"That's the last we'll see a him today," Artie La Russo bitched, watching the Cadillac disappear. "That fucker bastard pulls that on me one more time I'll have him on unemployment so fast." The electricians knew Artie was talking out of his ass. He was afraid of Malfie and said that every time Malfie took off in the middle of the day.
"That fuckin' kid's ready for the couch," Tommy said.
"Let's eat!" said Augie.
25
"TOMORROW'S it, baby, I put in my time." Stony tore off his greasy T-shirt and unlaced his boots. "I'm a free man."
Tommy hovered over him, ballooning with desperation. "You're really goin' back there?"
"Look, you said two weeks, and two weeks you got." Stony pulled off one boot with a grunt.
"You're really walkin' out on me, huh?"
"Aw, Pop!" Stony tossed the boot under the bed. "Gimme a break, hah? We had a deal." He got to work on the second boot.
"You know. Stones, you really fuckin' disappoint me."
"Well, don't make the feeling mutual."
Tommy lunged at Stony, cracked him across the mouth. Stony flew back on the bed, his hand to his bleeding mouth. Tommy towered over him, his huge hands shaking with rage. When the stinging jolt subsided, Stony felt cool. Twenty-twenty vision. "Thanks a lot, Pop." He licked the blood from the corner of his mouth. "You just made everything a lot easier."
***
"I'm quittin', Chub." Stony had developed the habit in the last few hours of gingerly touching the bloody crust on his mouth. "I just don't wanna do it."
Chubby clasped his hands in front of him on the dinette table. "It's on you. Stones, it's your life."
"Don't I know it."
"I'll tell you though, I think you're bein' hasty. Whynchoo give it a few more weeks?"
Stony flushed with panic. "No way! Come Monday morning you can catch my act at Cresthaven!"
Chubby sighed, shifted his weight on the high Formica-backed dinette chair. "You know, you may not be able to get in the union ever again."
"I'll live."
"Yeah, you'll live, but—"
"Hey look, my quittin' ain't no reflection on you an' Pop. It's just—"
"But it is, Stony, don't you see that? What's it gonna look like when your old man shows up for work without you Monday morning?"
"It's gonna look like I quit."
"You're killin' your dad, Stony," Chubby said sadly.
Fear hit Stony inside like a strobe light. He stared at his thumbnails pressed side by side in front of him. "Chubby," he whispered huskily, "lemme breathe."
***
On Friday, the last day, Stony and Tommy drove into work boycotting each other, Tommy staring straight ahead, Stony, his head at right angles with his body, staring out the side window.
After Stony changed into his gear in the shanty, he started taking coffee orders, but Jimmy O'Day stopped him.
"Let Phillip do it today."
"Who?" Stony, poised with paper and pencil, followed Jimmy's stare to a far corner of the shanty where a red-headed kid about Stony's age struggled with his utility belt. Stony glared at Jimmy, but Jimmy just winked.
"Hey, kid." Blackie smiled. "We're gonna start you off easy. You know what a gofer is?"
"Huh?" Phillip looked up, embarrassed at the difficulty he was having with the buckle.
"Hey, take that off," Blackie said. "Stony, give 'im the list. Just take everybody's coffee order an' go over to the Greek's. You know the Greek's?"
"The luncheonette?"
"Hey, this kid's on the ball!"
Phillip smiled, pleased he was off to a good start.
"Lemme go with him," Stony said.
"He can handle it himself." Eddie took the paper from Stony and handed it to Phillip.
Phillip wrote down every word of the orders, abbreviating nothing. Stony and Malfie didn't want anything.
"Make sure you get Artie's order in the trailer," Tommy added, bending down to lace his boots.
Phillip ran from the shed wearing his hard hat, the money in one hand, the order slip and pencil in the other. After he'd scampered across the street, Eddie dragged out an open gray cardboard box with rows of coffee in Styrofoam cups and stacks of cellophaned Danish.
"You fuckin' guys." Stony scratched his head. Everyone grabbed a coffee and a Danish and filed out to the building.
Stony and Malfie sat on upended cable reels smoking and staring over the smog-shrouded rooftops.
"Hey, Stony!" Vinny's head appeared in the stairwell. "C'mon, he's comin' back!" Vinny's fat face looked twice as wide with that gap-tooth grin. Sighing, Stony crushed his cigarette with his boot.
"Malfie, you comin'?"
Malfie indicated no with the slightest motion, not taking his eyes from the antennaed skyline.
