Onion Street (14 page)

When he was done checking that the van was locked, he crossed over to my side of the street, but never got close to me. Instead, he walked into a hole-in-the-wall neighborhood bar. Part of me was very tempted to walk in there after him, but I wasn’t in the mood to get my ass kicked. Besides, strangers tend to stick out in neighborhood bars like Hasids at a hoedown. There’s no way to just slip in undetected. The minute the door opens in a local joint, everyone in the place turns to see who’s coming in. Instead, I took the opportunity to check out the van more closely. I already had its plate number memorized, but I wanted to take a look inside. I pressed my face to the windshield, cupping my hands around my eyes to block out the sun. There wasn’t much to see. But for the two front seats, it was as bare as Old Mother Hubbard’s cupboard, and not nearly as cozy. Then, when I moved around to the passenger side window to get a different view, I realized it wasn’t quite as empty as it seemed. It had one thing in it I was sure Old Mother Hubbard’s cupboard had never had: a sawed-off shotgun.

If I had been standing in the street instead of on the sidewalk, the driver’s seat would have totally obscured it from my view. The interior door panel had been removed and the window wedged into a permanent shut position. The pump-action shotgun sat in two L-shaped metal brackets welded onto the door’s interior. Its stock was gone but for a curved nub, and a few inches had been removed from the end of the barrel. I didn’t know much about handguns. I knew even less about rifles and shotguns, but I didn’t have to know anything about them to understand that I didn’t want to be on the wrong end of a sawed-off.

As I hurried back to the Tempest, I glanced over at the local bar the big man had gone into. It looked like most other neighborhood places. Nothing fancy: a neon Rheingold Beer sign in the window and a porthole window in the front door. The only thing unusual about the joint was its name: Onion Street Pub. Onion Street? I wondered if there was such a street, and where such a street might be. Probably not South Ozone Park. Wherever it was, it sounded like the kind of place my mom would love. Even as a kid I used to think that my mom liked chopping onions, because it gave her license to cry and hide her sorrows behind the onion tears. I wondered if the housewives of Onion Street camouflaged their real tears like my mom camouflaged hers. It’s weird what you think about sometimes.

The big man stayed in the Onion Street Pub for about a half hour, and when he came out he didn’t act any drunker than when he went in. Everything about him — his size, his swagger, the tilt of his head, the way he puffed out his chest — was menacing and seemed to send a warning.
Stay back. Keep away. Just keep the fuck away
. I’d known guys like him in my life. You can’t grow up where I grew up and not know guys like him, but the van driver was different. It’s hard to explain, but he wore his menace the way a pro athlete wears his grace or a pit viper its tail rattle. I was likely projecting. He probably wasn’t half as menacing as his shotgun.

He saved me the trouble of having to turn around, because after starting up the van, he made a U-turn right from his parking spot. I let a few cars pass me before heading out after him. I wasn’t sure why I still bothered. The shotgun scared me, but it also intrigued me. What kind of cargo had the van contained that needed a shotgun for protection? What business could Bobby Friedman possibly have with such a man? Besides, I had nowhere else to go. I figured I might as well play out my hand and see what the cards had in store.

Twenty minutes later I was following the van through College Point, another unfamiliar Queens neighborhood. Again, like in South Ozone Park, it became difficult keeping enough cars between Aaron’s car and the van. I was forced to hang further back than I wanted to, and twice lost sight of the van for a few seconds. The last time I caught up, I came around a corner and saw that the van was halfway down the block. Its motor still running, it had stopped near a dilapidated wooden garage that looked like a set piece from
The Great Gatsby
. There was even a faded ad for a long-forgotten shirt company painted on the flank of the garage. The name of the shirt company had been lost to history, but the outline of a man’s face and some of his slicked-back black hair remained. I think his fingers were buttoning a top button. Oddly, his smile, of all his faded features, had stayed most intact. It was a white, knowing smile. What it knew was another matter altogether. I imagined the doomed Myrtle Wilson living in the tiny apartment above the garage, staring out her filthy window through dingy curtains, longing for escape. There were many such places in New York City, slivers of the past hidden amongst the glories of the space age like Princess phones and color TVs.

The driver got out of the van, undid a heavy padlock on the garage doors, and swung open the old wooden doors. He didn’t get back in the van. He disappeared into the garage, and a moment later drove out in a chestnut red ’62 Ford Galaxie. He pulled it over to the sidewalk and got out. He loved that car. You could just tell by the way he eased the door shut instead of slamming it. He wiped some dust specks off its fender as he might’ve wiped a tear from his lover’s cheek or tucked a stray hair behind her ear. At that moment, he didn’t seem quite so menacing. He got back in the van, turned its flat face out, and backed it into the garage. The driver swung the garage doors closed and locked up, got back in his Galaxie, and was off.

