The Wanderers (21 page)

"So what's gonna be?" Chubby wheezed and forced another grin. "You guys bowlin' tonight or what?"

Last-minute eye contact between the hustlers and their backers. Joey saw Peppy Dio on the street sneak up and lock the front doors from the outside. Chubby saw him too. Peppy Dio vanished.

"What's it gonna be?" Chubby repeated. Richie saw movement behind the amber glass partition.

"I dunno," said one of the bowlers, a tall skinny guy with a face made for pushing in.

Chubby raised his arm as if to scratch the back of his head. Albert Galasso emerged from the lounge.

"What the hell," the skinny guy said. Chubby casually waved Albert back inside before anyone noticed him.

"Good ... good." Chubby rubbed his hands.

"Ah, same as last week?" one of the bankrollers asked.

"Well, I'll tell you, I had a good week, lotsa tournaments." Chubby dug in his pocket and tossed the five-thousand-dollar roll on the counter. The bankrollers tore off the rubber band and counted the hundred-dollar bills faster than the Wanderers could see the green flash from one hand to another.

"This is five grand!"

"I said I had a good week."

"We don't got that much."

Chubby shrugged. "Whadya got?"

Another conference. Hard stares at Chubby, Richie, and Buddy. Chubby winked at the Wanderers.

"We get to pick the alley."

Chubby graciously conceded.

One of the bowlers stared suspiciously at Eugene and Joey. "Who a' they?"

"They're kids."

"Whada they doin' here?"

"They're friends a the kids."

"I don't like 'em. Tell 'em to take a walk," said the bowler.

Chubby shrugged and started to tell Joey and Eugene to get lost, but he remembered he had Peppy lock the doors. "Look, they're punk kids." Chubby lifted them both off the ground by their shirts and threw them five feet. They landed on their asses. Trembling and confused, they got up. Richie and Buddy held their breath. Chubby laughed. "If I wanna try somethin', you think I'm gonna need them?" Chubby took another twenty out of his pocket. "Getchaselves Cokes." Joey took the bill and walked on rubber legs to the bar, Eugene close behind. "Enough a this bullshit awready, you gonna play or not?"

Richie prayed they would say O.K. He silently swore to God he would bowl the best, the most perfect game of his life, shake hands with everyone, and run like hell. But he had to start
now.
The sooner they began the sooner it would be over. His bladder and his asshole and the nagging terror nibbling on the inside of his forehead with tiny teeth were making him walk in small circles, preventing his eyes from focusing on anything but Buddy's shoes.

Buddy stared self-consciously at his shoes. What the fuck was Richie looking at? He tried to catch Richie's eye but Richie wouldn't look up. Buddy peered into the bar, but Eugene and Joey were out of sight. Suddenly he sensed that he shouldn't be looking into the bar, that there was something forbidden and dangerously out of bounds behind the smoky gold glass. His eyes snapped straight ahead, and he felt ten points of ice on his legs as his fingertips chilled him through his pants. He balled bis hands and the chill swirled in endless spirals within his tightly curled fists.

Eye contact. Digging into pockets. "Forty-eight hundred is all we got." A bankroller tossed a stack of bills on the counter. Chubby laid his money on top of it.

"Good enough. I'll leave the money right here." Chubby slapped bis hand over the pile. "Whynchoo guys take some practice frames?" he offered the ringers. "Richie, whynchoo an' Buddy get some Cokes?"

"I ain't thirsty."

Chubby glowered at them, and they took off for the bar.

"Look a' this!" Buddy held out a trembling hand. "I can't even hold a fuckin' ball."

Inside the bar Eugene and Joey sat helpless at a corner table. The six Galasso brothers stood flat against the amber glass. Soon the thunder and hollow crashes of the ringers taking practice frames echoed through the building.

"You kids just sit tight till it's time for the game," said Henry Galasso, who wore a pineapple shirt like his brother Chubby.

They had no intention of moving. It was as if somebody had shouted "Freeze!" in a game of Red Light, Green Light. Joey stared unblinking at his freshly lit cigarette burned down to a fragile and perfect cylinder of ash before crumbling across his knuckles. Eugene's Banlon shirt stuck to his back like a mustard plaster. He closed bis eyes and fell into a twenty-second sleep waking with a shudder and a circular wetness around his stomach.

Five minutes later Albert nodded to his brothers, and the six of them filed out of the bar. The Wanderers sat wide-eyed and motionless.

