Tough Luck (3 page)

Another girl passed by, and Chris turned around to look at her ass.

“Hello, Lucy,” he said. The girl kept walking, then he said, “Karen . . . Lisa . . . Amy . . . Barbara . . . Helen . . .”

Finally, the girl turned around, sticking up her middle finger.

“Your name’s Helen, I knew it,” Chris said. “Marry me, Helen. Come on, have my babies!”

Chris laughed, his tongue hanging out of his mouth.

“Do me a favor,” Mickey said, “don’t say anything to the other guys about this.”

“About what?” Chris said.

“About Angelo,” Mickey said.

“Why not?” Chris asked.

“Because I just don’t want you to.”

“Whatever,” Chris said.

Mickey bowled an 89 in the third game, the lowest score on the team. Now if The Studs didn’t win next week, there would be no chance of finishing in first place.

While Mickey was turning in his bowling shoes at the counter, he heard Filippo say to Chris, “I don’t want that fuckin’ faggot on the team no more.”

“He’ll get better,” Chris said.

“He fuckin’ sucks,” Filippo said. “My grandmother in a wheelchair can bowl better than that pussy.”

Ralph was looking at Mickey as if he wanted to kill him, his left eye narrowed and his lower lip hanging down farther than ever.

“Don’t worry about them,” Chris whispered to Mickey. “They’re just fuckin’ retards.” Then Chris said out loud, “Hey, you wanna come out with us tonight? We’re gonna hit some tit joints in the city, and then we’re gonna cruise the West Side for whores. Come on, if you wanna be on The Studs, you gotta act like one.”

“No thanks,” Mickey said.

“You’re wasting your time,” Filippo said to Chris. “I told you a million times, the guy’s a fuckin’ flame thrower. He saw a naked girl, he wouldn’t know what to do with her. Ain’t that right, Mick?”

“Have a good time,” Mickey said to Chris, and walked away.

Later, driving down Ralph Avenue in his beat-up ’76 Pinto, Mickey turned on the radio to an all-news station. The sportscaster came on and said that the Chicago Bulls and their rookie guard Michael Jordan had beaten the Knicks 121–106, meaning that Angelo now owed Mickey’s bookie 1,020 bucks.

Mickey pounded the dashboard with the bottom of his fist as he stepped on the gas.

2

WHEN MICKEY ARRIVED at his apartment all the lights were out and his father wasn’t home. Mickey hoped this didn’t mean his old man was out wandering the streets again.

A few months ago, Sal Prada didn’t come home one night, and Mickey had to call the cops. They finally found Sal the next morning, sleeping on a park bench in Bay Ridge, the neighborhood where he grew up. It was so humiliating to have the cop car pull up in front of the house with all the neighbors standing outside in their T-shirts and robes to see what was going on.

Mickey and his father lived in a small, narrow apartment on the second floor of a two-family house on Albany Avenue. There were two rooms in the apartment—Mickey’s at one end of the hallway and his father’s at the other end. In between there was a tiny kitchen and a bathroom barely big enough for a toilet, sink, and shower stall. Mickey couldn’t wait to move out. He had hoped to find his own place this year, when he was supposed to start college, but he had put all of his plans on hold one night last July when his father collapsed at the dinner table. At first, Mickey thought it had something to do with his Alzheimer’s, which had been getting worse over the past few years, but it turned out Sal had suffered a mild stroke. Sal didn’t have any savings or pension—all he got were his monthly Social Security checks, which weren’t much because he’d worked most of his life off the books. The doctors at the hospital suggested that Sal move to a nursing home or at least get a home attendant, but Sal refused. Although Sal had never been a good father, Mickey didn’t want him to rot away in a home, so he put off school and started working full-time at the fish store. Mickey figured he could at least pay the rent and bills, which was all his father had ever done for him. He didn’t want to get into debt with student loans, and he hoped that by next year he’d have enough money in his savings to afford expenses while he went to school during the day and worked part-time on nights and weekends.

