Car Trouble

by Robert Rorke

  “I think you can learn to make a malted,” he said, shaking my hand. His voice was thick and deep; when he spoke, vowels died. He wore a black polyester shirt and hip-huggers, the kind they sold at Benhil, with a couple of gold chains draped around his neck for good measure. Except for his “I am the walrus” moustache, he looked like Neil Diamond, with wavy, almost kinky brown hair, parted on the side.

  Himself didn’t want me working there but I took the job anyway. Not to spite him, although he didn’t see it that way. “I can’t let you work in jigaboo country, Nicky,” he said at breakfast one morning while perusing the sports pages of the Daily News. He did not raise his voice. “It would behoove you to ask your boss for a transfer.”

  I chewed the rest of the Total cereal in my mouth and swallowed. As long as he was kind of sober, I tried to reason with him. “I can’t. I just started. It’s okay up there. Nothing’s going to happen.”

  Patty and Dee Dee were finishing up their bowls of Lucky Charms. Like everybody else in the family, they were all for it. Who wouldn’t be? It was free ice cream. Dad put out his cigarette and closed the paper. “Don’t try to fight me on this one. You will not win.”

  “It’s not as bad as you think.”

  I rode the bus past Utica Avenue every day and knew that wasn’t true. The slide was well under way. The Rugby Theatre, where I had last seen Wait Until Dark with Audrey Hepburn, was now showing porn, things like Tower of Screaming Virgins. A few remnants of the neighborhood from my grammar school days hung on: a kosher deli, Nettie Post’s costume jewelry, and Roma Furniture, an emporium of crazy, massive cut-glass chandeliers and ceramic collies standing three feet high. But I didn’t care if the place was going down the drain. I wanted the money. I wanted a reason to say I might not be home. Mom had her job. And now I had mine. My way out.

  This was my schedule: Friday nights, one day on the weekend, and two days after school. I wasn’t going to get rich—I made $1.60 an hour, minimum wage—but it would help me save enough money to get the phone turned back on. I was tired of being cut off from the world.

  In my first week at the job, I learned the ice cream business. The store was shaped like a rectangle, with a long plate-glass window facing Utica Avenue and a vertical window facing Church. Inside, the space was divided by a chrome counter and a freezer to hold the trademark thirty-one flavors. The cardboard tubs holding the big sellers were always half-empty while the obscure, this-must-be-a-joke flavors, like Pink Bubblegum, which had chunks of Bazooka in it, sat untouched. A black guy named Delmar from Lenox Road taught me how to make milk shakes, malts, and sundaes. Those supplies were kept on another counter that ran along the back wall. Delmar was a senior at Tilden with a friendly manner and a big Afro that did not fit under the pink and white hat we were all supposed to wear while scooping. Morty made him prune it.

  My sisters were forbidden to come to the store but that didn’t stop Maureen, who showed up after school with her friend Kathy Fitzgerald, and these guys she knew from Linden Boulevard. Boppo drove them to the store in an old Buick, but he didn’t look old enough to have a license. With his Coke-bottle glasses, he didn’t look like he could see past the windshield.

  Maureen gave my work uniform the once-over. “Do you go out in public like that?”

  As costumes went, this one—a white apron and a white zip-up shirt with the company logo on the left breast—was several notches below the gold lamé jumpsuit she sewed for Birdie. “I change in the store. You think I walk down Church Avenue like this? I’d be dead.” I leaned in. “Let’s make this fast because you’re not supposed to be here.”

  Larry came on a Friday after school. He’d slimmed down since he’d started going out with Rolonda, shedding about fifteen pounds, mostly from his gut, but today he wanted a double-scoop Dutch chocolate cone. He’d just passed his road test and he wanted to celebrate. As a reward, his old man was going to “give” him his old Plymouth to tool around with this summer.

  “Jones Beach, my friend,” he said. He put his mouth on the ice cream scoop so lovingly I could tell he’d been dreaming about it on the walk over from St. Mike’s.

