A Matter of Love in da Bronx

by Paul Argentini

  NOW PLAYING

  Fourex

  Secret Desire

  Sometimes they changed the name on the billhead outside, showed the same movie inside. No one complained.

  The show and intrafrication was continuous. One left when tired of sitting, or jerking off. There was such a sameness to the films that one was hardpressed to remember, or care, where they came in.

  Sam paid for his ticket, shoved the bills he got in change into his pocket, passed up the popcorn and candy--for the very first time ever--and moved quickly to see if his regular seat was available. From the dim light of the screen now supposedly lit up in erotic color he found his way to the aisle seat of the very last row on the far side. There were perhaps thirty-five people, no two seated together, scattered widely throughout the narrow, long showplace. What if Sol hadn't alerted him, and he walked out of here with his fly open!

  Before concentrating on the screen, he took notice of the solitary occupant at the end of his very same row, hunkered down, almost trying to be invisible. Like him.

  CHAPTER 2

  --MARY! MARY DOLOROSSO! Mary! A roaring voice over the

  machine-gun clattering cacophony that rose and fell from the forty-odd high-speed, short-bursted piece-worked sewing machines. Brrrrrttttttt! Brrrrrrttttttttt! Brrrrrrrrrttttttttttttt! each discyclically went at the sweatshop Star Manufacturing Clothing Company on the fifth floor in the 200-block of West 37th Street in Manhattan's garment district.

  Mary looked up from her machine, brown eyes glimmering from cressets refocusing.

  --Boss-wants-to-see-you!

  --What?

  --Boss! He jerked his thumb.

  --Another rub-off? Stout, long, well-formed, neatly manicured fingers cupping unpainted edematousoid lips.

  The messenger, exasperated, defeated by the distance and the noise level, was reduced to mime and mouthing. Head shake. Af-ter-wo-rk!

  Mary nodded. Afraid of that. Shoulder length auburn hair captured neatly in a bandanna trimmed a clear-stretched silk-smooth skin with light Italian olive complexion. Teeth. Even. White-white. Eyes. Brown. Big-big. A slightly broad nose well suited her pleasant, cheruby heartshaped face which came from highly pronounced cheekbones and the hint of a cleft in the point of her chin giving a miniature prevue of the bosomy cleavage above her work smock. Her frame stood under five-foot-five in heels; plump, girdle-held buns, fleshy bare arms; and slightly heavy but shapely legs. The French would say "une belle tournure," the English voluptuous, the New Yorkers zavdic. For such a body, whatever it was called, it was going to waste. Mary knew that. The heat her body generated was dissipated as mere room convection. Even though she was paid no more for doing a rub-off, a job requiring more skill in the production process than being a sewing machine operator, it was fun to make soft patterns. It wasn't exactly designing clothes, but it was better than being chain-stitched to a sewing machine, which was infinitely better than what the boss tried to offer on one's own time, that is, after punching out for the day. Another shot at a proposition, no doubt.

  She turned back to the too familiar chore of race-guiding materials under the foot and needle. Brrrrrrrttttttttt! Brrrrrrrttttttt! Boring! Vomitously boring. She used as little of her operating mind to concentrate on the task needed to make her wages more than something to ridicule. Petty wages. Piece work was unforgiving, one got paid by the amount of work done, and done correctly; one didn't get paid for what one didn't do--anathema for such as politicians and diplomats who were used to boring work. And, if one couldn't keep up with the rest of the workers to keep production flowing smoothly, one was asked to give up the machine and hunt for work elsewhere. Whatever. It was still boring. Brrrrrrrrrrrr...