He was like a different person driving the Ford. Whereas he drove the van like the apocryphal little old lady from Pasadena, he drove the Ford with a lead foot. I was pretty proud of myself that I managed to keep up with him, let alone stay undetected. We were almost at the Whitestone Expressway when Aaron’s Tempest decided it had had enough cloak and dagger for the day. It coughed a little and decelerated. No matter how hard I pressed my foot on the gas pedal, it wasn’t going but for another few feet. Gas pedals, I quickly realized, were kind of moot without gas in the tank to feed the carburetor. I rolled to the side of the street, fished the gas can out of the trunk, and started walking back to the Esso station I’d passed ten blocks back.

• • •

First thing I did when I got home was to make a preemptive call to Bobby. He wasn’t home. I hated calling his house, because his parents were so damned unfriendly. His mom especially made me feel uncomfortable. She spoke in this condescending monotone that on the one hand sounded like a news reader giving you the crop yields for the state-controlled farms in the central Ukraine and on the other dripped with disdain. Every time I got off the phone with her, I felt like she had spit on me and on everything I believed or ever would believe. I had no faith that she would relay my message to her son, so I tried him at Burgundy House. No one picked up. It was too bad, really. I had my excuse about this morning all worked out. I’d had plenty of time to think it through on my long walk to and from the gas station.

The next call I made was to Lids’s house. When his mom answered, I hung up. The palpable desperation in her hello told me all I needed to know. Lids wasn’t home yet. She’d answered hoping that it would be her son on the other end of the phone. I didn’t need to add to her dread and disappointment with lies she might or might not have believed.

The last call was to our insurance agent, Murray Fleisher. Murray was a nattily dressed charm merchant who was as vain as the day was long. Problem was, Murray had hit the upper limits of middle age, and middle age had hit back with a vengeance. He’d been reduced to wearing a rug, a nice one, but still pretty obviously not something that grew out of his scalp. He was also going a little deaf. I guess all those years with an office on Brighton Beach Avenue under the el had finally gotten to his ears. Unlike with the hair piece, Murray hadn’t yet reached a satisfactory compromise with his vanity that would allow him to wear a hearing aid. That worked for me … at least, I hoped it would.

“Murray Fleisher here.”

“Mr. Fleisher, this is Aaron Prager.”

“Who?”

“Aaron Prager,” I shouted.

“Oh, Aaron. Sorry, there’s so much noise in this office. How’s that sexy mother of yours doing?”

I didn’t know whether to laugh or gag. Murray’s charm was lost on me. “My folks are fine.”

“What?”

“My folks are fine.”

“Give your mom a kiss for me.”

“Whatever you say, Mr. Fleisher,” I said, more than a little repulsed by him.

“Huh?”

I yelled, “I’ll do that.”

“So, what can I do for you, Aaron?”

“I’ve got a problem,” I said loud enough for him to hear.

“Why else would you call old Murray? That’s what I do, solve people’s problems. Any problem you got, I can fix.”

I found myself wishing
I
was deaf. Jesus, this guy was even a bigger schmuck than I remembered him being. “I gave a friend a lift to the airport and when I came out of the terminal, there was a dent in my rear passenger side fender. Two witnesses said they saw it happen and took down license plate numbers. The thing is, Mr. Fleisher, the two license plate numbers don’t match.”

“I understand.”

No he didn’t, but that was okay. I kept the volume up so that the Cohens in the next apartment could hear me. “You see, I have no way of knowing if any of this is accurate. Before I put in a claim — ”

“I gotcha, kid.”

If he had really been speaking to Aaron, my brother would have reached through the phone and strangled Murray for calling him kid. Aaron was born an old man and always hated being referred to as son or kid. And once Aaron hit twenty-one and could vote, forget about it. He was the only person I knew of my generation who liked being called mister.

“You do?”

“Sure. You want me to track down those plates for you, so you can approach the drivers and see if you can reach some sort of ‘arrangement.’” Fleisher made the word
arrangement
sound dirty, like it should have been wrapped in brown paper. “While what you’re asking me to do is not strictly kosher, it’s a clever move, kid. No one needs their premiums to go up for some stupid fender bender, right? Your dad always said you were the shrewd one. How’s that lazy brother of yours?”

