Skin Games

by Adam Pepper

  She laughs and fiddles with her long, brown hair as she says, “Thank you, Skin.”

  “Am I being too forward? I don’t mean to make you uncomfortable. It’s just that you remind me of someone. Someone I used to know.”

  “It’s okay. I understand.”

  “You have some work for me?”

  “Yes. Griffin sent me. He says I can trust you.”

  “You can. I always keep my word.”

  “Always?”

  “Always!”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to question you. It’s just.” She pauses. “I have to be careful. This is very sensitive work, the job I have for you.”

  “I understand.”

  “I’m sorry if I offended you.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “So, I believe you, that you’ll keep your word. But, I need to know.” Again, she pauses while tightly twirling an auburn-highlighted streak of hair around the knuckle of her pointer finger. “I need to know that you are capable. That you are the right man for this job. It’s dangerous.”

  “I’m sure it is.”

  “It’s very dangerous.”

  “You wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t.”

  “Please. Humor me. I trust Griffin, and he trusts you. But I’m scared. If you fail, then I…”

  “I understand. You need convincing.”

  “I need reassuring.”

  “Fine.”

  “I need you to tell me why you’re qualified for the job, and why I can trust you.”

  “You want to know who I am.”

  “Yes. If you’ll tell me.”

  “It’s a long story.”

  “I have all night.”

  He looks up at the dark ceiling and takes a loud, heavy breath. Maria can barely see his face but it’s obvious that he’s uncomfortable with speaking to her. He’s struggling with a decision. She thought this was strictly business for him, but suddenly she suspects it’s not. This is personal, just as personal to him as it is for her. The longer he sits silently, the more Maria’s nerves kick up. Has she pushed him too hard, too fast? It’s really none of her business who he is.

  “Okay. I’ll tell you my story.”

  Chapter Three

  * * *

  If you want to know my story, then the only place to start is at the very beginning. I was born with the name Sean. My father was Irish, and my mother Italian. Mom said she wanted to name me Anthony. Her second choice was Michael. But my father insisted on calling me Sean. That was his name, you see, and he wanted to give me his name.

  It was the only thing he ever gave me. Okay, not the only thing. He gave me a bike once. Even taught me how to ride it. But I’ll come back to that.

  Skin closes his eyes and takes a deep breath.

  When I strain really hard, I can still see his face. He was weather-beaten, his nose red and round, his skin crusty and marked with liver spots. His hands were always rough and callused from smacking hammers into nails and fists into faces. He was a carpenter by trade, but construction wasn’t the only job he had. He couldn’t have been more than forty years old the last time I saw him, but in my mind, he looks fifty, or sixty or maybe even seventy. Of course, the mind plays tricks. I don’t have a single picture to confirm or disprove what I see in my mind’s eye. Maybe my memories make him out to be a monster because in my mind he always was.

  My earliest memories are of me and him.

  “Sean Sr. and Sean Jr.,” Maria says.

  Nobody calls me that anymore. Sean O’Donnell is gone. Senior and Junior. Both gone forever.

  “I’m sorry.”

  I told you to call me Skin.

  “Okay. Go on, please, Skin. I didn’t mean to upset you.”

  It’s okay. The O’Donnell household was normal for a few years. I guess you’d call it normal. Seemed normal to us, growing up in the Throggs Neck section of the Bronx in the late seventies and early eighties. My father worked from sunup to sundown six days a week and drank at Smiley’s Bar when he wasn’t working. But on Sundays, he would make time for me.

  “That must have been nice.”

  Those are perhaps the best memories of my life. The Bronx Zoo. The Westchester County Fair at Yonkers Raceway. The Botanical Gardens. The beach and Rye Playland. Once, he even borrowed Aunt Annie’s Oldsmobile and drove all the way to New Jersey to take me and my mother to Six Flags. Me and my dad went on The Lightning Loops and Rolling Thunder. Mom was too scared. She just watched and cheered us on as we flew by.

  I guess it wasn’t until I was nine or ten that I began to realize what a creep he was. I’d come home from school and my mother would be crying while sucking down a bottle of gin. Sometimes she’d have a black eye. Other times a fat lip. She never told me what was wrong, but I wasn’t stupid.

