Spitting Off Tall Buildings Page 2

  ‘Twelve thousand percent.’

  She went on. ‘Stay away from the projection booth upstairs. The night man is union. He’s a dope smoker and a drunk but there’s nothing we can do until we catch him. His contract states that he’s entitled to lock the booth door but he’s not fooling me. I won’t tolerate juicers or pot heads.’

  ‘Sounds good.’

  ‘Meaning what?’

  ‘I mind my own business.’

  ‘You start tomorrow, Dante. Your work schedule will be four to twelve with Mondays off. Ask for my nephew Eddy, the Assistant Manager. He’ll train you.’

  ‘What was today?’

  ‘Today was your interview.’

  ‘I thought today was my first day. Does that mean I’m not getting paid for today?’

  ‘Today was not your first day. You’re not working today. Eddy is off. Tomorrow is your first day. Today is Monday. Tomorrow is Tuesday.’

  ‘I was told by Miss Herrera at Olson’s to report for work today. Monday. Four p.m. I know the days of the week. Yesterday was Sunday, today is Monday.’

  ‘I just said that you have Mondays off.’

  ‘So what I was told by Herrera at Olson’s was bunk. No matter that my pay checks come from her.’

  I’d pissed Mrs. Lupo off. She began gesturing. Her spiderweb wrinkles flexed and relaxed then tightened again. ‘Hand those here, please,’ she snapped, grabbing at the clothes.

  I gave her the uniform, the shirts and the bow tie.

  ‘I haven’t got time for this,’ she said. Then she dumped the clothes on the dressing-room table in a heap and pulled the cord turning off the light.

  ‘Look. Okay,’ I said, surprised, squinting in the blackness. ‘I’ll be here tomorrow.’

  Mrs. Lupo didn’t answer. The darkness had covered her exit. I turned and caught sight of her making her way up the first few flower-carpeted stairs twenty feet away. ‘Hey, okay,’ I called again. ‘I’ll be here.’

  She paused, turned back in my direction: ‘Three p.m. sharp. Tomorrow. Tuesday, Mr. Dante. You don’t work on Monday. Monday is your off day. Take the uniform with you.’

  ‘Right. I know about Monday.’

  Her voice was echoing in the basement like the announcer at Shea Stadium. ‘Report to Eddy. After the first week, if he thinks you’ve got promise he’ll make a recommendation to me. I decide whether to put you on full time. I call the temp company.’ Then she bellowed, ‘Understood?’

  ‘Okay,’ I yelled back.

  Her dark eyes met mine from the staircase. ‘Dante’s an Italian name. You’re Italian?’

  ‘On my father’s side.’

  ‘Northern Italian?’

  ‘Half Italian.’

  She assembled a small, pleated, triumphant smile. ‘Go home. Be here tomorrow.’ Then she spun around and I watched as she bounced up the rest of the carpeted stairs. An ancient gymnast in spy shoes.

  Chapter Three

  THE NEXT DAY I arrived late again at almost three-thirty because I got up with a hangover and then forgot to bring Herrera’s subway instructions and came off the train at an express stop instead of exiting at the Twelfth Street station. I had to walk back from West Fourth Street. The attendant guy at the Times Square booth had told me the wrong train to get on. In New York the booth guys at the subway don’t give a rat’s dick because they’ll never see you again so, when they’re not sure about an answer to a question on which train to take to get somewhere, they give out bunk directions. Doing it they get a little cheap thrill.

  There had been no sleep all that night because of the swarming in my brain. I’d drunk several beers and a bottle of Nyquil then read for hours but my interior brain foam could not be silenced. Around dawn, as one roomer after another ran the hot shower water through the rattling pipes and opened and shut the clanking bathroom door in the hall, I tried writing on my play, hoping it would help. Working now on Act I, Scene iii. I typed non-stop for two hours. Afterward, exhausted, I still couldn’t sleep so I dressed and went out, ate breakfast at the diner where I found out LaVonne worked the afternoon and night shift, then returned to my room. I read what I’d written on the play, hated it, tore it to shithell then fell asleep in a chair about eleven o’clock.

  In the men’s changing area in the theater basement I got into my roll-up white shirt, bow tie and tux, then went upstairs and asked around the other staff until someone pointed out Eddy the Assistant Manager outside on the sidewalk smoking cigarettes, conversing with a neighborhood guy.