  ...Golden illumination from the brilliant sun against a clear, cloudless canopy of skyblue comingling reflections with the frothy seawater green and sugarwhite sand of an endless shore. The majestic alabaster equine a chorale of pulsing muscles, arhythmically hoofpounding to deepchested snorts consuming hectares at each flowing rise to outspeed envious onshore breezes. Aboard, in a billowing, tenuous film of bright bridal lace around her florescent, heaving body, she strained to retain bareback control, her knees indigging the flanks of the surging, pumping beast between her legs, a handful of mane twistbraided through guiding artful fingers. In the distance, like the looming head of a charging lance, another royal beast and a fairhaired riding colossus swiftly seizing at the space of shore between them. Allo! Allo! To hide, unseen...somewhat! To the beached rocks there! Ahead! A dune's length alee. Wait! Stand 'til he passes! The stamping, quivering flesh beneath of her horse in frenzy at the frustrating interruptus, holds tightstring as a drawn bow until the acmatic mortal flows galloping by, is then totally released again to gain its unsighted goal upbeach. Allo! Allo! Notgone unseen! His steed rears; his call an imprecation to wilier senses. Reverse! Reverse! Now, in pursuit again, he. Let the chase be on! Swifter, and faster, and harder, and deeper go the prints of doublesets of pounding hooves. Closer he draws. No place to hide! Foamy animal sweat falls intermingling with shorefrothed failing waves in shorter and shorter gaps. Until! Alongside, thigh to thigh, he reaches across ecstasy's charged air to clamp her like an island to the shore of his eager arms. There! At last, together, near co-joined, they make for the multi-colored flappings of Araby's deserted tent. Her bosom to his breast, he dismounts, tenderly transporting his treasure inside, laying superheated flesh on welcoming, algid silken down. Pectorals tense, a loincloth untied, wild anticipation painting the air. Allo! Allo! The dagger found by her side, unsheathed rides forward more to preserve her honor than to fend him away. Not you! Not you! Earn your day! The lunge! How fast! The point brings a blood-spurt, the cry lost as open mouth covers open mouth. Caressing hands seek to bathe in erotic fountains of response. Push away! Push away! to prevent any gain, but her spirit hands lock themselves at his nuque as he rises above her, high, with a ready rush to impale, to invade, to imprison her soul at first thrust. What ecstasy! Finally! Forpined lover consummates forpined lover, forever! Allo! Allo! Wait! Passion! Sweet merciless passion! Let me see thine face!

  --Mary! Mary! ...ttttttt! Brrrt!

  Oh! Yes! Oh! No! Don't call me away! Thine face! Thine face! Love's smooth slide igniting inspired, moist, turgid nymphae; the steaming , hypogastric swellings unrelieved too dear a price to pay, my prince.

  --You wanted to see me, Mr. Goldberg? Amiel Goldberg. The boss's son. Overstuffed sausage.

  --Close at fucking door!

  Pasha, yes. It's a privilege and an honor, Pasha, to be so summoned to your august presence with mine own thoughts caring not what whim or fancy bestir your lofty regency with thoughts of me. Bloated. Babionic ass.

  --You're going to cost me thousands a-fucking dollars! Your estimate on the fucking estimate that you estimated was so fucking far off the estimate I couldn't the fuck believe it! What the fuck kind of fucking estimated brain are you using?

  You have no idea of what I'm faced with at the slightest intimation that you might want me. I beg your pardon, Sire! That you might want to see me. All the other ladies in your hareem stop whatever they're doing, and put their eyes fast upon me. They watch my every motion to see how I behave, to learn to do as I do perhaps to learn when they, too, might be beckoned to this special reclusitory, or is it reclinatory, or reclitorisatory? Bedwetter.

  --The robe! The robe! That's what the fuck I'm talking about. The robe! I give you a chance to design the goddamned thing, and you do this to me? Crazy fucking broad!

  Pasha! How green their eyes as they watch my sensuous, swaying body glide toward our rendezvous wondering, too, how they could ever gain favor after you have once been transported to the nethers with me? Whorebaiter.

  --Is this how you fucking pay me back after all these years I let you have experience doing real designing so you can put all your school work to real use? So maybe it did save me the expense of hiring a designer who probably couldn't have done as well as you have. That's why I kept telling you weren't
ready! Not to go looking for a fucking designer's job until I said you were ready! Now see what you've done? Cost me a mint! A mint!

  Pasha, you want me to dance! You want to see my fleshy belly undulate to rhythms that boil the blood, incite desire? You will forget all else save your need to satisfy your mounting lust. Nosepicker.

  --Okay! Okay! So maybe you didn't do the design for the robe, you fucking had to do the rub-off! We used your soft pattern! I know I had you trace the fabric from the robe we stole from the Kazinsky Company and sold as our own, and I watched you make the fucking hard design! That's how I know! You a-fucking going to cost us a bundle!

  As if I didn't know you can't take your eyes off of me. How your eyes devour each twitch of my hips, and roll of my rounded bottom. How your eyes flash as I bump my love mound erotically first to the left, then to the right, then aimed right at the pounding erection between your legs. Thumbsucker.

  --You shoulda fucking double-checked my figures! I try to be the good guy and teach you all I know about clothing manufacturing with all the other things on my mind and I didn't concentrate and made a fucking error and you shoulda caught the fucking mistake!

  Pasha, I can see your hands reaching out to feel my breasts. Grub.

  --That's right! The next fucking day when you came in and told me I might get by provided the marker laid the pattern out as you suggested I got a million things jumping down my throat and I forgot! I forgot! I'm going to kick that fucker marker bastard right in the balls!

