City of Margins

by William Boyle

  “So, tell me something good,” Ralph says to Antonina.

  “I don’t know,” Antonina says. “There’s not much to tell.”

  “How’s Lizzie?”

  “Lizzie’s Lizzie.”

  “She make you another mixtape? I knew how to make a tape, I’d make you one. Sinatra, Dion and the Belmonts, Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, Bobby Darin, that’s the stuff right there.” He pauses. “I never asked, what do you think of Madonna? I seen her in that Dick Tracy and A League of Their Own. Very good. I don’t know from her music really. ‘Like a Prayer,’ I heard that on the radio a few times.”

  “I used to like her a lot. ‘Papa Don’t Preach,’ that was my favorite song when I was like ten.”

  “Madonna Louise Ciccone. Italian girl. You already knew that, I’m sure.”

  Antonina nods.

  “You like movies,” Ralph says. “I bet you like her in that Desperately Seeking Susan.”

  “I do like that movie.”

  “Reason I ask, I could get you tickets to this Madonna show at Madison Square Garden in October, you’d be interested? You could take Lizzie.”

  “The Girlie Show? That’s a big deal.”

  “So, I’ll get you the tickets. They’ll be the best. I got a guy.”

  “Thanks, Mr. Sottile.”

  “What’d I tell you? Call me Ralph. I like when you say my name.”

  The waiter brings their food. Antonina attacks her milkshake first and then picks at her waffle. Ralph tucks a napkin into the collar of his shirt, lifts his fork and knife, smiles, and digs in. His first bite, he looks happy as can be. While he’s still chewing, he says, “Here we are. Our home away from home.”

  Antonina thinks about taking Lizzie to the city for a Madonna show. Maybe Lizzie’s boyfriend, Chip, will get them fucked up beforehand. “I’m happy, too,” Antonina says, and she realizes she’s only partly lying.

  ROSEMARIE BALDINI

  Rosemarie is on her knees in the bathroom, cleaning the toilet, when the doorbell rings again. Mikey hadn’t made too much of a mess, but she wants to make sure she scrubs the bowl good while she’s thinking of it. She takes off her yellow rubber gloves, draping them on the side of the tub, and leverages herself on the sink as she stands.

  “Hold on!” she calls out. “I’ll be there in a minute.”

  She hopes it’s not that Nick Bifulco again. Some nerve, showing up like that, drunk. She wonders if he’s a homosexual.

  But when she opens up, she sees it’s Big Time Tommy and one of his sidekicks. Big Time Tommy is a large man. He’s got a neck like a tree trunk. His skin is dark from tanning beds, and his hair is greasy. He’s got bushy eyebrows. He wears a patriotic windbreaker and loose-fitting black slacks and black loafers.

  The sidekick is little. Rosemarie doesn’t remember him. He wears a leather Yankees jacket, a gold cross hanging on his chest over a blue muscle shirt. He’s young, maybe in his mid-twenties, and he’s got a fat lip.

  The streetlight out front is on, reflected in the hood of Big Time Tommy’s double-parked DeVille.

  “Rosemarie,” Big Time Tommy says, as a way of greeting. “You remember Dice?”

  “What’s the what?” Dice says, nodding.

  “I didn’t know you were coming today,” Rosemarie says, holding the door open and stepping onto the porch. She never invites Big Time Tommy inside. It’s a small act of defiance and resistance. Who she’s really mad at is Giuseppe, for bringing this into her life and letting it outlive him. She guesses he thought his death would clear her name, but no such luck.

  “I was on the block,” Big Time Tommy says. “You know Slimeball Sally on the corner? He needed a talking to.”

  “I don’t have anything ready for you,” Rosemarie says.

  Big Time Tommy turns and looks out at the street. Dice watches him. “Haven’t I been good to you?” Big Time Tommy asks. “Ain’t it nice I come personal, don’t send one of my goons? You don’t want to know my goons. Dice here, he’s nothing. An accoutrement. And didn’t I quit with the vig? Didn’t I say just the principal would square you and yours? Maybe that was a mistake. Maybe I’m too generous. I see a grieving widow, my heart opens up. But this has been two years, Rosemarie. Two years, and you’ve barely made a dent.”

  “I’ve got bills, Tommy,” Rosemarie explains. “The funeral put me in a hole. I’ve got the mortgage. Oil. Forget it. I work seventy hours a week at Sea Crest. I can’t keep up. I need some compassion, that’s it.”