  We walked up and down Utica Avenue on my break. Shopkeepers were pulling the store gates down—everyone was usually gone by six p.m. but some left an hour earlier—and people, mostly black, were heading home with paper bags of groceries and plastic bags from the local pharmacy. Larry wanted to check out the Rugby Theatre. “Pamela, You Are Many Times a Woman,” he said, reading the marquee as we crossed the street. “Now in its eighteenth week.” He looked over his shoulder and smiled at me. “What do you think? Must be good.”

  I smiled. “Let’s see what the flesh peddlers have to offer,” he said, striding past the beady-eyed ghoul at the box office to check out the posters in the windows, licking his cone, and motioned for me to join him. The movie poster showed a naked blonde with heavy black eyeliner and pendulous breasts. Her red nails covered her crotch and her mouth was partly open. Black stars covered her nipples.

  “What a bod,” he said.

  “If I’d known you were going to drool, I would have given you extra napkins.”

  A rank smell of air-conditioning and unidentified filth wafted out of the lobby.

  “Man, I bet it wouldn’t be too hard to sneak in,” Larry said.

  The magic-markered sign in the box-office window said No One Under 18 Admitted. “Well, if you can convince that creep you’re eighteen, I guess Pamela is all yours.”

  “You’re just chicken,” he said.

  “Anytime you want to go to the Astor Theater, let me know.” It wasn’t a porn palace like this place but a real movie theater on Flatbush Avenue where they showed European “art” movies. One of the actresses was guaranteed to be naked, like Olivia Hussey in Romeo and Juliet. “Besides, I’m on a fifteen-minute break,” I reminded him. “Besides, you have a girlfriend now. She’s got a hot body.”

  Larry shot me a look. “Thanks for noticing.” I blushed and he dug his hands into his pockets. “Don’t get me wrong. Rolonda is fun. But she is a good girl. I go to church to make money. She goes to church to go to church.”

  I laughed, sure he was exaggerating. Larry and Rolonda hadn’t been going out that long. I didn’t know what he should expect. I also hadn’t known he was that horny. Larry didn’t talk about getting laid all day long like some of the guys at school. I didn’t have a comeback to his remark. I also didn’t have a girlfriend. Larry asked me if there were any prospects at the ice cream emporium.

  “All the people on my shifts are guys,” I said. That was about to change.

  We parted at the corner of Church and Utica. I wasn’t expecting any more visitors but as soon as it got dark, I looked up from the counter and saw the Pink Panther parked outside, behind the bus stop, like a sentinel. It was the latest car, a 1956 Ford Fairlane convertible. Himself called it “Puerto Rican pink,” a dusky salmon with a cream-colored upper body and trunk. The hood was also pink, as were the fender skirts and the Continental kit. Naturally, the car had a portable record player under the dashboard radio.

  When I went outside to offer Himself a cone, the car was gone.

  He came back later, parked this time on Church Avenue. The crowd had dispersed, and I told Delmar I was going outside for a few minutes. The evenings were warming up, with that familiar trace of humidity that hinted of summer, complete with trash in the gutters, but you still had to wear a jacket. I knocked on the window of the car.

  “Hey, Dad, can I get you anything?”

  He was listening to the Mets game on the radio. Someone had hit a grand slam and Dad was slapping the dashboard. I waited until the commotion was over. “So, what brings you over this way?”

  “Just making sure things are the way they’re supposed to be.”

  I wondered how long he’d been patrolling the joint. “Everything’s fine,” I said, trying to smile. I was chilled in my skimpy company shirt. “You want to come in and I’ll make you up something?”

/>   He checked his watch. “You got anything like Vanilla Fudge in there?”

  I brought out a double-scoop cup with chocolate sprinkles. “I figured a cone would be too messy with the steering wheel and all.”

  I didn’t know where he was driving from or to; it seemed that he was just out. Maybe he was trying to stay out of the bars. Maybe that’s what all this driving was about.

  He stuck the cup on the dashboard. “Okay. I’m going to go. Maybe I’ll stop back. Give you a ride home.”

  He didn’t come back that night or for several nights after that, and I assumed the surveillance test was over, that he had proof I wouldn’t get killed scooping ice cream.

