I came to feeling hollow and hungry, Vinnie’s slice being the last solid food I’d eaten. Coat, gloves, scarf – I swept them up and headed out. I found a ten, a five spot, the pizza change, which amounted to about a buck-sixty, and three tokens in my pockets. That would have to last until I could get my hands on whatever the Pier owed me: two hundred bucks maybe. I squirreled my cash away in the Bosca billfold Grandpa Joe gave me for my Bar Mitzvah. It had compartments I didn’t have use for, so I had other stuff hidden in there: a losing ticket for a horse called Shuvee, the top right corner of Joe Pepitone’s ’69 baseball card, and a scrap of paper with Alfred’s Spokane phone number on it.
I decided to call him as soon as I could find a fist full of quarters and a warm phone booth.
I caught the A Train uptown to find my brother, Robert.
When I climbed out of the subway at 72nd Street the cold hit me hard. A Saturday evening crowd swarmed over the sidewalks and crosswalks of Broadway and Amsterdam. Snowdrifts, as hard as icebergs, gave a bright edge to the intersection. I wasn’t sure where Robert was. He’d cornered the Sunday Times assembly market in the area, working twelve to fifteen hours Saturday night into Sunday morning at three nearby newsstands. He could have been at Sammy’s on the uptown side of 72nd, or at what Robert called the “Papaya Place” because it was smack in front of Gray’s Papaya, home of the best two-bit hot dog in the city, or farther down 72nd toward West End at Mohammed’s shop.
I found him at Sammy’s stand. No coat, no hat, no gloves, his face smeared with ink, Robert stacked the papers with ferocious efficiency.
“Hey, Robert,” I called.
His smile filled his whole round face the way air fills a balloon. We hugged.
“I ate already,” he said. He smelled like sweat and roasted meat and onions.
When I let him go, he turned back to his tower of papers. Robert reveled in the pressure and the challenge of Saturday nights, the heft and texture and smell of paper and ink, the stacks rising like walls around him, the customers lining up down the block. He liked cash in his pocket. But most of all, he liked Sammy, a small-time character actor who landed a bit part on Broadway now and then. He gave Robert his first shot with the Sunday Times. He called Robert, Kippy, Grandpa Joe’s nickname, and even though Robert could hardly read the newspapers he stacked — anything more complicated than a list of songs gave him trouble — Sammy treated him like a prince of the theater.
I just said it. “I got fired.” There it was.
Robert’s rhythm didn’t falter: Open, slide, stack.
“From where?” He had four jobs. He made sense to himself. He couldn’t imagine only having only one. Or none.
“Grandpa fired me.”
Maybe he knew I had more to tell. He kept working until I was ready to spit it out. He hefted a stack of ten completed papers.
“I threw Max in the fish fridge and locked the door.”
Robert seemed to totter under the weight of his load, but his face lit up with a sudden smile.
“Max made me take these shit lobsters and I threw them on his desk and threw him in the cooler.”
“I don’t like Max,” Robert said. His smile dimmed slightly from delight to disbelief. He dropped the stack of papers within Sammy’s reach behind the counter. “Lobsters all over?”
I lifted my arms over my head and showed him how I emptied the crate.
Robert let loose a great belly shaking laugh. He lifted his arms and emptied an invisible crate and made the explosive sound he perfected playing with army men as a kid. When his hands came down they landed on insert and paper. He went back to his robotic assembly rhythm.
“So, I got fired.”
“Yeah, you said.” His new stack was already four papers high.
“Can you believe that?”
“Yeah,” he said. Seven papers piled up.
My toes ached with cold. I did a little shuffle dance to keep from freezing to death.
Robert said. “You don’t need it.”
“Don’t need what?”
“Grandpa’s job.”
“I’ve got maybe fifteen bucks,” I said.
With a sudden, swift, corner-of-the-eye flutter and flash, like the shadow of a bird, a folded Daily Racing Form landed in my hand. I opened it. What did I see? A twenty dollar bill.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “I ate already.”
