8

The portly Louie parked his ugly piece of steel in front of my house, scraping his wheels alongside the curb and adding one more dent to the last remaining hubcap the car possessed. His door squeaked open and the sounds of grunts took over as he attempted to pull himself from the vehicle, using the roof for added leverage. I sat and watched as it took a good minute to a minute and a half just for Louie to escape from the confines of his loaded lemon.

Louie had a large, egg-shaped head that sat on his neck like Humpty Dumpy on that infamous wall. His ears were flags that flapped on the side of his oversized melon, and if you painted them in the patriotic red, white, and blue, I would not think twice about saluting them. Today he was wearing baggy green carpenter pants that poured over his shoes and a beige golf shirt that featured a smorgasbord of stains from a day of eating various selections from not only the four basic food groups, but a few others as well.

Louie was one of the first people I met when I moved into the new neighborhood. He lived on “the other side of town” as he liked to call it, though in all honesty, I had no idea exactly where that was. On a daily basis he would stuff himself behind the wheel of his beat-up green station wagon and comb the streets looking for buyers of his products. Buyers by definition could be anybody with expendable cash and a hankering for counterfeit goods. The goods themselves were anything from watches to purses and everything in between, and more often than not they were piss-poor knockoffs of designer brands. If you took a look inside his trunk you’d find jewelry, sunglasses, golf clubs, electronics and an assortment of other

The first time I met Louie I was sitting in the very same spot on my porch. Being new in town, I was an uncharted buyer, and while he lacked any real solid sales skills, I couldn’t help but warm up to him when he arrived that day and announced, “The welcome wagon is here!” The more I bought from Louie the more he would appear until finally he was coming by on a daily basis.

“I got your t-shirt,” he announced as he dragged his way towards me like a zombie that just escaped from its grave. “It wasn’t easy but I did it. I made a special trip to Fall River.”

Louie held up the shirt. Its base color was white, that much was for sure, but it was clear that it had seen newer days. A yellow tint had taken control of the fabric as if the shirt itself had been urinated on or left in a window to be sun-soaked for at least a decade. To Louie it was a find, but to most people the shirt was a hand-medown better suited as a rag than a piece of clothing.

“How do you like it?” he asked.
“It’s great,” I responded. “Just what I wanted!”
“Look, it says, ‘I hate seagulls.’ And the seagull poop is right on

Sure enough, the shirt came with its very own fake turd, a detail that really classed up the garment.
“Feel it!” he continued. “I’ll bet some people are going to think its real!”
His enthusiasm was peaking and I had a feeling selling the shirt was going to be difficult for Louie because he seemed to be growing attached to it. Who could blame him though?
“It’s great,” I said. “How much do I owe you?”
“Well, I paid fourteen, but you can have it for fifteen. You’re a nice guy and I like you.”
I handed Louie fifteen bucks and he tossed me the t-shirt. Like most people, Louie had dreams of striking it rich. He was semi-old and street wise enough to know that the chances of hitting the lottery were slim to none, so he had to take control of his own destiny.
Louie pointed to the back of his wagon.
“You see all this stuff I have to sell?” he asked. “The exhaust pipe is almost touching the ground. It’s voluminous. I’m sick of this stuff. It’s time I cash in and retire. You want to know where the money is? I’ll tell you, friend. The money is in day-old bread. As soon as the stores close, they pack it up and bring it to pig farms.”
“Pig farms, huh?” I returned in hopes of making it sound like I was interested in where the conversation was going.
“Sure thing, friend. They might as well call them gold farms because that’s basically what they’re feeding to those pigs. That bread is perfectly good. Just because they put a date on it, nobody thinks it’s good anymore. Screw that! That’s why I say buy all dayold bread and freeze it!”
“Who’s going to buy old bread, Louie?”
“Somebody will buy it—I’ll tell you that much. You know I could be making fifty thousand bananas working for someone else.”
“I don’t doubt it,” I responded.
“I like my freedom though. I like being my own boss. Some days I pull in a hundred and a half, others only thirty-five. I’m not going to get rich doing this, but I get by.”