  He was taller than his wrinkled, rat-faced aunt; big-nosed and witless. When he saw me coming he intentionally turned his back. I realized he’d identified my tux and had simply chosen to stiff me.

  Waiting there looking at his back, I allowed myself to stand like a fool for half a minute or more, being dipped in the conversation piss of him and the street guy. When I felt the knot of anger in my stomach ready to pop, I interrupted. ‘Hey, excuse me,’ I said. ‘Are you Eddy?’

  He twisted his face, then looked at me. Because the neighborhood guy was his audience and because I’d cut into his conversation, I would be made to suck shit. ‘Yea, I’m Eddy. Whaz up? Who wants me?’

  ‘My name is Bruno. I’m the new usher.’

  He had me. ‘New usha?’ he sneered. ‘Wha new fuckin’ usha?’

  ‘Mrs. Lupo hired me yesterday.’

  ‘Mudda’s fuckin’ cunt! Da ol’ bitch hiah’s someone and don tell me fuckin’ dick! Den she fuckin’ dumps it on me on hah fuckin’ day off! Mudda’s fuckin’ cunt!’

  ‘What do you want me to do?’

  ‘Do? Go ta fuckin’ woik. Wha da fuck else izz zah?’

  ‘I’m supposed to be trained.’

  ‘Oh, okay! Fuck me! Ya know, fuck me!’

  I couldn’t leave and the other guy was fully engaged in the performance. Eddy looked at his watch, sucked quickly at the cigarette pinched between his lips and his rodent snout, then issued instructions: ‘Okay,’ he said, ‘we got us a fuckin’ show change in twenty minutes. Go fine dat lazy fuckin’ old Vic. He’s my upstahs guy. Foist, get a fuckin’ flashlight from da box unda the rigista inside. Den fine fuckin’ Vic. Okay?’

  ‘Okay.’

  He flipped his cigarette violently against a parked car. ‘Tell ‘im Eddy says ta show ya whaz what, okay? But I wan yaz by da exits woikin’ beforah da shows change soz the two of youz can help out. Got dat? Can ya handle dat?’

  ‘I see Vic upstairs.’

  ‘Right. Now, as fah az I’m concoined, yahs fuckin’ trained,’ he jeered. ‘Now ya da fuckin’ vice president of Low-eeze Thee-ate-ers.’

  ‘Okay,’ I said, grateful to walk away.

  ‘Eh, hey,’ he called, ‘whaz ya name…Bruno?’

  ‘Right. Bruno.’

  He looked at his watch again. ‘How come yahs late?’

  ‘I became delayed.’

  ‘She’ll can ya ass if ya get delayed tumorrha. Better not be fuckin’ delayed again tumorrha.’

  Inside, I located the flashlight, found Vic in the balcony, and became an usher.

  My second week on the job the theater began playing an Anthony Quinn festival that ran in the afternoon before the regular first-run movie started in the evening. La strada came on every day an hour into my shift. I’d watched the film a few times over the years and admired it very much. The mood, the enchantment of the music. Most people thought Fellini to be a genius. I’d agreed.

  Near the end of the five-day run I knew everybody’s dialogue by heart and I began to hate Zampano and resent Giulietta Masina’s hamminess. I found myself angered by the banality of the screenplay and the oversell in Fellini’s direction. Sometimes I’d get pissed off enough at parts of the film that I’d have to duck out of my post and stand in the upper lobby.

  As it turned out, I got fired over a triviality.

  Vic, my partner and immediate supervisor, was an old guy. Sixty or so. Not as old as Lupo, but old and arthritic. He kept to himself. Our one bad moment had come wh
en he’d discovered me sneaking a cigarette. He insisted the act jeopardized his authority in the loge. I’d made a remark back and we hadn’t spoken since.

  Vic and I were approximately the same build and suit size. He’d called in sick and I was alone upstairs searching my mind for things to do while La strada was on, nipping from a short dog, a Cisco Wine Cooler, in my pants’ pocket.

  I had the bad idea to switch tuxedo jackets with Vic for the day. His was nicer than mine because mine had missing buttons on the sleeve and had a permanent sticky stain above the elbow.