###
In the morning, I snuck into the Pier on the freight elevator at around 10:30 when I figured Max would be making his rounds upstairs. I surprised Carl in his cubbyhole of an office. He knew what happened. Max had made him clean up the lobsters. When I mumbled something about being sorry, Carl laughed and opened a drawer and pulled out a lobster claw. He held it to the light and twirled it in his fingers.
“I washed this off with soap and a toothbrush. I think I’ll take it home and varnish it, so it’ll last. You’re my hero, man.”
He wished me good luck and mentioned a couple of places where he thought I could get a job, but I told him I didn’t want a job, which was a dumb thing to say, but it was true. I didn’t really know what I was saying. I just wanted to get my check and get out of there.
I went to Alfred’s office. The lady who worked there - I don’t remember her name - had an orange year-round tan and big bug-eyed glasses. She could hardly look at me when she gave me my check. She asked me if I knew how Alfred was doing. I didn’t know, but I said I’d call him later. She asked me to tell him she missed him and wished him well. I promised, but I don’t think I remembered to say anything when I finally called him.
I headed back though the pantry to say so long to Carl again and wish him good luck and get his phone number, but he wasn’t around.
Neither was Max. His office door was open a little and I gave it a gentle nudge. It slowly swung all the way open and I looked in. Carl did a good job of cleaning up. I couldn’t see any sign of lobsters or seaweed or water stains on the walls. Max’s desk was cluttered with invoices, copies of the Post, and empty soup bowls and spoons. I stepped in and went to his desk and grabbed the drawer and gave it a tug. Just to see. Just to …
But it was locked.
I stood there, hand on the drawer, staring at the soup bowls and spoons, thinking about the money and Max — about Joe and Ira — and everything they owed me.
I let go. Let that book close for good.
That’s all I’m going to say about that.
After I cashed my check – two hundred forty-seven bucks and change - at the Chase Bank on 59th, I hoofed it uptown to the Dunkin Donuts on Eighth Avenue near 65th, just down the block from Alfred’s apartment. I camped out and studied the Racing Form Robert gave to me, but I kept thinking about Carl for some reason. I already missed the guy. He was a big, blond farm boy from Minnesota or Michigan or someplace like that. I didn’t know much about him, except that he liked to tie flies, the kind you fish with. He brought a small plastic box to work one day and showed me some. They were colorful tiny things with feathers and silk and golden fuzz on them. His uncle and father taught him, and they were famous for their flies back in Minnesota or wherever. Carl sold his flies at a fancy fishing store on the upper East Side. It made me wonder why he lived in Queens and worked in the basement of a restaurant in Manhattan when he could be fishing on a lake with his old man somewhere. Then, one day, I saw a flier tacked up in his cubbyhole for a dance recital with little girls in tutus on it. It turned out Carl’s wife used to be a ballet dancer and now she had a studio in Astoria where she taught little Greek and Russian girls to dance. His life made some sense, I guess.
I was thinking about Carl’s ballet wife when I spotted Rhymes with Rope in the Racing Form. She was running in Florida at Gulfstream in a maiden race for non-winners. At Aqueduct, around Thanksgiving, I’d seen her make a move from dead last to pass a half-dozen horses in the stretch. She finished fourth or fifth under an apprentice jockey’s stranglehold. I took note of that race because she was Mac Miller’s filly. He’s famous for training turf horses. He was front page news when he turned Sebastian Knight from a loser into the champion grass horse of ‘81. What he was doing sending Rhymes out in a sprint on a sloppy dirt track with a bug boy on her back? Her pedigree had grass written all over it. Her sire and dam were Bard’s Rhyme and Enough Rope, both above average turf horses. I figured I could throw the Aqueduct result in the river. What was Miller’s angle for the Florida race? That was the question. I marked up that page with circles and arrows, underlines and question marks. I obliterated the competition by scratching them out one by one, as I assessed their chances against Rhymes. None of them had any hope against Miller’s filly. None of them had the class to compete with her. I put an exclamation mark next to Rokeby Stables, because Miller’s boss was Paul Mellon, the banker. They had enough money to be patient, to make a play when the time was right and the horse was ready. They didn’t ship Rhymes to Florida just for fun. I went over it again and again, sliding each piece of the puzzle around in my head until they were all locked in place and wouldn’t come apart. It always looks simple in the end: Miller was stretching her out in a mile race on the grass and putting Angel Cordero in the saddle for only one reason: to win.