After Mickey munched on some leftover pepperoni and anchovy pizza in the fridge, he went into his room and locked the door. He’d had the same furniture in his room since he was a kid—a dresser, a night table, a springy single bed in the corner, a black-and-white TV set with a busted picture tube so everything always looked grainy and shadowed. A poster of Reggie Jackson when he was on the Yankees hung behind Mickey’s bed, and on the wall across from his bed was the poster of Farrah Fawcett-Majors smiling widely, her nipples showing through her bathing suit. Another poster, of Steve Cauthen atop Affirmed after winning the seventy-eight Derby, was attached to the back of his closet door.

Lying in bed, Mickey watched the end of the Knicks game, then he watched
The Odd Couple
and
The Honeymooners.
He had seen the episodes so many times that he knew all the lines by heart, and he didn’t laugh or even smile at the jokes.

At midnight, Sal still wasn’t home, Mickey was going to give it another half an hour, until
Letterman
went on, and then he heard the side door opening and his father’s slow footsteps coming upstairs.

When Sal entered the apartment, Mickey was waiting in the hallway. People always told Mickey that he looked like his father, but Mickey hoped this wasn’t true because he had always thought his father was the ugliest man alive. Sal had a small bald head, a huge Italian schnoz, big ears that stuck out, and he wore glasses that made his right eye look about twice the size of his left. Sal used to be taller than Mickey, but Mickey had grown late, in high school, and Sal had shrunk. Now Mickey had a good four inches on his old man.

“Where the hell’ve you been?” Mickey asked.

“What do you mean?” Sal said, almost yelling. He’d always talked loud, since Mickey could remember, even though there was nothing wrong with his hearing. “I took a walk. What, I can’t take a fuckin’ walk?”

Sal went to hang up his trench coat in the hall closet. It took him about ten seconds to figure out how to turn the handle on the closet door, and Mickey didn’t go over to help. Finally, the old man put away his coat and then he headed past Mickey, down the narrow hallway to his bedroom.

Following his father, Mickey said, “You can’t just disappear like that. I was gonna call the cops.”

“The cops? Why would you call the cops?”

“Because I thought you got lost again.”

“Lost? Why would I get lost? I’ve been living in Brooklyn seventy-five years. I know this city better than anybody.”

“It’s not a city.”

“What?”

“Brooklyn’s not a city, it’s a borough.”

“What the fuck’re you talking about?”

“So where were you, anyway?”

“Shopping.”

“Shopping? Where were you shopping?”

“What do you mean, the supermarket on Kings Highway.”

“What supermarket on Kings Highway?”

“What do you mean? . . . Bohack’s.”

“Bohack’s? There’s no Bohack’s on Kings Highway.”

“What the hell’re you talking about, Mi . . . Mi . . . Mi . . .”

“Mickey.”

“I know your goddamn name. What, you think I can’t find a fucking supermarket? I’ve been living in Brooklyn seventyfive years. I know this city better than anybody.”

“Wha’d you buy?” Mickey asked. “I don’t see any food.”

Sal looked around.

“I must’ve put the bag down already in the kitchen. There’s a lot of food in there, but don’t eat it up all at once. It has to last all week. I bought ham and bologna and chicken salad. But save the chicken salad for your mother. You know she likes it.”

“Mom’s dead,” Mickey said.

“Dead!” Sal shouted. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“She died in a hit and run fifteen years ago on the BQE, remember?”

“I know she’s dead,” Sal said, suddenly angry. “Jesus Christ, why don’t you leave me the hell alone?”

Mickey had had enough.

“Good night, Dad.”

“Where you going?”

“Bed.”

“You wanna go to the track Saturday? I’ll give you twenty to play with.”

Mickey lay in bed with the lights off. Watching the occasional shadows on the ceiling from the headlights of cars passing by on Albany Avenue, he eventually fell asleep.

3

MICKEY’S ROOM WAS still dark when the phone rang. Without getting out of bed, he reached onto the floor and lifted the receiver.

“Hello,” he mumbled.

“Pinocchio, get the marbles out of your mouth.”

Mickey recognized Harry’s voice.

“Yeah,” Mickey said, his eyes closing again.

“Sorry to call you so early,” Harry said, but Mickey could tell he wasn’t really sorry. Harry was the type who enjoyed waking people up from deep sleeps. “We got a little problem today at the store and I need your help.”

