by Robert Rorke
He raised the Magnum, pointed it at the ceiling, and fired one shot. I covered my ears and watched a small avalanche of plaster tumble to the floor. The blowback made him stagger backward. He wiped plaster dust from his face.
I slapped my hand on the counter, exasperated. “What the hell are you doing?” I almost called him Dad in front of everyone. “You can’t bring that in here.”
He was admiring the breadth of the gash in the ceiling. Valerie’s fan club made for the front door. “Damn, trying to get a cone, not get shot,” said the last one to leave.
Himself waved the gun. “Keep walking, scumbag.”
I had to get him out of here. What if one of these kids came back with his own gun? Valerie looked up at me from behind the counter, bewildered.
Finally I said, “Dad, what the hell are you doing?”
“Doing what I do.”
“You could have killed somebody. We had it under control. They were about to leave.”
He lay the gun flat on the glass, barrel pointed outward, and flung me a look. He wasn’t even drunk. “Mr. Flynn, you are full of soup.”
“Someone’s gonna call the cops.”
He clapped his left hand behind his head and his right arm shot out straight in front of him. “Feed ’em cheese.”
This gesture of defiance took me by surprise. His fuck-you to the world. I was dumbfounded.
“Nicky, I’ve been watching this place almost every Friday night since you started, and I’ve seen maybe four cop cars drive by.”
I didn’t believe him, but now was not the time to rile him. Valerie broke the tension. She stood up and poked me. “This is your father? Introduce me to my hero.”
Hero? So that’s what girls wanted: A man I would come to think of as Brooklyn’s Clint Eastwood barging in with a .357 Magnum to pick people off. My voice stammered as I did the honors. Dad leaned on the counter heavily, a mischievous gleam in his eye.
“Young lady,” he said, “does your mother know you are working in this godforsaken place?”
“Please,” Valerie said, with a wave of her hand. “She gave up on me a long time ago.”
“Some of us are still trying,” Himself replied with a wink at me. He put the gun back in his pocket.
If he wasn’t drunk, then what was up with him? I wondered.
“You know, there are assholes in every crowd,” Valerie said. “I don’t scare that easily.”
Valerie’s nonchalance was making it harder for me to stay mad at him. I was relieved he had chased those guys away, even if he was a madman. I didn’t know what I would have done if they’d kept it up. But I had to get him out of here.
“Let me fix you up, before Morty gets back,” Valerie said brightly. “After that I can only give you a cone and I have to pay for it. How about a banana split?”
“Actually, I thought I would bring home a little pint for the missus.”
I stared at him. The missus? By now, the missus was probably sleeping on the couch; now that she was supporting the family, the missus worked six days a week and had to get up early tomorrow to go to work.
“Make it two pints,” Valerie said. “I’ll throw in the second one for free.”
I couldn’t figure out why she was so eager to please him. She had to see that I wanted him gone. He ordered one pint of Pistachio, another of Butter Pecan. Valerie put the pints in one of those pink-and-white Baskin-Robbins paper bags. I told Valerie to lock the door until Morty got here and walked Himself out of the store, the first time I’d been outside since my shift started. The night air, scented with something floral and the exhaust from a passing bus, was strangely refreshing; anything to get away from the smell of sugar. The Pink Panther was parked on Church Avenue, nearly a block away, between two newer cars, more of a throwback than ever, like someone spliced it from an old, deckle-edged photograph.
The street was smoky in a glow of headlights from the cars filling up both lanes. A B-35 bus roared past us to beat the light on Utica. I wanted to talk to him seriously but I couldn’t do it through the open window on the driver’s side. As he settled himself in the front seat, putting the ice cream on the dashboard and the gun on the seat next to him, I walked around the front of the car and waited for him to pull up the button on the passenger side. I got in.
“You want a ride back to the store?”
“No. I wanted to say something, but I don’t want you to take it the wrong way.”
He chuckled. “You been talking to your uncles? Try me.”
