The Classics

by Tim McLoughlin

  “Everything’s about screwing,” said Frankie, acting the man of the world.

  The man in charge crooked his finger at them, so Frankie and his friends moved to the shadowy back of the store. There the man dealt out cards face-down on the glass showcase like hands of poker. When he flipped them over, they weren’t aces and kings; they were snapshots of naked dames turning themselves inside out to show how they were made. The guys got frog eyes.

  “How much?” said Frankie.

  “A fin,” said the man.

  “Five bucks for pictures?” said Frankie. “You’re kidding?”

  “Get out,” said the man. “Out. Before I kick asses. Scummy kids.”

  Farther down 42nd was the bus terminal with snaking lines at ticket windows, with sitters on suitcases and hard benches, and blind-looking people hurrying somewhere, and others dragging, unhappy to go where they were going. Not knowing which line to get in, the boys went to Information.

  “You don’t want the Greyhound,” said the colored guy. “It don’t stop in Union City. You want the Madison line. It’s red and white. It goes to Jersey by the Skyway.”

  At the first and only stop in Union City everybody got off, as if the only reason to go there was to see the show. It was almost June and the light was still out, and they all went up the hilly street, passing old brick buildings with boarded-up windows, dark warehouses where nothing useful could be kept, scurrying rats, and drunks nursing like babies from bottles in paper bags.

  “Poor bastards. We ought to help them out. But we ain’t got time,” said Frankie, and his angel whispered her agreement.

  The boys kept their eyes peeled in case a derelict should pounce from a doorway with a filthy proposition. They were a little scared, except for Rocco Marino. He threw a left jab at an invisible opponent to dare trouble to come out. But then, without being asked, Rocco gave a dollar to the old man with a balding beard and one-tooth grin.

  “I got dough from my fights,” Rocco said to his friends, who didn’t have as much. He didn’t want them to think he was a show-off.

  When the crowd turned the corner, the street was in the glaring spotlight of thousands of burning white bulbs on the Hudson Theater’s marquee, reading in capital letters:

  BURLESQUE

  “We have half an hour still,” said Frankie.

  “How about a beer?” said Gene Dragoni, hoping the bar next to the theater wouldn’t find him too young.

  “First, let’s get tickets,” said Nick. “If they sold out while we’re sipping suds, it would be a waste. After that trip.”

  They got in line. But the seats weren’t reserved. So instead of drinking their beers in Little Lil’s Bar, bought from Lil herself, who was built like a wrestler and who winked at Gene although she knew they were all underage, they took their bottles to seats in the third row of the balcony.

  The orchestra’s lower half was already mostly filled, though not entirely by servicemen and other men. Dames too were in the audience, with dates, or in groups of dames together. That girls were there at all seemed to the guys a little odd. But at the back of their minds they knew things existed that they couldn’t explain yet. They hoped that later on, when they weren’t boys any longer, they would understand such minor mysteries.

  Two rows down and over to the side in the balcony were two dames by themselves not much older than Frankie and his friends, and one had rusting blonde hair. The guys couldn’t take their eyes off the dames, and the dames, not taking their eyes off the guys either, even waved first. The guys elbowed each other and thought they were easily recognizable as Romeos. They talked about moving their seats next to the dames, or asking them up to seats in their row. But they were filled up on each other’s friendship and were anticipating the pleasure of other dames showing off their legs, breasts, and behinds, so for now they just didn’t need these dames.

  People in the aisles were still looking for seats when a guy in a white jacket and black tie came onstage. His grin was so broad it was almost a mirror reflecting flashes in code. “Ladies and gentlemen, tonight we have a sensational offer. The most sensational in the history of the Hudson Theater. Tonight we have this lovely box of delicious Whitman’s chocolates made with imported chocolate. Crunchy nuts. Chewy carmels. Buttery creams. All for one dollar. Let me repeat this sensational bargain price. All for one little dollar. This special sale is from the maker exclusively to you, to introduce their fine quality. And not only one pound of chocolates, but in each ten boxes is a special bonus. A Bulova watch. Can you believe your good luck? One out of ten leaves here tonight with a Bulova worth $25 on his wrist. What a terrific deal. I’m buying ten boxes myself. And even if you don’t win, these delicious chocolates make you feel like a winner. So, please, have your dollars ready. We have only seventy-five boxes for this limited offer. When we’re sold out, there just won’t be anymore.”

