What About Reb

by What About Reb (retail) (epub)

  ‘Sure, Reb,’ he said weakly.

  ‘I’ll try.’

  ‘Atta boy.’

  ‘I didn’t mean to spoil this weekend.’

  ‘You’re not.’

  Sal could not tell if he meant it. He turned and cast Reb a searching look.

  ‘But you’re not,’ Reb said. ‘And anyway ha ha.’ He gave Sal a playful nudge. ‘What are friends for.’

  9

  Stalled behind a line of cars at a traffic signal in the center of town Reb studied the lights, the fluttering neon signs, the milling crowd.

  ‘Hey. Look at all the people, Sal.’

  ‘I seen people before,’ Sal said.

  ‘You wouldn’t believe it,’ Reb said. ‘In another week this place’ll be a ghost town. All summer long it’s mobbed like this and then poof. Dead.’ Another three blocks and they turned into a pebbled parking lot. On a big windmill set above a long low building pulsing lights spelled out the words By-the-Sea.

  ‘Liveliest place in town,’ Reb announced. Sal looked at the lights. ‘By-the-Sea. Is it?’

  ‘Only everybody calls it the Windmill. Smell. That’s the harbor out there.’

  Reb got out, leaned on the open door, and snapped a handkerchief at his dusty shoes.

  ‘Come on. I’m buying.’

  ‘Nah, you go ahead and have yourself a couple. I’ll wait here.’

  ‘Come on, I said. You need cheering up and this place is usually jumping.’ Reb shot around to the other door, forcing Sal out.

  It was a windowless warehouse, a single vast room, in whose center, shaped like a track in a stadium, stood a bar where twenty or more red-jacketed men served drinks. The tables along the walls were occupied and between the tables and the bar stools the aisle was choked with heads and faces. Somewhere in the hot blue air, somewhere amid the smoke and noise, were beams festooned with fishing nets, glass floats, lobster buoys. Plowing through, Reb led Sal to seats at the far curve of the bar. Sal climbed up onto a stool. Reb twirled the seat in front of him and called for two VO and waters. Then, while he smoothed a ten dollar bill onto the wet counter, his eyes combed right and left, dwelling for a moment or two on a face. On another. On a third. Girls’ faces. Sal drank and stared into his glass, his hands laced around it. Reb got the bartender’s attention, pointed to the change from his ten, and told him to keep Sal’s glass filled. His back to the bar now, his eyes roving the tables along the wall, Reb sipped his whiskey and water. Opposite him four women faced his way. He studied them over the rim of his glass.

  ‘I’m bombed,’ one of them told the others, breaking into a peal of laughter.

  She saw that Reb heard. Their eyes met. She smiled at him. He lowered his glass and smiled back. She was plump, her laugh was like the Skilsaw going through a knot. He raised his glass and gave them all second looks. Two of them puffed at cigarettes, all clutched their glasses tight. Were they afraid someone might pinch their drinks? Had to be from Boston, he judged, and probably worked in insurance offices.

  The last of the four arrested his eye. A pink flush showed through the fair skin of her cheeks. She wore her straight hair cut in bangs over her forehead and curved in at the neck. It was dark blonde hair. Her short jacket and matching skirt were checked black and white. There was an air of tidiness about her.

  Suddenly she sprang to her feet, stepped clear, and began pawing at the air in the motions of a dance. Only then did Reb hear the jukebox music. Hips swaying, her feet in a tiny shuffle, she turned a full circle. He took it all in, the shape of her bottom, her legs, the thinheeled black pumps. She stopped when the music faded and stood fanning herself with her unbuttoned jacket. He took in the black jersey underneath. A black raincoat was slung over the back of her chair. Of the four she was the one.

  The plump girl spoke to her from behind a hand and her eyes darted up at Reb. Her fingers swept back loose hair, first on one side then quickly on the other. She reddened but returned his smile and even added a friendly laugh. Just then a waitress broke in to say she had to ask the girls to pay up their round as she was going off in five minutes.

  ‘We’ve got to get going too,’ one of the girls said. ‘Finish your drink, Bonnie.’

  ‘Let’s see you drink it right down, Bonnie,’ the plump girl said.

  ‘Chugalug?’ Bonnie said.

  ‘Let’s not waste our drinks,’ the one who had danced said.