"I guess I'll go, make sure the kid doesn't have a breakdown." Head down, Stony broke into a light trot across the littered concrete floor.
The men had congregated on the twenty-first level, sitting on upended cables or on a hip-high green metal trash bin.
Stony leaned against the bin, his back to them. Phillip trudged up the stairs, his milky face blotched with red. The legs of his chinos were matted to his skin with spilled coffee.
"Where was you guys?" Phillip puffed and panted. "I thought you..."
"Vinny, what time is it?" Eddie scowled. Vinny looked at his watch, cursed and showed the time to the men. Stony chuckled in spite of his contempt.
"You know how much money you just cost the contractor, kid?" Tommy folded his arms across his chest.
"What!" Phillip looked like he was going to cry. Just like Stony had the first day.
"You know how much money and time you just wasted?"
"Don't even fuckin' bother." Blackie waved in disgust. "The fuckin' kid's a jerk-off, I knew it the minute I saw him with that fuckin' belt."
"Yeah," Stony added almost inaudibly. He had walked around the bin and was standing next to his father.
"I ran!" Phillip's Adam's apple was going like a bubble in boiling water. He stooped to set down the box, splashing out half the coffee.
"Now the little prick's washin' the floor with our breakfast!" Vinny slapped his leg in exasperation.
"Wait! Artie didn't complain! Iran!" Phillip scratched his face nervously.
"Artie didn't complain!" Tommy mimicked nastily. "The fuckin' kid's an ass-kisser, sure! Artie's the boss. I can see it now, this kid's gonna be another Carlos."
"You think so?" Blackie squinted.
"Sure! Two days from now we'll find the kid behind the trailer with his pants down his ankles playin' drop the keys with Artie."
"Yeah! How you think he got the job to begin with?" Jimmy O'Day pouted.
"My father got me the job!" Phillip's voice was starting to crack.
"Uh-uh."
"Right."
"Sure."
They each picked up a coffee cup and in fifteen seconds all the cups had been dashed to the ground, the men cursing and bitching. Stony found himself pouring out a cup on the floor.
"This kid's got to go." Vinny smirked.
"I got fuckin' hunger cramps," Augie whined.
"Christ," Stony complained.
"Where's my fuckin' wrench?" Tommy glared at Phillip, clenching his teeth.
Phillip looked desperate. After ten seconds of painful silence, Stony stepped forward, his heart pounding. "Hey, kid?"
Sensing all eyes on him, he put a hand on Phillip's sweaty shoulder. A charge of power and excitement ran through him like alcohol. Phillip looked at him for help. Another kid. "When you left the Greek's, you feel a tap on the back a your head?"
***
"Those fuckin' guys." Stony was giddy as he returned to Malfie, confused yet turned on. Malfie snorted. They began pulling cable. For an hour and a half Stony worked in silence, chewing over what had happened. He had felt a sense of brotherhood that morning. It was mean, yeah, but... He didn't know if he felt like a jerk or a man. But he knew he felt good. One of
the guys. Tommy pounded down the stairs. Stony's back was to him, and he watched the sweat shimmering on Stony's straining muscles. He watched his son work. Finally, Stony turned around and saw Tommy staring at him. They looked at each other blankly, then simultaneously grinned.
***
"Hey, Malfie?" Stony hunched over the cable, chewing a mouthful of tuna and rye. "You remember when I asked you how come you quit the Convoys an' you said 'Lucy'"? Malfie sat against a concrete pillar, eating a sandwich. He removed a faint trace of mayonnaise from his lower lip. "Who's Lucy?"
"My woman." Malfie cleared his throat, his fist lightly pressed against his mouth, returning his gaze to the buildings in the distance.
Stony brushed crumbs from his pants. "You married?"
Malfie shook his head in the negative.
"You ever miss the Convoys?" He crumpled the silver foil in his lap into a ball.
Malfie wrinkled his nose. "Made a lotta money, man, a lotta money." He bobbed his head, a distant expression on his face. "But ah spent it. Women, liquor, drugs. Got tired. I was blowin' away my life. Had a good woman, a lovin' mother just waitin' for me, an' I was runnin' like a fool. We was in L.A. I just walked off the stage and took the next plane home. You can't run away from love. You can't run away from love, so I came home. Had seventeen thousand dollars left. Bought mah mother a house with it. Me, Lucy and mah mother live in it now. Someday, someday we're all goin' back to Cuba, live on the beach"—he winked—"get me another horse."