  “Let’s split one,” said Rocco, taking out a dollar. The other three each passed him a quarter.

  “But who gets the watch?” said Nick, believing it possible to win one.

  “We can toss for it,” said Gene, since the laws of chance, unlike arm wrestling, would favor them equally.

  “No watches in those boxes,” said Frankie. “It’s the worm on the hook.”

  The box had space for twice as much candy as was there, not a pound, but eight pieces, quickly chewed, as the boys shrugged off their disappointment.

  Another guy came onstage in his white jacket which was a little too long. He was short and square and talked up to the microphone. “All you people who didn’t win the watch. In case you won one, you can’t be in on this. This is only if you didn’t buy the candy, or if you did, you didn’t get a Bulova, which now you can get. Really, really cheap. But only one to a person. I know people here want to buy two, three to take home to their wife, and to their mother. But we have to limit one each, since we don’t have too many. It’s the most fantastic deal Bulova ever made. For just two dollars. That’s right, two American dollars, you get a 100 percent guaranteed Bulova. You never heard such a bargain. How can we do it? Very simple. They have more watches than orders. But they couldn’t get rid of the extras through the stores which sell them for the high price. In fact, you’ll notice the name Bulova doesn’t appear on the face of this watch. It doesn’t want regular stores knowing how cheap they’re selling them here tonight. In stores you pay $25. But tonight, for one night only, you pay just two dollars. The man’s. Or the lady’s. Solid gold-plated. Genuine leather strap. But we have to move fast, ladies and gentlemen. Only ten minutes to curtain time. So have your money ready, please. Don’t miss this amazing offer. It won’t happen ever again.”

  “We should get a watch,” said Nick, the altar boy.

  “I have one,” said Gene.

  “Me too,” said Rocco. “But for two bucks, it sounds good.”

  “It’s probably a Dick Tracy,” said Frankie. “I wouldn’t buy anything from these guys.”

  “My mother could use a watch,” said Nick. “I’ll get the lady’s.” He fished out his money. Then they all looked at the watch imprisoned in cellophane and staples. Frankie cut the paper with his Barlow knife. The watch was definitely a watch.

  So Nick started winding it. He was winding it and winding it. When it didn’t come to an end, he handed the watch to Frankie. Frankie looked at it for a minute and then tapped it in his palm. Then he passed it to Rocco, who shook it with his featherweight grace. Then Gene weighed it in his hand and passed it back to Nick. Gene didn’t want to be unkind to his friend Nick and didn’t say that the watch felt empty.

  Nick was still trying to get it to run when the curtain went up and the lights went out. To the beat from the orchestra in the pit, the line of dames kicked onstage with pink feathers in their hair and sparkling sequins on their underwear. They weren’t dolls exactly. The guys were expecting to see the beauties who existed in their imaginations, but instead they saw average dames, with all the mistakes Mother Nature makes in fa
ces and figures. Since they looked so human, the boys felt slightly embarrassed, as if they were leering at their own mothers or sisters, and they drooped a little.

  “One on the end’s cute,” said Nick.

  “Too skinny,” said Rocco. “But mama mia, the one in the middle.”

  “No,” said Frankie. “The blonde.”

  The blonde’s smile looked sincere, while the other smiles looked like something was too tight, or a snapshot in the hot sun was about to be taken. The girls in the chorus were showing their teeth as if the audience was a convention of dentists. They pranced and kicked and then they bowed their behinds to applause. Frankie thought none was as sexy as Sylvia tightening her garter in her office when once he just happened to walk in.

  Then the stage went dark and the spotlight was on two hands holding a sign that read miss sugar buns. The spotlight danced to the other side of the stage where a bride in her wedding gown danced out to a jazzy wedding march. One glove, one button, and one thread at a time was a slow boil for the crowd, and she was still in her underwear ten minutes later. The drumbeat seemed to be in her hips and breasts where she was big, and every guy was raving. Gene, who played the drums in his school orchestra, was thinking that he might come here to the Hudson Theater when he graduated in a few years and get a job at the skins in the pit from where he could look up at dames every night until, if it were ever possible, he would get his fill.