  They dug into their purses, the plump girl reading off from the check the amounts each of them owed. The waitress waited patiently, tray tucked under her arm, while they made change for one another. Reb marvelled. They appeared to be counting the nickels and pennies. Before he knew it he found himself at the table with his hand on the check.

  ‘Here,’ he said. ‘Let me take care of this.’ A crisp new twenty went into the waitress’s palm and he held out his own for the change.

  ‘Hey, sport. My name’s Dee. What’s yours?’ The plump one.

  ‘Ha ha, Dee. You are bombed,’ Bonnie said. ‘My name’s Reb.’

  ‘Reb. That’s cute. I’m Sally.’

  ‘How about another drink, girls?’ Reb said.

  Sally said again they had to leave but Dee cut her short saying they’d love one.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ the waitress said. ‘I go off now.’

  Reb lay a dollar on the table and set his glass down on it. ‘Bring drinks for them and this is for you,’ he told the waitress.

  Then, concentrating on the blonde, he went into action to cut her from the pack. He lowered his voice. ‘You come here often?’

  ‘Do you?’ she said.

  ‘Pretty often.’ He watched the pupils of her eyes and spoke to her as if they were alone. ‘Have I seen you here before?’

  ‘I’ve only been here a couple of times.’

  ‘I enjoyed your dance. I’d like to see you here again.’

  She laughed and once more the pink color came into her pale cheeks. She was pretty. He took half a step closer.

  ‘Would you?’ she said.

  ‘Yes.’ Reb glanced under his cuff. Five past eleven. ‘Tomorrow night around this same time. Say ten thirty.’

  ‘Ten thirty?’

  ‘Too late for you?’

  ‘No. Not really.’

  ‘Ten thirty then. Be here. Oh. What’s your name?’

  ‘Rosalind. Everyone just says Roz.’ Her voice was soft, her face glowed. Behind her back her friends toyed with their empty glasses.

  ‘Rosalind. That’s much nicer. Everyone calls me Reb.’ He sounded the name to himself. Rosalind. Rosalind. The waitress returned with the drinks and for a few moments, while she cleared away the empties, Reb and Rosalind were cut off from the rest of the table.

  ‘Rosalind. You wear the same thing tomorrow.’ Reb dropped his look to her shoulders and in slow stages down to her shoes. ‘This dress you’ve got on now.’

  ‘But it’s a suit,’ she said, breathing the words.

  Her face told that she was pleased.

  ‘Yes,’ Reb said. ‘And either way I like it.’ Without another word, without a glance back, he was away. ‘Let’s go, Sal baby. Place feels kinda dead.’

  Sal tipped up his glass. ‘Grab your change, Rebbie.’

  ‘Oh yeah. The change.’ Reb scooped it up and led the way out.

  ‘Chilly,’ Sal said on the drive back to the cottage. ‘Want the top up?’

  ‘Naw, this feels good.’

  Sal was stargazing again. Reb eyed him but said nothing. He wanted to plan it with Rosalind. Slowly he played back the scene with the four girls and considered that he had handled it well, with finesse even. Another glance at Sal. Sal was still at it, plumbing the sky. The car turned into the dirt road.

  ‘That didn’t take long.’ Sal sat up. ‘Feel better?’

  ‘I don’t think I’d be able to find this house at night.’

  ‘There it is,’ Reb said cheerily. ‘See the yellow light?’

  10

  If on Friday there had been any unity amon
g them, on Saturday, by contrast, each of the seven went his own way. More or less. Reb had wanted to sleep late so as to be fresh when he picked up Rosalind. But he woke early, lingered over a large breakfast, and drove alone into town to buy the lobsters and clams they ate for lunch. The others all wanted to get up early and instead slept late. Alex had wanted to lie on the beach and look over the girls. He slept until eleven, rose to find the house empty, and went for a long walk, barefoot, along the sea wall. When he got back the tops of his feet were painfully burned. He spent the afternoon drinking in the cool shade of the screened porch. Wiggy and Lee had wanted to go swimming, Chub and Vinnie to go for a boat ride in the harbor. Wiggy and Lee went for the ride, Chub and Vinnie ended up on the beach, where they got their legs scorched pink. Sal, having expressed no opinions or strong desires, had said he would wait for Wiggy and Lee and have a few beers in town. Instead he ran into Reb outside the fish market and they had a couple of ice cold Buds before returning to the cottage to start cooking.

