No Ordinary Love (3 page)

Angelo laughed. “Some of these women look as if they’ve been driven many miles.”

“If they were passenger vehicles, they would have odometers on them,” Tony said. “That is the law. You should not buy a vehicle if the odometer looks as if it has been tampered with.”

Angelo smiled. “It might make life easier for men if women
did
have odometers. They try to cover up their mileage, don’t they?”

“You should never do that,” Tony said. “You should never tamper with an odometer. It is against the law.”

“You got that right.”

Angelo smiled as Jasmine came in, held a finger in the air, and walked to the counter.
If I were ever to hook up with a black woman,
Angelo thought,
that woman would be at the top of the list. Jasmine is so sexy.
“Look at her, Tony. That’s Jasmine. I went to school with her.”

Tony looked at his watch. “I want to go to Far Rockaway now.”

“Come on, check her out.”

Tony looked up briefly. “I see two women.”

“Look at the taller one.”

“She is brown,” Tony said. “I do not know her.”

“Look at that booty,” Angelo said.

“That is not honest,” Tony said.

“Her booty isn’t honest? That booty is the
truth.
”

“It is not honest to stare at her buttocks like that,” Tony said.

“I’m not going to wait for her to
see
me looking at her booty,” Angelo said. “
That
would be rude.”

“It is rude to stare.”

“Not if she doesn’t know you’re staring,” Angelo said. “She’s looking over here, Tony. I think she’s looking at you.”

Tony wound his watch. “She is not looking at me.”

“She must like what she sees.”

“She is not looking at me.”

Angelo sighed. “She
is
looking at you, Tony. You’re a handsome man.”

“I am not handsome.”

“Yes, you are,” Angelo said. “You’re a younger version of me.”

“You said we could ride the subway to Far Rockaway,” Tony said.

“Jasmine is coming over.”

Tony reached into his coat pocket and took out a notepad and pencil.

“Put that away,” Angelo said.

Tony shook his head. “I want to write.”

“Now? Put it away. You’re about to meet a pretty girl.”

“I want to write.” Tony began scribbling on the notepad.

Jasmine came over to their booth. “Hey, Angelo.”

Tony continued to scribble.

“Can I join you two handsome men?” Jasmine asked.

Tony stopped scribbling. “Angelo was staring at your buttocks.”

“He was?” Jasmine slid into the booth next to Tony. “Were you, Angelo?”

“Well, you know me,” Angelo said.

Jasmine sighed. “See anything you liked?”

Angelo nodded.

“I did not stare at your buttocks,” Tony said. “It is rude to stare at other people’s buttocks.” He resumed his scribbling.

“What are you doing, Tony?” Jasmine asked.

Tony continued to scribble.

“What are you writing?” Jasmine asked.

“Notes,” Tony said.

Jasmine leaned closer, shadows forming on the notepad.

Tony moved the notepad away from Jasmine and into the light.

“Is that written in English or Italian?” Jasmine asked.

“It is in English,” Tony said. “I do not have good handwriting. English is the only language I know. Your leg is hot. It is firm yet soft. You are sitting too close to me.”

“Oh, sorry.” Jasmine scooted farther away. “Is that better?”

Tony looked at her leg. “Four more centimeters away is better. This booth is too small.”

Jasmine moved farther away. “What do you write about, Tony?”

“Your gum is peppermint,” Tony said. “I like spearmint. The flavor in the average piece of gum lasts fifteen minutes.”

“I believe it,” Jasmine said. “So . . . what do you write about?”

“I write in English,” Tony said. “That is the language I speak. I know some Italian from Poppa, but he is dead. We put him in the ground three years, four months, seven days, six hours, and”—he checked his watch—“ten minutes ago. He is buried at the Holy Cross Cemetery.”

“Jasmine doesn’t want to hear about that, Tony,” Angelo said.

“We put a Christmas tree on his grave every year,” Tony said. “Someone stole it last year.”

“That’s terrible,” Jasmine said, touching his hand.

Tony jerked his hand away. “This is the cold and flu season.”

“My hands are clean,” Jasmine said.

“Relax, Tony, geez,” Angelo said.

“The average human hand has one hundred and fifty species of bacteria on it at any given time,” Tony said.

“I wash them all the time,” Jasmine said.

“You cannot kill all the germs,” Tony said. “You should not kill all the germs. Some bacteria are good for you.” Tony returned to his scribbling.