He moved to the rear of his car, removed a woman’s purse from the trunk and returned to my side.
“Look at this bag. Feel it. It’s Gucci. Does it look real to you?”
I moved my head in a series of different directions to cover myself depending whether the answer he was looking for was a “yes” or a “no.”
“Some people couldn’t tell that it’s an imitation,” he continued. “There are guys on the street that will tell you it’s worth two hundred and they’ll give it to you for seventy-five, but the thing is, it’s not worth even that. I pay thirty-five bucks a piece for these and I sell them for forty-five. A lousy ten bucks is what I make. I’m not looking to get rich. I’m just having fun.”
Our eyes met when he finished the sentence and I could see that he could see that I saw through him. He quickly composed himself and got back to business.
“Now don’t you think that girl you’ve been seeing would like one of these bags?”
I smiled at Louie and shook my head in a very distinct “no” this time.
“I don’t think she’d take it if she knew I got it from you.”
“What do you mean?”
“Martha—the girl I’ve been seeing—I told her about you and she thinks you’re a low-life.”
“Low-life?” Louie yelped angrily. “You tell her I’m the highest low-life she’ll ever meet!”
I patted the traveling salesman from the inner city on the shoulder and assured him that I was just having fun at his expense. “I’m only kidding with you, Louie. Martha has never said a bad word about anyone. I don’t think she has it in her. You want a beer?”
Louie stood dumbfounded for a moment, still trying to wrap his head around what I was all about, because while we’ve had plenty of conversations together in front of my dilapidated house, I’ve yet to give any real indication as to who I am or where I was coming from.
“You sure have a strange sense of humor,” he told me. “In fact, you’re a strange guy all around. I don’t quite have you figured out.”
“That’s how I like it, Louie.”
I went inside and grabbed two beers with the long necks. I enjoyed Louie’s company, though I think I may have been in the minority. He was at times abrasive, and if you had an overactive smell organ, you’d probably have a hard time being in his company. He wasn’t particularly fond of bathing, or deodorant for that matter, and last I checked, those baggy green pants he was wearing were the only pair I’d ever seen him wear. He was a transparent con man with a distaste for personal hygiene, but for me, that’s what made him somewhat endearing.
My favorite thing about Louie was that no matter how hard he tried or pried, he couldn’t figure me out. I know he thought I was probably just some con man too, but he was having a hard time deciphering what my game actually was and the only thing that would comfort his curiosity was the idea that I may just be a crazy man that wandered into the neighborhood. This is why he referred to me as a nut as often as he could.
I came back out onto the porch only to find Louie sprawled horizontally across the steps like a lion on the Serengeti. I popped the top on his beer and handed it over. Louie took a big swig of the ale, released a roar of a burp and then rubbed the cold bottle over his sweaty forehead.
“It’s getting too tough out there, you know,” he said. “When the kids are more street-smart than you, that’s when you know it’s time to call it quits. Maybe I should get a real job, but I don’t know if that’s even possible at this point. You know what they say—you can’t teach an old dog new tricks.”
“That’s a good thing. You already know too many tricks.”
“SON OF A BITCH!” Louie yelled. For a minute I thought he was referring to something I said, but he quickly lifted his huge body off of the stairs and began pawing at his own ass, searching for something he couldn’t easily find. “I think I got a damn splinter from the stairs!”
Without hesitation, Louie shoved his hand down his own pants and began rummaging around his backside in an attempt to locate the frisky piece of wood that had lodged itself in his plump bottom.
“Every time I come to this place I leave with my ass looking like a porcupine,” he complained.
“Sorry, Louie. I’ve been meaning to sand it down, but it keeps falling to the bottom of my To Do list.”
He grumbled and then bit his bottom lip as he pulled the timber from his behind. Like a champion displaying a trophy, Louie held the piece of porch in the air, staring at it with amazement. “Look at the size of it,” he said before tossing it to the side. That’s when a light bulb went on in Louie’s head and he chirped up.
“I’ve been meaning to ask you something. Why does a guy like you—you know, good job and all—live in a dump like this? You got rats, rodents and all kinds of animals running around here.”
