The Tandem Flight of Ursie and Mando

  

August 1955  

        Ursie was all of six and a half years old that first day she burst into my social club carrying a well-worn broom twice her size and a homemade dustpan fashioned from the flap of a cardboard box. She stomped her bare feet when she addressed me in perfect Italian, “Buon giorno, Senore Lupiano.  Io mi chiamo Ursalina Bellamari.”  She brushed the too long fringe of  hair from her eyes, large brown orbs flecked with amber and kissed my hand before she chastised me for the accumulation of trash in the front of my ‘office’.

     Her speech was well rehearsed, she insisted the filth would damage my honorable reputation and argued that I would lose the respect of those in the neighborhood that I controlled if I continued to ignore the situation.  She spoke of rats and plagues and other misfortunes that would visit me if I didn’t act immediately.  

“Disgraziara!”  she huffed.  

Then and there she offered her solution to my problem.

“For only one dollar I will clean this street as it has never been cleaned before.  Just shake my hand and we’ll have a deal.”  

        My crew and I laughed long and hard with a few members of my entourage grabbing my hand and pretending to kiss it, an honor I wouldn’t earn for many years.  The child didn’t move an inch and thrust her tiny chin into the air while she waited for my decision.  I stuck out my hand, we shook and she set to her task immediately.  

        For three hours she toiled in the bright August sun sorting broken bottle glass, discarded newspapers and assorted trash into large brown paper bags.  She swept clean the entire block and surveyed the area for the tiniest speck of garbage before she carried the bundles of refuse to the ash cans in the back alley of the social club.  She pulled her worn polo shirt up over her nose and used her cardboard dustpan to push the dog waste into the storm sewer.  No ‘scoop’ law back then.  I sat on a chair that I set out in front of the club and watched as this little girl worked.  I smoked an expensive Cuban cigar and drifted with the fragrant smoke to a time long past, it was the yesterday that created my present day reality.  

 

1943

        My father ups and dies without warning, just drops dead.  I was the youngest of six children, the change of life baby and the only son.  The wails of sorrow in the tenement on 110th Street in what was then Italian Harlem resonated for weeks.  Food and envelopes with small amounts of money arrived at our door everyday for a month, then there was nothing.  My mother was inconsolable, crying and screaming for my father.  My sister Mary, shook her hard and told her if we didn’t do something quickly we would all die of hunger in the street.  All I thought about  was the Yankee game my father promised to take me to once the war was over.  He told me that I would see Joe DiMaggio hit a home run, but I knew in that same instant that I conjured up that poignant memory of my father, the only thing that was really important was food and shelter, not frivolous outings to baseball games.

        Within a year, whether through determination or desperation my mother married off my four eldest sisters to good men from good families.  We never heard from these sisters again, they moved far from the city and forgot us completely.  My mother got a job in a sweat shop, installing pockets in trousers  six days a week and yet, she still tried to make the evening meal an event for my single sister and me.  She asked us to tell her about our day and did her very best to make things joyous for us.  She praised our passing grades at school and our good behavior at home.  Nevertheless, our situation remained somber, as a matter of fact, until the war ended, my mother and sister foraged the discarded vegetable crates and fruit bins of the local markets looking for food to put on the table.  It was a task of humiliating necessity.

        In November of 1946, a few days after my tenth birthday (that came and went without celebration) I stormed into the storefront of the local shoemaker and demanded a job.  He was the man my father chose to be my godfather; he was obligated to me.  He handed me a shoeshine box and wished me luck.  Off I went, suffering beatings to numerous to tally for infringing upon the locations of the established shoeshine boys.  Then a bit of luck came my way, I had the good fortune to shine the shoes of Don Tomaso Deliberto.

        He was a community leader of sorts and he told me years later that he was impressed with me that viciously cold night because I didn’t cut short his shine.  He couldn’t believe that I didn’t shiver from the cold.  He didn’t know that I was numb with grief over my father and felt nothing; not the cold, not hunger pains,  not a damn thing.  

        Don Tomaso elevated my status from shine boy to trusted errand boy within two years.  He took a liking to me and by the age of sixteen I earned more money than my father ever could have even if he lived to be a hundred years old.  My family and I were never hungry again.  My mother and sister never wanted for anything for the rest of their lives. I saw myself in little Ursie, she was a workhorse and a survivor.  I knew then and there in that very moment that I would be responsible for her for the rest of my life.  If you held hot pokers to my eyes I couldn’t tell you why I knew this, I just knew.  