Jasmine mouthed “wow” to Angelo.

“I told you it wouldn’t be easy, Jasmine,” Angelo said. “He takes some getting used to.”

“Can’t he hear you?” Jasmine whispered.

“Not when he’s writing like that,” Angelo said. “He gets locked in like that sometimes. Poppa called it selective hearing, but I know different. He’s beside you, but he’s not really there. I have no idea where he goes, but he goes there hard. I call it Sponge World. Something you said or I said or something else he hears sends him there. A car beeps. Someone coughs. He hears some music. He sees a certain color. He smells something. You could tell him this place was on fire, and he wouldn’t notice.”

“And he’s really never talked to a woman before,” Jasmine said.

“Nope.” Angelo wrapped his knuckles on the table. “Tony?”

Tony looked up. “Are we going to Far Rockaway now?”

“You’re being rude to Jasmine,” Angelo said.

Tony looked
around
Jasmine’s face. “You have an Afro.”

“Yes,” Jasmine said.

“It is fluffy.” Tony reached out his hand. “May I touch it?”

“No,” Jasmine said, jerking her head away from his hand, her eyes wide.

“My hands are clean,” Tony said. “I use sanitizer. It kills ninety-nine percent of all germs. That leaves me with only one thousand germs on my fingers or two hundred germs per finger. I will only touch your hair with the tip of one finger.”

“You can’t touch her hair, Tony,” Angelo said.

“It is pretty,” Tony said. “I like it.” He returned to his writing.

“Thank you,” Jasmine said.

“He didn’t hear you,” Angelo said.

“I want him to hear me,” Jasmine said.

“Knock on the table,” Angelo said. “It seems to work.”

Jasmine knocked on the table.

Tony looked up. “Are we going to Far Rockaway now?”

“Thank you for thinking my hair is pretty,” Jasmine said.

Tony took a deep breath. “You have nice thighs. They are muscular and smooth and brown. They are hot. You have removed all the hair.”

Jasmine laughed. “I try.”

“They are not ashy,” Tony said. “Many women have ashy thighs. You do not have ashy thighs. You must use lotion.”

“I do,” Jasmine said. “Lots and lots of lotion.”

“You smell like coconut,” Tony said. “I am allergic to coconut.”

“It’s just the
scent
of coconut, Tony,” Angelo said.

“If I eat coconut, my throat swells up and I cannot breathe,” Tony said. “I will not eat you, Jasmine.”

“Um, thanks,” Jasmine said.

“I like your eyes,” Tony said. “They have gold flecks in them.” He blinked rapidly. “Jasmine’s eyes, bold gold flecks, cocoa thighs, coconut sex . . .” He flipped to a blank page on his notepad and wrote furiously.

“What was that?” Jasmine asked. “What did he say?”

“He gets stuck in an idea sometimes,” Angelo said. “He does these word association rhyme things all the time. Try to ignore him.”

Tony counted on his fingers. “Too many syllables.” He marked something out and mouthed the words. “Better.”

Jasmine moved farther away from Tony. “He said something about coconut sex, Angelo.”

“Compared to some of his other phrases,” Angelo said, “that’s pretty tame.”

Tony began rocking back and forth, mumbling. “He’s beginning to creep me out,” Jasmine said. “I should go.”

“Don’t leave,” Angelo said. “Please. He’ll be back soon.”

Tony stopped rocking and writing and put the pencil and notepad into his coat pocket. “I want to go to Far Rockaway now.”

“Tony, do you think Jasmine is pretty?” Angelo asked.

Tony turned slowly and let his eyes wander over Jasmine. “Her lips are plump and red then brown. She has white, shiny teeth. Her nose is smaller than mine. She has a tattoo of a snake tail above her left breast. I do not know where the rest of the snake is. She has furry eyebrows. Her earrings make ding-ding sounds when she talks. Her breasts are in perfect proportion to her ample buttocks. She wears underwear.”

Jasmine moved out of the booth. “I’m leaving now.”

“Just wait, Jasmine,” Angelo said.

“Your brother is a
freak,
” Jasmine whispered.

“He tells the truth at all times,” Angelo said. “He never lies. He is complimenting you. Really.”

“You are very pretty,” Tony said.

Jasmine sat. “Thank you, Tony. That’s very sweet of you to say.”