  “And what about your bum son? He’s still out of work? This kid could earn. This kid could earn for me.”

  “No.”

  “It’s a way out. Mikey works off your husband’s debt, and you get this weight off your shoulders.”

  “It’s very generous,” Dice says.

  “Very generous indeed,” Big Time Tommy says. “He’s not a kid anymore. He’s a man. Let him do a man’s work.”

  As if on cue, Mikey turns the corner onto the block. She sees him before they do, and panic rises in her. She doesn’t want Big Time Tommy to make this offer to Mikey. With Mikey’s state of mind, who knows what he’ll say. Sure, that sounds great! And then, boom, her son’s gone, a crook, shaking people down and breaking legs (not that he could break legs).

  When the front gate opens with a whine and Mikey comes into the yard, carrying a box of books, Big Time Tommy smiles as he sees him and says, “Oh, look who it is! Speak of the devil, and he shows himself. Freak Show Mikey.”

  “Don’t call him that, please,” Rosemarie says.

  Mikey’s attitude toward Big Time Tommy has always been a mix of fear and disgust and reverence. Rosemarie sees all of those things on his face now, as he stops at the bottom of the stoop and looks up at them. “You’re not supposed to be here,” Mikey says.

  “You keep a record of my comings and goings?” Big Time Tommy asks.

  “No, it’s just—”

  “Just my balls.”

  “Yeah, just his balls,” Dice says through a grin.

  “I can give you something in a few days,” Rosemarie says. “Tomorrow’s Mikey’s birthday. My brother, Alberto, comes tomorrow, I’ll ask him for help. Come back in a few days, okay?”

  “Alberto?” Big Time Tommy says, laughing, giving his attention back to Rosemarie. “What’s he got for you, some sweaty twenties he forgot to shove up his favorite stripper’s cooch?”

  “I’ll have something,” she says. “Just go.”

  Mikey walks up the stoop onto the porch, edging around Big Time Tommy and Dice, standing next to Rosemarie by the door.

  Big Time Tommy takes a couple of steps toward Mikey, throws his arm over his shoulder, and says, “How are you, Mikey? Tomorrow’s your big day, huh? Twenty-one. I remember when I turned twenty-one. My uncle took me to a house of ill repute in the city. Gentle Vic Ruggiero was there. He paid my way. Class act, that Vic. That was a night to remember.”

  “I’m okay,” Mikey says, stiff, uncomfortable with Big Time Tommy’s meaty arm holding him.

  “You a big fucking reader over here?” Big Time Tommy thumbs the box of books, takes notice of the books stacked on top. “Salem’s Lot—fuck’s that about?”

  “Vampires.”

  “Leave him alone,” Rosemarie says.

  “Your mother’s nervous,” Big Time Tommy says, “because I was just talking about the possibility of you coming to work for me. A way of erasing your father’s debt, I said. Plus, a good experience. Teach you how to be tough, how to survive on the mean streets.”

  “Me work for you?” Mikey asks.

  “What do you think?” Big Time Tommy asks.

  “No,” Rosemarie says. “Absolutely not. We’ll get you your money.”

  “Let Mr. Mikey here answer for himself.”

  “I don’t know,” Mikey says.

  “‘I don’t know,’” Big Time Tommy says, mimicking him. “The coward’s refrain. You should know. It’s an easy yes. It’ll grow you some balls.”

 
Mikey doesn’t say anything. Rosemarie tugs at the sleeve of his shirt.

  Big Time Tommy continues: “I used to tell your old man something. ‘Giuseppe,’ I’d say, ‘you can’t live with your tail between your legs.’ For a math teacher, for such a smart guy, he never played it safe, and I respected him for that.” He lets go of Mikey, dramatically, and then pinches his cheeks with both hands. Mikey tries to escape but can’t and takes the pinches like a kid who’s just been accosted by a drunk uncle at his Holy Communion.

  “This isn’t right,” Rosemarie says.

  “Happy birthday,” Big Time Tommy says. “Eat. Drink. Do whatever the fuck it is you do.”

  “Thanks,” Mikey says.

  Big Time Tommy turns, and Dice follows. They walk down the stairs together. Over his shoulder, Big Time Tommy says, “You change your mind, you know where to find me. Nine times out of ten, I’m at Twentieth Century on Bath. You know it? Vacant old disco dive.”

  Rosemarie puts her hand on Mikey’s shoulder, and he shrinks at her touch. They go back inside. She’s upset by the encounter, but Mikey doesn’t seem particularly fazed. He places the box of books on the table.