  “He hurt your mother.”

  Yes. He hurt her every day. But none of the pain from fat lips and black eyes compared to the pain of being deserted. Abandoned. That hurt far, far worse.

  “I’m sure. That must have hurt.”

  You’ll have to excuse me if I’m rambling.

  “Don’t be silly.”

  Let me focus. Okay, the beginning. Always the best place to start.

  “Please do.”

  My earliest really distinct memory of me and the old man. Just the two of us. I’m not sure where Mom was. Home alone, I guess. The two of us were at The Piagentini and Jones Middle School, on the playground. Only it wasn’t called the Piagentini and Jones School yet. They renamed it that later after a couple of cops got shot and the mayor needed a photo op.

  “Somehow I doubt the name of the school is all that important to the story.”

  No. You’re right. It’s not.

  “So tell me what happened.”

  My dad came home early that day. Around five o’clock. I remember it was still light out. He was smiling.

  “Junior! Look what I got you.” There was enthusiasm in his voice. Excitement. I can’t recall hearing that tone in his voice any other time. And he called me Junior, not kid or sport or buddy or pal. I guess that meant he was feeling fatherly.

  I was up in my room playing by myself when I heard his voice. I ran down the steps of our house. It was a two-family on Hollywood Avenue just off Randall.

  “Near the thruway. I know the area.”

  Yes. It’s still a nice area. Small lawns cut out in perfect rectangular patches between the sidewalks. Some trees fighting the good fight, trying not to be overrun by the sprawl of the ever-spreading concrete jungle. You might even find some shrubbery or a vegetable garden if you know where to look. Not quite suburban but as close as you can get in the Bronx. The Griffins lived above us.

  “Griffin?”

  Yes. The same Griffin. We’ve been friends for many years.

  “I see.”

  So, on that day the old man came home and I ran down the steps to see him grinning from ear to ear. He walked outside and I followed close behind.

  “Look at what I got you,” he said.

  “What was it?” Maria asks.

  A bike. A small, red bicycle with a long white seat, the kind with grooves across it and a curved handle on the back. The pedals were shiny chrome with orange reflectors on them. The handlebars had stringy, white tassels hanging from the handgrips. And the wheels. Those were the coolest part. There were thick black tires with a thin white line running around them; the spokes were a shiny chrome that matched the pedals and affixed to the spokes were more orange reflectors. You don’t see bikes like that anymore. These days a kid would probably get his ass kicked just for riding one of those. But at the time they were very popular—the absolute coolest.

  “A two-wheeler?” I remember asking him.

  “You bet. You don’t need training wheels.”

  “But Dad. I don’t know how to ride a two-wheeler.”

  “I know. I’m gonna show you.”

  We walked down the street, my dad pushing the bike and me hop-skipping just half a step behind. The school
yard was no more than half a block up the road.

  We walked through the opening in the fence onto the playground. It was paved with blacktop and had a bunch of basketball hoops mounted on the fence. Some kids were playing two-on-two on the far side. But otherwise, it was wide-open. Perfect for riding.

  I looked at my father. He smiled back. I’m pretty sure I was shaking. Truth is, I was shitting an absolute brick.

  “Come on,” he said. “Get on.”

  I hesitated.

  “Let’s go, you little shit! Do you have any idea what I had to go through to get you this bike?”

  Of course, I had no idea how he got the bike, yet. But it was clear I’d better get on and give riding it my best shot.

  I stepped over the seat as the old man held the handlebars, keeping the bike steady. The bike was too short for me; my knees were up awkwardly high.

  “Dad,” I said, I’m sure I was whining. “It’s too small. This bike is for a first grader.” I think I was in third grade at the time.

  “Hey. Stop complaining. You can reach the pedals can’t you?”

  “Um, hm,” I mumbled in agreement.

  “Then let’s go.”

  “Ok.”

  “Now, Sean,” he said, his smile widening again, his bulbous nose wrinkling with mischief. “Start pedaling.”

  I put my feet onto the pedals and grabbed the handlebars.