“Still lazy,” I screamed. “So you’ll do this for me?”

“Sure, why not? Here’s the thing, kid. I want you to think about coming to work for old Murray. I’m telling you, a clever fella like you could make us both rich.”

“I’ll definitely think about it, Mr. Fleisher.”

“What?”

“I’ll think about it, Mr. Fleisher.”

“Murray, kid. Call me Murray. After all, we’re practically partners, right?”

I ignored that. “So, when should I give you a call, Mr. — I mean, Murray?”

I swear I could hear his smile. “Tomorrow afternoon should be good.”

“Until then,” I said.

Besides having to top off Aaron’s gas tank and get the car washed and waxed before he got home, I had to buy him a suitable gift as a thank you. Because no matter how full the tank or clean the car, my brother would eventually check the odometer and go apeshit on me. Somehow I doubt that when he tossed me his car keys on Sunday night, he had anticipated I would do a Poconos round-trip and spend the following day driving all over Queens and back. Given that he was going to be pissed at me anyway, I decided to put my few remaining hours with the car to good use.

Samantha Hope’s old apartment was in the basement of an attached brick house on Avenue U between West 10th and West 11th Streets in Gravesend. It was only a short walk from her place to the Gelato Grotto. I remember she confided to me that she ate most of her meals there. We laughed when I told her she had my sympathy. I had been to her pad with Bobby many times, and twice for small parties she’d thrown. I’d also been there once on my own. I didn’t like thinking about that time. In fact, I’d kind of pushed it so far back in my memory I wasn’t sure it had really happened. Even when I was at her graveside and in her childhood home, it hadn’t come to mind. It did now.

When she invited me over, I didn’t think anything of it. She was my best friend’s girlfriend. We were friends. We spent all kinds of time together, and if Mindy could have stomached her, we would have spent nearly all our time together. It was a Wednesday night, and we’d all been hanging out over at the old Burgundy House apartment on Foster Avenue when Bobby stood up and announced he had to split.

“Business,” he said, shrugging his shoulders, blowing a kiss at Sam.

I was used to this from Bobby. He always had lots of irons in the fire, but rarely discussed them. I could tell that Sam didn’t like Bobby just taking off without an explanation of why he was going or where he was going to. That was the paradoxical thing about Sam: she was so with it and cool, so free-spirited, except when it came to Bobby. She always wanted to keep track of his whereabouts. She even used to bug the rest of us guys about where Bobby was and what he was up to. Sam’s jealousy, if that’s what it was, seemed strange in a woman as beautiful and worldly as she. I had tried to reassure her every way I knew how that Bobby loved her like he had never loved anyone else. She wouldn’t be reassured. I guess there was something about Bobby that made her feel vulnerable.

That night, the night Bobby just got up and split, Sam asked me if I wanted a lift home. I didn’t think anything of it. I didn’t live more than ten minutes from her apartment and I didn’t feel much like schlepping my half-drunk self home on the subway at midnight. But she didn’t take me home, not directly. She asked me to come over for a while, that she was feeling sad and needed to talk.

“Sure,” I said, “why not?”

It was fine at first. We had a beer, smoked a joint, listened to some Donovan. When Sam excused herself I was still trying to figure out what an elevator in the brain was all about and why, if Donovan was Scottish, he hadn’t used the word lift rather than elevator. Grass did that to me. When I was stoned I would latch onto a lyric or something a person said and I would dissect it, parse it, spin it around in my head, play with it. I think it’s the only part of getting high I really enjoyed. When Sam came back in the room I was on the floor, back against the couch, head resting on the cushion, eyes closed. Then I felt her straddle me. When I opened my eyes, I was stunned to see she was naked.

She pressed her lips against mine, not softly, and when she pulled her head back, she said, “I’ve wanted to do that for almost as long as you’ve wanted me to.” Her voice was a breathy whisper.

She kissed me again and I let her. This time I opened my mouth. She opened hers. She grabbed my wrist and put my hand on her breast. When my fingertips brushed against her nipple, she sighed and arched her back. I knew that if I didn’t stop then, I wasn’t going to stop at all. I took my hand away from her breast, turned my head away, and gently pushed her aside.

I jumped to my feet. With my voice cracking, I asked, “What is this, Sam?”

“Inevitable,” she said. “You know we’ve been headed for this from the day we met.” Then she spun around on her knees and rubbed her hand on the crotch of my jeans. She looked up into my eyes, a come-and-get-it smile on her mouth. “Sometimes men should listen to what their bodies are telling them, Moe.”