  “Where’s that from?” Rosemarie asks.

  “Someone was getting rid of them,” Mikey says.

  “They’re what, water damaged?”

  “They’re fine.”

  “Don’t be a junk collector.”

  “They’re books. They’re in good shape.”

  “We don’t need more stuff.” She realizes—as she gives him trouble about the books—that she’s doing it because she’s avoiding what she wants to say about Big Time Tommy. “You wouldn’t get involved with Tommy, right?”

  “Maybe I should,” Mikey says, and she can’t tell if he’s just kidding. “Maybe it’s work I’m cut out for.”

  “Don’t even joke.”

  “I could help us. I could get us out of this hole Dad got us into.”

  Rosemarie sits down at the table with a huff, her elbows on her knees. She takes a couple of labored breaths. “Don’t do this to me, okay? Just, please, don’t. I went through enough with your father. You’ll kill me.”

  “Ma, I’m kidding,” Mikey says. “I wouldn’t work for that animal. I just wish he wasn’t around to bother us anymore. I wish someone would push him in front of a train.”

  “You shouldn’t wish for things like that. God’s got His reasons for guys like Tommy.”

  “He does, huh?”

  “He must.”

  Mikey goes over to the sink and runs the tap, filling a glass with water.

  “How’s your stomach?” Rosemarie asks.

  “It’s fine,” he says, pausing to take a drink. “I’m sorry I made a mess before.”

  She waves him off. “It’s nothing at all. I’m glad you’re feeling better. Where have you been? I was worried.”

  “I was just out walking.”

  “That old teacher of yours came around looking for you.”

  “Old teacher who?”

  “Ava’s son.”

  “What? Ava, your boss?”

  “Yeah, Nick Bifulco.”

  “He was looking for me? Why?”

  “I don’t know. Very strange. Are you going out again tonight?”

  “I’m just gonna sit down on the couch and read. You think Uncle Alberto has some money you can borrow to pay off Tommy?”

  She shrugs. “We’ll see tomorrow.”

  “He’s bringing a new girlfriend?”

  “Who knows with him.”

  Mikey grabs a book from the box and trudges into the living room and turns on the lamp. It’s a lamp that’s been in her family for fifty years. The shade is tattered and torn. A kind of pastoral scene is painted on the side of the body. Big, open field, children and dogs running through grass, a sunset in the distance. Rosemarie’s never seen a field like that. She’s never really seen a sunset like that either. The way the light hits the neighborhood, the way it glows over the rooftops, that she knows. But nothing like the lamp.

  Mikey crashes onto the couch next to the lamp.

  Rosemarie stands in the doorway and looks at him.

  “What are you doing the rest of the night?” Mikey asks, eyeing her over the top of his open book. “Watching me read?”

  “No, smart guy,” she says, drawing back into the kitchen. “I’m gonna take a shower and paint my nails. Maybe listen to the news.”

  “Exciting,” Mikey says.

  “Very,” she says, sitting in her chair at the table, trying not to think about Big Time Tommy, trying instead to focus on the meal she’s making tomorrow. She wonders if she should call Alberto to tell him about Big Time Tommy’s visit, to ask for money so she doesn’t blindside him over dinner. She thinks she will.

  MIKEY BALDINI

  The inside of Donna’s apartment had been warm and sad. Mikey liked seeing her records. He likes that she likes music. He pictures her now, sitting in front of her turntable and speakers, dreamily getting lost in whatever she’s listening to. He should’ve asked who her favorites are. She’s probably never heard of the bands he likes. He saw a couple of album covers, but he didn’t recognize anything.

  He’s thinking that most guys his age wouldn’t find her beautiful. But he does. That feels like some sort of accomplishment. He loves how she said she didn’t want to look like a girl, that she liked looking her age. She has this confidence of knowing who she is. She wears her defeat on her face, and it makes her stunning. He likes that she’s divorced. He likes her dark hair with some gray mixed in and her pale skin. He likes that she wasn’t wearing a lot of makeup. He likes that she has wrinkles, little notches next to her eyes and mouth. And she has a figure that no twenty-year-old could have.