They sat in silence.
"Hey, Malfie? Do you dig this?"
"'Lectricians?" He shrugged, a hand over his mouth. "Yeah, yeah, I got peace here. Good money and peace. I can think a lot when ahm workin'."
Stony tilted his head. "Whadya think about?"
"Lucy."
"Hmph... You get along with the guys?" Knowing that he didn't.
Malfie frowned. "I'm a lone wolf, ah don't need anybody here. I got Lucy, mah mother and mah Cadillac an' someday I take 'em all to Cuba."
"Did you dig bein' away from home?" Stony started unfolding the silver foil. Malfie touched his cheekbones, wrinkled his nose.
"Nah, it was bad."
"Was it fun?"
"Fun?" Malfie shrugged as he lit a cigarette.
"This is my last day here," Stony said.
Malfie looked at him, the faintest glimmer of curiosity in his eyes. "What're you gonna do?"
"I'm workin' inna hospital. Cresthaven?"
"You gonna be a doctor? That's good money."
"Nah, I'm just workin' with kids." Stony smoothed the silver foil against his thigh.
"I dig kids." Malfie bent down and picked up a small strand of cable wire under his boot.
"You think I should stay here?" Stony concentrated on the silver foil, eyes directed toward his lap.
"I don't give a fuck what you do," Malfie answered without malice.
***
At two-thirty in the afternoon a carpenter was killed when a brickie on the twenty-fourth floor couldn't fit a forty-pound 4 by 4 wooden pallet in the covered garbage chute, so he just tossed it over the side.
When the whistles down below started shrieking like crazy. Stony and 240 construction workers ran to the lip of their concrete floors and peered over the side of the building. Twenty-four layers of men, their faces reflecting every response from amusement to horror. From Stony's viewpoint on the twentieth floor the body in the dirt looked like a swastika.
"An' people bitch 'cause we make so much fuckin' money," Tommy muttered, staring down from the twenty-second floor.
"Hey, I just sat on the bus with that guy yesterday," Vinny said, his mouth open in amazement.
On the sixteenth floor, Eddie crossed himself.
"Ah, the poor fuckin' guy was wearing a galvanized steel hat too," Jimmy O'Day said to Augie on the top deck.
"Great!" Augie laughed. "So his fuckin' brains woulda looked like chopped liver instead a soup."
***
At three-thirty, after the whistle, men lingered in the various shanties discussing the death.
"Them fuckin' guineas," Augie said, pacing the dimly lit floor. He was naked from the waist down and pulled his dick as he talked. "Them fuckin' wops, they're animals. Who took my fuckin' shorts?"
None of the Italian electricians took offense. Augie was talking about real guineas. Real just-off-the-boat mustache-and-baggy-pants paisans.
"It shoulda been two a them," said Vinny.
"You think they'll ever catch the guy?" Stony was the most shaken of anybody in the shanty. His face was chalky.
"Yeah, right away." Tommy's cigarette dangled from his mouth as he hitched up a pair of dress pants with both hands. "C'mon, kid, let's go." Tommy ushered Stony from the shanty, an arm around his shoulder.
"You had a good time this morning, hah?" Tommy asked. They picked their way through the assorted debris and rubble of the site to the car.
"You don't think they'll catch the guy?"
"Nah, them guinzos is thick as thieves. Have a good time today?"
"It was all right." Stony repressed a smile.
"Still doin' the hospital Monday?" Tommy tried to control himself.
Stony sighed and expelled air from puffed cheeks. "Pop, get off my back." Flat and tired.
"You know you're killin' me, Stony?" Tommy's voice cracked as if he were going to cry.
Stony felt terrified. He wrenched his shoulders free from Tommy's arm, jammed his hands into his pockets and walked rapidly back toward the site. For the second time that day Tommy stared at his son's back.
Stony veered clear of the electricians' shanty as he walked to the far side of the building. He sat down on a square chunk of concrete, stared at nothing. He remembered what Malfie had said, "You can't run away from love." He didn't know which word stuck in his craw more, "can't" or "love." Maybe both together. Mrs. Pitt had said she had to leave home to get on with her life. Never went back. Never went back. Scary shit. He remembered trying to get to Amsterdam with a bankbook and no passport. Harris said leaving home is the hardest thing. The hardest. With no passport. No money. A fucking bankbook. He thought of Derek, Tyrone and the other little niggers in wheelchairs. Who the fuck were they? Who were they to him? What the fuck was he going to do? Sit there and tell stories to cripples all his life? Candy striper. You can't run away from love. You can't. Run away. From love. You can't. Love. Can't love. They loved him. Chubby. Tommy. Albert. Oh Jesus Christ. Albert. Are you man enough? Understand enough? When you left the Greek's you feel a tap on the back of your head? That was your change.
