A Matter of Love in da Bronx (19 page)

--
Figlio
? You have just come home?

--Yes.

--It's six o'clock ina morning...

--Yes.

--Your father...

--Yes...

--Hey! What do you mean coming home at this time? Where the hell have you been?

--Come on, Pa...

--I'll slap your face! Fulminations of frustration. No come on, Pa! I want to know! What? You think this is a hotel? You live under my roof...

--...which I support... I break my ass every day...

--Fuck you! Unleashed fury. Flesh of the flesh met. The sound was sharp, though it echoed flat. You use that language in front of your mother! I ask a question, you answer! Now!

--I'm no kid.

--Big shot, Eh? I say in this house, or pack and go! Right now, this second!

The sound of his breath escaping was sustenuto, ten-fifteen seconds. --Walking.

--What?

--Walking. I was walking.

--I'll slap you silly!

--No, Pa, once, that's all! That's all you're entitled to. If not his words, his tone carried his flame dousing resolve.

Slyly retreating, establishing his ego as King of the Hill, the progenitor turned to the impassioned witness. --Concetta! What do we raise here? A retarded child? Walking the streets all night? You lazy bastard. Go look for work!

--I'm working.

--For what? For nothing you're working for that rotten sheeny bastard who's going to cheat you out of every nickel you got coming, and I'm going to make him pay extra for making us wait for our money! And this week, I want all the money you get paid from the restaurant! That's why I waited up for you! All your money this week! Or are you learning your tricks from him to cheat your own people? How do you think we pay our bills?

--Coffee? I make coffee? The cowing arbitrationist.

--No! No coffee! I'm not going to work today after staying up waiting for this good-for-nothing stupid bastard! And he doesn't need any. He's going to work for free, like a slave for his cheating Jew-boss bastard!

There came a saucy smell of spring thick in the breaths Sam deepsucked softly and outblew hard as he walked to the shop only moments later, his brain repetending, repetending, repetending: Mary, how do I make you love me?

FRUSTRATION, UNPREPOSSESING in the order of felo-de-se, burbled maddingly in the pit of her kiln. It manifested itself as acid, a matte verglas on her eyes, a dry mouth, and tension-tired muscles that made the matchflame quiver as she put it to her cigarette. She inhaled full bore, decking her lungs, holding it tight deep to her before making a fumarol of her mouth and nostrils. Mary? What? Mary, what? Punching the matches back into her purse resting on the ledge of the frosted window. She could see through its part opening the toilet down and across the way and in it the men performing their usual ritual, zipping, primping, tucking, adjusting. It was so good to get Louisa out of her face, out of her ears, out of her psyche! Louisa was lost in one of the cubicles amidst early morning villainous cannonades, crepitations and straining depurations; which would be replaced through the mid-day with cigarette smoke; then, finally, just before quitting time, perfumes of a type.

There was no agreement between the two of them after all these years about riding to work together in the morning. For the most part, they met and babbled incessantly with one another right up to the moment they started work. If they didn't meet, one just went right about her business, missing the other's company about as much as enjoying the change.

This morning, though, if they hadn't met, Mary would've waited for her. There was a compulsive need to communicate, to explore, to speculate. Last night's doings were dynamite! Could Louisa believe what happened? Was it possible, no less conceivable, that such events could occur to an ordinary person? Such...such luck? A half-a-second from the very last possible moment to have Sam appearing so dramatically! Like television! Forget the hours of waiting! --He must have been there all the while... Mary started to say, but there was no stopping Louisa, now the expositor, not necessarily uninterested or uncaring about Mary's story, but performing an unrestrained recitation of her own night's doings accompanied with a number of excursives and in-depth analyses. Lou Harness gave her the best fuck she ever had in her whole and entire life, and she had to relive it sensation by sensation, kiss by kiss, orgasm to orgasm, an act that would cause her to dribble and drench her panties--so she complained, or bragged--throughout the day with each remembrance. It left her physically and psychologically drained.

--I knew it would happen the minute I saw him last night. We went to his place. Stripped we were before the door even closed. We just couldn't stop fucking. That's why I didn't meet you last night. I got home late, but, somehow, managed to sneak into my room unnoticed. Oh! Mary! First, I gotta tell you what this guy can do with his pecker, and with his hands, and with his tongue. First time in my life I've got a sore hole, and love it! Now this here fellow, Lou, is a lover...

