I Loved You More (9 page)

The guy on the phone was as tough as ever. John Gotti in New Jersey.

“What's your problem?”

I gave him the account number and the street address.

“What's your problem?”

“Other.”

“What's your other problem?”

I said it fast, loud, and fuck you.

“Boiler emergency,” I said.

There was a silence, just for a moment, and then the guy laughed.

“I remember you. You're the super getting the college education.”

If you wait you lose. Before I had a chance to open up my mouth, the guy was talking at me again.

“Two hours,” he said. “You be there on the stoop with the keys.”

“If you're not on the stoop we don't stop.”

In the shower, no matter how hard I scrubbed I couldn't get the basement turd smell off me. Poured a bunch of Polo aftershave into my hands and slapped it on my neck and face. Put on fresh clothes. Tied a new red handkerchief around my neck. Grabbed the flashlight and the keys. In the hallway. I slipped on my shrimper boots.

THE MOMENT THAT
black van pulled up in front I knew. Which is the second reason why
Frank's First Call Boiler and Repair
fucked me up.

Marco.

Three months earlier, the last time I was alone with Marco, was in another basement. 211 East Fifth – the
first
time I'd called
Frank's First Call Boiler and Repair
. After getting hung up on all day, I'd finally I got a repairman sent over.

My boss gave me specific instructions to stay with the repairman the whole time. Just to watch him.
Make sure he doesn't goof off. Plus you might learn something
.

Marco arrived in a black van. Maria Callas playing a little too loud. Baldini. He was in his late twenties, tall and thin. Dark faux Aviator glasses. Under his ballcap, his hair was short and jet black. Orange coveralls,
Marco
sewed in red above his pocket.

He was sullen at first, you know like most straight guys, answered my questions with a grunt. I bought him a cup of coffee and he warmed up. Probably helped with his hangover. Turns out the oil pump had blown out and we had to undo the boiler assembly. I didn't know my ass from my elbow about boilers, but
my boss had told me I had to stay, so I became Marco's assistant – handing him tools and running to his van for shit.

The first time I got a close look at Marco we were taking a break, standing outside in the sunlight in front of the basement door. A smashed nose that bent off to one side. One of those pencil-thin mustaches. Lips that seemed unreal, the way they were red. When he took his faux Aviators off, I mean I had to stare. His eyes were light brown, almost gray. Eyes like they could never look up into the sun or at God the Father or work for
Frank's First Call Boiler and Repair
. Those sensitive eyes, the thin mustache, and his red lips, man. Marco must have known about his eyes, how he had to keep them covered up, or maybe he was just weirded out by my stare, because he quick started down the basement steps. I waited a bit before I followed him down, and when I looked at him again, he was in the dark and wearing his safety glasses.

The cement walls of the boiler room were only a couple feet wider than the boiler itself. The motor and the oil burner assembly were on the floor of the boiler room right next to the pit the boiler was set in. The whole apparatus had to come off and then we had to bleed out the pipes. Or something like that. In any case, in no time at all, the whole magilla was torn apart. Just one light in the room. I had to plug in an extension cord for another light. Marco's hands were thick and calloused. Grease along the nails. On his left hand third finger a simple gold ring.

There were boiler parts everywhere and I had to be careful where I stepped. We talked some as we worked. Guy talk, as much as I can figure out what that is. I told him I was from Idaho and he mistook Idaho for Iowa then mixed them both up with Ohio. I didn't try and correct him. He was a Yankees fan and had a motorcycle. Some kind of fast Honda motorcycle. He didn't cuss like most guys. I went to ask him about his wife, and if he had any kids, but decided against it.

After a couple hours of handing him wrenches, after an afternoon of holding my monkeywrench on the bolt heads while
he screwed the washers and nuts on tight, hours and hours of maneuvering my body around so I could get a better grip, both of us our arms up inside the dark hole of the boiler – there was no fucking way I couldn't not touch him – something changed. I have a theory about men working close in dark New York basements. Brings something out in you.

