Lunchmeat

by Ben D'Alessio

  “Yo, yo, yo. Check out her shoulders,” said Sonny, pointing at Maria with his eyebrows. “What’s her name again?”

  “Maria,” I said.

  “Maria. Right. Ya think she’s fightin’ tonight?”

  Uproar.

  “Yo, I bet she could knock your ass out,” said Joey. “She’s got a tight body, though. Look at that ass.” And we looked at that ass, high and tight in black So Low pants.

  Finally, Logan shut the garage doors and corralled us together to go over the rules one last time.

  “Come on, come on. We got it already,” Joey interrupted Logan as he bounced on the balls of his feet.

  “Alright, Lampedusa, you want to fight first? Pick someone who’s in, and no, you can’t pick Brian’s girlfriend.” He nodded his chin toward Maria. “Even though I think she’d kick your ass!”

  Uproar.

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever. I pick Ching Chang,” he said, pointing to the biggest Chinese kid in the group, whose name most certainly was not Ching Chang.

  “Whoa, whoa, none of that,” said Logan, trying to hide a smile. “That’s Jeffrey. Jeffrey, you want to fight Joey?”

  Jeffrey was already putting on the helmet and gloves before Logan could finish his sentence.

  “Yo, he looks pissed,” said Carmine.

  “Fuck it. Eyy, no using karate.” And Joey put on the helmet and gloves and proceeded to beat the shit out of Ching… I mean Jeffrey. It wasn’t even close. Logan and a couple of the offensive linemen had to hold Joey back from ground-pounding the poor kid into the cement.

  “Alright! Alright! It’s over! Joey, you’re done for the night.”

  “Still undefeated!” he said, whipping off the helmet and spiking up his hair and strutting in true Green Knight fashion.

  After a couple of offensive lineman matches and a melee between a Ukrainian and a Brazilian, interest in Fight Club started to wane. “Whoa, eyy yo, what about the annual freshman fight? I did it when I was a frosh. What freshman do we have here?” asked Logan. “What? No, no. Ferraro isn’t fighting.” Logan stepped into the ring. “Yo, I can’t have the athletic director’s son fighting in my garage. What if he hurts his arm?”

  Uproar from my paisanos. Joey burst into argument as if summoning the legal specter of the fictional Jerry Gallo, and Carmine started rubbing my traps like I was already seated in the corner of the ring getting my gloves laced up.

  Maybe it was the testosteronic atmosphere of sweaty, stinking sports equipment and unadulterated vodka (none of that razpberry pizzazberry bullshit), but I had lived on the cusp of violence for too long—with the guys from Westfield, with Pierce Stone in the Charlie Brown’s parking lot, with Pierce Stone in Jared Rosenblatt’s basement, and any time Pierce Stone had cracked a comment about my arm hair or school bus of a lunchbox during my Glenwood youth. Where is he?! Where is he?! Where is he?! I’d break him in half and then go take one of the girls viewing the spectacle right off of her boyfriend’s arm. Maria and I would make beautiful, athletic children—you got it, Dad. To the victor go the spoils; to Victor go the spoils, or so goes the motto of the Legions, but I wasn’t some Roman grunt—sorry, Dad—I was a goddamn gladiator, a blue-eyed, pale-skinned, goddamn Goth from the North who made even the Saxons shake in their animal skins. Where is he?! Where is he?! Where is he?! I don’t fear or fight dragons, I ride dragons into battle—I ride atop Smoag with a sword of flames: I am fire. I am death. I am reborn; renaissance through violence.

  “Vito!” Tank shook me by the shoulders. “Holy shit, dude. You okay?”

  “What?”

  “You put the helmet on and just started mumbling to yourself.”

  “You good, cuz?” asked Carmine.

  The football players and the Ukrainians, Chinese, and Brazilians surrounded me and stared like I was some sideshow attraction. Through the hockey mask cage and over shoulders in sweaty t-shirts, I could see Maria DiMonica looking at me, biting her lower lip as she let go of the point guard’s arm.

  Text from Maria <3<3: What am I going to do?

  Text to Maria <3<3: OK, jus relax.

  Text from Maria <3<3: Victor this could ruin my life. You know how I feel about abortion.