  Miss Sugar Buns was down to her hairnet bra and spangled G-string, and the guys were quiet as if words had more value now by their absence. The theater was heating up and everyone was sweating and holding his breath. The drum rolled. Poised in the spotlight, to clashes of the symbols, the stripper tore off her hairnet bra. Then her G-string. The boys thought they saw everything, but from the balcony, it was hard to be sure. She didn’t seem to have any pubic hair. And it all happened so fast. But they acted to each other as if they had seen the most precious thing a man would want to see.

  Altogether, they saw four comedy acts, the chorus six or seven times, and three other strippers. The last was Miss Floppy Candy. Then the show was over and the guys were almost dead from loving all the dames. They had loved even the ugly ones, which a few were, but noses, love handles, bowlegs, and buck-teeth had been disguised by the music and by their dreams of dames.

  The crowd moved up the aisles, and when the guys were out on the sidewalk in front of the theater their eyes lit up again. The two dolls from the balcony were licking ice cream cones, bought from the Good Humor Man at the curb. One was almost a Miss Sugar Buns herself, and the other was blonde, but not as pretty close up.

  “It’s kind of late,” said Frankie, worried about the time as usual, and reminded by that wispy voice that strange dames could be carrying strange germs.

  “Let’s go over,” said Rocco.

  “They won’t give us the time,” said Nick, who thought of the pain of confessing his sins that weren’t even too bad.

  “What can we lose?” said Gene, who aspired to brazen acts.

  Frankie for his reasons, and Nick for his, hung back, and Frankie said, “We’ll go take the bus. You guys can stay.”

  But Nick, not ready to admit he wouldn’t screw one of the dolls, said, unconvincingly, “They’re something.”

  “They are,” said Frankie. “But not for me.”

  Rocco said, “Go have a beer, you guys. Let me and Gene try.”

  “Okay,” they said.

  Before Rocco and Gene could approach the girls, the girls came to them. The blonde said, “It’s five dollars apiece. That’s the discount price if we take you four.”

  The guys had thought the dolls admired them as handsome young lions who stood out for their Sicilian dark looks, thick manes, and straight backs. The boys had money in their pockets to pay the dolls for their services, and they weren’t cheap about spending it. But they felt insulted now that the dolls weren’t wanting to be kissed and petted in their tight arms. The dolls just wanted their five bucks. “Shit,” said Rocco, in a mutter. So they all got on the bus and went back to Bensonhurst.

  “It’s nice you let me come over. I was thinking who I could talk to,” said Frankie in the hall.

  Sylvia Cohen wasn’t asking him inside. She was looking him over, trying to guess what he would say and what she would do with him. He didn’t work for Tony Tempesta or other gangsters, but delivered small packages between them on his Harley. Frankie had swaggered into Sylvia’s olive oil office unafraid of anything, but his grin said he wouldn’t swat a fly, and both those things tickled her.

  “Saturday night’s a lousy time to call a girl. The only reason I’m here’s the guy got a flat. But I was going out anyway,” said Sylvia, her lipstick chewed off and her hair in a mess, and Frankie guessed she wasn’t going anywhere like that.

  “This thing’s been on my mind,” he said.

  “So what is it?” she said.

  “You think we could sit down?”

  “Look, Frankie, just because we had an ice cream a couple of times and you held my hand once, don’t mean we can hang out. You’re seventeen, for Pete’s sake. Everybody’ll say Sylvia’s hard up. And I ain’t. So I hope you ain’t planning on asking me on no date.”

  She eyed him as if he was a crook, but one who wanted to steal only a fresh baked pie, and she thought she might spare a slice if he was nice and polite.

  “I was just wanting to talk. You always give me a big smile,” said Frankie, now worried that he wouldn’t get her interested, since she thought he was a kid even though he had a heavyweight’s build. Besides, she was too beautiful, with her buttery hair and stripper’s figure, to give it all away easily.

