Saving Room for Dessert

by K. C. Constantine

  Reseta walked quickly outside, got in the front seat of his MU, called the station, and said, “Thirty here. I’m 10-24 at the juvey center.”

  “Ten-four,” Stramsky said.

  Reseta started up the MU and headed back toward Rocksburg, thinking, well, there’s another one of God’s shop projects gone kaflooey. Everything’s upside down, 1 swear. Been to God knows how many classes on how to make war, never been to one yet about how to make love. Spent a thousand hours practicing how to subdue violent people, nobody yet ever taught me the first thing about how to keep a kid from becoming violent. Listened to all these experts about how to recognize all the different drugs and drug reactions, never had one yet say why anybody would want to take the damn things in the first place. James, my boy, it’s way past time you started writing that thesis, way past time you started looking for another line of work. This stuff is starting to get old faster and faster.

  Never do anything till something happens. We don’t act, we react. I know there are departments where people are talking about anger management, peace negotiation, we should’ve been working on that years ago. Why the hell don’t we? Is anybody in the schools talking to these kids about controlling their temper, talking about how to avoid a fight? Oh listen to me. Ain’t I wise all of a sudden? How exactly would I know? When was the last time I was in a school building here to do anything but collar somebody? When did I ever go to a school board meeting, try to find out what’s up? When did I ever go to a PTA meeting? Who the fuck am I to talk about what other people aren’t doing? And how exactly would I explain this to Nowicki? Who thinks I’m falling asleep out here. Thinks all I need is a cup of fucking espresso.…

  CANOZA PULLED into the strip mall on the east side of the Amtrak lines, looking for a parking slot near Jimmy’s Suds and Subs, where for the last six years he’d taken his meal break whenever he caught the second watch. He passed Annie’s Launderette, which used to be a branch office of Rocksburg Savings and Loan; Domino’s Pizza, which used to be Monte’s bar; Larry’s Flooring, which used to be Lukow’s Floor and Wall Coverings; ABC Cleaners, which used to be Al’s One-Hour Martinizing; and Rite-Aid drugstore, which was closing because its stock was being moved into the new Eckerd’s building at the corner of Mercury Avenue and Pittsburgh Street.

  Jernevich’s Beer Distributorship, which used to take up the back half of the building behind these other businesses, had moved into the store where B&T’s Freight Liquidation used to be, before it was itself liquidated in Bankruptcy Court. Jernevich’s former space in the back was now occupied by Jimmy’s Comedy Club, the Jimmy Abrigatto of Suds and Subs having branched out on Friday and Saturday nights into showbiz. On the other side of Jernevich’s was Maytag Appliances, which used to be Rocksburg TV and Appliances; Joan’s Videos, which before the divorce was to be Jack’s Videos; Advance Auto Parts, which used to be Al’s All-Auto Warehouse; Lonnie’s Hairport, which used to be Lou’s Barbershop; and finally Jimmy’s Suds and Subs.

  Canoza found a slot in front of Jimmy’s, parked, and called in his location and himself out of service at 1800 hours.

  “You keep eatin’ at Jimmy’s,” dispatcher Stramsky said, “one of these days you’re gonna look like a meatball sub.”

  “Maybe so, but no matter what I eat, I’ll never look like a Polak,” Canoza said back, signing off, locking up, and going inside Jimmy’s. He went straight to the john, where he took off his duty belt, shirt, and his Second Chance Kevlar vest, and gave his belly, ribs, and back a good scratching as far as he could reach. Then he put his shirt and duty belt back on, went out and found himself a seat at the bar, folded up the vest, and put it in his lap.

  Jimmy, as usual, was behind the bar haranguing his waitresses, all three of whom were in their late twenties or early thirties and wore red satin short-shorts and tight white T-shirts with “Eat At Jimmy’s” printed atop the words “Suds” on their left breasts and “Subs” on their right breasts. If it were up to Jimmy, his waitresses would be wearing nothing but tattoos, but since he’d already tried that and caused such outrage among the members of the Rocksburg Council of Churches that he’d almost lost his liquor license, he’d gone back to having his waitresses dress like the ones at Hooters on Route 22 West halfway to Pittsburgh.

