City of Margins

by William Boyle

  The schoolyard across the street is empty now. Antonina’s home in her bed, no doubt. Donnie wonders about Mikey—did he have to go to the hospital, or is he back home with his mother, worried about old Giuseppe here?

  Donnie’s Ford Tempo is parked at the end of his dark driveway. They get in, Donnie in the back with the bat across his lap and Giuseppe huddled next to him, Pags behind the wheel, Sottile in the passenger seat, scooting it in reverse until it bumps Giuseppe’s knees. The car reeks of booze.

  “So, where we going?” Pags says, turning down the visor and finding the key next to a prayer card from Gabe’s funeral Donnie keeps taped there. Pags knows the score. He got right in the driver’s seat without questioning anything.

  “Drive like you’re going to Riis Park,” Donnie says.

  Pags nods and starts the car. He knows.

  Donnie sets the bat down between his legs. He keeps a few things in the car for times like this. One is a roll of duct tape. He’s thinking he should wrap up Giuseppe’s legs and hands, slap a piece across his mouth. But then he thinks better of it. The guy’s taped up like that, no way it looks like he jumped, which is the preferable outcome here.

  Pags backs out of the driveway slowly, nearly scraping the car against the side of the house.

  “What’re you gonna do with me?” Giuseppe asks.

  “You’ll see,” Donnie says.

  “I’ll get the dough, I swear.”

  Pags has them in the street now, closer than he should be to a parked car. Donnie knows the car. A Citation. It’s Mr. Papia’s from up the block. The lights on the Tempo aren’t even on. Donnie scolds Pags, tells him to get his shit together. Pags snaps the lights on. Sottile has fallen asleep, and he’s sawing wood big time.

  They make a right off the block, another right at Twenty-Fourth Avenue, a left at the light on Cropsey, and then hop on the Belt Parkway, eastbound. No traffic at all, just the regular assholes going ninety.

  They get off at the Flatbush Avenue South exit, headed for the Rockaways. The drive isn’t long, fifteen minutes or less under normal circumstances, but it takes them closer to twenty-five because Pags is going slower than usual, drifting onto the shoulder the whole time. They’re not afraid of getting stopped.

  “The bridge?” Giuseppe asks. “I’m not a good swimmer. Please.”

  “Chi ha fatto il male, faccia la penitenza,” Donnie says, slurring his words, again summoning his old man, who had a proverb for everything. “‘You make your bed, you gotta lie in it.’”

  “I’m a good man,” Giuseppe says. “I got a family. I’m a teacher. I got summer school. You can’t do this.”

  “You’re a good man? My balls are good men.” Donnie laughs. “You raised a son ain’t worth shit, let me tell you that much.”

  Giuseppe looks confused. “What do you know from my son?” he asks, even more desperate now. He’s reading this as a threat against his family. “You leave my son out of it. And my wife. I owe the money, that’s all. You do what you need to do to me, but you leave my family alone.”

  Real noble all of a sudden, the stronzo.

  They stop in the middle of the bridge on the eastern edge. No other cars at this hour. Donnie was thinking the bridge was higher, to be honest. Been a little while since he’s been out here, and the last time he wasn’t sober either. It’s a vertical-lift bridge. In the raised position, it is higher. Regular like this, it’s probably only fifty feet down to the water. Giuseppe survives, he survives. He doesn’t, he doesn’t. No loss either way. Donnie shrugs it off. Though the guy said he can’t swim, so odds are good he sinks like a stone.

  Donnie looks up at the towers of the bridge, bright in the moonlight. He looks out at the Verrazano in the distance. It would’ve been a better option as far as height, that’s for sure, but there’s too much action there.

  “Think about this,” Giuseppe says. “You’re cops, right? You’re supposed to protect people like me.”

  “You don’t know us,” Donnie says.

  Sottile’s snoring fills the car.