  Text to Maria <3 <3: OK. Baby, jus go to prctice and take a test when u get home. Evrythng is gonna b fine.

  The cling clang, cling clang of weights lifting and crashing on the racks coupled with the grunts and yawps of morphing masculinity didn’t do my burgeoning nausea any favors—this was our second pregnancy scare in a year.

  “Eyy! Ferraro, DeVallo, what are you’ds doin’?” called Coach Porcello from his office. (You’ds was a personal plural pronoun in New Jersey—as in you guys, you all, y’all.) “Get your lifts in.” Coach Porcello was thick and stout like a veal-parmesan-eating bulldog. “Eyy, Ferraro, I got a call from the coach at East Stroudsburg. They want you to visit this summer.”

  “East Stroudsburg!” said Tank. “Coach, Vic isn’t going to bumblefuck Ohio to play ball. He’s the next QB at USC or Texas!” he said, performing his own imitation of a three-step drop.

  “Eyy, watch your language. And East Stroudsburg is in Pennsylvania and a solid Division Two school.”

  “Hey Coach, you hear anything from Hawaii?” I asked.

  “Nah, nothing. I think it’s time to move on from them, buddy. They just sent you a letter right? Last year?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Yeah, I don’t think it’s gonna happen. But eyy, don’t think about that now. We gotta beat Caldwell and Livingston this year. You play well, the recruiters will come,” Coach said and went back into his office.

  Trojans, Longhorns, Hurricanes, Buckeyes, Scarlet Knights, Rainbow Warriors—I would’ve happily joined any of these squads, and after a solid season where I started as a sophomore, I really thought some of the bigger schools would’ve come knocking.

  “Yo, you said you always wrap it up, right?” asked Tank as he spotted me on the bench press.

  “Yeah, Maria doesn’t let me get within a foot of her box without a condom on.”

  “Six… seven… come on, get it, get it. Eight, good. Yeah cuz, then there’s nothing to worry about.”

  If only it were that simple. After my set, I rushed to the boys’ locker room and yakked my pink and red creatine pre-workout shake into the toilet. Me, a father? I still had a learner’s permit, for Christ’s sake, and might be headed to play quarterback for USC or East Stroudsburg!

  Maria made me wear a condom and pull it out the moment I started to come—if she caught me loitering back there during the finish, she’d drop her hips and phlunk, I’d pop out. Then it was time for meticulous checking—the tip, any leaks? Any cracks, breaks, or snaps? Tie it tight and ball it up in toilet paper—NOT in the toilet! Could you imagine? “Mr. DiMonica, your pipes are clogged from copious amounts of balled-up toilet paper filled with condoms. Is there any chance your niece might be banging the high school quarterback?” Nope, we disposed of our sins as meticulously as the Mafia—there’s a pile of my used condoms the size of The Intrepid floating down the Passaic River.

  I gargled and spat and splashed some water on my face before I met Tank waiting for me outside the locker room. We hopped in my white ’96 Jeep Cherokee (my parents bought it from the Geigers for my sixteenth birthday) and we headed for downtown Millburn.

  “Yo, you better not get her pregnant,” Tank said, rolling down his window. “Her uncle is in the Mafia.”

  “That’s bullshit.”

  “No, cuzzo, I’m serious. The Mafia, the mob, La Cosa Nostra (translation: this thing of ours), ’Ndràngheta, Camorra…”

  “Fuck off.”

  “He’s connected, man. Look at me. Nose tilt.” Tank tilted his nose. “On the arm.” Tank patted his arm. “The Five Families. He’s a goomba (translation: compatriot, comrade, brother-in-arms; see also: paisano), a thre
e-piece-suit warrior, a wise guy, a real gangster. Not like those mulignans with the bandanas and tilted pistols. Capone, Gotti, Luciano, Gravano.”

  “Are ya done?”

  “Tony-fucking-Soprano.”

  “He’s a dentist.”

  “Yeah, okay, a dentist. Sounds like a front to me.”

  “So he went to dental school and was ranked a top dentist in the state—I saw his picture in New Jersey Monthly—just so he would have a cover for his mob activities?”

  “Yup. He’s fooling you and the FBI.”

  “You’re an idiot.”