How boring. Come on, Louisa. Your last lay is always your best, and you number them now in the thousands. Christmas tree. What? I said Christmas tree! If you had sticking out of you all that you had stuck into you, you'd look like a Christmas tree. For me, last night, it was a first so who deserves better the other's attention? You should've listened to me to recapture perhaps the brand new sensation of a different emotional excitement, the thrill that comes from an unknown but profound source struck only by two people of the opposite sex. I know what I was doing last night, but what about him? Do you suppose he was late? Or was delayed? Or forgot? Then, do you think he understood my message to meet him Wednesday--tomorrow--night? Don't you think he'll show up if he was there last night? Oh! And so much more I'd like to explore especially about relationships, that sort, but I have only to discuss these things with you, Louisa-Who-Talks-Incessently. And I allow you to do so in the hope that soon some politeness, some consideration will take over, and you'll ask about me and my episode. No. That didn't happen at all. Then, I try to interrupt, to slip in between breaths, no, you won't allow it. I wouldn't dare try to talk over you. How rude that would be. Instead, you offer a person dying of thirst the sound of trickling water. Instead of expatiation I remain unexpostulated, and though I may live it through this workday, you will find me insufferable homewardbound tonight first making you to understand my need such as yours was, similar to eating bread and chocolate to make more from little, my indagation an extender of my world. And you are going to listen to me, and talk to me, and answer my questions, and speculate about things I want to speculate about! If you can't bite your tongue, and listen, I'll do it for you! Now, Louisa, hear! Contemplate this question once we agree that he will be there waiting for me, and I will go to meet him: What if he wants to take me to his place, and... I could never... You know. I could never. No. I couldn't. God...God would punish me... I would fix it so my eternal soul would burn eternally in Hell. I just couldn't do that...could I?

IN THE TEEMING bazaar of his brain while sitting in the Eden Farms deli, Sam loitered for long, introspective moments at each and every sensation, thought and feeling not unlike his first carnival at six with the dazzling wonderment of the mass of humanity; garish lights; bonanza of pitch booths; animal and human acts on the midway; the hucksterings; the rides; the music; the slidey mudgrass underfoot; the smells, the smells, the smells! Of broiling peppers and steak, wet straw, hot dogs, spun sugar, stale beer, manure. Awesome awe. Now, the same awe, but a different atmosphere. Bright, bluish tube lights; dinky tables; swabbed white ceramic floor tile, narrow edged with a black Roman key; shelves of foodstuffs; long, lit refrigerated display cases; mouthwatering sights: whole roast beefs, turkey, wursts of all kinds, steamtable hot pastrami, potato and macaroni salads, sauerkraut, soups, sour creamed herring, smoked fishes--sable, nova--pickles, light or dark or oniony crusty breads and rolls, coffee, even tea in a glass. Behind the counter, two automatons in irredeemable surgical white replete with ketchupy contrails won in a dinnercrowd race for to eat here, for to go. The clientele, incoming, outgoing, fast in, slow out; sighs; undisguised burps, belches; by ones, twos, formless tired shapes. The waitress, sweater, jeans, no apron for latecoming to the rush hour Jeez I need the job going back and forth with dishes filled, dishes emptied; gum chewing fast like a watering-mouth waiting for things to get slow; the silent, winking flirting green computer numbers of the cash register with its drawer doings its noisy in and out thing; garbled glowerings for rolled beef on pumpernickel with Swiss, a touch of mayo, extra lettuce and fill the hard pickle dish a large coke, you haven't cleaned the table, who can get the goddamned napkin out of the overfilled dispenser? And I'll have the same, but with hot tea with lemon if you don't mind in a cup, God! In a cup! Hey! Lady! In a cup and saucer! You got it! All this. And that wasn't all, Sam.

Her.

She was there. With him. Can you believe? Sitting so close he could see her pupils' variate. His first. MaryMary on a date. Her perfume...no! Her
parfum
in the air. He searched it out, sucked it in, deep and deeper and deepest until he felt he had incarcerated her spirit in his body and he'd never let it go.