  Donnie acts fast. He orders Giuseppe out and follows him, the bat pressed against his back. He realizes the bat isn’t his piece just about then. He wishes he had his piece. This few-second stretch, the guy makes a run for it, what’s Donnie going to do? Get in the car and have Pags chase him down, which would be a pain at best and a mess at worst. But Giuseppe doesn’t run. Donnie’s guess is that Giuseppe’s decided this is nothing but a threat. He thinks they’re going to show him how close he came to dying, dangle him over the edge even, and then let him off with a final warning. The classic delusion that he’ll get a stay of execution. Donnie would bet a million bucks he’s thinking he’ll straighten up starting tomorrow. No more gambling, family first. He’s praying to God in his head, making all kinds of promises.

  As Giuseppe gets close to the railing, he’s about to say something else to Donnie, but Donnie uses the bat again to shove him forward as hard as he can. Giuseppe wavers and then goes over the railing, the top half of his body flopping forward, his hands looking for something to grab hold of. His legs are up in the air. It takes one more good push on Donnie’s part to shake him fully loose, his hand bristling against the cheap fabric of Giuseppe’s right pant leg, before the leg is over and the body is over and Giuseppe falls headfirst into Rockaway Inlet, screaming the whole way down. Donnie doesn’t wait to see how he fairs. He gets back in the car and tells Pags to take him home, he’s tired.

  JULY 1993

  AVA BIFULCO

  Ava Bifulco knows there’s trouble when her Nova starts making that clicking noise again. She’s on the Belt Parkway, heading back from a quick detour to Kings Plaza, a bag from Macy’s riding shotgun. Last time the car broke down was two weeks ago. She was coming back from her cousin Janet’s in Staten Island and the car started making this noise and just stalled out on her right on the Verrazano. Luckily, since she was on the bridge, help came fast. They towed her to Flash Auto, where Sal and his brother Frankie charged her six hundred bucks for this or that. She doesn’t even remember what exactly. The receipt’s at home. She was hoping to have a few months without any trouble. She’s sick of having things that break down. The car. The water heater and washing machine and refrigerator and toilets in the big old house that she shares with her son, Nick. She wants things that don’t break down. At fifty-one, she feels like she deserves some easy living. She’s got friends her age, they’re down in Florida now, and all they do is sit on beaches, read paperbacks, play bingo, go to buffets, rub oil into their skin. But she knows the easy life is a long-shot dream. She’s got work—Sea Crest, the nursing home and rehab facility she manages, would fall apart without her—and her mortgage is a few years from being paid off in full, and Nick, twenty-nine but not married yet, relies on her more than he should.

  She passes the Knapp Street exit. The noise gets louder. Smoke ribbons up from under the hood. What Ava wants to do is beat the wheel and scream, Fuck this bullshit! Instead, she tries to stay calm. She inhales and exhales. She keeps her fingers loose on the wheel. She says a couple of Hail Marys. She takes it in stride as she feels the car die and gets over to the narrow shoulder on the left. More smoke. She’s as close to the barrier as she can get. Cars are zooming by her at seventy on the right. Another deep breath. She’s got to figure out a plan. Get out and walk and find a payphone off the exit? There’s that rest stop coming up, isn’t there? But that’s on the other side. Still, maybe she can make it there and find a payphone. Yeah, just her. Hopping the barrier and dodging traffic in her black pantsuit and matching mules.

  She reaches over to the glove compartment and pulls it open and finds her Viceroys. She pushes the cigarette lighter in and waits for it to pop. Could be worse. Could be dark. The lighter thumps out, spooks her. She yanks it from the receptacle, its glowing orange coils hot against her palm. She’s a little unsteady, the thrum of traffic shaking her car. She puts a cigarette between her lips and lights it. She takes a heavy drag. Okay. Wha
t now? Finish your smoke, that’s what.

  A car pulls up behind her. She can see in her rearview that it’s a gritty gray Ford Tempo with a dirty windshield. The driver is just a dark shape to her. She’s nerved up. You never know. This fucking city. Guy could be stopping just to strangle her to death.

  He gets out of his car. White. Italian, by the looks of it. A few years younger than her, mid-forties probably. Hook nose, dark hair. He’s wearing a white T-shirt and blue jeans and work boots. She watches in the side mirror as he approaches, coming up on the driver’s side, away from the traffic. She rolls down her window.

  “Can I help you out at all?” he asks.

  She smooshes her cigarette out in a heap of filters in the ashtray under the lighter. “Thanks so much,” she says. “Piece of junk just quit on me. I’ve been having a lot of trouble with it lately.”