Without skipping a beat I quickly delivered a “Because I like the neighborhood” only to have it met with a roll of the eyes.
“You know, I think you’re a little nuts,” Louie said as he giggled uncontrollably. His laughter, which was peculiar with lots of “oo oo” sounds laced throughout it, was quickly overpowered by the squeaking wheel of a nearby grocery cart that was being pushed past my house by the hands of a middle-aged Hispanic woman.
Upon seeing the woman, Louie sprang up like a jack-in-the-box. “Excuse me, ma’am, I hate to bother you, but could I interest you in a fabulous Gucci bag?”
Louie’s sales pitch fell on deaf ears as the woman, schooled in the art of minding her own business in the ‘hood, kept her eyes forward and ignored everything that went on around her. It was if she had a force field up to keep creeps like Louie from getting close.
“I tell you, man, I don’t know what this world is coming to, but it’s getting to the point where it’s hard for a guy to make a living anymore,” Louie complained.
“If you want a real job, I heard the local biotech companies are looking for people to test new drugs on. It’s not a glamorous gig by any means, but the pay is supposed to be pretty good.”
Louie looked up at me with an angry glare. “Do I get my own cage when I sign up too?” he asked sarcastically.
“I bet they’d throw one in if you asked nicely.”
“Hardy har har. I don’t care how much money they’d throw at me. I’m not going to be anybody’s gopher.”
“You mean guinea pig,” I corrected Louie.
“Gopher. Guinea pig. It’s all the same to me pal. Either way, no bearded foreigner is going to be sticking any long needles into my ass.”
Another light bulb went on in Louie’s head and he perked up and puffed out his chest like a comic book super hero, grinning ear to ear as if he had just discovered the meaning to life itself.
“Hey,” he said in a boisterous voice. “Why don’t you give me a job?”
I was just about to tell him no when I had my own light bulb moment.
“Actually, we do have some mildly radioactive chemicals that need to be transported out of the office.”
“Mildly radioactive?” he asked.
“Completely harmless from what I’m told, though there was one guy in the office that said it gave him a tingly feeling in his loins.”
“Yeah, like having your pecker licked by a rattlesnake. No thanks. I like my dick and balls the way they are.”
I pulled two hundred dollars out of my pocket and displayed it to Louie like a Chinese fan.
“It pays two hundred dollars.”
Louie sniffed at the bills as if they were freshly cut roses and he salivated at the idea of it being his.
“Where’s it going?” he asked me.
“Revere.”
“Throw in ten extra bucks for gas and you’ve got yourself a deal.”
“Okay, but I want your word that the stuff isn’t going to end up on somebody’s front lawn,” I told him.
“Of course not! What do you take me for? I’ll get it to where it’s gotta go.”
“Good. Come by the office tomorrow morning at nine. Here’s my card with the address.”
“I got to be at my mother’s in fifteen minutes,” he said as he made his way to his car with my business card in hand. Once again I watched in amusement as he grunted and groaned his way into the station wagon, only this time there was a new obstacle for him to overcome as he refused to put down his beer prior to climbing in. For a moment he looked like an oversized infant sucking on a baby bottle as he finished off the beer while behind the wheel. I started laughing.
“What’s so funny?” Louie asked from the open window of his car.
“Nothing,” I said, laughing even harder. “Something that happened earlier today.”
“And you waited until now to laugh?” he asked with a laugh of his own.
My only response was more laughter. I laughed hysterically at Louie and he laughed hysterically at me. I waved goodbye to the beer-toting toddler as he drove off.
I was just about to head inside when Rose gestured me over. She lived directly across the street in a bright red duplex that was converted into a two-family back when this part of town wasn’t as avoidable. She was in her late seventies, opinionated, and from what I could tell by her choice in decorative lawn ornaments, color blind. Regardless of the time of day, Rose always wore an apron over her clothing. She liked to bake and she did it often, a benefit I learned that came in the form of cookies, brownies, and when I was particularly lucky, homemade breads.
The house was owned by Rose, which meant she was the hen that ruled the roost. She rented the remaining portion to Mikey and aside from an occasional complaint when his late-night conquests moaned particularly loudly, she stayed out of his way and let him live his life. She was a nice lady who enjoyed her soap operas, and in a day and age when being neighborly was an afterthought, she made it fashionable again.
