KooKooLand (6 page)

Hank was looking impatient. I edged a little closer to hear how Jimmy's matchmaking might be progressing.

“I've got something you can tap,” I heard Jimmy say. “She's not bad looking.”

“After my wife, who looks like a goddamn movie star, you want to set me up with something that's ‘not bad looking'? Forget it, Greek.”

“Look, she's not Ava Gardner, OK, but she's a nice-looking broad. Dark hair, like you go for. And a sweetheart, real quiet. Won't break your balls like Doris.”

“Doris can be nice when she wants to be.”

“You mean when she wants something. Like a new goddamn mink coat.”

Hank didn't say anything, just puffed harder on his cigar. Jimmy watched him like a hawk.

“I heard she's back in town,” Jimmy said. “Did you see her or what?”

“Yeah, I saw her last night. So what?”

“So what? Look at you. You look like you just took the slow boat up the devil's ass and back.”

“Yeah, and you look like the devil's ass.”

“Man, that broad just divorced you. Forget about her. How many times you gonna chase her tail across the country?”

“None of your goddamn business, Greek. That's how many times.”

“Is she back to stay or what?”

“She wants to sell the house and move out to California.”

“Sayonara. That's where she belongs. In KooKooLand.”

“No, that's where you belong. You're the goddamn head case.”

“Look, I'll have Shirley call this broad. We'll go out clubbing Saturday night. Just the four of us.”

“All right. Fuck it. If it will shut you up.”

Jimmy put his hand on Hank's shoulder.

“Forget Doris. Believe me, I know what I'm talkin' about. I had one just like her before Shirley. I may be a greaseball and you're a Polack, but we speak the same language.”

Hank stubbed out his cigar and walked away. As he passed me, he said, “Your old man's a royal pain in the ass.” Then he reached in his pocket and gave me a dollar. A whole frickin' dollar. I stood there, gawking at it.

Jimmy was already on his way out the door.

I ran to catch up with him, debating whether I would buy a Charleston Chew or Milk Duds or a Sugar Daddy.

I tripped over a fishing pole and went down into a sea of men's legs.

A meaty hand reached down and helped me up.

It was a cop. He was holding a hunting rifle. I froze. Froze at the sight of his shiny badge and his name. McSomething.

“Are you OK? Did you hurt yourself?” He actually looked concerned.

My knee was all scraped up. I knotted up every muscle in my body to keep from blubbering. I heard Jimmy's voice in my head. Always leave a cop on a stone wall. Meaning, don't tell them diddly-squat.

“I'm fine,” I lied. “I didn't feel nothin'.”

“Not a good place for little girls,” he said.

“My daddy knows Hank,” I barked at him, and ran off, doing my best not to hobble on my banged-up leg.

Outside, Jimmy was standing by the car, sucking on a Lucky.

“What the hell did you say to that fuzz?”

“Nothin', Daddy. I didn't say nothin'. I left him on a stone wall where he belongs.”

“Good girl.” Jimmy laughed. “I trained you good. Now hop to it. You're makin' me late.”

I scrambled into the car. The seat was burning hot and my knee was stinging like a bastard and I still felt like blubbering. I cupped the wound so Jimmy wouldn't see my bloody scrape. I didn't want him to call me a dummkopf for falling. I just wanted to go home. I had some Chuckles jelly candies hidden in the Good & Plenty box with Barbie's shoes and pocketbooks. I wanted them bad.

But just my stupid Norris luck, Susan's younger brother, Terry, showed up.

Jimmy jumped out of the car and jogged over to Terry.

“And there he is, in the center of the ring, the one-and-only Manchester Mauler!”

Terry laughed and Jimmy grabbed him around the neck and mussed his wavy black hair. According to Jimmy, Terry was a dead ringer for John Garfield, the mauler in his favorite boxing movie,
Body and Soul
.

“So now you're a big high school graduate, you think you're a man? You think you can take me?”

“I could take you when I was ten, old man,” Terry crowed.

They started throwing punches, messing around.

“Whoa, pretty boy,” cooed Jimmy. “Lookin' good, lookin' good.”

All of a sudden, I wanted to punch somebody, anybody.