Stony got up and pitched small stones into a slime- and oil-filled pothole. He tried to think of Albert. Save Albert. Got to. But somehow the thought felt like a sexual fantasy he couldn't really get into. Couldn't get a good hard-on about. Something rang false. He thought about himself on his own. Sometimes, I feel, like a mo-tha-less child. Breaking up is haard to-o, ha-ard to do-o. The Night Train! The green green grass of ho-me. My da-ad. He is-n't much, in the eyes of the world. Hit the ro-oad Jack, and don'choo come back no more, no more no more no more. Wi-ild hor-orsess, couldn't drag me away-yay.
But why would working at Cresthaven have to mean leaving home? Who said anything about leaving home?
Stony stopped tossing rocks, rubbed his eyes and staggered aimlessly around the building, his hands back in his pockets. Just a fuckin' job. He wandered over to the spot where the carpenter had died. Nothing, you couldn't see nothing. Just dirt. Earth. Garbage. And the shattered wooden pallet that did the job. He looked up twenty-four stories, imagined it screaming down at him. Picking up speed, slightly turning in the air. Bigger and bigger. Crunch! Stony shuddered. Tough job. Man's job. Stony flexed his muscles. Ahm a Mayn! Ah spell EM! AY! EN! NO BEE! OH! WHY! Runaway chil' runnin' wil'. Play hooky from school can't go out to pla-ay. For the res' a the week, in yah room you go to sta-ay. Eighteen was pretty young for leaving home. Twenty-one's a good time. Besides, who said anything about leaving home?
Suddenly he thought of Butler. He hadn't seen or talked to him since he started working construction.
***
Tommy waited ten minutes for Stony. When Stony didn't return. Tommy got in his car and roared off for Yonkers to drown his sorrow in pussy.
***
Stony took a cab home. His mother and Phyllis were in the kitchen whispering like assassins. He quickly changed, took some money from his desk and left the house.
26
"I CAN'T STAND it no more. That's it, that is it." Marie's eyes were like red stars.
Phyllis frowned as she examined the contents of the folded invoice Marie had handed her. It was a bill addressed to Tommy from the Saw Mill River Motel.
"Now, honey, you don't know for sure." Phyllis' voice sounded weak.
Marie propped her elbows on the kitchen table, her mouth resting against the back of her hand. Balefully she stared at Phyllis.
"It could, could be business. You don't..."
Marie shut her eyes as if to acknowledge a headache. "Just stop. I'm not a kid an' neither are you. At least he could have the goddamn decency not to have the goddamn bill mailed here." She hunched her shoulders and shivered. "Stupid. I don't even know why I'm getting so goddamn upset. I knew all along."
Something snakelike slithered rapidly through Phyllis. An awful tingle. "Whadya mean?"
Marie exhaled through her nose and pushed back strands of hair from her forehead. She felt like she had a fever.
"Go do your wash," she dismissed her sister-in-law with contempt.
"Whadya mean you knew?" Phyllis pulled out a cigarette, forgetting the unlit one between her lips. Marie took the cigarette from her hand and lit it, dropping the lighter in front of Phyllis. Her forehead wrinkled as she exhaled.
"For years an' years an' years..." Her voice trailed off. "I dunno what I'm makin' such a goddamn federal production for, I really don't. We shoulda been divorced after a year, before I even got pregnant with Stony. It was good when we dated, it was good for a couple a months after that, then... I dunno. The cheating isn't even it. It's somethin' that happens before that." She stared at her cold coffee. "There's this one moment, this one moment when you realize that after all those I love you's you say to each other for hours, days, months, years even, after all those I love you's you realize that somebody's lyin'. It's like at some point your heart goes on automatic pilot, an' no matter how you hold onto each other, an' no matter how it feels in bed, you know the whole damn thing's a crock An' you feel lonely, you feel hurt, you feel angry, but I'll tell you the truth, what you really feel is empty, like a big wind tunnel. And, honey, that's the most godawful feeling of all. Because then, you just died."
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