I crossed the street and greeted her with a sincere smile.
“Be careful of that Louie,” she said, waving her finger at me like a mother scolding her child. “He’s no good.”
“I don’t know, Rose. He seems like a nice enough person once you peel away the top layers.”
“The devil seems nice too, but you wouldn’t want to keep his company too long, would you?”
“No, certainly not,” I assured her.
“Do you know what that piece of shit did?” she asked me. This was the first time I had ever heard Rose curse, so I knew she was serious. Since I was a little kid I was always uncomfortable when old ladies like the innocent Rose dropped nickels into the swear jar. To me, it was about as unnatural as a cat and a dog fucking each other’s brains out, so I couldn’t help but get the slightest tinge of heebie jeebies running up my spine.
“He sold me a clothes dryer that he took from somebody’s garbage! That’s what that son of a bitch did!”
“He really did that?”
“I swear to you he did that,” she said, raising her hands in the air and waving them all around as if swatting tiny Louies out of her personal space. “I’ll never forget that day. He says to me in his devil voice, ‘Rose dear, I found a dryer and it has your name on it.’ He says, ‘A family is moving to New Jersey and they have to sell it. The dryer is almost new.’ ‘How much is it?’ I said back to him. He said, ‘They want three hundred, but I think I can get it for two hundred.’ I said, ‘What’s their number?’ He said, ‘Rose, don’t worry about numbers. I’ll take care of everything for you.’ And like a fool I bought the dryer. That machine couldn’t even dry the air inside its own belly. When I went to Mikey to have it fixed, he told me he saw the same machine sitting in the garbage on Bell Street.”
It was obvious that the thought of that dryer made Rose angry because she had to brace herself on the railing of her porch just to keep from toppling over. Her face grew as red as the fiery house and a tiny vein bulged out of her forehead.
“That’s terrible,” I said in a comforting voice.
“So you see? He’s a bad man. A very bad man!”
“He should give you your money back. Did you talk to him?”
“Talk to him? I even called his mother. She lives in a nursing home in East Cambridge. She was so hurt.”
“Next time I see Louie, I’m going to give him a piece of my mind for you, Rose.”
“It won’t do any good. If this was Italy, a man would never do that to an old woman ’cause somebody would crack his head wide open. I was born in Italy, you know. I came over when I was ten. The boat was a boat only by definition—not like the luxury liners they have today. The Captain said we were having “bird of the sea” that trip. You know what that is? It’s seagull. It tasted awful! But when you’re hungry, boy you eat it. Twenty-one days it took. The boat stopped in Boston at Commonwealth Pier and that’s where I became an American.”
Rose took a deep breath. Her anger seemed to turn to sadness as she relived the events of her youth in her mind.
“When I came to this country, my childhood ended,” she continued. “My father put me to work at thirteen. I worked five and one-half days a week and never saw a penny of it. Back then, a family works to support their family. Nowadays it’s different.” Rose had a lifetime of regrets to complain about and I always listened to her although it would have been more interesting had she told me some wild stories from her past.
“Did you go to school, Rose?”
“A total of two and one-half years. And my father didn’t like it neither. Each kid was an income and if we went to school, it was like taking food off of the table. He lied about my age, and the age of my brothers and sisters, so we could work,”
“Where did you work, Rose?”
“In the mills in Lawrence. I sewed. I walked two miles to work and only had twenty minutes to get there because I had chores I had to get done before I could go. I worked with a needle and thread from the time I was thirteen years old until I was twenty-two. When I got married, I handed my last paycheck over to my father and he complained that I cheated him of a half-day. I made three dollars and eighty cents a week.”
Rose stood motionless for a moment. Her eyes glazed over and she seemed to go somewhere else. It wasn’t until a muffler-less car roared down the street that she snapped back to reality.
“My father brought me to America to work,” she continued. “My childhood ended when I left Palermo.”
Normally I’d sit and listen to Rose until she grew tired of hearing herself speak, but our talk was borderline depressing and I was quickly eyeing my escape routes for an out. Thankfully, she could tell that I was teetering on uncomfortable and changed the subject.