  He nods.

  She waits for him to make a suggestion.

  He doesn’t say anything.

  “I’m not sure what to do,” she says. “My son’s probably worried about me. I’m already late getting home.”

  “I can give you a ride,” he says. “To a payphone. You live near here? I can just take you to your place. You can call a tow truck and get the guy to bring it to your garage.” He looks out at the passing cars. “You got Triple A?”

  “I do. And I don’t live far.”

  “Where’s your garage?”

  “Flash Auto on Bath.”

  “Sal and Frankie.”

  “Right.”

  “Stand-up guys.”

  “Wish they did a better job fixing my car a couple of weeks ago.”

  “Way things go. How about that ride?”

  “Sure,” she says. “Let me just get my stuff.” She grabs her Macy’s bag and her purse and gets out of the car, following him back to his Tempo, staying close to the barrier.

  “Why don’t you just get in back?” he says. “Too hard to get in on the passenger side.”

  “Good idea.” He opens the back door for her. She squeezes past him and climbs in. He closes the door behind her. The back seat is a mess of newspapers and torn-up scratch-offs. She puts the Macy’s bag between her legs and clutches her purse in her lap. She’s still nervous. He’s a stranger, and you can’t get in a stranger’s car without being worried it could be the beginning of the end. She’s heard the stories. Abductions. Rapes. Murders. But he seemed like such a nice guy.

  He gets in under the wheel and pulls his door shut. It makes a grinding noise that sounds something like the door on her washing machine. “I’m no bad guy,” he says. “You can stop worrying. I’m just here to help.”

  “Wouldn’t a bad guy say that?” she asks.

  “I guess. Good point.” He turns the car on, and soon enough they’re back in the flow of things on the Belt.

  She turns around to look at her Nova. It’s weird to leave it there like that. She wonders if someone will ram it from behind or bust a window and steal the radio or whatever else they can get. Not that there’s much in there. Did she lock the doors? Jesus Christ. She can’t remember.

  “I don’t know if I locked the doors,” she says.

  “It’ll be fine,” he says. “It won’t be there that long. You were abandoning it overnight, I’d say you had something to worry about.”

  Another thought. She digs through her purse. “Shit. And I forgot my cigarettes.”

  “You can have one of mine,” he says. He reaches across to the passenger seat and comes up holding a silver cigarette case. He passes it back to her.

  “Thanks,” she says. The case is pretty similar to the one her mother used to carry. She hasn’t seen a cigarette case like this in a long time. She opens it and takes out a cigarette. Unfiltered Pall Malls. “These are old-man cigarettes.”

  He laughs. “Are they? I just started smoking about a year ago. I used to buy Marlboros and rip the filters off, but then I got started on these by my bartender.”

  “Got a light?”

  “Right. Sure.” He digs around in his pants and hands her a yellow Bic. “Sorry. The car lighter doesn’t work.”

  She lights the cigarette and rolls down the window and blows smoke out at the other cars. She can really feel this one in her lungs.

  “Tell me where to go,” he says.

  “You can get off at Bay Parkway,” she says.

  “That’s my exit, too. Where do you live?”

  “You know the Marboro Theatre?”

  “Yeah, of course. I go to the movies a lot.”

  “Right near there.”

  “Okay. My name’s Don, by the way, just so you know who you’re riding with.”

  “I’m Ava,” she says, blowing more smoke.

  The exit’s looming. He looks back in his rearview mirror. A scuffed green pine air freshener dangles there. Coiled around the string is a twist of palm from Palm Sunday. She wonders if he goes to St. Mary’s or Most Precious Blood or St. Finbar or maybe Saints Simon and Jude. Either way, there’s that palm and it’s a good sign. She relaxes with her smoke, tenses down, tries not to think the worst about the Nova. She’s thankful for this Don. A Good Samaritan.

  NICK BIFULCO

  Nick’s worried about his mother. She’s late getting home from work. Could be she just stopped off at Pathmark or Meats Supreme, but the car’s been in rocky shape, and he can’t help but think of her broken down somewhere. The nursing home where she works is in Coney Island, and he hates to think of her standing out on Mermaid Avenue with the hood up, waiting for help. He looks at the yellow rotary phone on the wall, expecting a call any second.

