When Frankie was grinding up 79th on his Harley one evening, Gene flagged him down, but Frankie was going too fast as usual and couldn’t stop, so he made a U-turn up ahead, and even though 79th was one-way, rode his motorcycle back the wrong way to talk to Gene.
“You’re oldest,” said Gene, “so I have to ask for some advice. I wouldn’t trust asking guys my own age. They can be dumb. And I can’t ask my father, since he thinks I’m smart.”
“Shoot,” said Frankie.
Gene winced, but it meant he should get on with it, so he did. “I joined up, but I hate it. I got to get out.”
Frankie turned his bike the legal way and got off and took off his black leather jacket that was warm in the cold wind generated by his speeding. But the jacket was too warm now that they were going to talk on New Utrecht’s steps across the way. Gene told him his story from the beginning, and a few times Frankie laughed, especially since he was the opposite of Gene and wanted to stay out of the service. For a while Frankie was stumped about how he could help, but then his own birthday coming up gave him an idea.
The night of the next meeting, they packed all Gene’s Guard clothes from Rocco’s garage and strapped the duffel bag on Frankie’s Harley. Gene straddled the duffel bag and held on and they rode to the armory. An hour early, Gene shouldered his stuff and they went in. Ten minutes later the colonel came in, and Gene saluted and asked for permission to speak to the commanding officer.
“At ease,” said the colonel. “Say your piece.”
“I hate to admit this, sir.”
“Yes?”
“I lied when I joined up, sir.”
“So?”
“So I’m too young, sir.”
“You took the oath, didn’t you?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then you’re in the Guard, private.”
“But I can’t be in, sir.”
“Why not?”
“I haven’t grown up yet, sir.”
“You’re the right age. I don’t think you lied. You’re dismissed now,” said the colonel. He picked up a piece of paper and began reading through his heavy glasses. Then he looked up and Gene was still there. “I said you’re dismissed, soldier.”
Now Frankie stepped up and sat on the corner of the officer’s desk. He snapped another piece of paper in the colonel’s face. “What I have here, sir,” said Frankie, “is my friend’s birth certificate.”
“So what?” said the colonel.
“So look at it,” said Frankie.
“I don’t know who the hell you are, but get off my desk and out of this government building or you’ll be thrown out.”
“This is your last chance,” said Frankie.
So then the colonel grabbed the certificate, glanced at it, and said, “It’s a forgery.”
“We’ll go to the New York Times. Show them Gene’s birth certificate. And say you, Colonel Whitcomb, are holding him in the Guard against his wishes.”
The colonel took the birth certificate again and studied it for such a long time that Gene was sure he would piss in his pants now.
“I have no use for crybabies in my command,” said the colonel, finally. “We’ll send you your goddamned discharge. And don’t ever come back here again.”
After Frankie slept with Sylvia that Saturday night, he called her every night of the next week. Two of those nights she said for him to come over when it was dark. He should walk, since his Harley made a racket and people watched where it went. If the porch light was off, it meant a neighbor had dropped by and he should come back in twenty, thirty minutes.
In the subsequent weeks and months they ate, talked, played games and cards together, and they went to movies, restaurants, a picnic on Long Island, with Sylvia driving her old Studebaker, and across the George Washington Bridge to Palisades Amusement Park in New Jersey, and they rode the 69th Street Ferry from Brooklyn to Staten Island. If her parents weren’t going out of town, they made love in their rented room in Borough Park, and Frankie learned that Sylvia wasn’t a moll even though her other boyfriend was a gangster. She was just a little too hungry for excitement and a little too sad over the war from which her fellow Jews were running for their lives. Otherwise, she was a little tough, medium sweet, and very smart, and he loved her a little more now that he knew her human weaknesses.