As soon as Jerry Rosen, the main bankroller, saw the Galasso brothers emerge from the lounge, he bolted for the money, scooped it up, and ran for the door. He pushed, pulled, and banged on the glass. Chubby calmly walked over to him. "Where you goin'?" Jerry turned around wild-eyed and opened bis mouth to say something, but Chubby slammed him in the heart, and he dropped to his knees, the money descending like green snow across his back and shoulders. "We got a match here." Chubby dragged him along the floor by the collar dumping him at his brothers' feet The other two bankrollers stood trapped and terrified. Chubby motioned them to sit in the hard sky-blue plastic chairs at the head of the lane where the ringers were taking their practice frames. "You puvs can keen score. I'm just a dumb guinea." They collaosed in the chairs. A score sheet lay neatly clipped to a white Formica table in front of them.

The ringers started backing down the alley toward the pins. "Where you guys goin'?" Chubby laughed. They looked around. There was no place to run.

"You can't bowl over there, that's cheatin'," said Albert. His brothers laughed.

"C'mere." Chubby motioned. "I wanna get started awready." Unsteadily they walked up the lane to the bankrollers. Jerry moaned and struggled to his feet. Albert and Henry lifted him onto a sky-blue plastic chair next to his colleagues.

"I wanna fair match tonight" Chubby said. "You guys are very, very good bowlers. You're good enough to be pros." The ringers looked at each other and ran for the door, but Albert, Henry, and Chickie, the two-hundred-pound baby of the family, grabbed them.

"Look, take the fuckin' money," Jerry sobbed. "Let us get outta here."

"I wouldn't think of it," said Chubby. "We agreed on a game, so we got a game to roll."

"We just think that you guys are so good," said Henry, "that it wouldn't be fair unless you bowled wit' a handicap."

"Fifty pins!" said Jerry.

"That wasn't what I was thinkin' about," said Chubby. "Seventy-five!" Jerry offered.

"No good," said Chubby, as he nodded to his brothers. Henry took a ball from the rack, and Albert and Chickie threw one of the ringers on the ground. Louie and Jimmy Galasso forced him onto his stomach and sat on his back. Albert yanked his hand out straight and spread his fingers. The other ringer ran for the door again, but Chickie decked him. Henry knelt by the outstretched hand. The ringer screamed and tried to buck Louis and Jimmy off his back, but the two brothers sat tight.

A sixth brother, Ronnie, watched the three bankrollers for any sudden moves. "Sit tight," he growled, as two of them started to stand up.

Henry made sure the fingers lay straight on the waxed floor. He raised the bowling ball over his head like a big rock and brought it down hard, crushing three fingers. The ringer let out a horrible womanish scream and passed out. "Chubby, you wanna do the thumb too?"

Chubby walked over to examine the smashed fingers with the toe of his shoe. They were reddish-purple with deep gashes at the knuckles where bone protruded. Chubby didn't answer. Louie and Jimmy stood up, hoisted the unconscious hustier by his armpits, and dumped him in Jerry's lap. Jerry started to retch and threw him off his legs onto the floor, where he lay in a heap.

"Do the other prick," said Chubby.

The first ringer's scream had the Wanderers standing up. Richie knocked over his chair and quickly bent down to pick it up—maybe if the room was very neat when Chubby walked in they could all go home. He smacked his forehead on the corner of the table and saw stars for a moment, but the second scream from the alley straightened him up as if he had been stuck in the ass with a hot poker. They all ran for the bar entrance where they slammed nose first into Chubby Galasso's chest.

"Those guys are hustlers. They fucked with me, and they fucked with my money. They fucked with you guys too." He motioned for Buddy and Richie to come out. Richie stumbled after him, almost stepping on his heels. Buddy wandered in an erratic tine.

"Now that you guys are handicapped we can have us a match," said Henry cheerfully. Chickie slapped the two ringers awake.

"Let us go home," one of the bankrollers pleaded. "Take the goddamn money."

"If I took the money wit'out a match I would be hustling," said Chubby.

"You guys warmed up?" he asked Buddy and Richie. "Lemme see." He peered over Jerry's shoulder. "Hey, Jerry, you gotta write down everybody's name." He pointed to the blank lines of the score sheet. Jerry cursed and wrote four names in a hasty scrawl.

"Buddy." Chubby motioned Buddy to bowl. Buddy staggered to the tine in his street shoes, grabbed a lightweight red ball from the ball return, and threw it blindly down the alley. He knocked down five pins. The Galasso brothers jeered and laughed.