  Come, Pasha, let me teach you the ways of love. Mold.

  --So if we use your original design, and eliminate part of the panel, then your estimate for the material will be right, and we can come out all right!

  There's no need to send all the others away, to keep me as your very own. Though, I'm pleased I please you, Pasha, mine, in ways you did not dream possible. Excrement.

  Don't you worry about the foreman. I'll worry the foreman! I'll take care of your production tickets, and you'll find an extra hundred bucks in your paycheck for the designing work you've done. What I'd really like to give you is this hundred dollar bill. Ever own one of these, have you? A-fucking hard to come by. I'll tell you that. We'll just wait until everyone leaves so we can be alone. You see, my wife doesn't understand what I need.

  How do you read me so well, Pasha! Where does thine depth of understanding spring? How fortuitous for me your talent lies in arousing my desire that you might with equal skill quench my calorific quim. Enema.

  --Whatdayamean you'll be late for class? Fuck the class! How long you been here? Five-six years? Didn't I do nice by you? Treat you right? Give you a chance to do some real dress designing. Don't I give you a job? Worth keeping right? And all what I'm asking is to be nice to me right back. Come on! Take the C-note. Hundred bucks just to let me...you know...let me... In. My finger... Nothing more. Behind.

  Shitbrain.

  Mary found herself in the Chock Full of Nuts just east of Broadway leaning heavily on the counter, listlessly stirring a coffee--an indifferent appetite for the hamburger before her. There just had to be some signal system that would allow her to communicate more carefully with herself rather than go into disconnect, separating herself neatly into components each doing a different task. It wasn't a question of a personality disorder. She had that pretty much figured out. Yet, had she spoken to anyone about her capacity the instant diagnosis would be multiple personality disorder, schizoid in the least, with ego dysfunction brought on with early menstrual trauma complicated by regenerative figmental relapses. In her own mind, simply she had the ability to do two things at once. Born and bred partly in boredom. A true self-defensive mechanism. Early school grades. Ho-hum, teacher. No, no skipping a grade for you, so learn to write upside down;...and backwards; ...and mirror image; ...now try it all left handed. Ho-ho-ho-hum! As if just plain school wasn't bad enough. Then came sanctifying sanctum sanctotum Sunday school: Question--Which are the chief sources of sin? Answer--The chief sources of sin are seven: Pride, Covetousness, Lust, Anger, Gluttony, Envy, and Sloth, and they are commonly called capital sins. Question: What is pride? Answer--Pride is an excessive love of our own ability so that we would rather sinfully disobey than humble ourselves. Question: What effect has pride on our souls? Answer--Pride begets in our souls sinful ambition, vainglory, presumption and hypocrisy. Question: What is covetousness? Answer--Covetousness is an excessive desire for worldly things. Question: What effect has covetousness on our souls? Answer--Covetousness begets in our souls unkindness, dishonesty, deceit and want of charity. Question--What is lust? Answer--Lust is an excessive desire for the sinful pleasures forbidden by the Sixth Commandment. Question: What effect has lust on our souls? Answer: Lust begets in our souls a distaste for holy things, a perverted conscience, a hatred of God, and it very frequently leads to a complete loss of faith. Glib you are with the back and forth, how about somebody try some of mine? Question--How come I've completely lost my faith and have yet to lose my hymen? I've never been married, so how can I break the Sixth Commandment; Thou shalt not commit adultery, if I've never known the sinful pleasures I'm not to have? Or, do you say fornication of itself is forgiven? Ho-hum. More boring. And Sunday school, too, helped teach me how to escape through the window of my mind. But, the best reason I acquired the talent came from my father. I can never remember Rocco Dolorosso not being in the wheelchair though it's been since before I went to high school. I don't remember him as a gentle soul before then, but since he's been home all the time and in that wheelchair he's a firstwater tyrant. How he yearned always to lecture, to scold, to berate, to harangue hour after month after year! How the scar on his forehead would turn blooddrained white accenting his unshaven, whiskery face; the snarl to his lips showing the dirty, badbroken teeth; the hunching in the chair making him even smaller than he was. He was really a mean-spirited, pitiful fellow who blatantly disregarded and discarded all of his own human attributes. He thought no one knew this because he thought no one knew he could really walk. Mary knew. Not right away. But she found out. Then, by the third time he held her captive--a freshman in high school--while he fulminated so crazily against her on inane subjects for more than three hours, Mary began to develop the cinema screen behind her eyes. That's where life began while the robot took care of Station One--the outer self that performed and operated as a normal human being, functioning on level above a mouthbreathing retard. Excellent mode for the subway ride home. Very good for the classroom. Supreme at Mass. The very best for boring times, alone, alone with others or just with others. A marvelous place to disappear.

