Anyone But You (5 page)

“It’s my fault. Tell you what: I’ll find her for you.”

“I spent all day looking for her, Benny. It’s done; she’s gone.”

“
I’ll find her for you.
”

“You don’t even know what she looks like.”

“I got a glance,” he shrugged. “What’s her name?”

“Stella. Like ‘star.’ You’re never going to find one star among millions. Besides, I don’t even know her last name.” I gazed up toward the sky for a moment, then glanced back at my friend. “What’s the story with your shirt, by the way? Did you come home by way of the Union Stock Yards?”

“It’s not blood, it’s marinara sauce,” he responded. “Which reminds me, I’m starving. Come up to my place for some of my ma’s cooking, and I’ll explain everything that happened to me after you left. You won’t believe my good luck. It’s
incredible.
” Leave it to Benny to have had a wonderful, remarkable day. As we climbed the front stoop, Benny threw a reassuring arm over my sagging shoulders.

“It may take a little while, but I’ll find her for you, Nicky,” he repeated. “Trust me on this.”

• • •

“Thanks, Mrs. Caputo,” I said, as Benny’s mother cleared our plates from the table. Out of politeness I forced myself to down the last morsel of her normally mouth-watering linguini with clams. The dish tasted the same as always, but for some reason I didn’t find it as tempting tonight.

“
Ay, bambino
,” sighed his mother in exasperation as she sized up her youngest in his high chair. He appeared to be wearing more of the pasta than he’d actually eaten. Three of Benny’s other younger siblings were in the adjacent living room, apparently engaged in some version of Greco-Roman wrestling, complete with shrieks and loud thuds. Let it be said that life was never dull at Benny’s place. As an only child, I was ever amused by the nonstop cacophony in the Caputo apartment. “You know, Dominick, you’re welcome here anytime,” Mrs. Caputo remarked, ruffling my hair as she passed behind my chair with two more plates. “Are you sure you don’t want a cold compress for that bruise?”

“No, ma’am.”

“You need to be more careful,” she warned. “Watch where you’re going or you’re liable to really hurt yourself next time.”

“Yes, ma’am.” I shot Benny a glare, but only in jest. We’d agreed on the way up to his family’s apartment that it would be better to tell his parents and my mother that I’d inadvertently fallen headfirst into the street after tripping over a tree root. It was easy to blame it on that, since I had a reputation for being a klutz. Benny, as usual, was already on thin ice with his father, and a “street brawl” wouldn’t do him any favors in the filial relations department.

“And you, young man.” Mrs. Caputo, as if reading my thoughts, looked over at Benny, shaking her head in displeasure. “What’s your excuse for coming home in that sorry state? It will take me hours to get those stains out.”

“If things work out the way I think they will, Ma, soon you’ll be able to send the laundry out to old Mrs. Speranza.”

“Never mind. You’d better finish up quick and go change before your father gets home.”

I was dying to know what Benny was up to, yet I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of urging him to spill it. While I bore him no malice for clocking me, I was still nursing a grudge about Stella. I wondered if I’d ever be able to completely forgive my best friend, even though there’s no way he could’ve understood the depth of my feeling. Heck, even I didn’t quite understand it. The only thing I could equate it to was
King Kong
, the movie Benny and I had seen under the elaborate dome of the Uptown Theatre. At the time, I’d been mesmerized by the gaudy opulence of the picture palace—meant to help us all forget for a few hours the Depression waiting just outside the threshold—and thrilled by the action and high drama of the film. It was only now that I had an inkling of what that giant hairy ape had felt for Fay Wray. Sure, I was twelve, but I was convinced I’d experienced what’s known as love at first sight. Love at only sight, actually, since despite Benny’s promise, it was doubtful I’d ever see Stella again.

“C’mon, Nick,” he said, breaking into my thoughts, “hurry up and finish. We’ll go talk out on the fire escape.”

To us city kids, the fire escape was the equivalent of a tree house. We spent hours there, our legs dangling off the metal platform, as we waxed philosophic on everything from the batting averages of our favorite sluggers to the pros and cons of various superhero powers. We speculated on how far we might be able to spit from this high up and plotted our future careers, vacillating between Western gunslinger, flying ace, and submarine captain, the latter after we read Jules Verne’s
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea
.