  He’s still on the couch, feeling lonely. It must be eleven or so. He’s read about a hundred pages of Salem’s Lot. Rosemarie sat out in the kitchen for a while and painted her nails while listening to WINS. She’s in bed now, and he wonders if she’s sleeping. She never sleeps well. She tosses and turns and worries. With the unexpected visit from Big Time Tommy, it’s probably even worse. Mikey could be in his bed, but he prefers the couch because it feels less permanent. When he’s on the couch he feels that one day soon he could be sleeping somewhere better, maybe in a motel bed with a woman he loves.

  He often dreams of living in motels. He wishes money wasn’t required for everything. He thinks if the world was the way it should be, people could just travel around and do what they want and feel content. For him, that would mean having a car and just driving all over the country and seeing new places and eating in roadside diners and staying in the sorts of motels where complicated characters live in movies.

  His head is spinning. A crazy fucking day. Asking Ludmilla out at the bank, going to Spanky’s and getting a little bit drunk, finding Gabe’s note at the library, meeting Donna, coming home to Big Time Tommy. And his mother said that Mr. Bifulco from Our Lady of the Narrows came around asking for him. He’d honestly forgotten that Mr. Bifulco lived in the neighborhood. One of the main things he remembers about him is that he talked about Hunter S. Thompson a bunch the year Mikey was in his journalism class. That wasn’t nothing. It set him apart from the other dipshits on the faculty, the no-necks and the hard-core religious types, the fuckwads and the pushovers. But what could he possibly want?

  What Mikey’s thinking now is he was busting his mother’s chops about actually working for Tommy, but maybe it’s not the worst idea in the world. What other prospects does he have? He’s tried the liquor store on Bay Parkway. The library is never hiring. He can’t really do shit. Rosemarie said go into the city and find a temp agency. She’s told him, he likes to read so much, maybe he can get a job in publishing. Start at the ground floor, in the mail room, and move on up until he runs the joint.

  He puts the book down on the carpet, open to the page he’s on. The spine is crinkled. He thinks of Gabe reading it. He thinks of what it must be like to go through with hanging yourself. He does
n’t get why anyone would settle on that. Pills, he can understand. Take a bottle of something from the medicine cabinet and wash it down with whiskey. Maybe the fear there is in choking on puke. That would be a rotten way to go.

  When he closes his eyes, he imagines Gabe—though he doesn’t really know what Gabe looked like—hanging from a sturdy pipe.

  He wakes up a few hours later to the sound of his mother clicking off the lamp. She always gets up at four thirty and takes a shower and makes tea and plays solitaire at the kitchen table with the radio on. It’s as if she thinks she won’t wake him.

  That’s what she’s doing now. He just lies there in the dark, staring at the cracks in the ceiling. Eventually, he gets up and goes into his room and changes his clothes.

  His room is an unmade bed with boxes stacked high in the corner and posters on the wall. He never unpacked those boxes after moving back from New Paltz. He’s gotten rid of pretty much everything from high school and before, all the dumb baseball shit and wrestling toys and Star Wars guys. He’s got a crate of clothes, T-shirts and sweatshirts and jeans. He thinks maybe he will go get that corduroy jacket of his old man’s that his mother mentioned. He wants to see Donna again, and he wants to look nice for her.

  The posters on the wall are the same ones he put up in high school. Elle Macpherson’s Sports Illustrated swimsuit cover. John Carpenter’s They Live, with Rowdy Roddy Piper’s eye up close, one of those skeleton alien motherfuckers reflected in the sunglasses pushed low on his nose. The Jesus and Mary Chain’s Darklands. The edges of the posters are all curled, and all three are off-center. His mom’s tried to straighten them a few times, but she made them worse.

  The room has a low ceiling, which makes it feel small. An old radiator that he’s always found beautiful squats in front of the window. The view from the window is of the neighbor’s backyard, overgrown with weeds, weights lined up on a patch of concrete. Mikey sometimes watches this neighbor, whose name he doesn’t know, come out in the early mornings and pump weights among the weeds. It’s too early for him yet.

  Mikey sits on his bed and looks around. A room like this, one he’s spent so much of his life in, holds stories, secrets, things not even his mom could know. Where he hid his first stash of weed. How he and his first girlfriend, Gia, had skipped out of school early and beat Rosemarie home and made out on his bed for an hour until Gia left out the window, using the ancient rusted fire ladder on the side of the house to get down from the roof. Where he hid cigarettes and airplane bottles of scotch. Bringing Sarah Williams from Fort Hamilton High over while Rosemarie was at work and eating her out on the edge of the bed while he kneeled on the floor. He remembers a crinkled gas station receipt that fell out of her pocket as she pushed her pants down.