Gloria
!
Si
Gloria
Mondo
!
Si
Gloria
Mondo
Mutande
! Indeed! Universal is underwear. An operatic celebration.

The primary sensation was one of having been flash frozen. Yes. An impermeability brought on by the sight of her, and the realization that they would be together. With each other. Alone. By themselves. That she was there especially to be with him. Sam Scopia.
Ma quanto mai
? Whenever before? Never. Never, never, never. My Lord! Help me! What is it that one does on these occasions? It's a simple act. I know it. Yes! Yes! It's coming to me! I have it! Speak! That's it, just
talk
to her. Without all the stuttering, and muttering, and tongue swallowings and droolings. Say it: Hello... Yes. --Hello...! That was when they met as arranged. In front of the photographer's studio just up the way. Next came the superquick thaw that made him feel as if a highpressure fire hose had been loosed in his bowels inducing raving carminative tumultuations. Good Lord! Sam! Whatever you do on your first date, don't fart! A needless admonition because the very idea of such a social indiscretion pierced his brain as an icy lance turning his innards to such slushy mud he'd be constipated for a week. His feelings, meanwhile, a little high up in his body, were like a fountain of seltzer water emanating from an effervescent heart spewing unused childhood thrills. It brought an excitement that turned his mouth to a desert causing his tongue to stick to his teeth, and his eyes to burn dryly staring from wide open sockets. His solitary thought: Falling in love was no picnic!

Now, within the last seconds did not more sensations of the real world begin to colliquafy from his extremities inwards? Garbled small talk at first. Then, those eyes like lilies in a Monet pool take me in as I put a flaming match to her cigarette. Notice! Did you notice how her hand started to come up to mine, to guide it, womanlike to the essential target, stops! Hesitates. Touch me! Clear out path! I breathe in with her, deep, hard and with her take the pause in outer space spewing smoke over a world we wish to explore. Nothing else exists, though we must know it be out there.

Her, too. Food processor going through her insides. What's the word for the false need to micturate? Faux P? Excitement always brings it on. Good Lord! I can't make any sense out of what I'm saying! What am I saying? I can't believe I said it! He listens like it's for real. I'm the one that's supposed to be nervous, but look at him! Trying to light my cigarette like he's waving a flaming rescue brand. If I steady his hand, will he take offense? There! Soft. Warm. Real. Does he not understand? Let him talk, for Heaven's sakes! Let him talk! --A feeling? That we'd meet again?

--Yes.

--You're so positive.

--I thought I made a mistake once, but I was wrong. She laughs. Full, healthy. Throwing her head back, showing her teeth, pink deep in her throat, just a little too long, a little too nervous. He liked that. What he didn't like was being in the deli with her. Perhaps it wouldn't make a bit of difference if it wasn't their first date.
Mais certainement!
It would be to make a favorable impression on the lady, to win her quickly to his side if he had sought for them a premier class auberge. Not to order by price, necessarily, but to savor the juices rolling about on the tongue, then, to seek to satisfy through one dish, one glass, one savoring after another bud by bud by bud with the inspiring subtle reflections of crystal chandeliers, glowing cadmium tinged tapers, formal clothes, mezzo-sotto stringed music, and smart conversation couched in sensual suavity. All could've been arranged had his wits not abandoned him at the sight of her. It seemed certain that at that very particular moment he began to declaim the first thirty-six lines of "Odysseus" just as he had done with the same grinding knotted wire cable within his guts at eighth grade assembly only to be darned later if he didn't recollect Millay's Not in a silver casket cool with pearls...I give my love to you; coming from her lips at the same time! No matter that, the air filled with soundless jaggedflashes of lightning as they recognized in each other oft seen vistas responding to the harmonics of the situation only to plagiarize their dreams to find quite acceptable the thought of "...a coffee in the deli..." Sober now, he questioned the whole idea. What a fucking asshole! Where'd you ever come up with such a cretin idea?

--Dinner in a deli! What a really nice idea! I haven't in a long time! Yes, let's! That would be nice!

Well, kick me in the balls! Talk about nice! She goes right along with your stupid idea because she's NICE! Was there ever such a place short of Paradise for such understanding? Sure, Man, self-hynosis.