I brushed her hand away. “Stop it, Sam. I’m taken, and Bobby’s my best friend.”

She put her hands on my belt. “That’s like something our parents would say. Besides, Moe, no one’s taken … not really. And this, the two of us here, now, isn’t going to change what Bobby and I have.” She skillfully undid my belt, the button of my pants, and slid the zipper down with an aching slowness that made promises I was tempted to let her keep. “You’ve been curious about what it would be like to be with me, and I’ve been just as curious about you.” Sam placed both thumbs inside the elastic band of my BVDs, and at that same deliberate pace brought my underwear down to my thighs. She stroked me, first with the back of her hand and then her curled fingers and palm. “Let me, please, Moe. Let me.” She didn’t wait for an answer, putting me in her mouth.

Her mouth felt like I dreamed it would, better. It was warm, moist, and soft, her tongue eager and deft. I pushed her away, maybe less gently than I should have. “Stop it, Sam. Cut it out,” I said, pulling up my underwear and redoing my pants. “Sure, I want you. I have from the minute I met you, but you picked Bobby. Bobby always gets who he wants, and maybe I even resent him enough to let myself do this. So I guess it’s a good thing I feel more for him than just resentment. Maybe doing this won’t change things for you, but it’ll change everything for me.”

Sam looked up at me, her vampy smile replaced by something more earnest. “But if we don’t do this now, we never will. If we don’t scratch this itch, Moe, it will eat away at us.” She hugged my thighs. “Please, Moe, let’s do this. We’ll have this one night together. We’ll do anything you’ve ever wanted to do to me or to any woman, and then we’ll let that be enough.”

I wasn’t the smartest guy in the world, but I knew from what little of her I’d already experienced that if I went ahead with her plan, one night together would never be enough. The kisses, the feel of me in her mouth had already nearly blinded me to my responsibilities to Bobby and Mindy. If I let this go any further, I’d be destroying the things I relied on most in my life: loyalty and friendship. And what had Mindy done to deserve any of this?

“Come on, Moe, let’s just do it. We’re both high. We’re both a little drunk. I’m horny. You’re horny. We’re here. Let’s just do it. It doesn’t have to be anything more than that.”

“I can’t, Sam. I know me. I think I’m a little in love with you and if we do this, I won’t be able to turn it off.”

“Then if that’s what’s meant to — ”

“I’m leaving.”

I ran. I didn’t remember grabbing my coat, but I must have because when I was a few blocks away I noticed I was wearing it. I’d never understood what it meant when people said their heads were swimming. I did that night because, man, I was suddenly in the deep end of the pool. As I walked the whole way home, I felt pulled in about a million different directions. I wasn’t proud of myself. I didn’t feel honorable for turning Sam down. Mostly, I felt naive and stupid. I think I was nearly as angry with myself for not finishing what we started as I was at Samantha for starting it in the first place. I heard my dad’s voice in my head, droning on about all the things he should have done and the many opportunities he’d missed.

“I’m telling you, kid,” he’d say to me sometimes when we’d go out driving on Sundays, just the two of us. “There have been times in my life when things got served to me on a plate and for some stupid reason or other I didn’t help myself. When it’s lying on a plate for you, go for it. Take it. Take it! Don’t be like me. Don’t worry so much about who’s looking or what people might think. Take it. Because one day you’ll turn around and you’ll be old and full of doubts and questions. Sometimes I think that if only I’d taken it just one time, just once …” His voice would drift off and the car would go silent.

I never told anybody this, but I think of my dad as the King of Shoulda Done and Mighta Been. As I walked home that night, mostly I beat myself up for being his prince and heir to his throne. That was my greatest fear, I think, that I would be just like him, that the unifying principle of my life would be regret.

Standing in front of Sam’s old apartment, I wasn’t any more certain of what had happened that night or why it had happened. Thinking back on it, I wasn’t sure I believed the reasons Sam had given me for wanting us to be together. She’d kept subtly switching her reasons. First it was that our being together was inevitable. Then it was that we were both curious. Next it was she wanted to please me. Then it was that we were meant to be. Finally it was that we were drunk and horny. I think maybe I believed that last one most of all. Sometimes the lowest common denominator is also the most dependable. It seemed that she would have said or done almost anything to coax me into crossing that line. We’d never talked about it. The next time the three of us were together it was like old times. She knew I wouldn’t tell Bobby.

