t want to go, he doesn’t want to go.”

  Flynn rolled his eyes, threw his cigarette out the window.

  “Patrick, Patrick, listen to me. Where you gonna go to school? Huh?”

  “I thought maybe the community college.”

  “That’s a joke! They don’t even have a football team!”

  “Fuck football.”

  Flynn hit the brake, nearly sending Patrick and me against the windshield. A car honked behind us. Slowly, not believing what he’d just heard, Flynn put the truck back into gear.

  “What are you sayin’? All of a sudden you don’t like football?”

  His voice broke as he said, “I don’t like the idea of being away from my girl.”

  Flynn rolled his eyes, gripped the wheel like a getaway driver.

  “You guys,” he muttered. “I don’t know about you guys anymore. The two best guys I’ve ever had, and look at you. Look at you! Done in by your so-called better halves!”

  One thing he could count on from both of us was hard work, no matter how we felt. Patrick and I really threw ourselves into it that day, and as we were loading up the lawn mowers after our first job he grabbed my elbow.

  “You understand, don’t you, Mick?”

  I sighed. “Look, man, if you’re doing this for the girl, it could be a mistake. You’re young. You’re both young.”

  “You’re still in love with your first girl.”

  “She doesn’t want anything to do with me anymore, Patrick.”

  “If you really love her, it’s not over.”

  “Stop listening to the songs, kid, and hear the news. Love doesn’t conquer all.”

  “But you understand how I feel, don’t you?”

  “Yeah, Patrick, I understand.”

  And I also understood that this man-child named Patrick could develop and harden every muscle in his body except his heart. He startled me by grabbing me in an embrace even more powerful than Frankie McElhenny’s, an embrace my still-tender ribs could have done without.

  “You’re the only one who gets it,” he murmured in a quaking voice before releasing me. “Know what? When I say my prayers tonight, I’m going to pray for you and Lynn.”

  “You pray at night?”

  “Sure do.”

  “On your knees?”

  “Yup. The more you suffer, the better God listens.”

  This strange, strange day was about to get even stranger.

  At lunchtime Flynn always tuned his transistor radio to a station that played golden oldies. The noontime deejay was a highly caffeinated guy named Jimmy Pack, a.k.a. Jimmy (“The Rat”) Pack. He called his listeners “pack rats,” and he loved hosting contests on the air. On this day, he rolled out one hell of a contest.

  “Hey, pack rats, it’s hot out there at high noon (bing-bong chimes for the stroke of noon) and speaking of hot—have we got a contest for you! Jimmy needs your help on this one, my friends—we need you to help us choose the sappiest, and I mean the sappiest love song of all time! The one that made you lose your lunch, run out and get an insulin shot!

  “Are you ready, pack rats? Here, in no particular order, are the five candidates!”

  (Soundup: “We had joy, we had fun, we had seasons in the sun…”)

  “Terry Jacks, ‘Seasons in the Sun’! Oh, baby! Hang a bucket on that one and you’ll get enough sap to make a barrel of maple syrup!”

  (Soundup: “Feelings…nothing more than feelings…”)

  “Morris Albert, ‘Feelings’! Funny how a song about feelings can leave you so
numb, isn’t it? I got a feeling this one could be the sappiest song of all time!”

  (Soundup: “All by myself…don’t wanna be all by myself….”)

  “Eric Carmen, All By Himself! Boo-friggin’-hoo! Can you believe this song was a hit? They should play it when they put people on ‘hold’ at Masturbators Anonymous!”

  (Soundup: “Some people wanna fill the world with silly love songs….”)

  “Paul McCartney, ‘Silly Love Songs’! He wrote that one for Linda…. Hey, Paul, what did you sing to that second wife of yours—‘Peg O’ My Heart’? Ooh, I’ll do some time in Purgatory for that one, pack rats! And last but not least…”

  (Soundup: “Sweet Days…feel like a haze…a summertime craze…but it ain’t just a phase…”)

  “Mickey DeFalco, ‘Sweet Days’! Well, Mick, it turns out you were just a phase, but if you win the sappiest song contest, you’ll be right back on top! On top of what, I don’t actually know….”