  “Just better hope that pregnancy test comes back negative, paisan. I wouldn’t want to end up in his dental chair.”

  I dropped Tank off at Soleil Sands and parked in front of Jabie’s apartment building on Millburn Ave. My mind began to wander as I pictured the giant man—Mr. DiMonica was the first baseman for the 1981 Arizona State national championship team—curling over me in the dental chair, his breath seeping through the mask as his brooding frame blocked out the light. Maybe he is in the Mafia? Mobsters and dentists are completely comprised of sadists. Maybe that’s his title: The Dentist. A Hitman, a Punisher, a hired excavator who uses his chisels on the roots of a rat. “What’s this? Little Jimmy is talking to the Feds? Take him to The Dentist.” “What’s this? Vito Ferraro’s used-condom island blocked the shipment of Barolo? Take him to The Dentist.”

  I could hear my father now: “Vito! Italian-Americans have been fighting that stereotype for generations! Any successful Italian man is automatically labeled a mobster. Ya know, my grandfather—your great-grandfather—came from humble roots, all the way from Avellino, and set up a barbershop in West Orange. Papa had twelve brothers and sisters who all lived above the shop over on Eagle Rock Avenue.”

  Jabie appeared in front of the car and got in on the passenger side.

  “Yo, wuttup?” he asked.

  “Wuttup?” I responded.

  “Yo, is Maria pregnant?”

  “What? No. I don’t know. What? How do you…”

  “I really hope she isn’t. You know her uncle…”

  “Don’t fucking say it.”

  We grabbed a couple of monster joes from the Millburn Deli and picked up Tank from the tanning salon. I could see Joey’s car parked on the street as I pulled into the DeVallos’ driveway.

  “What the shit is he doing here?” Tank said as he popped out of the Jeep.

  We followed Tank as he rushed down the outside path that led to his bedroom door.

  “What the fuck, Carina?”

  I hurried to the door and peeked over Tank’s shoulder and was inundated with a plume of smoke. Joey had his lips suctioned to a bubbling bong, and I had to step over Sonny, whose eyes were open but not moving, on the floor as I entered the room.

  “Why the shit do you guys have to turn my room into the opium den? And… oh, come on, Jesus, Carina. Can you put a shirt on?”

  Tank tossed a t-shirt that was draped over his computer chair at Carina, who let it fly across the bed without even attempting to catch it.

  “This is so fucked. Where’s Mom? Don’t you have class today? Why can’t you move out? You’re fucking in college. At least these two stoonahds (translation: idiots, dumbasses, jackasses) don’t have anything better to do.”

  “I only have a morning class on Fridays. My school is only fifteen minutes away. And… what was the last one?”

  “Mom?”

  “I don’t know where Mom is.”

  I went to grab a can of Axe body spray from Tank’s bathroom, as Maria would cut me off for a week if she thought I was smoking weed, but the door flung open and Michaela stumbled out and plopped on the couch.

  “Hi, Victor,” she said, her eyes unable to completely focus on mine.

  Meat Loaf’s uplifting vocals erupted from my phone.

  “Dude, that is a lame-ass ringtone,” said Jabie.

  “It’s Meat Loaf and it’s our song, so shut up.”

  “Mhmm.”

  “Hey, can you make sure she’s okay?” I nodded toward Michaela. “I gotta get this.”

  I left the smoke-filled room and went upstairs and immediately began pacing from dining room to kitchen to living room. “Hey, babe.”

  “NOT PREGNANT!”

  “Hallelujah!”

  “What?!” She laughed.

  “Nothing. That’s great, Rie. You took a test?”

  “Yup. Bled right on the stick.”

  “Jesus.”

  “Already thanked him.”

  “Let’s celebrate tonight.”

  “Definitely. But you’re wrapping it up twice. Where are you, by the way?”

  “Tank’s.”

  “Who’s there?”

  “Ya know, the guys. Tank, Jabie, Joey, Sonny.”

  “I’m not hanging with Joey and Sonny. Can’t stand those two. Is Carina there?”

  “Yup.”

  “That’s it?”

  “… That’s it.”