I walked up the brick steps to the brick and concrete porch and rang the bell. A heavyset woman in a house dress answered the door. In her early fifties, she was overly made-up, and her hair was so black it was almost blue. It was a pity because she had a lovely, kind face beneath the too-black dye job and clown mask. I didn’t know her name, but I had seen her many of the times I’d been to Sam’s place. I thought I saw recognition in her eyes too. Then I saw the sadness.

“You’re Samantha’s boyfriend, right?”

No
. “Yeah, right. That’s me.”

“We never met, but I’m Mrs. Fusco. Call me Gloria. I used to see you and your buddy hangin’ around here with her all the time.” She held her hand out to me and I gave it a tender shake. “I’m so sorry about what happened … you know. I don’t believe a word of what they said about Sam. She just wasn’t that kinda girl.”

“I know, Mrs. — Gloria. I still can’t get over it. I think that’s why I’m here.”

“Come in. Come in …”

“Bobby,” I said. “Sorry, I forgot my manners.”

“That’s fine. I understand.”

Her house was full of fussy, ornate furniture with bright red and green suede cushions covered in thick, suffocating layers of plastic. Still, the rooms were immaculate and as orderly as a museum. She gestured for me to sit on the couch. In the hot weather, I thought, bare skin would stick to the plastic slipcovers like glue. You’d have to get peeled off to stand up. She offered me coffee to drink and I said that would be fine. I noticed pictures of a boy about my age — her son? — wearing Marine dress blues. Some were of him in green fatigues.

“That’s Rocco, my boy,” she said proudly when she noticed me studying the photos. Then her voice got brittle. “He’s in Vietnam. I hope he’s okay and that the damn war gets over soon.”

“Me too, Gloria. I mean that.”

“He volunteered.”

“That was brave of him.”

“It was stupid. I already lost his father. I don’t know what I’m gonna do if I lose him too.”

“I’m sure he’ll be fine,” I lied.

She handed me my coffee. “Thanks for sayin’ that. So what can I do for you?”

I told her the truth. “I’m not sure. We only had a short time together. It’s funny, isn’t it, how you can be so in love with somebody and not really know them? It was like that with Sam and me. So I guess now that she’s gone, I’m trying to find out who she was.”

Tears poured out of Gloria Fusco’s eyes, ruining her perfect mask. “Bobby, that’s so beautiful. What do you want to know?”

First I tossed some easy questions to her about what kind of renter she was. Was she friendly? Did Gloria like her? Stuff like that. Then I got around to asking how it was that Samantha came to rent the apartment from her in the first place.

“She didn’t,” Gloria said. “Her father rented it for her. Paid a month’s deposit and a year’s rent in cash.”

“Her father? What was he like?”

This was the first question that made Gloria squirm a little. Then when she answered, I got that her discomfort wasn’t about the question itself but about what she had to say. “Her dad wasn’t a very nice man. When I got to know Samantha, it was hard for me to believe such a hard, crude-talkin’ man could have been her dad. If I didn’t need the rent money so bad, I wouldn’t’ve rented to him, daughter or no daughter.”

“Crude-talking?”

“When he found out I was a widow …”

“I understand. What did Sam’s dad look like?” I asked, as a throwaway question.

Gloria frowned. “He looked as hard as he was. Short and nasty, with that pasty complexion and the map of Ireland on his face. He had these cold, gray eyes and a crooked mouth. The first thing I thought when I met Sam was that she must look and be like her mom. She sure was nothing like her father.”

My head was swimming again. I’d never met Sam’s father, but I’d seen more than twenty photographs of him, and the man Gloria Fusco just described wasn’t Sam’s dad. Sam’s dad was tall and kind of regal looking. He was a state trooper, so I was sure he could be belligerent when he had to be, but I couldn’t ever see him being described as short and nasty. And then there was the map of Ireland thing. I looked more Irish than Sam’s dad, and I didn’t look very Irish. What about the fact that Samantha was buried in the New Lutheran Cemetery in Koblenz, Pennsylvania? There were probably more Jews in Ireland than Lutherans. It didn’t add up.

“When Sam died,” I said, “I didn’t really have anything of hers to hold onto. I mean, I have some snapshots and stuff, but no clothes, nothing that smells like her perfume.” That got Gloria’s waterworks going again. “Do you have any — ”

“I’m so sorry, Bobby, but the cops and FBI just came and took everything from her apartment. The furniture and everything.”

“That’s okay. I under — ”

Gloria cut me off. “Oh, my God! Oh, my God. I completely forgot something in all the excitement. Come on with me.”