Harry explained that one of the freezers in the store had broken down last night and all the fish inside spoiled. The next delivery from the Fulton Fish Market wasn’t for a few days, so Harry needed Mickey to come with him to Sheepshead Bay and buy fish straight off the boats.

“What time is it?” Mickey asked.

“Five o’clock,” Harry said. “Be by the store in a half hour, will ya?”

“Yeah, yeah, all right,” Mickey said, his eyes closing.

Mickey fell asleep then woke up again at five-fifteen. Without showering, he walked from his house to the fish store along the dark empty streets. Harry was waiting in the truck. When Mickey got in they said, “Morning,” to each other, and they didn’t say anything else until Harry pulled up in front of a deli on Flatbush and said, “Want some coffee?” and Mickey said, “Sure.” Harry stood outside the car, waiting, then Mickey realized he wanted money. Mickey gave Harry a buck and then, when Harry was out of earshot, Mickey said, “Cheap fuck.”

The coffee barely lifted Mickey’s eyelids. Mickey and Harry arrived at Sheepshead Bay and had to wait about half an hour, with the rest of the buyers, until the fishing boats started to come into port. There was still mist over the bay, and the sun was just starting to rise; it was turning into a cool, breezy fall morning.

Staring at the boats and the docks, Mickey remembered all the times when he was eight and nine years old and he went out fishing with Chris and Chris’s father. They were some of the only times in Mickey’s life that he felt like a normal kid, doing the things normal kids did. The nights before, Mickey was so excited he could hardly sleep. Then, at five o’clock, he would go down to meet Chris and Mr. Turner. They would have an extra fishing pole for Mickey to use, and they’d drive down to Sheepshead Bay and take one of the boats. One time, Mickey caught a twenty-five pound striped bass. Well, he didn’t really
catch
it. His line got tangled with some guy’s line on the other side of the boat, and when the guy reeled both lines in, the fish was on Mickey’s hook. Mickey still looked at the picture sometimes—Chris and him standing in front of the fishing boat, both smiling, holding up the huge fish between them.

The fishing boats pulled into the docks, and buyers from restaurants and fish stores all over Brooklyn lined up to buy the day’s catch. Harry bought some fluke, flounder, striped bass, porgies, bluefish, and blackfish. At about a quarter to seven, they headed back to the fish store, Harry listening to some radio station that seemed to play Frank Sinatra every other song.

MICKEY AND CHARLIE unloaded the truck and then Harry left for the morning. Mickey had only gotten about four hours sleep, and it was hitting him hard. Even the Run-D.M.C. cassette Charlie was blasting on his boom box couldn’t keep Mickey from feeling exhausted.

After putting ice on the stands, Mickey and Charlie washed the new whole fish and laid them on top of the ice, then they added the older fish they had stored in boxes in the refrigerator overnight. After they put out the shellfish in their own stands, they rested for a few minutes until the store opened for business at ten o’clock.

All morning, and especially around noon, every time the bell above the door rang, Mickey looked over, hoping to see Angelo. But when the lunch crowd started thinning out, around one-thirty, Mickey knew Angelo wasn’t going to show.

At around two-o’clock, Harry returned to the store and said to Mickey, “Well, I feel great. I went home and slept like a baby for four hours.” He stretched in an overexaggerated way and then went to the back of the store.

Mickey was cursing Harry under his breath when the bell above the door rang and a girl walked in. She had big curly brown hair with short straight bangs and was wearing tight faded jeans and a white sweatshirt coming off of one shoulder. She might have been about ten pounds overweight and her skin was broken out on her cheeks, but she was still one of the best-looking girls Mickey had ever seen.

“Why don’t you take a picture, it’ll last longer?”

Mickey looked over his shoulder and saw Charlie standing there, smiling.

“What are you talking about?” Mickey said.

“Ah, come on, man, who you kiddin’?” Charlie said. “I know you was just checkin’ that girl out.”

“What girl?” Mickey said.

“What girl?” Charlie said. “That’s funny, man. Come on, what you waitin’ for, an invitation? Go talk to her.”

“Why?” Mickey said.