I wanted to punch Terry. It didn't matter that he was nice as pie to me or was my future best friend Susan's younger brother or might one day be the boxing champion of the world. I hated his guts. Hated that he was keeping me from my Chuckles. Hated that Jimmy took him hunting and fishing and sat ringside with Hank at his boxing matches. Cripe, he was only in the Golden Gloves, but to hear Jimmy go on and on you'd think he was the Great Jack Dempsey.

The blood on my knee was starting to get sticky. I found a greasy gun-cleaning rag and tried to dab some of the blood off. The knee was now black and red and still throbbing and I was sure I was gonna get blood poisoning if I didn't get the hell home and swab it with alcohol the way Jimmy the Cut Man had taught me to do.

I heard Jimmy invite Terry to come up to Maine to watch our horse, Victory Bound.

“Come have your picture taken in the winner's circle,” he said.

Goddamn it! I didn't want Terry horning in on my vacation. He wasn't part of our family and I didn't see where he got off being in the winner's circle. He already had a millionaire father and a movie-star-looking mother, even if they had just busted up. He already had a sister like Susan.

And he was a goddamn pretty boy. What more did he want?

Finally, Jimmy told Terry not to overtrain because with horses that was the kiss of death and people were the same as horses. Then Jimmy got back in the car. Terry gave me a little wave. I waved back at him.

Maybe he'll fall into a garbage truck or a snake pit, I thought. Maybe the Boston Strangler will get tired of strangling women and start strangling a few men.

You never knew. Something bad could always happen.

I still had hope.

T
he Great Jack Dempsey was staring down at me. He had his arm around my grandfather, Papou Nick. Papou was wearing a fancy suit and a shiny tie and a white shirt with a collar all stiff and tight like it could choke him to death. Papou looked like a million bucks. Like a millionaire, even.

But that was a long time ago.

I studied the picture of Papou and the Great Jack Dempsey that hung above the cash register in Nick's Ringside Cafe. We had stopped there on the way back from Hank's. As I stared at the photo, I tried to figure out what had gone wrong. Why wasn‘t the Great Jack Dempsey in our lives now?

I glanced around the place. The truth was I didn't think a world champ would be caught dead in a joint like this. Everything was piss yellow from the haze of smoke that never went away. Even the picture of the Great Jack Dempsey was all yellow. There was sawdust on the floor that had beery spit in it, and three big dusty jars on the bar with gray things floating in them. Pickled eggs. Pickled pigs' feet. And kielbasa sausage, which was a Polack food for any Polacks who might be stopping by. I had seen a guy eat a kielbasa once, but nobody ever seemed to touch the pickled eggs or feet. I figured maybe they were just there for decoration like the picture of the Great Jack Dempsey. But then Jimmy had explained to me that you had to pretend to serve food in a beer joint or the city would shut you down. You had to have a grill in the back and a few hot dogs and some raw hamburger meat to throw on it when some pencil pusher from the city pulled a sneak visit. You had to offer the pencil pusher a grilled dog and a cold soda, which he would turn his nose up at before he got the hell out and let the paying customers get back to the business of drinking themselves half-blind.

The paying customers needed to drink themselves half-blind, Jimmy said, 'cause they all hated their Mickey Mouse, collect-a-paycheck-every-Thursday jobs. They were a bunch of poor alkie mill workers caught in a cage like Squirmy our hamster. The mill workers didn't own racehorses and had nothing to look forward to except a lousy week or two off in the summer and a frozen Butterball at Christmas.

No wonder they turn into rumheads, Jimmy said. I wasn't sure why he called them that since the only thing Papou and YaYa sold was ten-cent beers.

YaYa started to yell at Jimmy.

“Why do you do this? Why do you keep bringing her in here? You know we could get shut down again if a policeman sees her!”

“Relax, will ya?” Jimmy said to YaYa. “If a copper comes in, I'll hide her under the bar—she's skinny enough to fit anywhere. Skinny like her Olive Oyl mother. Besides, don't you want to see your own granddaughter? What kind of good-for-nothing grandmother are you?”

He was kidding around with her, yanking on the ties of her apron.