He was under control now but my heart was racing. “I know you got attacked, and they never caught the guy, but you can’t go around like this.”
I looked down at the gun, silent on the seat between us. The portable record player was open; some of my old 45s lay, forgotten, on the turntable. The Magnum’s likely hiding place. As long as I lived, I’d never be that clever or that sneaky.
He put his left hand on the top of the steering wheel, then turned on the engine. “The only place I’m going now is home. Let me get this ice cream home before it melts. You want me to pick you up in an hour?”
“I’ll be all right.” I didn’t need him back here tonight, but I did need one more thing. “I’m a little worried about you driving around with this.”
“Don’t worry about me.”
It was the saddest thing he ever said; that’s all we ever did. “You know I’m not going to do that,” I said. He could take off as soon as I left him, driving up and down Utica Avenue, Linden Boulevard, Lenox Road until he saw that kid in the Tomahawks jacket, the one who mocked him. I’d sat across from him in this seat enough times to know the kind of trouble he could get into.
“How about if you give me that?” I said.
“I cannot do that.”
I pressed on. “Come on, Dad. You keep this around, you’re just gonna hurt someone else or hurt yourself. Let me keep it in the store over the weekend. In case they come back.”
He laughed out loud. “You’ve gotta be kidding me. Those mutts are not coming back, believe me.”
“You don’t know that.” I picked up the gun. It didn’t feel as heavy as it did the morning he passed it around the kitchen table, like a time bomb. Tonight, the bomb went off. If I had my way, it never would again.
“Don’t pick that thing up when it’s loaded.”
He reached over and opened the chamber. He told me to remove the remaining bullets. I slid them out—five brass slugs that felt dirty in my palm. I couldn’t imagine ever being able to pull the trigger.
“Let’s get out of here,” I said.
He flung me a look.
“You heard me,” I said. “Pull out, but don’t drive past the store. I’m taking you home.”
He made a U-turn in the middle of Church Avenue, cutting off a westbound bus. I didn’t know where to put the bullets and placed them on the dashboard, next to the bag of ice cream. Must be going soft now. I checked my watch. Ten thirty. Morty was most likely in the store by now. I would have to come up with a story as to why I had to leave early. My first job and I was already going to lie to my boss to protect Himself. It didn’t get any better than this. I felt like I was picking up my own teenage son on the street and taking him home.
He made a left turn on Albany Avenue. An idea came to me as the gloomy granite headstones of Holy Cross came into view. I asked him to stop the car when we turned onto Snyder. I picked up the gun off the seat.
“Hey, where’re you goin’ with that?”
“You were supposed to get rid of this,” I said over my shoulder. “Now I will.”
I took the gun and ran across Snyder Avenue. I climbed up on the fence, placing my feet between the iron bars, and threw it as far as I could.
Twenty-Three
The warm weather was here and guys were just dragging themselves to classes. Even the cafeteria, usually a rollicking scene, was a snooze. I was eating lunch in the cafeteria with Larry the week after Himself made his appearance at the store when he leaned over a
nd said, “I hear not all the first-year teachers are being asked back.”
I only knew one first-year teacher. “How do you know?”
Larry made a face. “I played at a wedding on Saturday. One of the ushers is the son of Mrs. Caputo.”
I finished my lemonade. “Who’s that?”
Larry was having rice pudding for dessert. “She works in the front office at St. Mike’s. She knows everything.”
I seldom went into the front office so I wouldn’t know Mrs. Caputo from a hole in the wall. I was getting impatient. “So what did she say?”
Some guys walking down the aisle between the rows of tables called out to Larry. There were three of them, carrying trays and heading our way. I thought I knew all of Larry’s friends but I didn’t know these guys. “Hey, fellas,” he said, pointing to the empty chairs at our table. “Come join us.”
“So what did she say?”
Larry took off his glasses and cleaned the lenses with a handkerchief. “That was all, but I think our friend Ventresca might be on his way out.”