“Yo, just go for it, man. She’s
still
checkin’ you out.”

“Sure she is.”

“Why would I lie to you? Her eyes was just goin’ up and down, lookin’ at you like you a piece of prime rib on the rack. You gotta go take her order, anyway—why not get her phone number while you at it?”

Mickey knew Charlie was just egging him on. The girl was looking at the fish on the stands, deciding what to get.

“Are you gonna take the young lady’s order or are you just gonna let her stand there all day on her pretty little feeties?”

Harry had come out from the back, and he was standing behind Mickey with his hands on his hips.

Mickey noticed the girl’s green eyes.

“Sorry, can I help you?” Mickey asked.

“Yes,” the girl said, “can I have two pounds of flounder fillets and that striped bass right there?”

She pointed.

“You want the bass whole or in fillets?” Mickey asked.

“Whole,” the girl said.

“You want me to cut off the head and tail?”

“Yes, please.”

“You got it.”

As Mickey was cutting the bass, he turned back toward the girl, looking at her legs in those tight jeans, wondering how she got them on, when he felt the pain in his right index finger. He looked at his finger, surprised to see how much blood was flowing out of it.

“Fuck,” Mickey said.

Harry, at the other end of the counter, looked over.

“Jesus,” Harry said. “What the hell’s wrong with you?”

“The knife slipped,” Mickey said.

“Slipped?” Harry said. “Don’t you know how to cut a fucking fish?”

Now there was blood all over the counter and on the fish.

“Are you okay?” the girl asked.

“Yeah,” Mickey said. “Fine.” He didn’t care about his finger, he just couldn’t believe he’d made such a fool of himself.

“Look what you did,” Harry said to Mickey. “You know how much this costs? Go clean this up—right now.”

Mickey wound up his finger in the corner of his apron, then he went toward the kitchen, mumbling, “Fuck you.”

“What was that?” Harry said.

“Nothing,” Mickey said.

“I thought I heard you say something,” Harry said.

“I didn’t say anything,” Mickey said.

Charlie must have come out from the back in time to hear what had happened because Charlie said to Harry, “It wasn’t his fault.”

“Was I talking to you, Budinsky?” Harry said. “Why don’t you get back to work and mind your own fuckin’ business, all right?”

“I just think that shit ain’t right,” Charlie said. “The knife slipped—it was an accident.”

Mickey had stopped near the entrance to the back. As Charlie and Harry continued to argue, the girl came over toward Mickey and said, “Is it very deep?”

“It’s not too bad,” Mickey said.

Looking at Mickey’s finger, the girl cringed. “Ooh, that looks bad. You might need stitches.”

“It’ll be okay.”

“You better wash it out and put peroxide on it.”

“Yeah, you’re probably right,” Mickey said.

Mickey went through the doors to the back of the store, to the bathroom and washed out the wound in the sink. In the dusty cabinet above the sink, there was no peroxide, but there was an old box of little Band-Aids. Mickey used a few of the bandages to cover the wound on his finger, but they didn’t stop the bleeding. Maybe the girl was right about needing stitches.

With his hand around the injured finger, putting pressure on it, Mickey left the bathroom. Charlie had returned from the front of the store, but he looked angry and upset. He started cleaning the knives and cutting boards in the sink.

“Thanks for sticking up for me like that,” Mickey said. “But you didn’t have to do that.”

“Hey, somebody had to say something,” Charlie said. “That shit was wrong.”

“Yeah, but you know nothing you say’s gonna help.”

“You’re right,” Charlie said. “Harry’s just a fuckin’ asshole, and he treats us like we the shit that comes outta it.”

“Watch out,” Mickey said. “He might hear you.”

“I don’t give a shit if the man hears me or not,” Charlie said. “Let him hear me.”

Mickey returned to the main part of the store, through the swinging doors. He wanted to talk to the girl again and apologize for the big scene he had caused, but he saw that she was gone. Only Harry was in the store, sitting on a stool by the cash register.

“What’re you doing, standing there?” Harry said to Mickey. “Go clean up your mess.”

Mickey hesitated then took a moist rag and started cleaning up the blood.

“What happened to that girl?” Mickey asked.