  --Earth to Mary... Louisa Golczek. Blonde, big, bosomy; about twenty-eight, happy face, pleasant-pretty, not beautiful; swinging walk; excitement-seeker. Why shouldn't Goldberg try to blame you, Mary. He's been using your designs all these years, and not paying you one cent for them. You could work anywhere on the street for anyone you wanted. I don't know why you don't give yourself a break, and do it. I know you're going to win the school award this year. I know it. And that cheap bastard says he's going to put extra money in your envelope, he never has yet! Why don't you call him on it? Just once! I would've grabbed that hundred bucks and shoved it up his rear end. He really wanted to do that? Just that? What a pervert! Like a baby playing with ka-ka. You know, Mary, that's not the only sweatshop in town, so why do you put up with his crap? I know. I know... Permanently puckered red-red lips take in a bit of datenut bread, sip of coffee.

  Weezy, thanks for the rescue, for coming to his office for me. Another second I would've been sitting on his finger.

  --Gotta protect my own alibi. Good thing you told me to come for you, too. You know, if you're not going to eat that hamburger, I think I'd better. This creep that's picking me up might turn out to be real cheap and not buy me dinner... No big Mac until the second date! Thanks, Mary.

  How did the world revolve in this fashion for her? Getting caught up with a home that was worse than a boarding house; in a job that was worse than stultifying; a
nd with an only friend some few years younger than her who was crazy about anything that wore pants and for whom she lied so she could go out and screw around. It really wasn't that much of a thing to do. What made it distasteful, possibly, was the idea that maybe she'd like to be doing the same thing. The opportunity was remote the way her parents--her father, mostly--kept her chained to the frontdoorstep, demanding she account for every second of her time that she was out of their sight. Why did she allow it to be her world? She really couldn't tell herself, though she suspected the foundation was fear, fear of some unknown thing that could possibly hurt her. It could be anything. And nothing. Louisa still asked her every time to double date with her. No more of that nonsense. No sooner did she take the back seat than Don Juan reached for her snatch. It made for very short rides and long times in between blind dates. The pressure came. Louisa's date would admonish her not to bring along "friends what don't put out..." Then, Louisa herself, asking what the hell she was keeping it for? A virginal sacrifice? No! And neither would she be some sacrificial virgin for some singleminded concupiscent rutter later to be discarded with as much deference as so much septic effluvium. No, thank you. And, one step above that level, for mutual satisfaction and embellishment? To meet the need? Too many knowns to know about before leaping into that cauldron. Would she enjoy it? Would she be brutalized? Would it be demeaning, giving away an irrecoverable part of her? Would she get pregnant? Would she get a disease? Course, she never said anything like this to Weezy, but Louisa intimated quite broadly that she'd been fucking men a long time and had been pretty goddamned lucky in lots of ways. Besides, she loved it better than anything else she could do on earth. Not that Weezy was one, but some whores were just lucky that way--getting paid to do something they'd be just as glad to give away. Well, that might be all right for Weezy, but she might not be so lucky, so Mary held back with one slithering thought in her mind which was that she'd get laid at least once before she reached forty--ten years to go. And when that time came, it sure wouldn’t be with Vito Cigrugli, the greasy baker, whose only redeeming characteristic for her parents--not for her--was that they tolerated him, no small accomplishment. Mary didn't learn until long after she was out of high school that whenever she dared consider a date, and invited the fellow home to pick her up to meet her parents, her father usually found a neat way of phrasing his concern for his daughter's chastity. With Mary out of hearing, the lad would be sat within range for him to poke him in the chest with his index finger, and ask, "What'sa you name again?" Then, he'd say something like, "Well, John--or Tony--or Frank--I suppose you want to fuck my daughter? Well, let's get this straight. You have to fuck me first, you understand?" It wasn't long before the story made the rounds of the high school, and when Mary heard it, she thought it was the funniest story ever told. It was only after she heard it came from a man in a wheelchair that she realized who they were talking about, which effectively ended her search for romance with the neighborhood boys. But, Vito, the baker, appeared to be prosperous--a most redeeming quality according to Ma and Pa--at least, he owned a bakery and had never once been married in his forty-odd years, which, to Mary, confirmed his least redeeming quality, which was that he was a schnook. Once she confided in Louisa, "Oh! Weezy! He's such a bore!" To which Louisa replied, "...which is not as bad, you'll learn, as lonely..." So far, Louisa was only close, not right about that. In the meantime, aid and abet romance, at least for Louisa.