  The part of La strada was coming on where Zampano kills Richard Basehart and the musical scoring swells portentously. I’d come to hate the scene because of Masina’s cartoon performance and the blaring of the moronic music. To avoid watching it I decided to go downstairs to the dressing area and exchange jackets with Vic for the remainder of my shift.

  In the changing area there was a standing open cabinet divided into sections where the male employees kept their tuxedos. Each section was marked off with a piece of tape above the slot with the employee’s name written in pencil. Vic’s slot was at the opposite end from mine.

  I slipped on his tux jacket and was pleased to discover that it fit perfectly. Forty, short. I made the substitution of my coat for Vic’s on his hanger.

  Leaving the room, I took a piss, then used up more minutes by going to the storage box at the candy counter to swap my flashlight batteries for new ones. When I returned to the balcony I’d timed it right because Quinn had murdered Basehart and the imbecile scene was coming to an end.

  My problem happened an hour later when Vic unexpectedly arrived sick to go to work. He’d gone for the last five years without missing a day and showed up out of a sense of duty.

  In the dressing room when he realized that I’d exchanged jackets, he became nuts and unglued. He limped up the stairs and flung the loge doors open with a thud. To find me in the back row he began waving his flashlight beam in the faces of the balcony customers.

  I tried to calm him down, offering to go downstairs and change back into my own jacket to settle things, but Vic had the flu or another disorder and had decided to make a big deal in front of the customers. One lady got up and reported the disturbance to Mrs. Lupo, who hurried to the balcony to demand that we follow her to her private office.

  There, with the old Lupo in the role of hanging judge, Vic persisted in overdoing the deal, screaming words at me like ‘liar’ and ‘burglar’ and continuing to insist that I’d stolen his uniform jacket. He even stabbed my chest several times with his finger until I pushed it away and made him stop.

  I explained that I’d picked the jacket off his hanger by mistake. But that only served to make him madder. He pounded her desk with a bony fist. I didn’t give a crap for private property, he screeched, for Loew’s Theaters. I was a punk, a hardened criminal type. One of us had to go. Him or me.

  Copping a plea to save the gig turned out to be useless and stupid. I tried to put a more realistic spin on the deal by talking about my own uniform’s missing coat buttons and the sticky elbow, admitting that I’d simply wanted to ‘borrow’ his jacket for the day. Old Lupo might have been satisfied with that but Vic wouldn’t let up. The rant turned into a fit. Saliva flew, neck arteries throbbed. Stuff about my sneaking smokes on duty, sitting in the back row when I should have been doing balcony rounds, and leaving my post to take unauthorized piss breaks. He knew just what buttons to push to get Mrs. Lupo’s face wrinkles activated. I was dead. Bumped on the spot.

  The next day I was in the ‘Cash, Ten-Items-Or-Less’ lane at a market and a lady in front of me had thirteen items in her shopping cart. A lady with a kid. A baby. Thirteen items.

  While the line edged forward I counted her stuff over and over. The line was long and the closer we got to the checker the more edgy I got. When the woman set her groceries down on the moving ramp I informed the register guy that she had thirteen items, not ten as the sign specifically specified. I made the checker count the items, then I demanded that he not take her order. He smiled at the woman and the kid in the cart, made an excuse, then began ringing up her stuff anyway.

  The deal escalated. I threatened the checker and started calling him fuck names. The child commenced to wail and a manager, complete with big smile and pocket pen protector, came over. He attempted to mediate but it was too late by then.

  I swept the woman’s groceries off the counter onto the floor and on my way out I knocked over a tall display of Tropicana Orange Juice from Florida mounted on a vat containing a million little square ice cubes. Shit was everywhere.

  Chapter Four

  AFTER LOSING THE usher job I hit a flat spot. Herrera at the temp agency told me that Olson’s had a rule about not reassigning persons who had been fired from their assignment for cause. No second chances. So, instead of looking in the Times want-ads for work or making the rounds of the other temp agencies in midtown, I decided to take a day or two and remain in my room reading, going back to Tennessee Williams’ plays and some of David Mamet, writing if the urge presented itself.

  On the third morning I woke up with an idea for a short story. The words began coming out, jumping from my fingers. A tale about a deaf eight-year-old kid and his dog Bugs. The kid spends most of his days in his room in his imagination because he doesn’t attend regular school.