  By lunchtime there were eight of them. Dom drove up in his car just as a cloud of steam was rising over the kitchen sink and a pot of lobsters was being drained. ‘Be-eautiful,’ he said, standing in the doorway with a huge grin on his face. ‘Shut the screen,’ were their words of welcome, ‘you’re letting in the bugs.’

  ‘Look at this,’ Lee had said, ‘Dom brought a sixpack.’

  ‘Two sixpacks,’ Dom corrected.

  ‘How about that,’ Vinnie said, ‘the guy brings beer just for himself.’

  ‘Whatsa matter, Dom,’ Reb said, ‘the old lady hold back your allowance?’ But he was glad Dom had come and told him so as he shoved a whopping VO and water into Dom’s hand.

  That afternoon some of them stayed with Alex and drank out on the porch. Others went to the beach. Vinnie said he was going for the boat ride and Dom said he would too but when they reached town Dom ended up in an amusement arcade and Vinnie drove back in disgust. Reb dispatched someone in the Buick to fetch Dom. When by some mystery at around five o’clock they were all eight together again, lit up, laughing, clowning, they sang, ‘Avanti, o popolo, alla riscossa, Bandiera rossa, bandiera rossa.’

  Lee and Reb, as the sons of anarchists, had sung the line bandiera nera. Black was the anarchist color. They had all sung, good Catholics and lapsed, atheists and agnostics, ‘Rivoluzione noi vogliamo fà, rivoluzione noi vogliamo fà, rivoluzione noi vogliamo fà, evviva il socialismo e la libertà.’

  But what Reb and Lee sang, winking at each other, was evviva l’anarchismo. Everyone agreed it had been a splendid day, a lot of fun, a really good time.

  By Saturday night they were stunned. Stunned by the sea and salt air and sun. Stunned by overeating. Stunned by drink. Saving himself, Reb was less stunned than the others. In the peace and dullness that followed dinner, Wiggy and Dom stayed on in the kitchen to clean up. The rest of them, sprawled on the living room furniture, looked as if they were waiting for something to happen. Nothing did. Lee said if two tables were set up they could all play scopa.

  ‘Play with Reb?’ Vinnie said. ‘After what he pulled last night hiding the sevens and misdealing? Nothing doing.’

  ‘That was last night,’ Alex said.

  ‘Never mind,’ Reb said. ‘I don’t feel like cards tonight anyway.’

  ‘Me neither,’ Sal said.

  That was that. Alex and Vinnie challenged Chub and Lee to whist. The card table was set in place and a floor lamp dragged beside it.

  ‘Feeling beat as hell, Sal,’ Reb said. ‘Think I’ll go in and grab me an hour of sleep.’

  Sal followed Reb into the bedroom, set down a bottle of VO and a glass, and sat on one of the beds. Kicking off his shoes Reb stretched out on the other bed.

  ‘Remember what I was saying this afternoon?’ Sal opened. ‘About when I first came to work for your father and they told me to watch out for them guys that wear the farfalla neckties? You know who it was told me that?’

  To make his intention clear Reb mustered a yawn.

  ‘My wife’s old man and all my brother in laws,’ Sal said. ‘That’s who.’

  ‘I don’t get it,’ Reb said. ‘They don’t know my father, do they?’

  ‘No, but they must of heard he was a Bolshevik. They know he named your brother Atheist. They’ve got religion coming out of their ass in that family. Most of them are in church six o’clock every morning. Yeah. My wife meets them there. That’s why I gotta laugh when you tell me why don’t I get her fixed up. But you oughta see the way they run their business. Real crooks.’ Sal poured himself some whiskey.

  ‘You mean the heavy equipment?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Sal said. ‘Shovels, dozers, trucks. What I was doing when I was with them.’

  ‘Oh. One time you mentioned they owned some property.’

  ‘That’s only a sideline. A block of stores and apartments. Some half ass lawyer handles it for them. He thieves off of them and they thieve off of him. They had me worried about you guys at first. But it didn’t take long to see that the ones supposed to be all heathens or atheists or what the hell you guys are treat me better than my own in laws. Can you beat that?’

  ‘Ha,’ Reb said.

  ‘Telling me watch out for them that don’t go to church backfired ha ha. I’m more scared of the ones that go every day now.’

  ‘Yeah?’ Reb said.

  ‘You know what their idea of doing something good is? Putting up a marble statue of the Virgin in Saint Leonard’s Church. In memory of the dead sister. This big it is too. But will bastards like that do anything to help the living? Like hell. And they shelled out two or three thousand bucks for it.’

