Anyone But You (7 page)

“It’s neon,” Benny proudly explained. “They call it ‘liquid fire.’ And if you think it’s bright now, you should see the way it’s going to look after dark. This is really going to get people’s attention.”

“By
blinding
them?”

“This is the future, Nick. Trust me.”

I sighed and climbed off the stepladder I was standing on, setting my paint roller back in its tray. Despite the open door and windows, the paint fumes were getting to me.

“Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure it’ll cause a stir. But a metal placard would have been a lot cheaper. We’ve got to be careful with our funds, Ben. The pizza oven is setting us back a pretty penny, and you go blowing the budget on this?”

“Relax, Nick. Haven’t you ever heard the expression, ‘You’ve got to spend money to make money?’”

“Oh, now you’re J.P. Morgan, spouting off financial wisdom? We’re just a couple of kids who dropped out of high school to make pizza.”

“And look where it’s gotten us, my friend!” Benny smiled exuberantly, extending his arms to size up the small corner shop we’d recently leased. “Twenty-year-old entrepreneurs? Who’d have ever thunk it? Antonio must be smiling down on us, God rest his soul.”

Our cherished friend and original mentor from that summer at the World’s Fair, Antonio the pizza peddler had passed away three years earlier in a tragic streetcar accident. His wife, Vera, had been pregnant at the time with her first child, so Benny and I had stepped in to assume operation of the small pizza shack he had started, which was little more than a tin shed with an oven. Under Antonio’s tutelage, Benny and I had become masters at slinging pies. The Naples-born immigrant’s no-fail formula for a perfect crust and mouthwatering marinara proved a literal recipe for success, especially among the residents of the city’s Italian enclaves who were homesick for a taste of the old country. Benny and I eventually quit school early and took over Antonio’s business following his death. Although we were only seventeen years old at the time, we managed to make our modest profits rise at a slow but steady rate. As a result, we had money enough in our pockets to supplement our families’ incomes and still provide for Antonio’s widow and her baby daughter, Carmen. It had been Benny’s idea to use the small savings we had amassed to open a bona fide brick-and-mortar location, which is how I came to be standing here painting over the pink walls of what was formerly a ladies’ haberdashery near the corner of West Lawrence and North Broadway.

“Why is the top foot and a half of that wall still pink?” Benny asked in confusion, sizing up my incomplete paint job.

“That’s as high as I’m going on the ladder,” I said, wiping my brow on my blue denim coveralls, which were now speckled white. “I left the rest for you, so grab a paintbrush and make yourself useful.”

“It’ll have to wait,” replied Benny, too distracted to mock my still unrelenting fear of heights. “I can’t get paint on these duds. Got a girl coming over later.”

“Of course you do,” I said. “Only one this time?”

“No, actually, I threw you a bone and told her to bring her sister. You can thank me later, after you’ve sized her up. We can all go tear it up over at the Green Mill.”

“And get shot up with Tommy guns?” I asked, facetiously. The Green Mill Jazz Club, spitting distance from where we were, was a known gangster hangout and speakeasy during the Prohibition Era. Al Capone’s favorite booth was now practically a holy shrine there.

“The way I see it, all those ‘wise guys’ are our potential customers. We ought to mingle.”

“Benny.” I looked at him with exasperation.

“What? I’m
kidding.
”

“I’m not. We’re swamped with work here. Now’s not the time to be chasing skirts and pretending we’re hepcats.”

“She’s not just some skirt. And I’m not chasing her. We’re in love.”

I opened my mouth to speak, but nothing came out. I was slack-jawed. I’d watched Benny make time with a decade’s worth of pretty girls. Like Chicago’s leading Lothario, he’d spent his adolescence stealing (and squandering) the hearts of fair maidens with much the same enthusiasm that he’d exhibited as a child collecting fireflies in a jar. As with the bugs, his fascination for these young women dissipated the moment he had actually captured them. Going steady was never his aim—it was only the chase he found exhilarating. Needless to say, “love” had never even entered his vocabulary, so now that he’d uttered it for the first time, the word resonated in my ears like a ladle clanging the bottom of an empty spaghetti pot. Even though I was standing on the floor, I felt struck by a fleeting sense of vertigo, and reached for the push broom propped against a table to steady myself.

Benny leaned his back against the tile counter we’d installed last week and hopped himself to a seated position atop it.

“I know what you’re thinking,” he began.

“Am I that predictable?” I rested my chin on the tip of the broom handle.

“This is different,” he said, ignoring my question. “I am done. Playing the field, I mean.”