  By mid-afternoon I was near the end. Twenty pages. The boy in the story, Bartholomew, has discovered a sorcerer living on a gleaming silver button in the corner of his toy box. The tiny sorcerer shows Bartholomew many tricks and proves himself to have great mind power, moving objects around the room, changing the colors of the walls, having stuffed animals dance and do flips, then magically growing Bartholomew’s feet a foot long. Bartholomew is awestruck and they become fast friends. He is shown how to tap his own indwelling powers. By himself he tosses a plastic truck out the window, then transforms it to actual size in the street. Then he raises himself off the floor until his head grazes the ceiling. Turning to look in the mirror, he sees himself wearing a thick silver astronaut’s suit, piloting a spacecraft. Bartholomew implores his mentor to show him more.

  Now the sorcerer runt knows that he’s got the kid. He bestows an enchanted black robe on the boy and crowns him with a velvet fez adorned with the seven precious jewels. Bartholomew is told that if he truly desires entry into the deaf wizards’ magical cult he must first make a gesture to prove his commitment, trust, and worthiness. A five-quart jug of yellow, sweet-smelling antifreeze is materialized by the elf, who demands that Bartholomew let his dog Bugs drink from it.

  But the kid isn’t stupid. He knows that if Bugs licks up the engine coolant it will poison him and he will die. The sorcerer says, ‘Not so,’ that he personally can cast a protective spell that will render the dog immune. This is an initiation. Bartholomew must trust him.

  The boy is afraid and hesitant. The light on the wizard’s glowing button is fading and when it vanishes he and all his magic will be gone forever. Bartholomew must have faith, act immediately or forever lose his power…

  I couldn’t make up my mind how to end the deal. Does the kid get chumped by the wizard and let his dog die? Is the wizard a friend, a kind of guardian angel, or a malevolent, pernicious little fuck manipulating the boy to acquire the soul of his spaniel? I came up with two or three endings but found them all deficient. Frustrated, becoming pissed off, I decided to take a break and let the answer come by itself. For the next half-hour I lay on my bed with the window open, smoking cigarettes, sticking my toe in the cloth circle at the end of the shade cord, pulling the blind up and down, permitting my brain to go to other things.

  A mistake.

  Soon it was assuring me that my story was puke, worthless cockshit. Another moron idea I’d left incomplete. A failure.

  I got up and went to my writing table, looking down at the pages and pages of words. It was true. I saw the misspellings, the hurried errors, my hopeless, inaccurate punctuation. Slobbo! I flung
the pages in the direction of the trash can. I was talentless. No wonder I drank and let queers suck my cock. Loser! Stuck with no job, near penniless, walled in like a cockroach surrounded by a rooming house full of junkies and perverts. I was finally where I really belonged.

  I tried to stop it. To distract myself and give myself something to do, I went out to the market for cigarettes and Fretoz but returned with a half-gallon jug of Mad Dog wine.

  In my room, unscrewing the cap, I let the first few wallops hit my stomach. I knew instantly I’d be okay. I’d done the right thing. Fuck the story. What mattered now, the important thing, was to defend against the noise.

  Around dark I was drunk and going in and out of awareness with a crazed need for sex. I walked the ten blocks to the pornos in Times Square. I remember being in the back row of the theater, the guy next to me loosening my pants and letting them slide to the floor. He sucked me off.

  A while later, another guy, a kid, got on his knees on the filthy carpetless concrete, licking my balls and fingering my asshole, massaging my cock with his hand until I was ready to come. Forcing his head down on my dick as far as I could, I blasted off. Hours later I remember being in a hotel room with an older guy - a black man wearing a tie. More wine. More sex.

  The run lasted three days after that. When I finally sobered up my mind began mercilessly replaying some of the flashes, the unquenchable need for sex and depravity. The thoughts evoked so much disgust that I had to stop them - shut them off - there was a terrible need to kill myself; cut or stab my flesh. To die immediately.

  I had to sell some things to pay my rent and the other bills. Family stuff. My mother’s carved-ivory family heirloom scrimshaw pillbox that one of her uncles had brought around Cape Horn to San Francisco Bay in 1850; a ring bearing her father’s German coat of arms, a gold chain my father’s father, Nick, had kept his pocket watch on. Handmade in Abruzzi. The chain brought in the most. Two hundred dollars.