Ursie gave her dungarees a hoist and held her hand out when she proclaimed, “Immacculata!”

“How will you spend your fortune, little one?” I queried

“I’m hungry. I’ll buy myself something good to eat,” she smiled as she rubbed her tummy.  

She clutched the coins I placed into her tiny hand and ran to the grocery store across the street .  I had the pleasure of watching her devour a huge hero sandwich stuffed with salami and provolone as she sat on an empty beer keg under an old shade tree.       

        Ursie showed up with her broom and dustpan looking for work every Saturday thereafter.   Her services were needed, the storefront was always filthy.  

“Damn rotten kids,” I thought to myself.  

It was only by chance (or was it?) that I happened to be driving past my ‘office’  at three o’clock in the morning with my partner and dearest friend, Nicky “Slits” Tomanelli, when I discovered just how clever Ursie was.  There she was, in the middle of the night dumping trash in front of my social club.  Nicky Slits wanted to jump out of the car and grab her, but I was his superior in the hierarchy we belonged to and I nixed the interruption.  

        I choose to dim my car lights and follow her.  Up the hill she went and quick as a shooting star she disappeared down an alley lined with willow trees that cast octopus arm shadows this way and that.  Slits and I followed her;  bandits by nature, we advanced quietly.  A door creaked and a dim light shone through a wide opened casement window.  I peeked into the window and saw that the tiny room was some sort of laundry area.  An old washing machine engulfed by piles of musty laundry (most of which were dirty diapers if I could trust my nose) took up much of the space.  The cinder block walls were painted black and the floor was bare, grey bumpy cement.  In the far corner was an antiquated furnace with a a small mat and a pile of tattered books placed neatly in the forefront.  

        Slits and I watched as Ursie slipped out of her dungarees and polo shirt.  Her undershirt straps were held together with an enormous safety pin and the elastic in her underpants was so shot she had to keep tugging at the waist to hold them up.  She hummed as she set out a thin sheet and prepared to lie down when the louver door that connected the room to the main house flew open.

“Where were you?  You ugly little bastard, answer me when I speak to you!”

“I got up to go to the bathroom, Papa, I swear.  I’m sorry I wasted electricity. I’ll shut the light right now.  I’ll never do it again,”  Ursie promised as she hugged herself  and cowered.  

Her father backhanded her so hard that her head bounced off of the cinder block wall. She dropped and rolled to safety behind the old furnace where no one could reach her.  A panicky scream and slipper clad footsteps approached the laundry room.

“Leave her alone.  She’s only a kid.  Come back upstairs.”

It was Ursie’s mother trying to protect her.

        My temper was still uncontrollable back then.  I drew my gun from the back of my waistband and took aim at the son of a bitch’s left temple.  Nicky Slits grabbed my wrist and begged, “Boss, ya can’t help the kid if ya in the joint.”  

Until the day that I died I’d be indebted to to my old friend for his intercession.  Nicky knew way back then that I was an ‘earner’ and not a killer.  We heard the old man stomp up the stairs and saw the lights go dark.  Only then did Ursie crawl out from behind the shelter of the furnace.  She gathered her thin sheet blanket,  wiped her nose and comforted herself.

“You’re not ugly.  You’re a beautiful girl. I love you, Ursie.”  

She gave her hand a kiss and rubbed her head as tears streamed from her big sad eyes.

        Nicky Slits and I made our way back to the car where once seated my friend pulled out his handkerchief and blew his nose feigning a severe allergic reaction to willow tree pollen.  The big ‘mama lucca’ was crying.  I lit a cigar and mentally synthesized the beating I would give the child’s father first thing in the morning.  I visualized myself breaking both of his arms so he wouldn’t be able to strike his daughter for the rest of his days, that is, of course, if he survived the beating beforehand.  

        Nicky asked me if I noticed how thin Ursie was.

“The kid’s arms and legs look like they belong to a marionette, not a little girl.  Boss, let’s cook a big breakfast for the kid, peppers and eggs with onions and potatoes.”  

Off we went, two of the toughest, most treacherous and feared men in the neighborhood to shop for groceries in the early morning of that almost autumn day in 1955.  

        Nicky Slits returned to the alley at 7:00 A:M and tapped on Ursie’s window with his keys, waking her instantly.