Sometime in the late afternoon, Marco stood up. He started making a big deal about how hot the basement was. A production number, him taking off his coveralls. Underneath he was wearing one of those Guinea T-shirts and a pair of jeans. White white skin. Lots of black hair on his chest. His jeans were some kind of designer washed-out jeans. When he bent over in those jeans. I mean he had to know he was showing hairy cleavage.

Propinquity. At this one point, I'm lying next to him on the cement floor, holding some damn oil pump burner thing steady, while Marco tightened a screw down. All the while his armpit's in my face. Sweat is what always tells the tale.

Marco smelled like my father.

And the most amazing thing. I didn't want to be in the next borough.

Later on, seven-thirty, eight o'clock, we were outside having a smoke. The boiler was back up and running, Marco was wearing his faux Aviators and his orange coveralls were back on. The tools were put away. The early evening was hot, and after a day in a dark basement, the bright burnt orange sky was good on my eyes and the air felt warm on my skin. I was sitting on the stoop. Marco was leaning against his black van. There was something different about Marco. The way he just kept standing there smoking. And his lips, Marco kept moving his red red lips, as if he was trying to say something. I wanted to say something too. I mean I felt like the boiler had lost and Marco and I were on the winning team. Didn't most guys feel this way after their hard work paid off for them? Wasn't that called
camaraderie
? Of course, I wanted to say something more. But Marco's lovely butt crack kept flashing in my brain. Made my breath stop. And how Marco smelled
like my father. How fucked up I was that smell was sexy. So I didn't say anything. I had no voice, my heart was broke, same way as my dick was.

Marco pushed away from the van, walked through all the sunset bright orange, over to me on the stoop. I put my hand over my eyes. When his body was between me and the sun, I could see his hand stuck out. Marco shook my hand the way I always shake hands with men, too hard. All that overcompensation. Then he got in his van, started it up. I was halfway up the stoop when he called out.

“Hey, Ben!”

I had no idea Marco knew my name, so when I heard my name coming out from under that pencil thin mustache, from out of those red red lips, that place inside me that's always scared in that moment stopped being scared. How I stopped, looked at my arms, at my hands, looked around me at the world. Blessed fearless moment. When you're Catholic the way I am, you don't have to die to spend eternity in hell.

Marco had his window rolled down. On the window ledge, his black hairy forearm. He reached up under the visor and pulled out a pen and began writing on something. Maria Callas too loud. Just as he handed me out the business card, the way he turned his head, his faux Aviators shone the bright orange sky right into me.

When I got back to my apartment, I put the card under my reading lamp.

Frank's First Call Boiler and Repair

Marco Tucciarone

Scribbled on the back, his phone number and
weekends call after nine o'clock
.

About a week later, after a bottle of
Vin Santo
, I sat with my telephone in my lap, wrapping the curlicue cord in my fingers. Marco's business card under my reading light.
Weekends call after nine o'clock
written in strangely cursive handwriting.

THREE MONTHS LATER
, on the stoop of 39 East Seventh,
Frank's First Call Boiler Repair
's black van pulls up, double parks. At first I'm relieved because the too loud music isn't Maria Callas. It's hip-hop. The Italian guy that gets out on the passenger side looks like he's still in high school. His orange coveralls are too long for him and he has to stop and roll the pant legs up off his boots. He doesn't like that his coveralls don't fit. He's cussing the long legs of the coveralls, or cussing his short legs. I just know there's something he isn't happy about. He's bent over, his ass pointed my way. It's through his legs he sees me standing on the second stair of the stoop. He straightens up fast and turns around. The look on his face as he looks at me, his dark eyes, inside those eyes, it's hate.

“What the fuck you looking at?”

I have to remind my internal homophobia that I'm just standing on the stoop on the second step waiting for the boiler guys. And the boiler guys came and one of them stepped out, bent over, and started pointing his ass at me.