  “Don’t let go,” I said.

  I must have sounded pitiful, because the old man snapped at me. “I won’t let go, you little sissy. Now come on.”

  He held both hands on the handlebars and stood at the front of the bike. I began to push down on the pedals. They moved, and the bike slowly eased forward. The old man back-stepped along with me. It left him awkwardly off balance and also made it feel a little heavy as I pedaled. I guess I got scared, and I just stopped pedaling.

  The bike stopped moving and fell to the side. The old man let go, jumping backwards and I fell sideways along with the bike, hitting my knee on the ground and scrapping my shin along the gritty asphalt.

  “Stop being such a wimp!” My father had managed to shed most of his Irish accent, but when he got angry, it came out prominently.

  “I’m trying!” I said firmly, not whining like before, instead my voice was more forceful. I guess the pain made me bold. Pain has always made me bold. I looked down at my shin. Blood began to run out of the wound. My knee was scraped up, too, but not bleeding.

  The old man did not like backtalk. His slaphappy grin disappeared instantly. He yanked the bike out from under me and shouted, “Get up.”

  I hopped up, quickly, then bent down and wiped the pebbles and dirt from my sore shin and kneecap.

  He straightened up the bike. This time he held the handlebars with one hand, and the curved end of the seat with the other. He took a deep breath and then really shocked me by smiling again.

  “Let’s go, buddy. We’ll get it.”

  I stepped on and mounted the bike again. I got a firm grip on the handlebars and dug the soles of my sneakers into the sharp serrated edges of the pedals.

  “You can do it. Come on, Sean.”

  Excitement filled me, and I stood up and really put pressure on the pedals. The bike lunged forward, and my father stutter-stepped to keep up as I sat down in the seat.

  The old man was running with the bike as I pedaled faster. “That’s it,” he said. “A little more.”

  I pedaled even faster, my knees seemingly touching my ears as the pedals brought them up, and the next thing I knew, I looked over and he was gone. He’d simply let go and stepped aside.

  “You’re doing it!” he shouted.

  I wobbled with uncertainty, and fear. But I didn’t fall. I kept on, pedaling faster, now sort of squatting above the seat to adjust to the low height of the bike.

  “Now turn,” he yelled.

  Ahead of me was a mass of sound coming from the thruway. Despite the chain-link fence in between, I suddenly felt like I was about to ride right into traffic. My heart raced and my palms were sweating.

  “Turn. Turn, Sean, turn.”

  The bike wobbled and shook from the fierce wind blowing off the tractor-trailers as they flew by, drawing closer and growing larger in my ever-widening eyes.

  “Turn,” the old man yelled again.

  And somehow, I fought off the anxiety and impending heart attack, and I turned the handlebars. It wasn’t clean. It wasn’t graceful. I’m sure it wasn’t pretty. But I did it.

  The bike turned and then straightened out.

  “That’s it!” the old man yelled. I swear I had never seen him so excited.

  He ran over to me, and I slowed up and then stopped. I looked up at him.

  “Great job, Sean. You did a great job.” He patted my back and rubbed it. It was truly a once in a lifetime moment.

  My father was proud of me. Visibly, noticeably proud.

  My confidence grew, and I rounded the schoolyard again, then again. For several minutes I did laps around the playground. With each lap my steering was cleaner, my balance steadier.

  I had my back to my father when I heard a noise: he shouted. I jerked the bike around and stumbled, my foot hitting the ground to keep my balance and the bike upright. I kicked the ground a couple of times, then rode towards him.

  Two men were standing over my father. He’d been knocked to the ground. I didn’t know who the men were at the time. But now I know them both well: Vinny Macho and Scrubby Mike. Vinny was maybe thirty at the time and Mike in his early twenties but otherwise, they haven’t changed much.

  Maria fidgets in her chair at the mere mention of the two men.

  Scrubby’s foot was pressed across my father’s chest, holding him down. My father wasn’t struggling, but Vinny Macho kicked him a few times anyway.

  “Dad!” I pedaled over and came to a stop right in front of the three men.

  “That’s your kid?” Vinny Macho asked.