For her part, Sylvia learned that Frankie kept his word, that if he said he would arrive at six he did, if he said he would bring wine he did, and that he hadn’t told his friends he was sleeping with her. They grew used to each other, and loved each other, and were careful that Bruno didn’t find out. Since Bruno was married and, according to him, had a Sicilian wife who would roast his nuts in olive oil, he wasn’t around much, and Sylvia, using her clever mind, cut back even on the few demands he did make. She slept with him twice in June (including Frankie’s graduation night) and twice in July and twice again in August, and by then Bruno was making her sick.
The only thing that Bruno was doing differently was making the most of the few times they had together. But Sylvia was feeling more and more like the whore who screws for money but doesn’t get paid. If she was paid by Bruno, perhaps she could go on with it, especially if she bought gold jewelry with the money. But Bruno didn’t even bring her flowers, which Frankie did, from his father’s garden, once a fragrant bunch of lilies of the valley, and another time zinnias with the colors of crayons.
“I’ll tell him something,” she said.
“It’s better I talk to him man-to-man.”
“Don’t be dumb, Frankie. He carries a gun. He’ll blow your brains out.”
“Better me than you,” he said, and the voice in his ear said indeed it would be him and not her.
“That’s very brave,” she said.
“He doesn’t scare me.”
“I know that.”
“So I’ll go have it out with him.”
“You won’t. That’s an order.”
“I don’t take orders.”
“You will from me.”
“Sylvia, I can’t let you risk your pretty neck.”
“Kiss my toes.”
“Jesus.”
“Kiss them. You said you would if I asked. So do it.”
“What’s that going to prove?”
“That you love me enough to do what I say. I’m waiting.”
Frankie got down on his knees and kissed her red painted toenails. Her toes didn’t smell sour as his could, but of perfume, which seemed to be hidden everywhere on her body.
“I could almost make love to your toes,” he said, getting up and rewarded with a deep kiss.
“The bum’s a bully,” she said. “So we have to play him careful. So neither of us gets hurt.”
“Tell him it’s over.”
“He won’t accept that. He’d keep after me, thinking he said something wrong, or did something. He’d apologize. Slobber over me. Hoping everything would be hunky-dory.”
“Write a letter. Say you’re pregnant. Going to Puerto Rico for an abortion. You don’t want to get knocked up again.”
“Are you kidding? With him Sicilian? You think he’d let me get an abortion of his kid? He’d pass out cigars. My God, I’d never get rid of the bum.”
“So then what?” said Frankie.
“I could always shoot him. With his own gun. In the motel. He always signs in as Jones.” She seemed very serious, looking Frankie in the eyes.
“Jesus.”
“After we do it, he passes out. Then I’d hit him between the eyes. He wouldn’t know he got killed.”
“No. No, Sylvia. Jesus, no.”
“You believed me?”
“I did.”
“I really wouldn’t.”
“Don’t, Sylvia.”
“Hey, Frankie, I’m not that kind of girl. I couldn’t do that, take his gun and kill the SOB, even if he is a rat by trade.”
“I’m glad. Killing is the worst thing. It makes us rotten as him. My father says that.”
“Jesus. Don’t do it. Not for my sake,” he said.
“It ain’t only for your sake. It’s for mine too. And I just got a great idea. It’s getting us out of this mess. Out of Bruno’s clutches.”
“Yeah? What’s the idea?”
“I can’t tell you yet. After I figure out all the answers to all his questions.”
“You sure I can’t tell him nice myself?” said Frankie.
“You want to kiss my toes again?”
“Something else this time.”
“You listening to me? And not talking to Bruno?” she said.
“I’m listening to you,” he said.
“Good. Later we’ll go out for macaroni and clams.”
For her performance Sylvia bought a nice sensible dress that came up to her neck and down to her knees and had plenty of room for her breasts. Ordinarily, her breasts were pushing against the fabric. She was just too big-busted, the shopgirls in the dress stores would say. And her new dress was also in white to look cherry. She had had a sexy look since puberty but had kept her cherry until giving it to Bruno, which was the biggest mistake of her life.