Benny and I had known each other since we were in utero, if you can count that. Our parents lived on the same floor of the building. His ma and mine had compared notes about their swelling bellies as they hung laundry to dry in the building’s claustrophobic courtyard out back. Following our births (I came first, by three weeks), he and I were routinely shuffled back and forth across the third-story landing. Mrs. Caputo would watch me when Ma ran errands, and we’d take Benny whenever his mother had her hands full with his four younger siblings (which meant he was at our place more often than not). We romped our way through Hull House kindergarten classes together in matching sailor suits, and later donned black cassocks and white surplices as altar boys at Our Lady of Pompeii Church. Most of my childhood memories were infused with images of this pal of mine, from hours spent emulating Douglas Fairbanks in
The Black Pirate
to our lengthy discussions about if and when the White Sox might clinch the pennant again. Benny once told me that, until he was six years old, he thought we were actually brothers who lived in separate apartments. He was the Laurel to my Hardy, the Mutt to my Jeff, the Barnum to my Bailey. Despite the polarity of our personalities, we were frequently mistaken for fraternal twins. When my dad died a few years ago following a freak accident at the factory where he worked, people either looked at me with pity or avoided me outright so as to detour any awkwardness. Everyone but Benny, that is. His “business as usual” demeanor sustained me until I managed to build some semblance of a scaffold around my heart. Sure, we got on each other’s nerves; spending as much time together as we did made it unavoidable. But today’s fray seemed different; more indelible. It was fitting that we ended it, like so many other days before, on the fire escape, and that this was where Benny filled me in on the enterprise that was to become our life’s work.

“
Pizza?
” I asked, repeating what he had just said. We had purchased our share of the tasty Italian specialty at “two cents a chew” from a favorite neighborhood peddler who traversed the streets of our neighborhood, distributing pizza from the metal washtub he carried on his head.

“Antonio says it’s the food of the future,” Benny said in response to my incredulous look.

“Who’s Antonio, and what makes him the expert?”

“Aren’t you listening?” Benny replied. “He’s the pizza guy. I saw him at the fair. They’re selling like hotcakes. He and his wife can hardly keep up with the demand, so he’s expanding. That’s where we come in. We’ll be his apprentices. One of us will learn how to make the pizza while the other takes out Antonio’s second cart. Then we’ll swap. Here we thought seeing the Chicago World’s Fair was a once in a lifetime opportunity. Now we’re going to get
paid
to hang out there every day! Imagine all the excitement we’ll get to be a part of!”

“How much will he pay us?” I asked, ever the pragmatist.

“A pittance, but what else are we going to do this summer? Once we learn the business, we can save up and break out on our own. Think of it: Benny and Nick’s Pizza.”

“Don’t you mean Nick and Benny’s Pizza?”

“Sure, if that’s what you want.”

“When do we start?”

“Tomorrow.”

Sleep should have been my succor after the exhausting day I’d had, but that night I lay in bed tossing and turning. I was, of course, partly worked up over the anticipation of returning to the fair the following morning. The thought of getting to go to the greatest extravaganza on earth for the next few months—and get paid, to boot—was admittedly thrilling, but I couldn’t manage to drum up the appropriate level of enthusiasm. Instead, my thoughts kept returning to Stella. I’d never had a girl as clever and beautiful as her give me the time of day. Holding her hand had been a high point in my life, and not just because we were umpteen stories off the ground. What a cad she must have thought me, to have left her hanging there, alone in that seedy arcade, when I had given her my word. I sat up in bed and clicked on the small lamp on my bedside table. My face still throbbed from where Benny’s fist had made its mark. Reaching into the drawer of the nightstand, I pulled out my copy of
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
There it was, still tucked between the pages at the beginning of Chapter Eighteen: My 1909 Honus Wagner baseball card. Nicknamed The Flying Dutchman, Wagner was one of the greatest shortstops in the history of the game. My dad had gotten this card from a pack of smokes in his younger days, and given our shared passion for the sport, it was one of the few items of his that I requested from Ma after he passed. Staring at Honus in his almost formal-looking Pittsburgh Pirates uniform against a gold background, I permitted myself to remember my father. It was something I normally didn’t do, as it was just too painful. Dad had only been thirty-three years old when he died. This card connected me to him, far more than the framed photos Mom kept in her bedroom, or his World War I Victory Medal that we kept on display in the china cabinet. The card was scuffed around the edges from where Pops used to carry it in his wallet—“My lucky charm,” he’d say—but I’d been treating it like the Holy Grail since taking possession of it. Benny was the only person I’d ever let have a glimpse of this small, personal treasure. Only he could understand the scope of its sentimental significance. I slid the card back into its berth at the start of Chapter Eighteen and returned the novel to my nightstand drawer, clicking off the lamp. Tomorrow was going to be another long day. I needed to sleep.