“The Boss needs you to start work early today, Ursie.  Hurry up and get dressed.  I’ll wait for you out front.”  

It was a morning full of fresh, clean air with a sun that was taking its sweet time rising as I stood in front of the club and watched the two of them make their way down the hill gabbing and giggling, Ursie dragging her old broom beside her.  

“I’ll have this street cleaned in no time,” she greeted me.

“Have you had your breakfast yet?’  I asked.  

When she didn’t reply Nicky and I ushered her into the club and asked her to join us for peppers and eggs.  

“Only if you have enough,’ she said politely as she wrinkled her nose in delight at the wonderful aroma in the air.  

        I took Ursie to my private living quarters on the second floor of the club to wash up while Nicky Slits set the table.  My place was large, clean and comfortable; a combination parlor/bedroom with a full sized bathroom.  The furnishings were sparse:  a large bed, a dresser with a mirror and a huge club chair with a matching hassock situated in front of the only window in the room.  I liked to sit in that chair and read the morning newspaper and look out onto Fat Anthony’s garden and wine shed in the backyard of the club.  

        Fat Anthony was only in the country for ten years and still felt the need to till the soil.  He was a loyal member of my crew and made the finest wine in the neighborhood.  I sat on the arm of that chair and watched as Ursie  scrubbed her face and hands and ears and arms all the way up to her shoulders.  She asked if she could use my tooth powder before she used her index finger to brush her teeth.  She dried herself off and replaced the towel on its hook then ran to me and asked,

“See any sweet potatoes in there?” as she held her long brown hair back so I could look into her ears.  We both laughed and went down to breakfast.  

     Now most folks, if you ask them can’t remember what they ate an hour ago, but that breakfast I shared with Ursie and Nicky Slits all those years ago is one of my most distinct memories.  At that meal Nicky and I learned about Miss Moran, Ursie’s new teacher, who wore red lipstick on Fridays.  Ursie told us how Miss Moran’s right eye would roll around in her head when she had to yell at the class for misbehaving.  Other than that and the red lipstick on Fridays,  Ursie thought her teacher was quite beautiful.  Nicky Slits asked Ursie if she was going to be a teacher like Miss Moran when she grew up.  

“Oh, no,”  she insisted,  “I don’t want to be anything special when I grow up.  I just want to read books.”

        The food was delicious.  Both Slits and I knew our way around the kitchen, thanks to the federal government.  We both did a short stretch together at the same penitentiary when we were young and careless and believe it or not, some of the finest recipes available to the general law abiding population can trace their inception to a branch of the prison system .  The three of us savored every sip of Nicky’s espresso coffee that he flavored with just a touch of anise.  We ended the early morning banquet with a glass of Fat Anthony’s red table wine.  Nicky prepared Ursie’s glass with one ounce of wine, one ounce of water and one teaspoon of sugar.  In our culture wine was an important part of daily life for the young and old and was rarely abused.  

        Slits requested help with the dishwashing and Ursie happily obliged.  I remained at the table with a second glass of wine and watched the two of them chattering like magpies as they washed and dried the breakfast dishes.  My anger over the kid’s situation returned.  

“Nicky we’ll settle that problem before this day is over.  You hear me, Nicky?  We take care of that today.  You hear me, Nicky?”  

“Yeah, Boss.  Let me take a little nap, then we’ll take care of that.”

Nicky Slits collapsed into the recliner and was snoring softly within minutes.  

I barred the door and stretched out on the couch.  I was exhausted.  

Ursie tiptoed to Nicky and kissed his forehead and whispered,  “Thank you, Uncle Nicky.”  

Then she wormed her way into the crook of my arm and said, “Thank you, Mando.”  

I asked her why she called Nicky ‘uncle’ but not me.  

She leaned on my chest and looked me dead in the eye when she replied,

“I call Nicky ‘uncle’ because he’s so nice to me.  Treats me like family.”

Then she cupped her small hand over my ear and whispered,

“When I grow up, I’m going to marry you.  It would be foolish to call you ‘uncle’.”

I laughed and told her, “I’ll wait for you, Ursie.”

“Oh, you won’t have to, I’ll catch up to you in no time.”  

I was just about to give Ursie a kiss on the head when she begged me to hold on to her good and tight for our nap, claiming,

“I fly when I go to sleep and I don’t want to fly away from you.”  