"C'mon, Borsalino! Booo."

Buddy took a deep breath, tried not to look at the two ringers writhing in agony on a long plastic bench, and rolled a spare.

"Yeah! Awright! Way to go," they cheered.

Chubby looked at the score sheet. "Which one a you guys is Larry?" he asked the two ringers. Chubby yanked one of them to his feet. "C'mon, Larry. It's your turn!" He shoved Larry to the ball return. Larry just stood there swooning. "C'mon, do I gotta show you how to bowl?" Chubby grabbed Larry's mangled hand and rammed the fingers into the holes of a bowling ball. Larry howled, falling to his knees. "I'm just tryin' to help." Chubby shrugged. Larry struggled to his feet and grabbed a bowling ball with his other hand.

"Cheata! Cheata!" The Galassos laughed.

Larry moved like a drunk. He managed to hang the bowling ball by his unbroken thumb and with a stiff motion, he rolled the ball ineffectively into the gutter.

Eugene and Joey sat at the table in the bar listening to the cheers and the catcalls. "I'm gettin' the fuck outta here," said Joey.

"Where you gonna go, shithead?"

Joey nervously pulled at his hair. "We're gonna get killed."

"Shut up."

"We are."

A loud roar went up from the alley.

"I ain't
never
bowlin' again," said Eugene. He started pacing the bar, but stayed away from the entrance to the alley.

"Where you goin'?" Joey stood up in panic.

"I'm goin' dancin' ... whereya think I'm goin'?"

"Sit down, hah?" Joey started crying.

"That's it, start cryin'. That'll take care of everything."

"Shut up." Joey held back more tears.

"Capra, you're such a faggot, I swear to God."

Joey stood up and grabbed Eugene by the front of his shirt. "Start somethin', cocksucker!" he snarled and grabbed the bottle of Canadian.

"Forget it." Eugene was shaken by Joey's rage.

Joey sat down. "Big fuckin' hero ... cool man."

"Forget it," Eugene said.

"You think just because you get laid you're somethin' else." Eugene said nothing.

"Well you ain't shit, Caputo, you ain't..." Eugene reached for the bottle, but Joey's hand darted out like a snake clutching his wrist. He tripped Eugene backward over his extended leg and sat on his chest, knees pinned like nails into Eugene's shoulders. Joey drew back his fist, ready to let loose when Richie and Buddy walked in. Their faces were white. Neither of them looked at Eugene or Joey.

"Let's go," said Buddy.

Joey stood up. "How'd it go?"

They didn't answer. Eugene stood up, straightening his shirt and smoothing back his hair. Joey shot him a contemptuous glance. Eugene was silent, knowing that whatever happened from now on, Joey could kick his ass and knowing that Joey knew that too.

As the four of them left the building, Chubby was Scotch-taping the score sheet onto the glass door.

BUDDY—102
LARRY—7
RICHIE—97
TEDDY—10

"See you next week, boys." The glass caught their reflection as they left Paradise Lanes.

D
RIVING
ALONE
to Despie's house one night after dropping the guys off from bowling, Buddy saw some blond cunt waiting for a bus under the el. "You wanna ride?"

Her whitish-yellow hair was piled on her head tike custard. Meaty legs and a sneering mouth. "Get lost."

"You wanna fuck?" Buddy burned rubber, laughing, shooting a red light and missing a panel truck by inches. He debated going around the block again. No, yes, no, yes, no, yes, yes. The second time around she was standing with some monster guinea with a leather jacket and no teeth. She pointed at Buddy. The big greaseball lumbered over to the car, and Buddy took off again, running lights and taking corners like a drunken stunt driver laughing in his terror.

Buddy sat on a cracked vinyl revolving stool under a filthy tight in Pioneer's candy store nursing a too-hot cup of coffee. He watched Maxie pile dishes in a gray plastic bus box, the overhead light converting his rimless glasses into blinding reflectors. Maxie was a crazy fuck. Buddy had come into Pioneer at least four times a week, since he was old enough to cross the street himself, and Maxie never once in all those years showed any sign that he'd ever seen Buddy before in his life.

Buddy thought of Despie and savored the twisting in his gut. Somebody put Chuck Jackson's "Any Day Now" on the juke box and Buddy felt his stomach shrink to the size of a marble.

"Any day now, ... man beau-ti-ful bird
You will have flo-o-o-wn"