  To Jimmy, Hooters represented everything he wanted out of life: TV sets continuously showing sports, so many brands of draft beer he’d never heard of half of them, cheeseburgers with yellow mustard and grilled onions, french fries as thick as his thumbs, and young women with big breasts serving his beer, burgers, and fries with such sunny sincerity he believed they actually would go home with him if only they didn’t have to care for their crippled mother, cancerous father, retarded sister, unemployed brother, son, daughter, puppy, kitty, canary, ferret, or iguana.

  Jimmy’s dream to own a Hooters franchise had been quashed when he applied for the license himself. He thought the suits from Hooters’ home office wouldn’t be nearly as diligently interested in his past as either the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board or the county Health Department had been when he got the required licenses and permits to open Suds and Subs, though even Jimmy had to concede that neither the LCB nor the HD really had a chance to examine his past, because their investigations were directed at his mother, whom Jimmy had hired to apply for those licenses by paying for her monthlong vacation in Italy. Since Mrs. Abrigatto, unlike her son, had never been convicted of a felony, she had no trouble getting LCB and HD licenses and permits. And as long as Jimmy continued to pay her way to Italy for a month every year and bought her a new Chrysler New Yorker every two years, she didn’t care how he ran the businesses that were in her name. The only times she ever went into Suds and Subs were to tell Jimmy he was late with her car payment.

  Aside from Jimmy’s near fatally clumsy attempt to have his waitresses work in the nude—the morning after he did, the Rocksburg Council of Churches gave him twenty-four hours to get his waitresses dressed or they would petition the LCB to revoke his license on the grounds he was running a “nuisance bar”—his only other glitch on the road to his entertainment empire occurred when a group of bikers, aspiring to membership in the Pagans, started using the Suds and Subs as their hangout. At first they seemed just harmlessly rowdy, a bunch of guys who, after Jimmy’s own heart, wanted what he wanted: many TVs showing different sports continuously, draft beer in frosty mugs, half-pound cheeseburgers, thick french fries, and busty young women in tight T-shirts waiting on them with parted lips, oily hips, and a consuming desire to know how many different parts of Harley-Davidson engines could be chromed.

  But then, of course, bikers being the same as any other humans inclined to club membership, different cliques began to form among these Pagan wanna-bes, one clique calling themselves the Animals and the other the Undertakers. For a while their disputes were strictly vocal, but then they started showing up with different colors on their jeans jackets, and the louder their vocal disputes became, the more Jimmy’s regulars tended to stay away. It didn’t take Jimmy long to figure out that on the nights when the bikers didn’t show up, his beloved Suds and Subs had become a place for him to stand around and harangue his waitresses while they pretended to listen to him. In Jimmy’s mind the only way the situation could’ve been worse was if his bar had been invaded by fags.

  Since Jimmy Abrigatto’s grandparents and Robert Canoza’s grandparents had come from the same village in Italy, and since Jimmy’s mother and Robert’s mother were both members of Mother of Sorrows parish in Norwood, and since Jimmy and Robert had gone to Mother of Sorrows Elementary School together, Jimmy thought he’d have no problem reaching out to Robert to solve his problem with the bikers.

  “You always said I wasn’t smart enough to walk and chew gum at the same time,” Canoza had responded to Jimmy’s outreach.

  “Hey, I was a kid, you know? Kids say things.”

  “Oh is that what it was, huh? You were a kid. I get it.”

  “C’mon, you’re not gonna hold that a
gainst me now, are ya?”

  “Well what happened—you got older and dumber? And I got older and smarter—is that what you’re sayin’ now?”

  “Whattaya mean?”

  “Hey, genius, ever hear of nine-one-one? Next time they start some shit, pick up your phone and push those numbers. Coupla cars’ll show up, they’ll bust some heads, kick over a few bikes, that’ll be the end of that.”

  “Yeah but how will I know you’ll be workin’?”

  “Whattaya mean, how will you know I’ll be workin’? You askin’ me to do this? Me specifically? What’s goin’ on here, Jimmy? You wouldn’t be solicitin’ an aggravated assault, would ya?”

  “No no no no no, nothin’ like that, c’mon. I’m just sayin’, you know, I don’t want a coupla little guys showin’ up, I mean what the fuck, you know? You show up, that would be like, uh, impressive, you know? You’re a big guy, Booboo.”