I promised I’d never let go of her and the last thing I remembered before dozing off was Ursie flying high above the neighborhood, laughing, tethered to my heart.  

        That afternoon Fat Anthony pounded on the door waking us all.  He came to drop off some business funds and to tend to his garden.  He greeted Ursie with a kiss on each cheek and inquired how her grandfather was doing.  I sent the kid to the candy store on the corner for the afternoon edition of the newspaper because Nicky and I wanted to quiz Fat Anthony about her family.  

“Hard working people. The entire family is legitimate,”  he informed us.  

The grandfather was from his village in Italy.  

“What about her old man, her father?” we wanted to know.  

Fat Anthony looked around and lowered his voice, “He isn’t Ursie’s father.  Her father was a decorated soldier, an American.  He came home from Korea and committed suicide.  The kid was three.  The mother married Bellamari in less than a year and now has two of his kids.  Ursie is the reminder that he isn’t the first one to sleep with his wife.  It must eat him up every time he sees the kid.”  

        Nicky and I left Ursie with Fat Anthony promising her we’d be back in an hour.  Up the hill we went in separate cars and waited for the monster she called “Papa”.  We didn’t wait long.  With a synchronization that only comes with a lifelong friendship we lifted the bastard off his feet and forced him down the alley to the back of his house.  

“Betcha didn’t know that Ursie had a crazy uncle,” taunted Nicky as he whittled away at Bellamari’s chin with his switchblade.  

I stuck my gun into his mouth and the lowlife pissed his pants.  Undaunted I laid out the rules he would now follow,  “Stay at least ten feet away from the kid or I’ll cut your prick off.  If you even look at the kid cockeyed I’ll kill you. Got it?”

He nodded assent and that’s when I cracked his head opened on the same cinder blocks he threw little Ursie’s head against.  

Nicky gave his head another crack and hissed, “She’s just a baby, you cocksucker.”  

Because he could, Nicky gave him a non fatal plunge in the gut with his blade.  We left him bloody and whimpering and crying for help as we strolled back to our cars.

“Under thirty, Nicky.  A ‘c’ note,  I wagered on the number of stitches that the bastard would need to close up his head.  

“No way, Boss!  I’ll take over thirty. Gotta be over thirty,” my friend predicted.  

Nicky hugged me and took off telling me he had an important errand to run.  

        I returned to the club to witness the finale of Fat Anthony teaching Ursie how to make minestrone.  While the soup simmered I introduced her to the classical music station on the radio that I so enjoyed listening to, not letting the annoying siren of a nearby ambulance detract from Mozart’s Adagio in E.  After lunch Fat Anthony asked Ursie to help him in his garden. He explained to her that winter was coming and that’s when the Earth slept and it was his responsibility to provide a warm blanket for the land he tended.  Together they spread the decomposed fruit and vegetable skins that Fat Anthony had accumulated during the summer.  Ursie tamped the mixture down with her bare feet. A beautifully colored quilt of dried leaves covered every inch of the garden when they were finished.  

“She’ll sleep well, Ursie,”  Fat Anthony assured his helper.  

        Nicky Slits returned with an armload of packages from one of the big downtown department stores, “All for you, Ursie,” he beamed.  

Nicky had been busy shopping or if I had to place money on it: shoplifting.  The kid was speechless as she gazed at all of the new clothes.  She hugged the underpants with the little yellow ducks on them and cried,  “I love them Uncle Nicky. Thank you so much.”

She hugged his neck with all of her might.  

“Do you like everything, honey? “  Nicky wanted to know.  

“I love everything Uncle Nicky, but not as much as I love you.”  

Nicky Slits started to tear up and cursed, “God damned allergies!  This is the worst time of the year, ya know.”  

He went out to the front of the club and we could hear him blowing his nose and cursing this and that pollen.  

“Mando, please, can I keep my new clothes here in the club?  I’ll come tomorrow morning to change.  Please can I do that?”

“Yes, you can,”  I answered softly.  “As a matter of fact,” I continued,  “you’re going to spend the next few weeks with Uncle Nicky and me here in the club.  Is that okay with you?”

She jumped out of her chair and into my lap and hugged me as she whispered, “My heart loves  you more than anything in the whole world, Mando.”  

I wanted to strangle Nicky Slits for his creative ability to concoct the ‘allergy’ excuse when his eyes filled with tears.  I stepped outside to dry my eyes without an alibi.  