A gorilla this guy, the way he stares at my white boots, walks up to me, past me, up to the third step so he can look me in the eye.
Frankie Junior
sewn in red above his pocket. Puffed up in his chest, like Hank makes his chest, but I don't know Hank yet and this guy isn't pretty at all like Hank. He's mean,
Frank's First Call Boiler Repair
mean, and up this close his breath smells of beer and his skin is bad and there's something about his eyes. He isn't twenty years old yet, and his tiny brown eyes are dead.

“Frankie Junior!”

That voice. I know that voice. It's the voice who called out my name one evening three months ago in the glowing. Marco.

“Your dad's on the two-way. He wants to talk to you.”

Frankie Junior's brown dead eyes go from my eyes down to Marco. It's in that moment I can see the hate in Frankie Junior's eyes doesn't have anything to do with me. He's got a chip on his shoulder, or a hangover, bad drugs, really bad gas, or he's just somehow fucked up and whoever he runs into has to pay for it.

Frankie Junior steps down, the too-long pant leg scraping the bottom step.

“Motherfucker!” he yells and kicks his too-long pant leg at the step.

“Orange cunt fucking pants!” he yells. “Can't fucking even walk!”

Marco stands tall on the sidewalk, his toolbox in his right hand. His thin mustache, those red red lips. Faux Aviator glasses. Even though I can't see his eyes, I can tell his dove gray eyes are not looking at me. They're not looking at Frankie Junior either. There's something resigned about Marco. Like this is my fucking job and this is my fucking life and this is my boss's fucking spoiled brat son and this guy on the second stair is the fucking guy who never called me back.

As I speak I try to put in my words a softness, some kind of apology.

“Hey Marco,” I say, “How's it going?”

A quick breath in, Marco gets taller, his shoulders go up. His right arm lifts the toolbox, lets it back down. The fucking faux Aviators, man. He's not Marco Tucciarone. He's Boiler Man. And nothing's going to touch this guy.

Frankie Junior slams the van door.

“So where's this fucking boiler?”

I UNLOCK THE
door to the basement, turn on the light. The shit smell is still strong. Frankie Junior's right behind me. By the third step he's cussing again.

“Somebody fucking die down here?”

On the cement floor, no sign of turds or toilet paper.

“Fuckin' A, somebody died,” he says. “Shit themselves first, then sprayed it down with perfume water.”

The single lightbulb is hanging right above us. Shadows of us puddle on the cement floor. Frankie Junior's standing right next to me. Marco steps out from behind him, bends down and opens the toolbox. When I look up, the dark shadows on Frankie
Junior's cheeks. His dead eyes are so dead they've become black holes.

It's time to tell them what's up with the boiler. My fucking mouth that doesn't know how to speak to big loud macho brute Italian guys, especially when the news ain't good is just about to speak, but the black holes in Frankie Junior's face, man. The black holes start sucking me in.

“Fuck man, I don't know who smells worse,” Frankie Junior says, “this fucking basement or you. What'd you do take a bath in foo foo water?”

He's half a head shorter than me and his body is thick. Marco starts taking out tools and laying them on the cement. His faux Aviators reflect the lightbulb. You wait, you lose. That quick, Frankie Junior pulls a flashlight out of a side pocket, turns the flashlight on. Shines the light onto the boiler apparatus. The three of us all turn to look.

I hadn't sprayed it down. I was too freaked the boiler had stopped and I ran out of there and I didn't spray down the boiler apparatus. The black electric motor, the sparkplugs, the wires coming out of it, the oil filter, the copper tubing, the pump, the blower system – all of it. Covered in toilet paper and turds.

Frankie Junior goes ballistic.
Motherfucker
and
motherfucker
. Stomps up the stairs. Marco picks up a wrench, puts it back in the toolbox. It's when Marco realizes he's alone with me, he does that quick breath in again and his shoulders go up. That quick he follows Frankie Junior up the stairs. I stay in the basement, think maybe somebody should stay with the tools. The dark wet basement looks like a dungeon where people get tortured. The metal push broom I've left is leaning against the stairs.