  “Don’t call me that.”

  “Hey, sorry. I forgot.”

  “I’m a big guy, huh? No kiddin’. Nobody ever told me that before.”

  “Hey, you know what I mean—oh, you’re pullin’ my chain now.”

  “Me? Robert Canoza? I’m pullin’ your chain? The guy ain’t smart enough to pass the sergeant’s test? The guy ain’t smart enough to get out of a car and behind a desk?”

  “Hey, I never said that about you, man. Anybody says I said that is a fuckin liar, man.”

  “Yeah? Well maybe you should have a little talk with your mother, ’cause that’s who told my aunt. And guess who she told, huh?”

  “Nah, whoa, c’mon, Bobbie. My mother said that? Never. Never fuckin’ happen she said that.”

  “Yeah? First off, not even my mother calls me Bobbie. Second, this better be on the square, Jimmy, ’cause I find out you’re usin’ me to solve a problem? After I bust their heads I’ll bust yours, you got that?”

  “Yeah, hey, Robert, I got ya, man. I understand. Absolutely.”

  “Good. ’Cause, uh, obviously your memory’s goin’ bad.”

  “Huh?”

  “Yeah. What you apparently can’t remember is how you been raggin’ me since we were kids. You think I forgot that, huh? Back in Mother of Sorrows? Then, you were the skinny good-lookin’ one, the one with the wavy hair and the fast mouth, and I was Quasimodo, remember? King Kong? Mighty Joe Young? Now you’re just another bald guy can’t see his dick when he pees. Another bald, fat guy with a problem he thinks I’m supposed to solve just ’cause I’m on the city payroll. I’m gonna say this once more, Jimmy. If this ain’t what you say it is, I’m gonna be on your payroll long as you own this bar, understand?”

  “Absolutely. No question, man—Robert. I know exactly what you’re sayin’. But I swear on my mother, these guys are ruinin’ my business, man, they’re worse than a buncha fags. They don’t show up, I’m empty here.”

  Three days after that conversation, the leader of the Animals got loud with the leader of the Undertakers, and Jimmy thought he saw a knife. Then he thought he saw another knife, and then he started hollering he was dialing 911 before he even started for the phone.

  By the time Canoza and Rayford showed up a few minutes later, the Animals and the Undertakers were all charm; their behavior could not have been more congenial. Canoza looked around for a minute or so and then asked who their leaders were. Nobody answered. Canoza stepped quickly behind two of the Undertakers who happened to be sitting with their backs to him, cracked their heads together, and then slammed them facedown onto the bar, breaking both their noses.

  After their screams turned to muffled sobs, a strange silence fell over Suds and Subs, exaggerated by the hum of the beer coolers and the sizzle of frozen potatoes in the deep fryers.

  “One more time, who’s in charge here?”

  At the other end of the bar, the two who had been in each other’s faces provoking Jimmy’s 911 call held up their right hands.

  Canoza approached them, bent between them, put his hands on their shoulders, and said, “We got a report this place is becomin’ a nuisance bar. Know what that means? The LCB is gonna be sendin’ its agents here. Know who they are? Case you haven’t heard, LCB regs are now enforced by the state police. If you fellas don’t want the state cops on your case, you’ll find someplace else to hang out, understand?”

  The leader of the Animals looked at the leader of the Undertakers and they started to laugh and turn around.

  Canoza cracked their heads together, quickly slid his hand down their backs until he found their belts, then jerked them backwards off their bar stools, and started carrying them, one in each hand, toward the front door, telling Rayford to open it. Then, banging their heads off every surface he passed, Canoza carried them, gasping and coughing, outside, where he rammed them, first one and then the other, headfirst into the side of his MU. Then he dropped them, barely conscious and bleeding profusely, onto the macadam.

  He turned around, looked at the double line of Harleys, eleven in a line closest to the door and nine in the second line, dropped into a crouch beside a bright red one on the end of the second line, put his hands on the seat and gas tank, and with a guttural roar, shoved it into the next one, toppling all nine like dominoes. Inside, he made the same announcement as before, much louder this time, to the rest of the bikers, who were scurrying to put tables between them and him.