        Fat Anthony had to leave to make a collection at a downtown tavern.  Nicky and I took Ursie out for pizza.  When we returned a half of box of soap flakes was used to prepare a bubble bath for her.  Nicky Slits shampooed her hair and instructed her to scrub all of her important body parts.  He filled the old white porcelain macaroni pot with warm water to rinse her off.  He designed a sensible nightgown for Ursie using one of my undershirts.  He made her a belt from bakery cord to tie around her middle so she wouldn’t trip on the too long garment.  For the remainder of the evening Nicky Slits gently combed the tangles from her long hair and taught her how to read the racing form.  “She’s a natural, Boss,”  bragged Nicky.     

 

1963

        Ursie thrived as the eighth winter of our unique relationship approached. She did well in all of her subjects at school.  She gained weight, problems at home were non existent and thanks to Nicky Slits she was the best dressed girl in the neighborhood.  Over the summer and after school she worked as a babysitter for the children of a prominent lawyer earning three dollars an hour.  That created a problem    

        The city was preparing for a crippling snowstorm when Nicky Slits stepped outside the club for a smoke and saw Ursie nearing.  With every step she took she left a bloody footprint causing Nicky to gasp as he helped a sobbing Ursie to the couch inside.  

“Boss, Ursie’s bleedin’. Come quick!”

I was stirring a pot of pasta faggioli (pronounced pasta fazzul in our neighborhood) and felt my heart race as I rushed to her side to find out what happened.  

Nicky gave me the eye and whispered,  “Maybe it’s her womanhood come down.”

Ursie lifted her feet to show us her shoe bottoms, which were almost totally without soles.  Her feet were a bloody mess and her socks and the cardboard insoles she made for herself were stuck to her skin from the cold.  I bundled her in my warm cashmere topcoat; she was shivering.  Nicky filled a basin with warm water to soak her feet.

“What happened , honey?” we wanted to know.  

As sad as we’ve ever seen her she cried,  “I got fired from my job.  I was ashamed to tell you.  I wanted to show you that I could start to take care of myself.  I wanted to buy my own shoes, but I got fired,”

Mr. Larsen, the lawyer Ursie babysat for, told her that he was an officer of the court and that it violated his code of ethics to keep her in his employ because of her known association with hoodlums.  

“What does that mean, Uncle Nicky?  I don’t know any hoodlums.  He told me to get off of his property and if he ever saw me talking to his wife or kids he would call the cops on me.”

Nicky and I said nothing, we seethed, but we said nothing.  She had herself a good cry while we took turns hugging her and communicating with our eyes how we would mangle that free hole son of a bitch lawyer that made our Ursie cry.

        She calmed down a bit and Nicky attended to her feet while I continued to hug her.   Using kitchen scissors he cut off her socks and most of her homemade insoles.  He soaked her feet a bit longer then prepared each of us a warmed cognac.  As always, he mixed Ursie’s with water and sugar.  She had a pensive serenity about her as she sipped the comforting tonic.  Ursie looked beautiful, sad, but beautiful.. Her long hair was exactly the same rich caramel shade of the cognac and her cheeks were tinged rosy; flushed.  

        With the demeanor of a surgeon (we didn’t call him “Slits” for the heck of it) he resumed caring for her feet and happily gave his prognosis,  “You won’t even need a Band-aid, honey.  All those summers of you running around barefooted saved the day.”  

He swallowed the rest of his drink and kissed Ursie on the forehead before he rushed out the door to get home to his wife and kids before the snowstorm hit.  Nicky had married five years before and was quite the devoted husband and father.  His wife, Francie, was a former chorus girl who took surprisingly well to marriage and motherhood.  She allowed Nicky a very long leash to conduct his business and extracurricular activities and this resulted in a very happy union for them both.  Ursie and I loved Francie and the kids, they were family.    

        I asked Ursie to set the table for supper as I secured the front door. You could hear the wind picking up outside.  She didn’t talk much during the meal, she could sense my irritability.  We were drinking our espresso when she asked me,  “Do you want to play checkers?’  I

I didn’t answer her.  I was thinking about that bastard lawyer and how I’d like to play checkers with his balls.  

“Do you want to watch ‘Perry Mason’?”

Again I didn’t answer her, thinking, “Yeah, I’m really in the mood to watch a fuckin’ lawyer sling shit.”

