Tough Luck

by Jason Starr

  Mickey was embarrassed to tell Artie that he barely knew the guy.

  “Friend of mine,” Mickey said.

  “And he has this kind of dough?”

  “Yeah,” Mickey said confidently.

  “If Angelo loses, he knows he’s gotta pay by Friday.”

  “He knows.”

  “You sure?”

  “Sure I’m sure.”

  That night John Riggins rushed for one hundred yards, and the Washington Redskins beat the Atlanta Falcons 27–14. All of Angelo’s bets had lost, and now he owed Mickey’s bookie 470 bucks.

  The next morning Mickey was in a shitty mood. When Mrs. Ruiz came in and said, “You got mussels?” Mickey didn’t feel like playing the game, and he snapped, “Of course we got mussels. How much you want?” Distracted the rest of the day, he screwed up a couple of orders—giving a lady fluke fillets instead of flounder fillets, giving some guy butterfish who’d asked for kingfish, filling a bag with mussels instead of clams. Mickey’s boss, Harry, warned Mickey to get his head out of his ass or he was going to send him on a “permanent vacation.”

  Harry Giordano co-owned Vincent’s Fish Market with his brother Vincent, who lived in Florida. Harry had a huge beer gut, a thick handlebar mustache, and was one of the biggest morons Mickey had ever met. Mickey figured Vincent must have put up the money for the store, because there was no way Harry could have been smart enough to save up the money to start a business on his own. Besides, it was called Vincent’s Fish Market, not Harry’s Fish Market, or even Giordano’s Fish Market.

  When Mickey started working at Vincent’s, he didn’t think he would last at the job for more than a couple of weeks. Mickey was sensitive about the size of his nose— sometimes he would stare at himself in the three-way mirrors in the dressing room at Alexander’s, amazed at how big it was—and Harry always made jokes about it, especially when other people were around. One day, a guy was placing an order, and Mickey was talking to someone else and didn’t hear what the guy was saying. Harry said, “Hey, Pinocchio, take this guy’s order.” Another time the same thing happened, and Harry said, “Hey, Big Bird, get your beak out of the clouds, will ya?” The worst part was that, since Harry was his boss, Mickey could never talk back to him. Mickey was dying to crack jokes about Harry’s big beer gut, but Mickey knew Harry would fire him if he did. Mickey could have found some other job, but he was making decent money at the fish store—seven-fifty an hour—and the location was convenient, only six blocks from his house. So every time Harry insulted him, Mickey just ignored it, hoping Harry would eventually get tired of being a dick and leave him alone.

  Harry had no schedule. Usually he just came to the store to open and close, but once in a while he stuck around all day.

  Today Harry left at about eleven and, since there were hardly any customers in the store, Mickey hung out most of the time, reading the Daily News and talking to Charlie.

  At one o’clock, Charlie left for lunch. Then, at around one-fifteen, Angelo strolled in.

  “The usual,” he said to Mickey. Then he said, “You know what? I think I’ll mix it up for once. How’re the fried-fish sandwiches?”

  “Pretty good,” Mickey said.

  “Yeah? Lemme get two of ’em,” Angelo said.

  As Mickey fried the cod fillets on the skillet, he felt the sweat building on his back. He didn’t care if Angelo was in the mob and carried a gun. He wanted his 470 bucks.

  “About those bets you made,” Mickey said to Angelo as he was putting the sandwiches in a paper bag. “You know your figure is up to four-seventy now.”

  “Is that what it is?” Angelo said casually. “Now I see why you wanna be an accountant—you’re good at keeping track of numbers.”

  Angelo blew his nose into a handkerchief then replaced the handkerchief inside the jacket pocket of his pin-striped suit.

  Mickey smiled, only because he was nervous. He didn’t think there was anything funny about possibly getting stuck owing $470.

  “Anyway,” Mickey said, “I’m kind of short on cash, and I was hoping I could, you know, see some of that money today.”

  “I’ll get you the money,” Angelo said. “Don’t worry about it. What do you think, I’m a thief?”

  Angelo glared at Mickey, then he took the bag of fish sandwiches and strutted toward the register. There were a couple of other people on line, but Mickey left them there and walked behind the counter to the front of the store, meeting Angelo.

  “Sorry, Angelo, I really am, but I need to know like when you’re planning to give me that money. It’s not me, it’s my bookie. He makes me keep a two-hundred-fifty-dollar pay-or-collect number, and you’re already way over it. He said he needs his money by Friday.”

  “Needs?” Angelo said, his face suddenly pink. “Did I hear you say needs? I don’t need to do anything except die. You got that?”

  “Yes,” Mickey said.

  “I said I’ll get you the money, didn’t I?”

  “When?”

  “When I give it to you,” Angelo said.

  “No problem,” Mickey said. “I don’t care one way or another. It’s not me, it’s just my bookie, like I was saying. I mean to him you’re just a name, like any other name and—”

  “You tell your bookie, Angelo Santoro makes up the rules when it comes to his bets, and nobody else. Before your bookie sees any money, I want a chance to get even. I’m going to the Knicks game Thursday night. Gimme a hundred times Knicks.”

  “That’s another five hundred fifty dollars,” Mickey said.

  “I know what the fuck it is,” Angelo said.

  “I can’t put in any more action for you,” Mickey said.

  “Can’t?” Angelo said. “I don’t think you heard me right, because I know you wouldn’t tell me ‘can’t.’ You better put that action in for me unless you wanna kiss your skinny little ass good-bye.”