“Have you lost your mind?”

“Not any more so than usual,” he joked. I walked over to him and placed the back of my hand across his forehead as if checking his temperature.

“Are you ill?” I wondered. He shook his head, grinning. Was he actually blushing? I clutched his chin in my hand and turned his face back and forth as if examining a melon.

“No,” I said decisively. “This cannot be my friend Benito Caputo. He’s been switched, under cover of night, with some sappy, starry-eyed Romeo.”

“It’s true, Nick. I love this woman.”

“A
woman?!
Oh, thank God. I was worried that you’d fallen for some pack mule. But that’s what you may liken your ‘fair Juliet’ to tomorrow when the next pretty girl turns your head.”

“Not this time, Nick. Not anymore. She’s smart, she’s feisty, she’s a real looker, and she’s the one—I’m certain of it.”

“
The one?
” I was incredulous. He smiled and nodded. “Well, for crying out loud, you old dope! I’m happy for you!” Prodding him in the ribs, I added, “In that case, I’m glad she’s on her way over here. I’ve got to meet the nice Sicilian girl who finally nabbed the mythical Golden Fleece: your heart.”

“Yeah. About that ….”

“Wait—don’t tell me she’s a
Genovese
. I might have to disown you,” I teased.

“Funny thing, actually. She’s not even Italian,” Benny clarified, setting off more of my mental clanging.

“Now you’re pulling my leg! Let me guess: Polish? German?”

“Neither. She’s … not exactly from our neighborhood.”

“The plot thickens,” I replied dramatically, backing away from him and returning to my paint roller. “Papa Caputo’s not going to be too keen on this.”

“Tell me about it,” he sighed. “I haven’t told him or my mother yet.”

“Remind me to vacate the premises when you let that cat—or should I say kitten—out of the bag.”

“I know, I know. Ma’s going to start crying that it ain’t right with God. Dad’s going to, well … I’m not sure whose father I should be more worried about, mine or my girl’s.”

Benny’s musings were interrupted by the piercing sound of glass breaking and a small popping explosion. Our sign! We both ran to the front window and saw shards of colored glass raining down onto the sidewalk. The old wooden bowling pin that had struck the neon sign rolled off the sidewalk and into the street like a wobbly bandit making its half-hearted getaway. A silver-and-white Hudson Coupe squealed through the intersection just as some hoodlum hanging from the passenger window screamed, “Feed it to the Pope! We don’t want you Sacco-Vanzettis around here!” (The pejorative referred to two Italian immigrants who’d been executed for armed robbery and murder in 1927.)

Benny yelled a litany of Italian curse words at the vandals as the car disappeared into the distance. A few pedestrians stopped and gaped. Still muttering under his breath, Benny spun on his heel and stormed into the kitchen.

I respected my friend too much to ever say “I told you so,” but that didn’t mean I wasn’t thinking it. When we initially discussed opening a counter-service pizzeria, I had suggested a location in our home turf, somewhere on Taylor Street, where you couldn’t walk two feet without bumping into a paisano. Benny disagreed with me, arguing that the best way to grow the business would be to introduce it beyond the sphere of Little Italy.

“That way, we expand our customer base—introduce a taste of Napoli to all the people whose last names don’t end with a vowel,” he said at the time.

“But the people you’re talking about wouldn’t know mozzarella from an umbrella,” I’d argued. “You’re banking that we can convert
them
into pizza lovers?”

“This isn’t just any pizza. It’s
our
pizza. One taste, and we’ll have ’em eating out of the palm of our hands. Or
their
hands, I should say. We can’t lose.”

Since our calamitous (and, in many ways, fortuitous) first day at the World’s Fair all those years ago, I had never forgotten Benny’s criticism that I was too cautious, too afraid to take a risk. So while the pragmatist in me harbored serious doubts, I had buried them and agreed to set up shop in this swank section of Uptown, a good six miles north of our home turf. This was Benny, after all. I trusted him.

I swept up the broken glass out front. Benny spent about an hour in the back of the shop, shifting around wooden crates of cooking supplies while I finished up some detail painting along the floorboards. When he finally reemerged from the kitchen, he took a cross-legged seat beside me on the ground, looking more dejected than I was accustomed to seeing him.

“Well, you were right about the sign,” I said.

“How do you figure?”

“It certainly attracted attention.”

“I won’t argue with you there,” he sighed. “I’ll figure out some replacement tomorrow. Guess a metal placard would be better, after all.”