Actually, Sylvia had two plans. If the first didn’t work, then she would ask Tony to get Bruno off her back. Bruno would kiss Tony’s toes. Bruno worked for Tony, and was scared of Tony. And Tony had told Sylvia, who was his secretary in the olive oil office, that whatever her problem, it didn’t matter if it was money or love or hate, he, Tony Tempesta, wanted first crack at solving it for her. Even though she was Jewish, she was in his family like his sister and he wouldn’t let any harm come to her.
Before Bruno asked for their next date at the motel on Long Island, she asked him to have a drink when she got off. She was in her modest white dress and almost looked like a nun in the summer habit, and Bruno didn’t give her the usual slap on her ass as soon as they were alone, and not getting it now, Sylvia knew her idea was working. He took her in his Caddie to The 19th Hole on the corner of 14th Avenue across from the Dyker Heights Golf Course. At the back of the bar they took the red leather booth where no one else was around.
Bruno’s long black hair was combed straight back, his teeth were slightly irregular, his face was square and strong, and he still wasn’t fat from all the food he ate, and he had the kind of smile that one minute could love a person to bits and the next minute could chop a person in pieces. The bad part of Bruno’s smile came from his eyes, which were brown, but not warm as brown eyes often are. His eyes were like dried blood, scabby and mean, and if they weren’t disguised by his smiling mouth, then the average person could feel a chill that no amount of clothing could warm up.
“I don’t know how to tell you this, Bruno.”
“So tell me. I won’t bite.”
“I got this marriage proposal,” said Sylvia, very calmly. “He’s a nice guy.”
“He screw you?” he said.
“You know I wouldn’t,” she said.
“But he wants to get hitched anyway?” he said.
“Yeah. He’s Jewish.”
“I thought my Sicilian cock converted you.”
“He’s an accountant. He’ll make a good father for my kids someday,” she said.
“Accountant. That’s pretty good. So you’re quitting your job?” he said.
“Not till I get pregnant.”
“I wouldn’t screw up your wedding plans.”
“I knew you’d understand, Bruno.”
“Hey, I ain’t no animal. I respect a woman who tells me what she has to do in her life. So, do I get an invite to the wedding? Like I’m just a friend from the office?”
“It’s going to be a civil ceremony. At city hall. Just us.”
“When you set the date and all, you let me know. So I can give you a wedding present. What can I give to show I appreciate all the good times we had?”
“I wouldn’t ask for anything, Bruno. I had good times too. But thanks just the same.”
“You finishing your drink?” he said.
“I had enough.”
“Let’s get out of here. I’ll drop you off at your house. Don’t worry, I ain’t asking for a last piece of nookie. By the way, what’s his name?”
“His name?” she said. “He’s just a guy.”
“I’m curious.”
“Oh. Herbie.”
“Herbie what?”
“Herbie Schwartz,” she said, biting her tongue too late.
“So, pretty soon, you’re going to be Sylvia Schwartz. Is that the truth, Sylvia?”
“Of course.”
“Well, that’s pretty good for Herbie. Not so good for Bruno. But what the hell, I’m married anyway. Maybe I’ll go give Marie a good screwing for a change. You know, that butterball, she gained another five pounds last month.”
Frankie and Sylvia waited for weeks to see if anything would go wrong from her dumping Bruno. Then they had a rip-roaring celebration, just the two of them, at Le Petit Cabaret in Greenwich Village. There Frankie spent his money on French champagne, escargots, and calf brains in brown butter. The show had Apache dancers, cancan girls, a comedian, and a canary, blonde, small, but with the voice of a choir.
They sat close, touching hands and thighs under the table, and saying clichés they meant. They danced cheek-to-cheek on the crowded floor. But their golden hour wouldn’t last. Frankie, in order not to spoil the evening, didn’t mention the greetings from the draft board in his pocket. He would tell her, if not that night, and not when they awoke in the morning in their rented room with other things on their minds, then another night.