“Do you have a girlfriend?” she asked me.
“Nobody steady.”
“Well, I believe that there is somebody for everybody, you just have to work hard on finding her.”
“I think you’re right, Rose. You know what they say? Nothing good comes easy.”
“Ain’t that the truth,” she said, giggling like old ladies do to their grandchildren. “It’s nice of you to talk to an old lady. I don’t understand people today. Everybody’s in a hurry. Everybody has so many things on their mind. In Italy it was never like this. I wish I never came to this country.”
I felt bad for Rose. I wished there was something I could have done to make her feel better in that moment, but butterflies and hugs were never really my cup of tea. She was hurting, that much was obvious, and I wondered if a simple gesture of mine would help to lessen the load she was carrying, whether it was helping her to take the clothes down from off of the line or being her date to the ever-competitive sport of Sunday afternoon Bingo tournaments down at the YMCA.
“You know, Rose, if you ever need me to take you anywhere—to the market or whatever—you just give me a holler, okay?
Thank you,” she replied with a growing smile. “I appreciate that very much. You’re a nice man.”
Rose walked slowly towards the large door that lead into her house, stopping briefly to remind me of what brought me across the street in the first place. “Remember,” she said. “Stay away from that Louie. He’s no good.”
By the time I had made it back to my house, my cell rang. It was Jimmy.
“I think I’d like to try your idea,” he told me with desperation in his voice. “I can’t take it anymore. That woman is driving me bonkers. I’m losing my fucking mind!”
“Okay Jimmy, everything is going to be fine. Mrs. Fazzino should be coming outside in about fifteen minutes,” I said, looking down at my watch. “She’s very punctual with her daily outdoor activities, so we don’t have much time. I’ve got some two-week-old dirty pans and a rack of dishes that could use some major cleaning. Meet me outside at your place in five minutes. Bring out some drinking glasses and a bottle of dishwashing liquid. Oh, and make sure you have the garden hose ready with the spray nozzle.”
“Why the hose?” he asked.
“Jimmy, tonight you’re going to do the dishes on the front lawn. Mrs. Fazzino will look over at you and you’ll smile at her and keep smiling. You’re going to tap into her insanity and she is going to look at you as a crazy comrade from this night on.”
“You sure this is going to work?”
“Absolutely,” I said confidently, though I knew deep down that it was a long shot.
I went inside my apartment, grabbed an empty moving box and packed the dirty pans inside. The Crock-Pot wasn’t as filthy as I had anticipated, but the frying pan made up for the other’s shortcomings thanks to a firm, crusty layer of congealed fat that had wedged itself into the bottom of the skillet. I then removed a stack of dishes covered with corn and baked beans from the counter and loaded them into the box, turning my head slightly to the left to avoid direct nose-to-scent contact with the odor the plates were giving off.
I passed Mrs. Fazzino’s place and met Jimmy in the front yard of his house where he was standing haplessly with the garden hose in his hand. I spread the pans and dishes, as well as Jimmy’s glasses, out on a tarp that my toothless neighbor had put down over the lawn.
“I’m a little nervous,” Jimmy said.
“Don’t worry, you’ll do just fine,” I assured him. “When Mrs. Fazzino sets the vacuum cleaner down on the walkway, that’s when you fire away.”
I went back to the comfort of my porch and sat on the highest step to get a good view of the action as it unfolded. Mrs. Fazzino’s door opened, right on time as always. Visibly nervous, Jimmy had the hose in one hand, ready to spray on the given command. Mrs. Fazzino suspiciously glanced over at Jimmy, unsure of his motives. It was like a Western duel of craziness set at high noon and there was no telling what the end result would be.
Mrs. Fazzino placed the battle-hardened Hoover down on her lawn and powered it up. Sensing his moment of truth, Jimmy squeezed on the nozzle’s silver handle and started spraying like a madman on a mission from God. His arm swayed from side to side, watering the porcelain, glass and nonstick aluminum. Unfortunately, Jimmy was too close to the dirty dishes and the hose was giving off too much pressure. I watched in awe as the pans and glasses exploded halfway across the lawn, erupting from the tarp like a simulated war scenario where the plan of attack was a carpet bomb initiated from the sky. By the time Jimmy lowered the pressure on the nozzle, the human fire hydrant was soaking wet and covered in week-old baked beans from head to toe. He wiped his face partially clean and looked over at Mr. Fazzino.