I walked up Eighth Ave bouncing my Spaldeen and squinting against the snow-struck sunlight. The OTB office smelled like dirty laundry and Lysol. I bet my paycheck on Rhymes at twenty to one, and I almost bet the twenty Robert gave me, but I knew I’d need lunch and a handful of quarters to call Alfred if I went bust. I watched the race on closed circuit with a guy I knew called the Count. He earned the name because he was pale as Dracula and he never stopped counting his bankroll. He stood there thumbing his cash while Rhymes rounded the track. She lay in wait in fourth until the quarter pole. She made her move on the outside and glided past slowing horses, her hooves hardly touching the turf.
How did I feel when Rhymes won?
It’s not just one feeling. I’ve cashed hundreds of tickets and every time it hits a different spot. Sometimes I feel my whole body tingling. I feel every hair on my head. I feel my toenails. Other times it feels like a deep breath goes to my toes and then floats out of me and carries my worries to the rooftops. Some tickets feel like business as usual — like cashing a paycheck.
With Rhymes, I felt like I was owed a win. I would’ve been angry and desperate if I lost, but I was already angry and desperate. With her, winning made my heart go boom, boom, boom with satisfaction, but it didn’t wipe out everything else I felt. It didn’t fix getting fired, that’s for sure. It made me even. Almost.
In the shine of a win, some shadows don’t go away.
The guy at the window whistled when he counted out my cash. Boom, boom. I walked out of the OTB onto 72nd, past the cigar chompers and ticket shufflers, with over six grand in my pocket. First stop was across the street at Malachy’s for a vodka soda or two and some quarters for the phone. When the bartender set up my drink, I bragged about my win.
“Twenty to one,” I said.
He studied my face with a weary scowl. He managed to put a smile on, but it took all he had to get it done.
“May your pocket always have a coin or two inside,” he said.
The drink was no vanilla malted, but it smoothed the jagged edges after a morning drinking bitter coffee at Dunkin Donuts. A question dogged me. What was I going to do now?
A lady with short hair and long earrings sat next to me reading a book. Her eyes didn’t leave the page when she groped toward the ashtray for her cigarette. She took a drag and put the lipstick stained butt back where she found it, her eyes still glued to the page. Must be a good book. I tried to get a peak at the cover but she kept it pressed to the bar. She heard what I told the bartender. Twenty to one! That would’ve gotten my nose out of a book. But she didn’t want to talk to me about a horse race. Or anything else.
I was in the mood to buy somebody a drink, but … forget about it.
By the time my second drink was mostly ice, I realized I had to get out of town. I set a bridge on fire when I threw Max in the cooler. The thought of going to work in the basement of some other restaurant made me want to throw my drink through the window. But where could I go? Spokane was he only place I could think of, because Alfred was there. I didn’t know anything about Spokane, except it was way the hell out of town.
I swiveled my stool around and looked past the backwards letters on the window at the door of the OTB across the street. Robert’s pal, Kenny the Cowboy, strutted around in the cold in his ten-gallon hat, his head bowed to blow the steam off a cup of coffee. The Count stepped out the door to air out his money-roll. I bet he’d let me buy him a drink, the Cowboy, too.
The booze and thought of leaving the city forever and ever and ever made me start to miss Carl and the Count and the Cowboy. I missed everybody, even the lady with the long earrings and the lipstick sitting next to me. I said goodbye to her in my head and thought if she looked up from her book, I would tell her a story that began with goodbye and good luck and ended somewhere far away.
I ordered a third vodka soda. My pockets were bulging with money and I didn’t have anywhere to go. The grumpy bartender turned out to be friendly enough to keep the drinks coming. I ordered a fourth cocktail. Somewhere along the line he said his name was Alfie, like the song, so I sang it to him, “What’s it all about, Alfie?”
He didn’t know or he didn’t want to tell me. That’s when the lady smashed her cigarette in the ashtray and closed her book and left.
Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye, I whispered into my glass.
I dug Alfred’s phone number out of my wallet and stared at it. I must’ve asked Alfie for quarters, because there he was – making stacks of them on the bar in front of me.