  ON THURSDAY NIGHT Mickey wasn’t in the mood to go bowling, but he had no choice. Mickey, Chris, and two of Chris’s friends, Ralph and Filippo, were in a money league at Gil Hodges Lanes in Canarsie. They each had put up fifty dollars at the start of the season, with a chance to win two hundred apiece if their team won the championship.

  Mickey arrived at the bowling alley with his bowling ball, wearing his uniform—an extra-large white T-shirt with the team’s name, “The Studs,” written in script across the chest. Chris had come up with the team’s name, and Mickey always felt like a big idiot whenever he wore the shirt.

  Chris, Filippo, and Ralph were waiting for Mickey by the shoe-rental counter. Chris and Filippo worked together, unloading and shelving groceries at Waldbaum’s on Nostrand and Kings Highway, and Ralph and Filippo were good friends; but Mickey was only friends with Chris.

  Chris used to be a shy, quiet kid who never got into any trouble, then his father took off when he was ten years old. His mother, who’d always liked to drink, became an alcoholic, and Chris started getting into fights at school, getting suspended all the time. One night, during the summer after sixth grade, Chris and some other kids tried to rob a drugstore on Avenue U. One kid pulled a knife and slashed the owner’s face, and Chris was sent to juvenile detention for two years. When he came out he was still short, but he had big, bulging muscles and he became one of the most popular kids in the neighborhood. He dropped out of high school during eleventh grade when he got the job at Waldbaum’s.

  Filippo was tall, about six-two, and he’d had the same military-style crew cut since he was a few years old. When he wasn’t wearing his Studs T-shirt, he dressed like a real cugine, in white tank tops and gold chains. Filippo and Mickey had never gotten along. In kindergarten, Filippo always teased Mickey and he convinced other kids not to like him. In elementary school, whenever Filippo passed Mickey in the hallway, he would slap him on the head or punch him in the arm as hard as he could, and he even beat him up a few times after school. In junior high, Filippo busted the lock on Mickey’s locker, just for the hell of it, and one day in gym c
lass he snuck up behind Mickey and pulled down his gym shorts, and all the girls laughed. In high school, Filippo continued to pick on Mickey all the time, and Mickey was glad when Filippo dropped out of school to work with Chris.

  Ralph was an older guy, around thirty. Mickey didn’t know much about him except that he had done time at Attica for armed robbery and had gotten out about two years ago. He was a big guy, with more fat than muscle, and he had clumps of black hair on his back and shoulders that spread out over the neckline of his Studs T-shirt. His lower lip always hung down, exposing the tip of his tongue and his crooked bottom teeth, and he made gurgling sounds in the back of his throat when he breathed. Ralph was friends with Filippo, so when Chris started hanging out with Filippo he started hanging out with Ralph too. Ralph had never said a word to Mickey, and Mickey had only heard him speak a few times, to Filippo and Chris. Mickey thought there was something seriously wrong with Ralph, but whenever Mickey asked Chris about it, Chris always said, “Nah, Ralph’s just like that.”

  Mickey’s bowling average was 145, but he was so distracted in the first game, thinking about his trouble with Angelo, that he only bowled a 97. Afterward, Filippo said to him, “Hey, Mickey Mouse, what’s wrong, you got a dick up your ass?”

  In the first two frames of the second game, Mickey didn’t get a single mark, and in the third frame he threw two gutter balls. After the second ball bounced off the alley, Filippo yelled, “That’s it! I don’t want this faggot on the team no more! He fuckin’ sucks!”

  Mickey bowled two strikes on his next two balls and ended the game with a respectable 134. Between games, he went into the bathroom.

  “You all right tonight, buddy?” Chris said, coming in behind him.

  “Fine,” Mickey said.

  “You sure?” Chris said. “I don’t know, you seem kind of out of it. What’s the matter, your old man acting up again?”

  “Nah, it’s not that.” Mickey didn’t feel like talking about his problem with Angelo, but then he decided it might be good to get some advice.

  So Mickey told Chris about the bets he’d put in for Angelo and how much Angelo had lost. When Mickey finished, Chris, who was trying to pop a zit on his forehead in the mirror above the sink, said, “Didn’t I tell you to be careful with that guy?”

  “That’s not the point,” Mickey said. “The point is he lost this money, and I don’t know what the hell to do about it.”

  “That’s a tough one,” Chris said. “I mean, on the one hand, the guy owes you the money. On the other hand, you can’t fuck with the mob. I guess you gotta pay.”

  “But I don’t have that kind of money.”

  “What do you mean? I thought you’ve been putting away.”

  “No fuckin’ way, I’ve been saving that money for college since I was nine years old. I’m not giving it away now, not for this bullshit.”

  “Then I guess you gotta hope Angelo comes through,” Chris said. “How’s my hair look?”

  When Chris and Mickey left the bathroom, they passed two girls, walking in the opposite direction. They were wearing tight jeans and tube tops, and their hair was big and frizzy. The odor of their strong perfumes made Mickey nauseous.

  “Jesus, you see the knockers on that short one?” Chris said. “What a fuckin’ set.”

  “What if he doesn’t pay?” Mickey said.

  “What? You don’t like that?” Chris said, still staring at the girl.

  “I don’t have that kind of money to shell out,” Mickey said.

  “You want to know what I’d do?” Chris said. “I’d sit down and talk to Artie. You know the guy a long time, right? Explain him the situation. Maybe you can work out some sort of payment plan or something. . . . Man, I gotta get laid tonight.”

  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 wh
ile 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.