How did he know things even I didn’t know? “You’re kidding, right?”
“I hope I’m wrong, kiddo.”
I did too. I told Larry I would see him later and went upstairs to the first floor and poked my head into the faculty lounge, a room as large as one of the classrooms, but carpeted in dark-orange pile. Desks lined the perimeter of the room. Brian was one of the lucky ones: his faced the window. He wasn’t there; nobody was. I wasn’t sure if I should go in, but I wanted to leave a quick note. A stack of tests, with students’ names and their class written in blue ink on the covers, were weighed down with a gray rock on one corner.
A voice behind me asked, “Can I help you?”
I turned and saw Mr. Probst, who taught chemistry to the juniors. Like Brian, he was one of the ultra-tall teachers, about six-four, with a conservative, square-back haircut, almost military style. He dropped his textbook on the desk adjacent to Brian’s with an authoritative thud.
“I was going to leave Brian a note,” I stammered. Students weren’t supposed to be in the faculty lounge, but I’d been in here often enough that most of the teachers knew me.
He glanced at the stack of tests. “I saw him headed to the parking lot,” he said. “Maybe you can catch him.”
The parking lot was on the other side of the gym and by the time I reached it, Brian’s car was gone.
In my next class, I listened to Brother Methodious drone on about the Nazi occupation of Paris. He loved to talk about World War II and he would surely include questions about it on our world history final; I took a lot of notes. A warm breeze came through the open windows; soon enough, we would all be sprung from this beige building. Summer. Long bike rides to the beach. I wondered if Valerie had gone out to Rockaway on a bike. She had a ten-speed, a Peugeot she sometimes rode to work. That convinced me to do the same thing. And sometimes we rode home together, if our shifts ended at the same time. Morty was an easygoing boss but he really didn’t like clutter and there wasn’t much room in the back of the store for bikes. So we had to lean them against each other. The way I wanted to be with Valerie.
* * *
Morty switched Valerie’s shifts after the night with the gun—a total bummer—and I didn’t see her as much as when she first started at the store. She only worked weekend days and every other Friday night, when Morty could be there. Profits were down.
When she was there, though, there was always a crowd. And now her friends were visiting, a couple of girls from Bishop McDonnell and some guys too. They came in with car key rings dangling from their fingers. Guys with Jesus hair and an easy swagger, all older than I was. Valerie always introduced them as friends of her brother Chris, though he never made an appearance.
“Which one is your boyfriend?” I asked one day when we were loading new tubs of ice cream into the freezer.
“None of them. I’m not really in the market for a boyfriend,” she said, not looking at me. “So don’t get any ideas.”
Mind reader. I blushed, and I had no comeback. So how did I think I was going to get anywhere with her? It was going to be a long campaign. I envied Larry his luck of walking into McDonald’s one day and having Rolonda wait on him. They were both on the same level. Me and Valerie, it was different, like I was at the bottom of a seesaw.
Larry came by the store to check her out and thought she was out of my league. “Too grown-up for you, sport,” he said, when we took our walk around the block on my break. The ceramic collies in the window at Roma Furniture were gone, along with the blinding chandeliers and the game-show bedroom sets. Roma had gone out of business, though the sign was still there. A large For Rent sign had been taped inside the window.
“You’ll have to invite her to a group thing,” Larry said, glancing over at the marquee at the Rugby. The feature attraction was Naughty Nurses. A silhouette of a naked woman adorned the marquee, next to the title. “Somebody will have a party. If she can hang with you and your friends, then she’s good to go.”
Until then, I rode with her down the tattered streets of my neighborhood and hoped she would invite me to hang out at her house.
“You don’t have to ride home with me,” she said the first time we rode together. She took the lead, her long legs pumping the pedals, silver spokes catching the lights from passing cars.
“I want to.”