“G
IGI!
I
N THE NAME OF ALL THINGS HOLY—
you’re not even dressed yet!”

“Relax, Mom,” I said, still wearing a green tank top and cutoff jean shorts. “It’s just so hot back here by the oven. Unless you want me to wilt before I make my grand entrance, I’m not changing until the last minute. By the way, I’ll start to smell like garlic if you keep me back here much longer.” I patted my hair, which she’d carefully curled and set into an elaborate updo at the nape of my neck. The bobby pins jutting into my skull felt like tiny instruments of torture. Thankfully, after plucking a few wayward eyebrow hairs, she decided that caking my sun-kissed olive skin with makeup would be gilding the lily. I’d gotten off easy with just a bit of blush and some light pink lip gloss. My mother glanced at her watch, then pushed a stray tendril of hair behind my ear.

The simple ivory lace sheath she’d miraculously let me choose for this evening was still hanging up in its garment bag in the stockroom. Mom had compensated for my subtle choice by wearing enough glimmering rhinestones to outshine a Vegas showgirl, but despite our difference in tastes, she looked very pretty in her bedazzled cocktail dress. I could only hope to age so well.

“Oh baby, I’m so proud of you,” she said, beaming. “Just be snappy when we call for you. It’ll be another ten minutes or so, once we’re sure all the guests have arrived. Angelo, will you make sure her bra straps are tucked in when she gets her dress on?”

“
Mom!
”

“Oh, for Pete’s sake, Gigi, you know I lost any sense of modesty around Angelo on the day you were born.” Chef didn’t turn his attention away from the crostini hors d’oeuvres he was prepping, but I saw him raise his eyebrows in comic assent. To make a
very
long story short, he had ushered me into the world—right here on the floor of Cap’s kitchen—when Mom had gone into labor with me during our Saturday night dinner service, three weeks earlier than I was due to arrive. It was clear Mom wasn’t going to make it to the hospital on time, and since Dad was a total basket case, Chef had abandoned his post at the stove long enough to catch me in a flour sack kitchen towel. His nickname for me, to this day, was “Ladybird,” because he said I had resembled a slippery plucked chicken in his arms. “And you squawked like a chicken, too,” he liked to remind me. By the same token, I couldn’t recall a time when I called him anything other than “Chef.” Standing at the helm of Cap’s kitchen wasn’t just a job for him—it was, in many ways, his identity.

“In five minutes, I want you dressed and ready, young lady,” Mom instructed, kissing my forehead. On her way back toward the dining room she paused at the swinging door and threw me a backward glance. “Perry and his father are here,” she said with a sly grin. “He brought you a long-stemmed red rose! Isn’t that
romantic
?”

I gave her a tepid smile, figuring this wasn’t a great moment to voice my opposition. Discussing my unwitting love life with my mother made me inwardly wince.

Chef grabbed my shoulders and gently positioned me two feet away from the prep sink, where he was about to rinse some more tomatoes.

“Natalie Wood. That’s who you remind me of, with your hair like that. Except she had brown eyes, and yours are that knockout blue from God-knows-where in the family gene pool.”

“Natalie who?”

“Oh, child, I’ve gone and passed my expiration date, haven’t I? All I’m trying to say is, you’d give any Hollywood starlet an ugly complex. Is this Perry who I think he is?”

“Yeah. The son of Dad’s sugar daddy.”

“Careful, Little Miss Lippy. That’s no way to talk about your father.”

“I know,” I said, guiltily. “I’m just tired of everyone trying to sell me on ‘Stare-y Perry.’ He never blinks, by the way. Just gapes. Like a fish.”