“Jasmine is a white or reddish flower with a delightful fragrance,” Tony said. “It is often seen in gardens of the southern United States. You are not white or red. You are dark brown and tan and black. You are not in the southern United States. Your name is wrong.”

“What?” Jasmine cried.

“You have child-bearing hips,” Tony said.

“Oh, that’s
enough!
” Jasmine left the booth. “I’m outta here.”

“Jasmine, give him a chance,” Angelo said. “He’s harmless.”

Tony glanced at her. “Pink.”

Jasmine snatched her coffee. “What?”

“Your tongue is pink,” Tony said. “I like that color.” He stuck out his tongue. “My tongue is red. My dog Tonto has a black and red tongue. He licks his balls with it.”

“Yeah, um, right,” Jasmine said, backing away from the booth. “You need to keep your brother on a leash. . . .”

Two weeks later, Angelo sold “Coconut Sex” to Jam U, an up-and-coming R & B group from Atlanta.

Four months later, Jam U released it as a single.

It went Platinum.

3

O
ver the next ten years, Angelo helped his brother to become more and more independent. At first, Angelo had to be with Tony wherever they went, mainly to soften and deflect any of the more outrageous things he might say to servers, store clerks, or people on the street or on the subway. Over time, Angelo merely shadowed Tony, making sure he didn’t cause too much trouble.

Or cause a woman to punch him out for being too honest.

By the time he was thirty-five, Tony was going out alone to cafés and coffeehouses in every nook and cranny of Brooklyn, his only tether to Angelo a smartphone that Angelo called every hour or so to check up on him. Tony spent his days out in Brooklyn, writing songs on his little notepads while sponging up dialogue and street sounds, later turning them into music using his dusty piano and an old Roland CR-78 drum machine Angelo bought him. Tony enjoyed riding the subway for these adventures and often spent hours listening to subway and street musicians.

“Art E. could be sitting next to you scribbling lyrics on the G train right now,” Angelo wrote in the biography. “He could be in front of a violinist in Central Park, seeing the notes in the air as the violinist plays. He might be beat-boxing in his mumbling, stumbling way with a crew on some street corner in Bedford-Stuyvesant. Art E. is always sponging, always searching for music, always soaking up the lives of perfect strangers to give life to his music.”

Angelo had tried without success to get Tony to keep a separate notepad for any conversations he might have with women on his travels.

“I do not have conversations with women,” Tony said. “I do not talk to strangers.”

“Sometimes strange women are fun to talk to,” Angelo said. “And after you talk to them, they aren’t as strange anymore.”

“I will not talk to strange women.”

Angelo tried again a few days after Christmas as Tony prepared to go out wearing his favorite Brooklyn Dodgers jacket, black gloves, and a New York Jets knit hat. “Hey, if you talk to any women, write it down.”

“I will not talk to any women,” Tony said.

“Come on, Tony,” Angelo said. “We have to improve your relations with women so you can get a wife one day.”

“I do not need a wife.”

“If you had a wife,” Angelo said, “you’d have someone to love. Then you can have children.”

“I do not need someone to love,” Tony said. “I do not need children.”

“We all need someone to love,” Angelo said.

“I do not need someone to love.”

“Don’t you ever get lonely?”

“No.”

He answered so quickly.
“Not late at night when it’s just you in the bed?”

“There is no one else in my bed,” Tony said.

“Besides Silver.”

“Silver sleeps on the floor now,” Tony said. “He licks his balls. He keeps me awake. Tonto licked his balls before he died. Silver is going to die soon.”

“Silver isn’t going to die soon,” Angelo said. “Please do this
one
thing for me. I do everything else around here.”

“You do not do everything else,” Tony said. “Delores cooks for us. Mrs. Jimenez cleans for us. The garbage men take our—”

“I sell your music, Tony,” Angelo interrupted.
I make sure you’re safe. I keep the world from messing with you. I supply you with toothpaste, notepads, map books, and Hires Root Beer.

“I never asked you to sell my music.”

“Well, we wouldn’t have any of this if I didn’t,” Angelo said. “We wouldn’t have the Castle if I didn’t. You wouldn’t have a music studio.”

“I liked Mama and Poppa’s house better,” Tony said. “It was smaller. I miss the cellar.”

Angelo knew Tony spent some of his days standing in front of the old brownstone in Cobble Hill.
As if he’s waiting for Mama and Poppa to open the door for him.

“Just . . . write down what you say to women and what they say to you today, okay?”