  “I’m thirsty. You thirsty? C’mon in the parlor. I’ll get something.” She didn’t leave, but instead, they stood on the parlor rug, wondering what they were doing there together.

  “You have iced tea?” said Frankie.

  “Last night this guy was feeding me brandy alexanders. Which I loved. And he thought he was going to get somewhere. He’s an accountant. So he thinks each day’s a sheet in his ledger. He’s so boring. His voice comes out a word at a time. You could die waiting. Almost I could’ve screamed. Then I had another brandy. So, actually, I’m glad to talk to you. You’re not boring, but I sure wish you was older.”

  “I’m sorry I’m not,” said Frankie. “But then I’d be drafted.”

  “Sit down,” said Sylvia. “I’ll be right back.”

  “I’ll be quiet so I won’t wake anybody.”

  “Yeah. Be real, real quiet. But even if you was loud, they wouldn’t hear you. My folks went to Miami Beach,” said Sylvia, walking away swinging her hips.

  “No kidding?” said Frankie, dropping to the sofa and crossing his feet on the coffee table. Chinese-pagoda lamps and cupid lamps were on the tables, and porcelain poodles, cats, teacups, dishes, vases, World’s Fair trylons and perispheres were on shelves in the corner.

  The artificial flowers and artificial fruits on two tables saddened Frankie, although he didn’t know why, since they were beautiful in their own right. Before Sylvia came back, he hid the flowers behind one stuffed chair, and then hid the fruit too. He helped himself to a cigarette from the brass box on the coffee table, but when Sylvia was coming back he took his feet off the table.

  “I do it myself. Except I take my shoes off,” she said, slipping out of hers.

  They both put their feet up on the coffee table and slouched back in the plush sofa and sipped tea. Frankie was crazy about Sylvia because she always acted herself. There was no bullshit to work through. And to find out if she would be anxious to be rid of him in a few minutes, or whether she was lonely and would talk for hours, Frankie tested her by saying, “I won’t stay long. Since you’re going out someplace?”

  “You know what they do in Miami?” she said, ignoring his question and asking one of her own, which she was prepared to answer herself. “My mother and father? They go sit on the sand. The men talk business. Jewish men always do. The w
omen play Mah-Jongg. They go for Christmas. And now they go in the water. I went once. Almost died for something, anything, to happen.”

  “Didn’t guys on the beach come over?”

  “They were old enough to be my father. I just turned twenty-two. Last Saturday. May 21.”

  “I didn’t even know you had a birthday,” said Frankie. “You suppose a birthday kiss a week late is okay to give?”

  “Here on the cheek,” she said.

  He kissed both gardenia-smelling checks, and then she steered him back to his place on the sofa and took his hand to keep him in check.

  “You smell good,” he said.

  “Holding hands is one of the nicest things,” said Sylvia. “It has to be somebody you like. Then it feels right. So what’s on your mind, Frankie?”

  He had wanted her opinion of his dilemma, since she lived on 18th Avenue and wasn’t connected to any Sicilian family on 79th Street, and wouldn’t have their same ideas, and wouldn’t gossip. But they were having a good time now and no one else was home, and no telling what miracle might happen. Still, he had to prove that he wasn’t just making it up that he wanted to talk to her, so he told her.

  “I’ll be eighteen in three months,” he said. “Then I get drafted. But I don’t want to kill nobody. So I don’t know what to do.” He was surprised that Sylvia looked interested.

  “Somebody has to kill the Nazis,” she said.

  “They should be killed,” he said. “But I can’t be the guy pulls the trigger.”

  “Are you afraid?”

  “No more than anybody else.”

  “It ain’t against your religion?” she said.

  “No. What’s worse, guys from the neighborhood can’t wait to get in. Their mothers cry, but they want their sons to go. It’s patriotic. We have to show we don’t side with Italy.”

  “What does your father say?”

  “I asked him. He said it’s up to me. That it’s bad either way. It’s which trouble I can handle. My father ran away from Sicily so he wouldn’t go in. He took care of my mother three years. In bed, in the parlor, where there’s more light and people passing by. I watched her dying but couldn’t do anything.”