  When I took Maria’s virginity, I felt like a great conqueror; I wanted to take out my father’s atlas (the internet was very much up and running at this point in my life, but clicking little boxes didn’t carry that… that umph! of slamming a thick atlas on the coffee table) and run my hand across the continents, like Attila the Hun, like Alaric the Visigoth, like Charlemagne or Cortés, and cry out, “All of this is mine! King Ferraro, defeater of point guards, masturbator of the mid-Atlantic, took the virginities of each a faire maiden in his kingdom that stretched from West Road to the faraway lands of Mendham, up to the mountains and lakes of Kittatinny and down to the shores of Ocean City!”

  I had believed that I had entered manhood when I plunged into Diana to the lights and screams of Roman candles, but I was mistaken. I became a man when an olive-skinned, almond-eyed brunette stood in front of me in brand-spanking-new black lingerie, with so many bells and whistles (more like snaps and straps) that my hand would get caught and tangled in the lace—especially those two straps bisecting each of her high, tight butt cheeks and connecting to a thigh-high stocking; oh what a flutter those two little straps could bring.

  Maria spoiled me, not in the way every single teacher told us we were spoiled growing up in Short Hills, but in the way that made me feel Achillean. On Fridays she would bring me succulent, dripping sandwiches from the Millburn Deli or Oscar’s Sandwich Barn, and we’d scarf them down in front of the freshmen munching on their bologna on rye—Maria did this, foregoing her senior lunch free from the confines of the high school.

  We walked right down the middle of the hallway, and sometimes I’d grab a cheek and squeeze, especially if it was a So Lows day and I wouldn’t be seeing her until that night. We kissed before class and we kissed after class and she wore my varsity jacket—with “Ferraro” written in royal blue script on the cream collar—to any and all functions. We left lovely little graphics on each other’s Facebook pages, with hearts and kisses and anything else mushy before big games or weekends away at camps or clinics. We’d wave to each other from our team benches, and sometimes she’d blow me a kiss.

  On Saturday nights she wore new lingerie or costumes from Spencer’s, each one with more straps, snaps, and webs of tantalizing lace than the last, and modeled them for me as I lay parallel on the couch like a Roman senator. Everything I said was hyperbolically brilliant or hilarious or adorable. And not in a patronizing sort of way, but in the sort of way that love, like a filter, just made everything so damn exquisite—I almost wanted to dig up my old epics of yore, the ones I used to hide in my desk at Glenwood, and have her read them aloud, swooning over every description of a decapitation and shattered shield. During weekday nights, she brought me Dunkin’ Donuts hot chocolate when it was cold or Dunkin’ Donuts freezes when it was hot and the lightning bugs were out and about—sometimes we’d fool aro
und in her brand-new massive SUV parked right there in my driveway.

  My favorite place on Earth was the postcoital pullout bed in my basement as we lay panting and catching our breath, serenaded by Nick at Nite or a thunderous sermon of Tom Jones Cleaver.

  “I can’t believe you put this guy on,” Maria said one October night, arms twisted behind her back as she snapped on her red bra.

  “I find it entertaining.”

  “Hey, you didn’t say ‘I love you’ back during.”

  “During what? Doggy? I’m sorry, sweetheart, but…”

  “No, you jerk,” she smacked me on the arm and then pounced on my exposed chest and stomach. “When you were on top of me kissing my neck.”

  “I didn’t, huh?”

  “Nope.”

  “I said it earlier when we were in the car.”

  “Yeah.”

  “With a rage hotter than the deepest fires of Hell!” Tom Jones Cleaver’s voice sonic-boomed from the surround sound my father had recently installed.

  “I said it before your game against Nutley, didn’t I?”

  “Yeah, you did.”

  “Oh! And I know I texted it to you between third and fourth period because we wouldn’t be walking to class together.”

  “So what, Victor…”—I kinda liked when she called me Victor—“it’s important that you say it when we’re making love.”

  “To kill a child! My lovelies, to kill a child is the worst sin on Earth!”

  “Hey, what if you were pregnant? Like, what the crap would we do?”

  “We? You, my friend…”

  “Don’t call me that.”

  “Okay, you, my love, would be on the run from my uncle.”

  “The Dentist,” I said under my breath.

  “And my dad. He’d be on the first flight from California.”