We rode straight down Church Avenue, slipping between the buses and parked cars, past Erasmus, the high school that looked like a castle, and the movie palaces on Flatbush Avenue, the Albermarle and the Loew’s Kings. The bright marquees lit up the street and Valerie’s brown ponytail. I kept my eyes on her shoulders and the small of her back, where her blouse rode up above the waist of her jeans. Thinking we were going to get cut off by a turning car or knocked off our bikes when someone decided to exit their car into the street, but we didn’t. I don’t think we even stopped at a red light. My thighs burned as I tried to keep up with her. After taking a right turn on Beverley Road, the light and the noise left us, as if we had crossed into a suburb. Valerie lived in a Victorian mansion with green shingles on the upper floors and white on the first floor. There was a wraparound porch but it took several rides before she invited me to hang out for a bit. She only asked to see my house once. Maybe once was enough? One night, we sailed through the intersection at Albany Avenue and she asked, “You live somewhere around here, don’t you?”
“A few blocks.”
“Show me.”
I turned onto my block and braked my bike in the street. The Pink Panther was parked in the driveway. Himself was probably fast asleep in the wing chair with the television on.
“This is your old man’s car?” she asked, riding onto the sidewalk for a good look. She laughed and shook her head in amazement. “My god, it’s a tank. Is this what he drove when he showed up with his gun?”
She hadn’t mentioned the gun once since the night of his visit. I paused and said, “He likes the old cars.”
“Very old. Why does he have a gun? Is he a cop or something?”
Sergeant Flynn, Brooklyn’s patrolman. I would have laughed if I wasn’t so fed up with him. “No. He thought he was protecting us.”
She nodded. “Sounds like you didn’t agree with that.”
I looked over my shoulder at the front porch. The center window was open but it didn’t look like anyone was in the room, eavesdropping. “None of us do. Not me, not my sisters, not my mother. That night he came in the store and scared off those kids, maybe that impressed you. ’Cause he’s outrageous and knows how to get attention. Try living with it.”
She ran her hand over the chrome curve of the Continental kit. “You shouldn’t let him bother you so much. You’re not going to be here forever.”
Every day felt like forever with Himself. “I know that, but my mother will. And my younger sisters. What’ll they do?”
“They’ll leave when they can. That’s what happens. I’m the last one left
in my house.”
A dog barked nearby. I looked at the front porch windows. Queenie was observing us, her forelegs up on the front porch radiator. She was waiting for me to come inside and hook the leash to her collar.
“I have to go in,” I said, leaning on the car, folding my arms. I didn’t want to talk about Himself anymore.
Valerie turned her bike around, got on the seat, and rode over to me. She kissed me on the cheek.
I smiled. “What was that for?”
“Don’t worry so much.”
Then she was off, riding toward Holy Cross. I put my bike in the garage. Larry was wrong, I decided. A girl who kissed you was not out of your league.
* * *
When it was finally time to go to English class, Brian was talking to a few students outside the classroom so I couldn’t grab him, but he called me over after the period ended.
“You came by the lounge?”
I nodded.
“Everything all right?”
“Everything’s never all right. I wanted to ask you a question.”
The classroom was empty now, but students were milling about outside, waiting for the next teacher. Brian was through for the day and asked me to wait for him on the front steps while he packed up. I was finished too, but had some free time. I went upstairs to my locker, put back the books I didn’t need, took some notebooks, and left the building.
Brian was on the sidewalk, pacing. He started walking toward Collisionville as I came down the steps. It was too warm to wear my windbreaker and I tied it around my waist. The mongrels behind the fence at the junkyard yapped as we approached.
“I’m headed to the V.A. hospital in Bay Ridge,” Brian said. “Otherwise, I’d give you a ride. How’s the job going? Seems like it suits you.”
“Money suits me is more like it.” Mom and I had scraped together the three hundred dollars it took to turn the phone back on. The first time it rang, after so many months of silence, it made everyone jump.
Brian’s car was parked across the street by the playground. I looked at the faded body. Our midnight confessional seemed like a long time ago.