  I stopped chewing my sandwich. Patrick sat there open-mouthed before breaking into applause. Flynn laughed out loud as Jimmy Pack went on about the numbers to dial to vote for the sappiest song. It was seventy-five cents per call, and the winner would be announced at lunch tomorrow.

  Patrick stood up and reached into his pocket to count his change.

  “Patrick,” Flynn said, “what the hell you doin’?”

  He pointed to a pay phone down the street. “I’m gonna vote for Mick.”

  Flynn rolled his eyes. “Patrick. Do you understand what’s goin’ on, here? Mickey doesn’t want to win. That would be embarrassing.”

  Patrick swallowed. “Oh, yeah.” He turned to me. “Sorry, Mick.”

  “Don’t worry about it, Patrick. You go ahead and vote for me if you like.”

  “No, no, Mr. Flynn is right.”

  Patrick resumed eating his sandwich. Flynn turned to me and spoke in a whisper.

  “Nice kid, but sometimes I get the feelin’ he didn’t always remember to wear his helmet out there on the field, ya know what I’m sayin’, Mick?”

  Lunch was almost over when a long, lean guy in jeans and a wrinkled denim shirt came walking our way, a cigarette in his mouth, a scowl on his face. He was about my age and he had one of those deliberate three-day growths of beard, shaved along the edges. A contradictory face, a bum with a butler.

  There was a manic determination to his stride, as if he were both in a hurry to get somewhere and hopelessly lost. But when he saw me sitting there on the sidewalk with my peanut butter and jelly sandwich, his face lit up.

  “Are you Mickey DeFalco?”

  He said it like a cop, and for an instant I thought I was at long last being nailed for the L.A. thing. Then I realized I could have been in trouble for what had happened the night before with Rosalind. Could she have filed an assault charge against me, for the way I’d dragged her down on that bed in SoHo? Attempted rape? It wasn’t impossible.

  I finished chewing and swallowing. “Actually, my proper name is Michael DeFalco.”

  He clenched a fist in triumph. “Man, have I been lookin’ for you!” He extended his hand. “I’m Joel Schmitter.”

  I shook his hand without getting up. Flynn and Patrick eyed the guy like a couple of bodyguards. Schmitter was still holding my hand when he added, “I’m a producer with Hollywood Howl.”

  “Oh for Christ’s sakes,” Flynn muttered.

  Schmitter chuckled. “Hey, I know, I know, it’s not the greatest TV show in the world. But man, am I glad we found you!”

  “We?”

  He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “My crew’s in that blue van across the street. Relax, we’re real discreet. Plain van. We could be anybody.”

  “What do you want from me?”

  “Could we talk in private?”

  “I have nothing to say to you.”

  “Just walk around the block with me, please. No cameras, no mikes. All right? Come on, I’ve come a long way for this.”

  I turned to Flynn and Patrick, who regarded Schmitter through narrowed eyes. “I’m going to walk around the block with this guy.”

  Flynn nodded. “If the waiter comes back while you’re gone, do you want dessert?”

  “Yeah, the apricot soufflé.”

  “You got it.”

  I got up and walked with Schmitter, who waved to the guys in the van, a wave that told them to stay put, but be ready.

  “Your boss is a real comedian, huh?”

  “He has his moments.”

  “You know why we’re here.”

  “Yeah, I’m not an idiot.”

  “Quite a story, your comeback, wouldn’t you say?”

  I had to laugh. “I didn’t come back. A movie came out with my song in it, that’s all.”

  “A hit movie, man. And you didn’t get paid shit.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Checked it out. I’m good at my job. Listen, man, the whole friggin’ country’s wondering what the hell happened to you. That’s why I flew three thousand miles.”

  “How’d you find me?”

  “Ha! You wouldn’t believe what I went through! Called all over L.A., nobody knew where you’d gone. I mean, nobody. So I ask myself, where does a nice Italian kid from New York go when he’s down on his luck? And the answer is, he goes home. Home is always home for you spaghetti-benders, am I right?”