  No one was more impressed with Canoza’s display of courage and power than William Rayford, who’d only been on the job six months and knew he didn’t have the vocabulary to say how happy he was that Canoza arrived on the scene about ten seconds before he had and not only was first through the door but had never hesitated about taking the initiative. As Rayford described it later, and he would describe it many times to any of his fellow officers who wanted to listen, he stressed that Canoza had never even asked him if he wanted to handle it. “It was like I wasn’t even there,” Rayford would say. “But I’m tellin’ you, man, my chin was on my chest, I ain’t lyin’. I had to tell myself to swallow or I would’ve been droolin’ all down my chin.”

  Second most impressed, of course, was Jimmy Abrigatto, who, the moment the last Undertaker ran out his front door, shouted, “Man, Robert, long as I own this place, you eat here, you drink here, you don’t pay for nothin’. I swear on my mother, anything you want, anytime you want it, it’s on me, man.”

  “And that’s the only time ol’ Boo acted like I was even there, man,” Rayford would say. “He looked at this Jimmy and then he pointed at me and he said, ‘I got a witness, Jimmy. You heard that, Rayford, right?’ And I told him yes sir I surely did. And that’s why Boo eats there all the time. Man, you shoulda seen those bikers scatter. Left their wounded behind too, man. Buncha chickenshits.…”

  Even before Canoza found the one empty seat at the bar, Jimmy was working on a meatball sub for him, while one of the waitresses reached around the corner of the bar, got a frosty mug and filled it with ginger ale. She brought it around the bar and set it in front of Canoza with her most genuine smile while pushing into his right arm with her breasts.

  “Hi, Robert,” she said.

  “Save that for the tourists,” he said, leaning away from her.

  “Gee, you’re welcome,” she said, acting hurt. Or maybe she was hurt, Canoza couldn’t tell.

  “Why do you always do that?” she said.

  “Do what?”

  “Pull away from me like I’m some kinda …”

  “Some kinda what?”

  “Hey, you know what I mean. I’m just doin’ my job, okay?”

  “And you do that to do it better, right?”

  “Hey, it’s a job, you know? I got a kid, okay?”

  “If that’s part of the job description, you oughta sue the prick.”

  “What prick, who’s a prick?” Jimmy said, delivering the meat-ball sub.

  “Who do you think? You.”

  “Me? I’m the prick? Fuck’d I do now?”

  “Tell your waitresses shove their boobs into me every t
ime they bring my ginger ale.”

  “Hey, that’s bullshit, Robert, I don’t tell ’em do that. They do that all on their own. What you don’t understand is they like you.”

  “Yeah, right,” Canoza said, taking a bite of his sub. He chewed for a while, closed his eyes, and said, “Good sauce. Good meatballs. Had it all together when you made these.”

  “Same way I always make ’em.”

  “Nah, uh-uh. Some days you make ’em you leave your dago soul in the parkin’ lot. Those days they’re like sawdust and porch paint.”

  “What’re you talkin’ about, sawdust and porch paint, that’s my mother’s recipe. Get outta here with that bullshit.”

  The waitress was back, looking genuinely hurt. She tapped Canoza on the shoulder.

  “What?”

  “I’m tired of you really hurtin’ my feelings.”

  “Gimme a break. You said it yourself, it’s just a job.”

  “You think you don’t have feelings ’cause it’s your job?”

  “Hey,” Jimmy said, “if you don’t have tables to work you can always clean the ladies’ toilet, you know? Do somethin’, Jesus.”

  “If I had tables, I’d be workin’ ’em, okay? God knows, that’s the only way I make any money around here.”

  “What’s she mean? You don’t pay ’em?”

  “Whattaya think—I’m nuts? Much as they make they oughta be glad I don’t take a cut.”

  “Oh please, much as we make.”

  “No joke—he doesn’t pay you?”

  “He just said it, didn’t he?”

  “You don’t pay them anything? Nothin’? How do you get away with that? You can’t do that.”

  “Who says?”

  “Get outta here. You can’t make people work for nothin’.”

  “They don’t work for nothin’, they work for tips. You think tips are nothin’, you kiddin’? How much’d you make yesterday, Lois, huh? Tell this fuckin’ gorilla.”

  “Sixty-three and change. Only had to be here from eleven till midnight.”