I said, “I’m going to call my friend. His name’s Alfred, Alfie.” I thought that was funny, but Alfie didn’t.
He said, “As my sainted father used say, “Put a beggar on horseback and he’ll go at a gallop.”
Then he wasn’t in front of me anymore and I thought, What’s wrong with a gallop?
I rolled out of the bar with a buzz and just a hint of my winner’s adrenaline working. I turned uptown with the vague notion of finding my old pal and partner, Pez, to talk business. But first I needed a warm phone booth.
Across Broadway, I saw the white palace of the Ansonia Hotel with its towers and curly cues gleaming in the sun. Through the revolving doors I went, like the tiles of the lobby were made of ice and I was on skates. They were black and white, the tiles, like a checkerboard, like a pattern on a jockey’s silks. The high white walls and balconies and the windows with the light streaming through and the chandeliers floating above me shining like diamonds brought back that boom, boom, boom to my chest. I looked like a bum probably in my Army jacket and jeans, but the cash in my pocket gave me confidence. The guy at the counter looked up from whatever he was reading, his glasses glittering. “Phone,” I said, like I owned the place. The guy lifted his chin toward a wide hall to my right. There was a row of wooden phone booths.
When I closed the door, a light came on. I settled onto the smooth seat and piled my quarters on the ledge below the phone. In my jacket pocket, I found my Spaldeen. I took it out and rolled it back and forth on the top of my leg with my palm.
Alfred’s mother answered the phone. She had a high, excited old lady voice. She said, “Oh yes, oh yes,” when I told her who I was. “Here’s Alfred. Here he is.”
His first word wasn’t a word. It was a cough. A lot of coughs.
Finally, he said, “Sorry.”
“Are you okay?”
“Okay. I’m … just … I have this cough. It gets better sometimes.”
“Hey, I… had a problem with Max.”
“I heard.”
“Joe fired me.”
“I heard,” Alfred said.
“The lobsters.”
“Yeah.”
“They were shit.”
“I know.”
That’s when I told Alfred about Rhymes with Rope and the money in my pocket and that’s when he said, “It seems are lives are guided more by chance than by choice after all.”
I mumbled something about luck not being on my side.
Alfred said, “Michael. Are you listening?”
I had a phone pressed to my ear. What else was I going to do?
“Max called me.”
I kept listening.
“Money’s missing, Michael. The Dio money. Seven grand.”
Seven grand?
“He’s slipping, Alfred. You said so.”
“He said you pried his desk drawer open with a soup spoon.”
“I threw him in the cooler! He hates me.”
“I know, Michael. But he told Joe you took the money.”
I pressed the phone harder to my ear. I made it hurt. I shut my eyes and squeezed my Spaldeen. I crushed it.
I said, “Max is a degenerate gambler and a goddamned liar!”
“Listen, Michael, I don’t believe most of what comes out of his mouth. But if he told Joe, he’ll tell Johnnie. You’re in a sea of troubles, no matter what.”
My tongue felt thick and dry. I wanted an ice cube to suck. I wanted to be back at the bar talking about a beggar on horseback. My heart was going at a gallop.
I said, “You’ve gotta believe me.”
The telephone line hummed in my ear.
Finally, Alfred said, “What are your plans?”
I said, “I dunno,” because I didn’t.
Then I said, “Guess what? I’m in the Ansonia. They’ve got good phone booths here.” Just to say something.
“Yes,” Alfred said. “Looks like it belongs in Paris or Prague.”
“Chandeliers and everything,” I said.
He started coughing and a high voice came on the line asking for money.
When Alfred said, “You can stay in my apartment, you know, if you need a place,” it was almost drowned out by the jangle of coins down the slot.
“I need to get out of town.”
“Sure,” Alfred said. “Where?”
“I dunno. But I have money.”
“Rhymes with Rope,” Alfred said.
“Yeah. Mac Miller’s filly.”
“Why don’t you come out here?”
I gave my Spaldeen a squeeze and closed my eyes tight.
“Michael?”
“I’m here.”
“What do you think?”
“So. Where is Spokane?” I said. “Oregon?”