A week went by and, not being able to tell her his notice had come, he just handed it to her. She read the place, Whitehall Street in downtown Manhattan by the financial district, and the date, Monday, November 30, 1942, at 8:00 a.m., and she wept.
Frankie now had another reason to resist going into uniform: his furious and singular passion for Sylvia, equally matched by her passion. That reason, of course, wouldn’t excuse any man from the service. So he had no acceptable excuse, and they both knew it.
“I’m going in.”
“We could run away. Change our names. Get a forged 4F card,” she said.
“I couldn’t,” said Frankie, and was surprised to hear his angel say that Sylvia’s plan was pretty good and that he should take her up on it.
“If you go, and won’t kill them, you won’t last. Not five minutes. The Nazis will aim at you first. You can’t go in, Frankie.”
“It would be a disgrace to Bensonhurst.”
“Screw Bensonhurst,” she said.
“We still have fifty days,” he said.
“Think about it, honey. We could set up housekeeping. Get jobs in a war factory. What a wonderful time we could have.”
“I’ll think about it,” he said, but he knew he wouldn’t change his mind. The right thing to do, as everyone saw it, was to go in and be a soldier.
To store up on love and lovemaking, they were together every free minute. Frankie even met her for lunch a few times in the next weeks, and once Bruno got a glimpse of them. And they moved into the rented room and played house, cooking on a hot plate and going down to the basement to do the laundry. They put the calendar in the trash and lived as if it hadn’t been invented.
When Frankie came home one evening with cartons of chow mein and sweet-and-sour pork, carried from the restaurant on his Harley, Sylvia wasn’t there. Neither were her clothes and things. Her note said she couldn’t see him for a while, but that she would explain everything in her letter when she had time to write it, and that she still loved him and always would.
For Frankie, losing the woman he loved was no easier at eighteen than it would be for another man losing his wife after decades. He brooded for a night and a day, not leaving the room. The mystery of her departure finally drove him into the street and he phoned her house, bu
t her father said she wasn’t there. Then Frankie had to make a run to Tony Tempesta’s office where Sylvia was the secretary, but she wasn’t on the job either. So then he really got worried and went and rang her father’s doorbell. When no one answered, he went to the back door and jimmied the lock with his Barlow knife and went inside to Sylvia’s bedroom. She was in bed in bandages.
“Jesus! What happened?”
“How’d you get in? You shouldn’t’ve come here. Leave, Frankie, leave.” Sylvia was a little hysterical, which was unlike her.
“I ain’t leaving,” he said, sitting on her bed, touching the gauze on her face and arms. “Does it hurt? How’d you get all that?”
“It doesn’t matter. I’ll heal. Then I’ll do what I have to,” said Sylvia.
“Were you in an accident?” said Frankie, who had the true explanation in his ear, but as always it was something he didn’t want to hear.
“Yeah, an accident,” she said. “And I don’t want you getting in one too. So don’t come around no more. But write me which camp you go to. Maybe I’ll send you cookies, and if it ain’t too far, come and see you.”
“Make a list of anything you need. I’ll come back tomorrow. And bring you roses. Red roses.”
“You’re my honey,” she said.
“You ain’t getting in no more accidents,” he said.
“What’s that mean?” she said, sitting up, extending her arm, and he came back and took her hand again.
He loosened up to put on his wouldn’t-swat-a-fly grin. “You know that angel? She’s been a pain. So I’m leaving her here. And she’ll watch out for you.”
Frankie looked around the room, looked under Sylvia’s bed, but in her closet he thought he saw her. She was a frail and pretty young thing, with bright round eyes of sky, which she dimmed shyly.
“You stay here,” said Frankie. “Don’t leave Sylvia. If you follow me this time I’ll get sore. And besides, you could get hurt out there too.”
Sylvia said, “You have a screw loose, Frankie?”
“It could be.”
“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “I made one mistake. Herbie’s name.”
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