  One Friday night, I reported for duty and found Morty behind the counter with a girl. “I’m adding more staff,” he said. “This is Valerie. I trained her this afternoon. She knows ice cream.”

  Valerie shook my hand and said, “Is this a great job or what?”

  “Yeah, I’m having a blast,” I said, looking down at my right hand. She had a good grip.

  Valerie’s last name was Conway. I always liked tall girls. She was five-eight and slim with bright, almond-shaped blue eyes and a thin mouth that conveyed impatience. She wore her long, light brown hair in a ponytail. As it turned out, she was all business when Morty was around, brisk and efficient, but the first to turn up the store radio when he was gone and a good song came on.

  “Smokey Robinson, ‘Tears of a Clown.’ C’mon, Nicky, let’s dance.”

  She took my hand and we did a few steps in the narrow aisle between the counters. Our dance lasted almost as long as the song, but someone came in for a milk shake. And then we were slammed all night. I didn’t know if she had a boyfriend. All I knew was that when we weren’t working the same shift and there were no customers, the time really dragged.

  We became friends quickly, but not more than that until later that summer, after Himself left. For the first time in a long time I felt I could breathe. I knew we were going to end up going out, though, because I hung on her every word. One day, when Morty was out of earshot, she leaned over to me and said, “And how about this uniform? I can’t believe I had to buy this.”

  The girls who worked at Baskin-Robbins had to wear a pink jumper that looked, Valerie said, like a Catholic schoolgirl’s gym uniform. Only a girl who went to a Catholic high school would even think that. Valerie was a junior at Bishop McDonnell, and she lived on East Seventeenth Street, a mile away from me, in Holy Innocents’ parish. In fact, she lived right across the street from the rectory.

  “That sounds scary,” I said. Priests made me nervous. I always used to see Father Byrne walking by himself on Church Avenue, looking a little stewed, his hand over his heart, where he held, no doubt, the Blessed Sacrament to bring to someone needing Extreme Unction.

  “Tell me about it,” she said. “We’re always having priests over for dinner.” I raised my eyebrows. Not even the Martinuccis did that. I asked Valerie if she knew Gina.

  “Isn’t she the one who plays guitar at those masses they make us go to? The nuns just love her.”

  I suppressed a smile. Gina would have that folk mass label attached to her for the rest of her life.

  Even though she started working at the store after I did, Valerie was much better at dealing with the customers. I had been talking to them in polite, complete sentences until she took me aside and said, “They’re lookin’ at you like you’re nuts. This is the jungle, not the perfume counter at Macy’s.”

  She called the neighborhood “the jungle” the same way Himself did, but I didn’t bristle when she said it. So when some black guy with a low-rise Afro came in and said, “Hey, man, let me get a Pralines ’n Cream,” I said, “Cone or cup?”

  “Not you,” he said, sliding his hands deep into his pockets. “I want her to get it.”

  I had been through this before with Valerie. A lot of the black guys who came in only wanted her to fill their orders. They knew her by name. Some campaigned to come back at closing time and drive her home. One Friday night, a cluster of guys came in, standing on her side of the counter. It was about an hour before closing time, and we were waiting for Morty to swing by. As she filled their orders—Blueberry Cheesecake, Rocky Road—the two guys at the front of the line slowly ground their pelvises against the counter. I stared at them, amazed. Valerie bent her head over the tubs in the freezer, beet red, strands of hair falling out of her ponytail.

  I stepped over. “Let me help the next person here.”

  There were about five guys in all, average height and above. The third in line said in an overly polite tone, “We’re waiting for the white, I mean, the young lady to wait on us.” He was wearing a bright yellow sweatshirt and jeans. His buddies snickered behind him.

  Valerie handed cones to the first two customers. The guy in the sweatshirt wanted a milk shake, so Valerie filled up a silver malt cup with chocolate ice cream at the back counter. The next guy in line stepped up, and I leaned in. “What can I get you?” I asked.

  “If I wanted you to wait on me, don’t you think I’d be on your line?” He was short with a close-cropped haircut, and he wore a shiny black vinyl jacket with the word HAWKS printed in yellow on the back.