  ‘Some people are like that.’ Reb let his head sink into the pillow.

  ‘They were paying me sixty a week before I had the fight and quit. Sixty lousy bucks. There I was married to their daughter and on top of that I had two kids and the third coming. That’s the kind of shits they are.’

  ‘They had you in bondage.’ Reb’s eyes were shut. ‘Yeah. But if they could of seen me a couple of hours ago. Singing a Communist song. Ooh, I’d of given anything to have seen them on that porch.’

  Reb lifted himself onto one elbow. ‘That wasn’t Communist.’

  ‘Well, Bolshevik then. What’s the difference.’

  ‘Wasn’t that either.’

  ‘Well, anyway, what the hell ever it was I enjoyed myself.’

  ‘You’re a good guy, Sal.’ Reb dropped back and gave a big yawn.

  ‘Listen. You really want to know what kind of people they are?’ Sal said. ‘Well, until a couple of years ago the old lady burned wood in the stove.’

  ‘Burned wood?’ Reb said. ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘It’s true. They own this frigging mansion but they never go upstairs. They live down the cellar and when she cooks the old lady burns wood in the stove.’

  ‘You mean they ain’t got no gas?’ Reb sat up straight.

  ‘They do now but three or four years ago they didn’t. Summer and winter she used to cook with wood.’

  ‘But why?’ Reb said.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Sal said. ‘There’s always a lot of scrap wood around construction jobs. They’d fill up sacks and take them home. Keep the stuff nice and neat in a shed out back.’

  ‘Boy, they must be tight bastards.’

  ‘Tight? That’s misery.’

  Reb forced another yawn and lay back flat again.

  ‘And that’s what I married into,’ Sal said.

  ‘I’m gonna take a little snooze now, Sal. Only for an hour. Why don’t you do the same?’

  ‘I feel like talking. That’s why I didn’t wanna play cards.’

  ‘We’ll talk a little more when I get up,’ Reb said, ‘Take the bottle out there and help yourself to it. There’s plenty.’

  Reb dozed, lulled by the voices of the card players. Sal spoke. ‘That’s right,’ Reb mumbled. ‘Talk to the guys. And flip the light off on your way, will you.’

  Sal left the d
oor ajar. Reb turned to the wall and immediately sank into sleep. After some time there were bursts of laughter and hilarity from the living room. Reb stirred lazily, then plunged a wrist down to the floor to read his watch in the streak of light coming in the door. Only twenty minutes had passed.

  He heard Vinnie say, ‘Thinks he’s a strongman.’

  He heard Lee say, ‘Ha ha. You must spend all your time in the saddle, huh, Sal?’

  Sal said, ‘Number five ha ha. In six years and a half.’

  Alex said, ‘If you don’t give it a rest from time to time you’ll wear it out.’

  Everybody hawhawed. Then cards were shuffled. Reb faced the wall again.

  One of them said, ‘This wife of yours. Is she Irish?’

  Sal said, ‘Irish your ass. Sicilian. Half nigger.’

  ‘Take it easy with that kind of talk,’ Chub said.

  ‘Don’t tell me how to talk,’ Sal said.

  Sal’s voice had a nasty edge Reb had never heard before. He sprang off the bed, wriggled into his shoes, and was through the door.

  ‘There’s nothing to get sore about, Sal,’ Vinnie said.

  ‘Lay off of him you guys,’ Reb said, blinking. ‘Well, well. The US cavalry,’ Lee said.

  ‘We’re only having a game of cards,’ Chub said.

  ‘Cards my ass. I heard what was going on.’ Reb saw by the bottle that Sal had hit the fifth hard.

  ‘We were only talking,’ Sal said.

  ‘Come on now, Sal,’ Reb said. ‘Don’t make a nuisance out of yourself. The guys wanna play cards.’

  ‘Since when can’t a man talk to his friends about his own family? Tell him, Al. Was I busting up your game?’

  ‘Friends or no friends, you don’t wanna go around saying things you might be sorry about the next day,’ Reb said.

  ‘What the hell did he say that was so bad?’ Lee said.

  ‘I didn’t say the half of it. Ain’t drunk enough to say ha ha. What’s in here.’ Sal thumped his chest.

  ‘He ain’t a baby,’ Vinnie said. ‘Leave him alone.’

  ‘I want you guys to lay off pushing him,’ Reb said.

  ‘The big dictator,’ Chub said.