“No way.” I shook my head. “Tell that neon sign company to make us a brand new one. Only
bigger
, this time. And brighter, if that’s even possible.” A slow grin emerged on my pal’s face.

“What about the budget?”

“If we’re going to do business on this end of town, we’d better
mean
business, too,” I said. “Nobody’s running us out of here. We’ll take out a loan if we have to. Besides, didn’t you know you have to spend money to make money?”

“Now who’s the one not acting like himself?” Benny laughed, slapping me on the back so hard that I lost my balance and placed one hand into the can of paint I’d been using to touch up the trim.

“Watch it, wise guy!” I yelled, annoyed but laughing in spite of myself. I reached to smear my hand on Benny’s face, but he grabbed my wrist and held it at arm’s length.

“Unhand me, you dried herring!” I shouted, setting my mouth into a steely grimace as I issued my challenge. For as long as I could remember, trying to out-insult each other had been our favorite sport. Whoever balked during a quick succession of comebacks—or laughed first—forfeited.

“Flea-bitten gypsy!” Benny replied. Gritting his teeth and twisting my wrist, we simultaneously launched into an arm-wrestling showdown.

“Rank-smelling rapscallion!”

“Knobby-kneed gnat!”

“Pig-snouted … canker sore!”

“Sweat-stained scamp!”

“Clay-brained, Cupid-struck carbuncle!” My last remark prompted an uptick at the corners of Benny’s mouth: an involuntary grin.

“Hey, can’t a couple of girls get some service around here?” A feminine voice interrupted our horseplay as Benny, vanquished, released his grip on me.

“I win,” I taunted him.

“No.
I
win,” he grinned, pointing at the visitor who’d interrupted. “Estelle! You made it!” He bounded toward the front entrance to greet a young woman of indescribable beauty. Benny clearly hadn’t been exaggerating his claims. I half-expected him to launch into a vaudeville-style song and dance number at the sight of her, but he seemed unexpectedly well-mannered around her.

“You must be Nick,” she said, unclutching one gloved hand from the handle of her pocketbook and extending it toward me. I displayed my paint-covered right hand and shrugged. She laughed. With bright eyes and hair that framed her face in a glossy platinum permanent wave, she was an Art Deco goddess come to life. Her face mixed a screen siren’s beauty with the placid serenity of those hallowed creatures in the copy of
Early Christian Saints
Ma kept on the shelf of her nightstand. “It’s wonderful to finally meet you!” she continued. “Ben’s told me so much about you.”

“My apologies for that. I’m afraid I’m a terrible bore.”

“Oh, that’s okay. The coma only lasted a few days.”

Wow. This girl didn’t miss a beat, and judging by her bold red lips and the jaunty angle at which she wore her felt tilt hat, I got the sense she was no shrinking violet. Since I wasn’t sure to what extent Benny had professed his feelings to her (nor was I completely convinced my friend was ready to retire his jersey as the Near West Side’s number one playboy) I opted not to make a huge verbal fuss over meeting her. After all, Benny seemed effusive enough for the both of us.

“She’s gorgeous isn’t she?” he proclaimed, throwing all subtlety to the wind. Though I naturally agreed with him, it would have been awkward for me to vocally concur, especially in front of her sister, who clearly hadn’t inherited the same exquisite features.

“And you must be Gertrude,” Benny said, turning to this glum and lackluster also-ran, who looked as if she would rather be in Timbuktu. My friend threw me an apologetic sideways glance.

“That’s right,” the sister practically huffed. Pointing to the freshly painted walls, she added, “Why’d you miss the top part?”

“Care to explain, my acrophobic friend?” Benny asked, staring at me with a smirk.

“Come now, Nick. You’re not afraid of heights?” Something about that question, or the sound of Estelle’s voice as she asked it, gave me a startling sensation of déjà vu. Before I could answer, she was onto another subject. “This is so exciting, Ben!” She sized up the room with a broad smile and a glint in her eye. As she made a fuss over what we’d done with the place and how thrilled she was for us, I stared fixedly at the young woman, trying to figure out what it was that was making me feel inexplicably mesmerized by her. She was a stunner, yes, but as Benny’s longtime sidekick I’d seen plenty of pretty girls. Why did this one seem so different? Perhaps I subconsciously recognized her as some sort of symbolic punctuation mark in my life. Things were bound to change between Benny and me, especially if he was truly as gone on her as he claimed. Yet that sixth sense didn’t entirely account for the fact that my heart was in my throat, and I had to stop myself from staring. My train of thought was interrupted by the less-than-symphonic voice of her sister.