  “Yep,” the old man said, then wiggled slightly. Scrubby moved his foot, and my father sat up.

  “Nice bike,” Scrubby said.

  I slowly moved the bike backwards by kicking my feet against the asphalt.

  Vinny Macho shook his head back and forth the way the nuns at Sacred Heart would do to me when I was late for class.

  “Where’d you get the bike, Shamrock Sean?”

  My father’s red nose and cheeks went redder still, but he didn’t answer.

  “We know where you got the bike,” Scrubby Mike said.

  “Look guys, I was gonna come see you.”

  Vinny Macho started shaking his head again. Then he sighed and bit his lip. “You know the deal, Shamrock. You and Griff stole this off Dusty’s truck, didn’t you?”

  “I said I was coming to see you guys. I just wanted to let the kid ride it.”

  “Anything you get off Dusty belongs to me. You know that.”

  “I was gonna kick a piece upstairs. I always do.”

  “The bike’s worth what, a couple hundred? You give me a hundred and the kid keeps the bike.”

  My father stood up and reached into his pockets. He pulled out a sad wad of bills and counted it. “I’ve got thirty bucks. I’m good for the rest.”

  “No chance.”

  Scrubby Mike started to laugh. Then he turned to me and said, “Come on, kid. Get off the bike.”

  I stepped back a few more steps.

  My old man held the money up trying to give it to Vinny Macho as he said, “Here. Take what I got. I’ll talk to Griff and see what he has. We’ll both come down to the Cucina later with the full hundred.”

  “Get off the bike, little Shamrock,” Vinny said.

  “Give the kid a break,” the old man said. He stepped in Vinny’s way and cried, “I’m good for the money.”

  With an open hand, Vinny slapped my old man across the face while Scrubby Mike grabbed his shoulder and yanked his arm.

  “You don’t step in front of Vinny.”

  “Sorry. Look
I’m sorry.”

  Vinny slapped my father again. The snap was loud and my father cringed.

  “Please,” the old man said.

  Scrubby Mike grabbed both shoulders and brought his knee up into the old man’s gut. Then he tossed him to the ground. The old man rolled over and Scrubby kicked him as he tried to curl up.

  “Alright! Take the bike.”

  “It’s my bike,” I said. I have no idea why. I knew damn well it wasn’t my bike.

  “Sean,” the old man said firmly, “get off the bike. Now.”

  I got off the bike, and Scrubby grabbed it and picked it up off the ground, carrying it on his back like a knapsack up a stone staircase to a dark blue van waiting up on the avenue.

  Chapter Four

  * * *

  There was never a dramatic moment to signal that the old man had left us. It didn’t happen like that. There was no knockdown, drag-out fight. No “Get out of my house and don’t come back, ever!” There was never a day where my mother packed all his shit and left it out on the front porch.

  That just isn’t how it happened.

  The way it did happen was he started coming home later and later each night. Sometimes he’d stay away for days at a time. The trips to the Bronx Zoo stopped happening. No more Rye Playland. No more Six Flags. And eventually, no more old man.

  I guess he just never came home one evening. I can’t tell you which evening it was. I’m not sure if my mom even could. The guy just disappeared. Never to be heard from again. At least I never did. No goodbye. No so long.

  Keeping the house paid for was no easy job for Mom. We could have sold the house, moved to a smaller place. But she didn’t want to leave. It was all she had and she was gonna do everything she could to hang on to it.

  The day I first really began to appreciate just how hard it was for Mom was one day when I was in sixth or seventh grade. I guess I was thirteen or so; a boy turning quickly into a young man and experiencing that growth and inevitable awkwardness that accompanies it without a male figure to guide me. I had to fend for myself a lot.

  I should explain that Mom paid the mortgage on the house by working several jobs. We rented the apartment to the Griffins, and they were pretty dependable with their share each month. But there still was a big hole without the old man’s income. Mom worked for years as seamstress for Bertelli the tailor. He had a shop on the corner of Tremont Avenue and White Plains Road. Mr. Bertelli was a fair and decent man and paid my mother a good wage. But it still didn’t cover all the expenses of the house.