  I assumed HAWKS was short for Tomahawks, the Brooklyn gang. The jacket was a couple of sizes too large for him, especially in the sleeves, which he kept pushing up, above his elbows. I had a bad feeling about these guys and wondered when Morty was coming back. “There are two of us, but only one line.”

  He ordered a cup of Jamoca Almond Fudge with sprinkles.

  The whirring sound of the malted machine drowned out whatever remarks the guys were making. I dug the scooper into the brown swirled tub then tossed a few teaspoons of sprinkles on the ice cream at the toppings bar. The kid in the Tomahawks jacket threw some singles on the counter. While I made his change, Valerie served her customer his chocolate milk shake. She handed it to the kid too soon, because he couldn’t pay for it. He made a big show of looking in his pockets, pulling them inside out to show they were empty.

  “Must’ve left my wallet home,” he said, winking and wrapping his lips around the straw sticking out of the cup.

  Valerie crossed her arms. “Why did you order something if you had no money?”

  The kid broke into a sneering grin. “I was kinda hoping you were gonna give it to me for free.”

  Valerie lay down her scooper and addressed the group. “Okay. Who’s paying for this?” Her cheeks were flushed. “’Cause I’m not.”

  The guy in the Tomahawks jacket turned to one of his buddies. “What she say?” Valerie nodded to the last guy in line. He was huskier than the others, with wild, woolly hair and glasses.

  “I’m not waiting on any of you until someone pays for that shake.”

  The kid with the Tomahawks jacket was licking his cone and talking to his friends when I put his change on the counter. The husky guy stood with his hands on his hips. He showed Valerie a five-dollar bill from his pocket. “I got money.”

  I asked, “Are you paying for the milk shake?”

  “No. Why should I pay for him?”

  “One of you has to. You’re all together.”

  He turned to his friend. “Fool, why’d you come out the house without any money?”

  The boy in the yellow sweatshirt shrugged.

  “If I had known that, I would have made you get in line behind me. So I don’t get no ice cream? That is fucked up.”

  Valerie looked him in the eye. “You guys have been jerking me around since you came in and now you’re going to talk to me like that? Why don’t you just take your ice cream and leave?”

  I was in love. This girl had balls.

  A swelling chorus of jeers and snickering rose up. The guy in the Tomahawks jacket came up to the counter and paid for the shake. He poked the husky guy in the soft flesh around his ribs. “Now get your cone, so we can get the fuck out of here.”

  I stepped up. “What can I get you?”


  The guy shook his head. “Not you. I came here ’cause I want her to do it.”

  “I think she’s had enough for one night.”

  Valerie stood beside me. “It’s okay, Nicky.” She stared the guy down. “Make it fast. What flavor?”

  He glanced at the board on the wall behind us. “Let me see. The only flavor I think of when I look at you is Cherry Vanilla,” he said, cracking himself up.

  “You want that with hot fudge?” Valerie shot back.

  “You can give it to me any way you want, mama, as long as you give it to me.”

  I heard the door swing open. I was hoping it was Morty—it was almost closing time—but instead Himself was standing there, in the center of the room. He had that watchdog face: he was looking for a fight. Now the shit was really going to hit the fan and I couldn’t do a thing to stop it.

  He sauntered over to the group. Valerie stood stock-still.

  He started with the kid who ordered the milk shake. “Hey, pal, you have your ice cream?”

  The boy nodded. “And did you pay for it?” Before the kid could say anything, Himself pointed to the door and said, “Then get in the wind.”

  He turned his blue glare on the rest of them. He must have seen the whole thing, but from a hiding place. “You would all be well advised to hit the road with your friend.”

  “For real?” The guy with the Tomahawks jacket laughed.

  Dad’s hand was resting on his pocket.

  “For real.” Then, it was out, out of the pocket and at his side.

  The guy in the yellow sweatshirt was the first to speak. “Holy shit. Motherfucker got a gun.” Then he was out the door.

  So much for Mom getting rid of it. Valerie ducked behind the counter.