  He’s sitting at their kitchen table with the window open. He’s got a plate of cold squash flowers in front of him. Golden, crispy edges. Perfect batter. Ava made them last night with blossoms that Larry from up the street brought over from his garden. The radio’s on. WCBS. Traffic, news, sports. He can’t focus on any of it. He’s got the little fan going. He should change. Put on shorts and a T-shirt. He’s still in his work clothes. Button-up yellow linen shirt, blue tie loosened around his neck, blue blazer, blue Dockers. He teaches at Our Lady of the Narrows in Bay Ridge. Journalism and Honors English. Now he’s doing summer school. He takes the bus every day, the B1 with a transfer to the B64, leaving as early as he can to avoid seeing students on the route. They only have the one car, he and his mother, and he’s not ashamed to live at home with her even though he’ll be thirty at the end of August. His girlfriend, Alice, teaches Biology at OLN and wants him to move into her place over Pipin’s Pub right there in Bay Ridge, but he likes living at home with his mom. He likes feeling like a kid.

  Nick left home for college. SUNY Geneseo. He lived up there for four years. They were okay years. He missed Brooklyn. He took the bus home often. When his dad died his last semester, he started coming down every weekend. And then it just seemed like a foregone conclusion that he’d move back in with Ava, and she seemed thankful to have him. She never grew tired of him, at least not outwardly. She liked to see him fed and entertained and happy. Nick had wanted to pursue a career in journalism, to be the next Jimmy Breslin or Pete Hamill or Mike Lupica, but that stalled out on the tracks. He couldn’t get in the door anywhere. Instead, he took the job at Our Lady of the Narrows, his alma mater, and he’s been there seven years. Time just rattling by. His twenties over. Just like that. He’s one of those teachers students don’t love or hate. They find him boring. Maybe a couple here and there latch on to him as a potential mentor and then realize he’s got nothing to offer them.

  What he really wants is to write a script. He loves movies. Their neighbors, Paulie and Nina Puzzo, have a son, Phil, who lives downtown in a Boerum Hill brownstone and put out a big book on the Diamond Den murders and has another one coming about the Brancaccio crime family. Phil does all these interviews, and he’s got piles of material. His Diamond Den book was a bestseller, and De Niro even bought the movie rights, with Phil tapped to write the script. Least that’s what Paulie reports. Nick wants to w
rite a script about gangsters, something Scorsese would direct, but he can’t settle on a topic. He makes notes, tries to figure out an approach, but everything falls flat.

  The phone rings. He rushes over, expecting a harried Ava. But it’s Alice. “I could use a drink,” she says.

  “I can’t come all the way back to Bay Ridge right now,” Nick says.

  “Everything okay?”

  “Ava’s not home yet. I’m getting worried.”

  “You always do this. She’s fine.”

  “The car, you know?”

  “She’s fine, I swear. I wish you’d just come over. Hell, I wish you’d just move in. Think how nice it’d be. We could walk to work every day. We could go down to Pipin’s for drinks whenever. Movies at the Alpine. Dinner at Colucci’s. Nonstop screwing.”

  He laughs. “Nonstop screwing sounds pretty good.”

  “You wouldn’t have to jerk off with your mother’s Jergens anymore. You know what I’m wearing right now? Nothing. And I’m smoking a cigarette. I bet you’re still in your school clothes.”

  “You’re really wearing nothing?”

  “I’m telling the truth.”

  Our Lady of the Narrows is a boys’ school, and all the students have crushes on Alice. The other teachers, too. Mr. Maroney and Mr. Miller putting their eyes all over her whenever she passes. Principal Sechiano getting flushed when she talks to him. She’s that teacher. A little older than him. Thirty-two. Pencil skirts. Librarian glasses. Science-smart. A rack that makes even the closeted Christian Brothers among them howl at the moon. Once Nick confiscated a notebook from Gianluca Spara, a pimply junior, and it was filled with drawings of Alice in various stages of undress. Gianluca was a real-deal artist, and the drawings were good. Some of them were even tasteful. And the ones where Alice was totally naked, well, Nick had to admit they were pretty close to the real thing.