Upon seeing everything play out, Mrs. Fazzino sprinted into her house and quickly returned with what appeared to be two large brown handles taped together in the shape of a cross. She scurried over to the metal fence, leaned over the top of it and held up the giant crucifix, waving it in Jimmy’s direction. As previously directed, he smiled at Mrs. Fazzino like a schoolboy sitting down for his class photo, but it was not well received.
Cars were now slowing down to get a long glimpse of the man with the hose and the woman with the makeshift cross. A cyclist out for a trek stopped at the curb so as not to cross between the two. A Puerto Rican couple, holding hands and smooching, came upon the scene in mid-kiss and stopped in a frozen state of shock and dismay. They looked to me as if to say, “What’s their problem?” but I wasn’t going to give them the satisfaction of sanity, and instead looked back at them with no expression whatsoever, only to turn to the seagulls flying above, barking at them like a territorial hound. They said something in Spanish but the only words I could make out were “todo” and “loco.”
I watched as Martha parked her Honda Civic on the street, leaving the ideal distance between her car and the curb.
“What’s going on here?” she questioned me with her car window all the way down. “Why is that crazy man spraying water on plates and glasses? And what is that old woman holding?”
“I think it’s a cross.”
“What is there a lunatic convention going on here?”
“It’s a sick world Martha.”
She exited the car with grocery bags in hand and a purse over her shoulder. She was dressed conservatively as usual, this time wearing a pair of perfectly pressed slacks and a baby-blue colored blouse that covered every inch of her upper body, even though it was smack dab in the middle of summer. She glanced all around as she headed up the walkway towards my house, taking in her surroundings and the chaos the neighborhood released on the world. She was visibly shaken, though I didn’t blame her. This was the first time she visited me since I moved to this part of town, and I could already tell that she was second-guessing her decision to make me dinner that evening.
I greeted Martha at the door, kissed her on the right cheek and welcomed her inside. She looked like a newborn baby taking in the world for the first time; only it wasn’t amazement in her eyes, but fear.
“This… this is your place?” she asked with a certain amount of a tremble in her voice.
“Home sweet home.”
I took the grocery bags from Martha and tried to take her purse as well, but she clutched it tightly as if she was going to be robbed at any moment. I headed into the kitchen and placed the brown paper bags full of food on top of the counter, clearing a space for them by tossing a half-dozen boxes of partially eaten Coco Puffs into a nearby trash can. I glanced over my shoulder at Martha and smiled. Everything about the moment was horrifying her and she did very little to hide it.
“So how was your day?” I asked her as I unpacked various items from the bags, including a package of chicken, a head of lettuce, two tomatoes and a dented box of Rice-A-Roni. At the bottom of the second bag was the promised corn on the cob.
Before Martha could answer my question, a bug, most likely one of the many cockroaches that inhabited the house, crawled over her shoe and she let out a mind-numbing scream. Unable to control her fear of a creature one inch in length, she stumbled backwards and bumped into the fireplace mantle, which terrified the sleeping Gato enough to jolt the cat awake and put it on the defensive. Still half asleep, Gato hissed and lashed out at Martha, scratching her across the back and slicing three small slits into the baby-blue blouse she wore.
When the dust settled, Martha was hysterical. She was hyperventilating and ranting about my living conditions, so I gave her a brown paper bag and told her to breathe into it slowly. I had just about calmed her down when Charlie decided to make an appearance, slithering from underneath the couch and scaring the lunches out of both of us.
After coaxing Charlie into the bedroom and corralling him inside, I somehow convinced Martha to stay, even though it was clear that she would have rather been anywhere than the house of horrors I was calling a home. I could have just let her walk out the door, and it probably would have ended right there, but I’m a glutton for punishment and in a way, I was kind of enjoying myself in her company for the very firs