Ursie retreated to the couch with a book.  

        I got up to get myself a final cup of coffee and she followed me.   She asked me if I would please teach her how to kiss and went on to report that Vinny Scandini, a kid from the neighborhood had been pestering her to kiss him.  I was infuriated and thought about how I was going to choke that horny little son of a bitch.  

When I didn’t answer her she sassed me,  “Very well then, I’ll just go to Vinny Scandini’s house and ask him to teach me.”  

I lost it.  I pinned Ursie to the refrigerator door and kissed her so hard our teeth gnashed.  I immediately came to my senses when I tasted her tears.  I carried her to the couch and hugged her and rocked her and begged her forgiveness.  I wanted to chop my head off.  

        She looked up at me,  “Are kisses always supposed to be that hard and hurt so much?  

I wiped her tears and told her that kisses were supposed to be soft and not hurt at all.

She held my face in her hands and kissed me, gently,  “Am I supposed to close my eyes, Mando?  

“You only close your eyes if you trust the man your with.  Never close your eyes if you don’t feel safe or if you have a bad feeling about the person you’re with.  Remember that, Ursie.  Promise me that you’ll remember that.”  

She closed her eyes and kissed me.  

        She wrapped her arms around my neck and kissed me again, this time separating my lips with her tongue.  She bit my lower lip ever so gently and nipped at my earlobes.  Her tongue traversed the slope of my neck and returned to my lips.  Her fingers massaged my temples as she kissed my eyes and nose and chin and each cheek.  She became bolder and bit my lower lip harder and slipped her tongue into my mouth.

         I felt myself becoming aroused,  “We have to stop now, Ursie.”

With the detached clinical demeanor of a doctor notifying the family that ‘the patient has expired’ she insisted,  “Oh no, Mando.  You’re in the first stages of erection. I read it in a book somewhere, you can’t stop now.”

Did I mention that Ursie’s catchall phrase was, “I read it in a book somewhere?”  

All she did was read books, “Books, she claimed, “ provided her with verbal ammunition.”  

She kissed my hand and coaxed me from the couch and I followed her upstairs.  She motioned for me to sit on the edge of the bed and I obeyed as she pulled my sweater up over my head  and dropped it to the floor.  She kissed my throat and removed my undershirt.  My nipples stood upright and she rolled them around between her thumb and her index finger until the tautness left them.  

        She pushed me down on to the bed, removed my shoes and socks and unbuckled my belt so she could remove my pants.  I was erect, harder than I’ve ever known myself, I didn’t think she’d be able to undo my zipper.  She stripped me bare and didn’t seem to notice when I sat upright to place my gun in the drawer of the nightstand.  Ursie let her skirt fall to the floor and then she slipped out of her sweater, undershirt and panties.  She stood there naked and I was only able to detect the inkling of hips and a waist.  Her breasts were not yet developed, but her nipples had erupted into beautiful swollen pink mounds.  Her waist long hair was dense and as luxurious as fine sable.  She stood there waiting for me to beckon.  I pulled her to me and we lay there holding one another, kissing one another.  I felt my head throb. How would I tell Nicky about this?  

        I felt her heart beating against my chest keeping perfect time with my heart, a duet if you will.  I kissed her mouth trying to swallow her lips, trying to swallow all of her and then with only a feathery touch to my shoulders she urged me to explore the rest of her body.  I came upon summer fruit that winter, and she moaned softly and stroked my hair and pushed me deeper and I savored that inner rain made warm and sweet for my tongue.  

I asked her, “Do you know what happens now, Ursie ?”

I trembled when she smiled at me and pulled me closer to her.  I placed one hand on the base of her spine and I cradled her head the way one does an infant’s with my other hand.  I lifted myself and entered,  immediately feeling a warmth I’ve never known.  

        A rhythm emerged, a sexual circadian clock.  For every one of my thrusts she responded with an equally forceful push.  She contracted intentionally when I was inside her causing me to shake like a baby’s rattle.  She drew circles around my nipples with her tongue exciting me all the more and bringing me to fruition   The wind howled outside, but not nearly as loudly as I did when I released all that was inside of me.  We were soaked with perspiration, wet and shiny and slippery with lather, like hooked eels. It was some time before our breathing returned to a medically acceptable rate.  

Ursie lay in the crook of my arm, just like she did when she was a little girl and asked me, “Will it always be this wonderful, Mando?”