“What girl?” Harry said.

“The one who was just here.”

“Oh,
her.
What do you think happened to her? She left. You probably disgusted her.”

Harry laughed, walking away, then he turned back toward Mickey and said, “Why do you want to know, anyway?”

“Know what?” Mickey said, although he knew exactly what Harry meant.

“Come on,” Harry said, “a pretty girl like that would never go for a guy like you, and you know it.”

Harry started laughing again, belly-laughing, as if he thought he was the funniest guy in the world. Mickey finished cleaning up, pretending to ignore him.

Mickey knew Harry was just being a prick, but he also knew it was true—the girl probably didn’t like him. She’d just acted nice because his finger was bleeding. If he hadn’t cut his finger, she probably wouldn’t have said a word.

Later in the day, Mickey’s finger still looked bad, and he decided he definitely needed stitches. Before he left work, at around seven o’clock, he called his father to tell him he would be home late because he had to go to the emergency room. As usual, he wasn’t sure if his father understood him. Suddenly angry and frustrated, Mickey hung up.

Mickey walked about ten blocks to Kings Highway Hospital and had to wait over an hour before a doctor would see him. The doctor sewed four stitches into Mickey’s finger and told him the stitches would have to stay in for two weeks.

On his way home, Mickey stopped at John’s Pizzeria on Flatbush and bought a pepperoni pie and two sodas. His father was waiting for him by the door when he walked in.

“Where the hell’ve you been?” Sal Prada asked.

Ignoring his father, Mickey put the pizza on the kitchen table then went into his room and changed out of his dirty work clothes into clean jeans and a Rangers jersey with “ESPOSITO 77” written across the back.

Mickey left his bedroom and went into the kitchen where his father was sitting at the table eating a slice of pizza. Mickey took one of the slices out of the box, held it with a few napkins, and then left the kitchen.

“Where you going?” Sal asked.

Mickey didn’t answer. As he headed down the stairs, he heard his father’s muffled voice screaming something at him.

MICKEY GOT IN his car and went to talk to Artie in Artie’s “office,” a bookie joint above a shoe store on Kings Highway and East Sixteenth. Mickey only went there once in a while, to see Artie, or on Friday and Saturday nights when the OTB around the corner got too crowded.

As usual, there were about twenty guys packed into the small room, filled with cigarette and cigar smoke. Bridge tables with strewn
Racing Form
s,
Sports Eye
s, and betting slips were set up all around the place, and Max, an old guy, was taking bets at a table to the left. A TV attached to the wall in the corner was showing odds from the Meadowlands, where, Mickey noticed, it was three minutes to post time.

Mickey went up to Artie, who was sitting at a table in the corner, bent over a
Sports Eye.
Artie had turned fifty last year. He was short and bald, and he wore thick glasses. He had a wife he sometimes talked about, but Mickey had never met her or even seen her. Mickey sometimes wondered what any woman could possibly have in common with Artie, who seemed to spend all of his time at racetracks, bookie joints, and OTBs.

“Hey, Artie,” Mickey said.

Artie didn’t look up from the
Sports Eye.

“You got my money?” Artie said.

“That’s what I need to talk to you about,” Mickey said.

“I don’t want to talk about anything except money. What happened to your finger?”

“Cut it at work.”

“Sorry to hear that. Where’s my money?”

“Come on, Artie, just hear me out, will ya?”

“What’s the matter?” Artie said. “It’s not your money, it’s this guy Angelo’s, right?”

“Right.”

“So what’s the matter? He won’t pay up?”

“I wouldn’t say ‘won’t.’ ”

“Look,” Artie said seriously. “I asked you if he could handle that kind of action and you said he could. I even let him put in another dime on the Rangers and now I expect to see that money.”

“You don’t understand,” Mickey said.

“I don’t want to understand,” Artie said. “I made it very clear to you over the phone. I said, ‘Angelo has this kind of money?’ and you said, ‘Yes.’ That’s all I heard and that’s all I wanna hear now. He has to come up with the money and that’s it.”

“I asked Angelo for the money yesterday, and he said he’ll pay it when he feels like it.”

“That’s not my problem.”