  “I’m half Irish.”

  “I figured. Your mother doesn’t look Italian.”

  I stopped walking. “You saw my mother?”

  “Unless it was the maid. Knocked on the door, asked her where you were. She shut the door in my face.”

  “We don’t have a maid.”

  “Well, then, it musta been your dear old mother.”

  We resumed walking. “Why didn’t you phone first?”

  “It’s not my style.”

  “Just in our brief time together, Schmitter, it seems to me you don’t have much of a style.”

  “Hey, I found you, didn’t I? Tracked you down on a job that moves all over the place.”

  “How’d you know I was cutting lawns?”

  “Hey. I don’t divulge my sources.” He smiled, showing nicotine-stained teeth. “Come on, give me a little credit.”

  “All right, I give you credit. But listen to me when I tell you that if there was a door between us, I’d be shutting it.”

  “Like mother, like son, huh?”

  “We’re not a terribly friendly family.”

  He kicked a pebble, like a frustrated child. “Come on, talk to me. Give me a few sound bites so I can get out of your life forever.”

  “Sound bites about what?”

  He gripped his chest as if he were having a heart attack. “Come on, man! You had a number one song when you were just a kid, and now you’re a middle-aged man pushin’ a friggin lawn mower!”

  “Thirty-eight is middle aged?”

  “Close enough. Hey, excuse me for having an opinion, but that is a big story!”

  “If it’s such a big story, how come they didn’t send a reporter with you?”

  He couldn’t help laughing, and this time it sounded real. “My man knows the game, doesn’t he?”

  “This isn’t the first time I’ve dealt with TV interviews. I knew I was in decline when they stopped sending reporters.”

  “What do you want from me? It’s summertime. Lots of reporters on vacation. This is the best we can do. But listen, you’re better off with me handlin’ it, Mickey. I promise there won’t be any stupid questions from some dumb meat puppet tryin’ to sound like a journalist.”

  “Schmitter, I’m not talking to you, and that’s it. Tell your boss you tried your best.”

  He hesitated, bit his lower lip. “We’ll pay you.”

  That stunned me. “You pay for interviews?”

  “When we have to. Three thousand bucks.”

  I looked him in the eye. He wasn’t kidding. He was offering me the same money I’d be getting for a whole summer sweatin
g behind a lawn mower, just for answering a few questions on camera.

  Three thousand bucks. With that kind of money I could take off someplace for a month, get out of my parents’ faces, get out of my own skull.

  “Cash?”

  “Well, no, not cash. Come on, we’re a legitimate business! Gotta account for expenditures!”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Listen, man, I’m not an accountant or anything, but I’m guessin’ that in your current tax bracket, you’d get to keep most of it. No offense, but it’s true.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “So, what do you say? I got a contract right here.” He pulled a folded white paper from his back pocket. “You sign it, and we’re on our way.”

  “If you’re offering three, you’ve been authorized to go as high as five.”

  Schmitter gulped. “Smart guy, aren’t you?”

  “Not particularly. But when you get fucked over enough times, you have to be an idiot not to detect the pattern.”

  “Would you do it for five?” He pulled out a cell phone. “Lemme call my boss, we’ll make it happen—”

  “No, no. No deal. I just didn’t want you to go away thinking I was an idiot.”

  “I’m not going away.”

  “Well, I am.”

  We turned the final corner on the block. Patrick and Flynn were finishing their lunch. Schmitter lit up a fresh cigarette with nervous hands, like a gambler down to his last few chips.

  “Tell me one thing,” he begged. “All those chicks, just throwin’ themselves at you. What was that like?”

  “Repetitive.”

  “Oh, Jesus, see what I mean? That’s a fuckin’ great sound bite! Why won’t you talk to me?”

  “Because…”

  It was a great question, actually. Why wouldn’t I do it and grab the easy check? I didn’t have to exploit anyone for the money, it wasn’t drug money, and God, did I ever need it….

  Schmitter was waiting, a drop of sweat rolling slowly toward the point of his Adam’s apple. I cleared my throat.