YaYa smacked him away and retied the bow on her perfectly starched apron. Then she smoothed down the front of her fancy blue dress. YaYa, like always, was dressed to the nines. Jimmy said she dolled up for the beer joint like she was going to the Carpenter Hotel, the place where all the Yankee ladies sipped their limey tea. She even wore diamond jewelry. Shirley told me the jewelry was as phony as a three-dollar bill, but I didn't see how anybody could tell the difference.

“Whose fault is it I don't see more of them?” YaYa snapped at Jimmy. “Why don't you let me bring her and Virginia to church this Sunday?”

I knew what he'd say about that. No f'in' way. No kid of his was going to have to suffer like he did when he was a boy with all that smelly incense and those priests in their big, goofy hats.

“These kids don't even speak Greek,” he said. “It'll be mumbo jumbo to them.”

“Whose fault is that?” she barked. “Who wouldn't let me send them to Greek school when I offered to pay for it?”

She shouted something at him in Greek for good measure. Jimmy answered her in English.

“I don't need your dough. Not one red cent. And she don't need Greek school. She's an American kid, for Chrissake. She don't want to be stuck in some dungeon after school learning a language she'll never use. She wants to be outside in the sunshine playing with the other American pip-squeaks.”

He turned to me to back him up.

“Don't you, Dracula?”

He waited for my answer. YaYa waited too. Her eyes were black as licorice dots.

I didn't know the right answer. The answer that would make them both happy.

“I don't know,” I mumbled.

“Of course she doesn't know,” YaYa snapped. “Children do what their parents tell them to do—unless they're bad like you. I hope she doesn't take after you, that's all I can say.”

“She does take after me. She does in spades.” He pumped me again. “Don't you?”

“I don't know,” I mumbled again.

I could see he wasn't happy with my answer.

“I guess so,” I chirped.

I wanted out of there.

“Daddy, I'm hungry,” I blurted out.

“How 'bout a pig's foot?” he suggested. He started to unscrew the top of the jar.

I stared panic-stricken at the floating feet.

Jimmy burst out laughing.

“Look at her. She thinks I'm serious.”

He bopped me on the head.

“Take it easy. Nobody's gonna make you eat that. It's been here since the Stone Age.”

He looked back over at YaYa, who was taking a dime from an alkie and putting it in the cash register.

“Make Dracula a hamburger,” he ordered her. “Nice and bloody.”

I didn't want it nice and bloody and said so, but Jimmy said that was the only way to eat meat. He said if I went to a swanky restaurant in Paris and ordered filet mignon cooked black as a nigger they'd call me a Yankee greenhorn and throw me the hell out of there.

YaYa went in the back and soon I could hear the sizzle of frying meat.

Jimmy covered the bar while she was gone. He poured frothy beer from the taps and collected more dimes from the alkies.

When he opened the cash register to drop the money in, I saw him slip some bills from the drawer and shove them in his pocket.

Playing the accordion, he called it. Skimming a little off the top.

I pretended I didn't see.

I had another secret and knew I had to keep it. Keep it on a stone wall.

Jimmy called me over and held out a nickel.

“Some music, maestro,” he said.

I knew what he wanted me to play.

D-4. The buttons on the jukebox were hard for me to push with my
pip-squeak fingers. The machine went and found the record I picked and dropped it on the spindle. Louis Armstrong's “When the Saints Go Marching In” started up.

I looked over at Jimmy. He nodded his approval. I knew in a few moments he'd be making trumpet sounds for the alkies and they'd be telling him he sounded pretty damn good.

YaYa put my hamburger on the counter with an Orange Crush and a slice of cool watermelon and I crawled up on a stool between two half-blind alkies. They made room for me.

I took the first bite of hamburger. No blood seeped out. I could see the outside was nice and black. I looked over at YaYa.

“How is it?” she asked with a wink.

“It's good,” I said. “Mmm-mmm good.”

YaYa went back to serving the alkies. She smiled and joked around with them. As I watched her yank on the tap, I thought about what Shirley had once told me. YaYa had been an alkie too when Jimmy was a kid. She drank like a fish in a barrel of booze until one day she took Jimmy out in Papou's car and drove right off the road. “Women drivers!” Jimmy woulda said if he'd been part of the conversation. Luckily nobody died and YaYa vowed to never touch a drop of the stuff ever again.