I promised her that it always would be.  

        Ursie examined my body with a precision known only in the military.  She perused my scalp using her delicate fingertips as her fine comb and her tongue gave each one of my ears an internal examination.

She fingered my earlobes and announced,  “Attached.  A sign of longevity if you believe the great sages.  I read it in a book somewhere.”

She tugged at my chest hair, she pressed her nose to my underarms, she tried to count the hair follicles on my nipples (much to my delight, I might add) .  She measured the depth of my navel with her tongue, she stroked and petted my inner and outer thighs. She kissed the front and back of my knees, she rubbed my feet and played a nursery game with my toes.

        Reversing her direction she came upon my testicles and held them and bounced them in the palm of her hand, as though she was weighing precious metal.  She held my growing self in her hand and as I grew larger from her touch she squealed,  “You’re not circumcised!  Hygienically speaking, you’re at a disadvantage.  I read that in a book somewhere.”  

I laughed so hard my sides cramped.  I pulled her on top of me and hugged her as hard as I dared to.  I knew then that I loved her as a man loves a woman.  I sensed that I’d never have to compete with anyone for Ursie’s love.  My competition would come from her curiosity about everything simple and complicated.  She wouldn’t  come to me for answers, she’d rely on her books.

         Ursie straddled me and placed my huge self inside of her.  She placed the palms of her hands on my shoulders and lifted her haunches to find her stride.  She quickened her pace and brought me to a precipice of an intimate exhilaration that I thought would cause me to go into cardiac arrest.  Her eyes went wide and she screamed my name, begging me to hold her.  She didn’t know what was happening to her, but I did.  Together, in the same moment we discharged all that swirled within us and found the ultimate physical contentment and I knew then and there that those who lay together for money or lust or on a bet or a dare, or due to a threat, or because they’ve been artificially stimulated will never know what I’m talking about, never.    

        Ursie experienced difficulties catching her breath.  Her body became spastic and I had to stroke her brow and whisper reassurances that all would be fine before she was able to relax the sensitive flesh inside of her that gave her so much pleasure.  Her outer self gleamed with sweat, simultaneously sweet and salty as documented by the taste buds on the tip of my tongue. She pulled herself free from the crook of my arm and kissed me with all of her remaining strength and whispered, “I love you.”

Some tough guy, I wept quietly and then slept.  

       I awoke with the smoky blue gray morning light that accompanies all of the big snowstorms in the city.  Ursie was between my legs devouring me, using the same technique she employed when she ate an ice cream cone in the summer.  She behaved as if she were a playful , six-week old puppy sequestered in a cardboard box with her favorite toy.  

She looked up at me and gave me a seductive smile,  “Deliziosa!”

Our hearts and souls melded that winter morning.

        We went downstairs to make our breakfast despite the fact that neither of us was hungry for anything except one another.  Ursie was wearing my undershirt that hung to her upper thighs.  Melancholia overcame me, she had grown so.  With my help Ursie pushed the back door to the garden ajar and filled the coffeepot with the first snow of that winter  from a six-foot drift.  Using her Uncle Nicky’s recipe she made the most wonderful pot of  ‘snow coffee’.  Nicky made this particular coffee for the guys on our cellblock in prison.  He was well known in certain social circles for his culinary adeptness.   

        I carried the breakfast tray laden with bread and cheese and wine and snow coffee upstairs to my hassock in front of the window.  Ursie and I were a perfect fit for my old club chair. She kissed me between each sip of the delicious coffee, enjoying her new found power of being female.  My thoughts were as varied as the snowflakes floating outside in the all white garden when I wondered,  “What lucky star did I stand under to deserve this?”

        Ursie loved to hear the saga of my childhood.

“Tell me about the day you were born, Mando.  It’s one of my favorite stories,” she pleaded.

I inquired why she loved to hear the same old tales over and over again.  

“I write them down in my head and when I’m away from you and missing you I bend time backwards and play a memory movie.”

She was as excited as a young child sucking on a warm bottle waiting to hear her favorite bedtime story, so I gave in.  My eyes were drawn to the ice coated branches of Fat Anthony’s sleeping cherry tree.  The flailing silver gray twig tendrils reminded me of the hair that fell into my mother’s eyes when she scrubbed clothes on the old washboard in our kitchen sink.  

        For what was I’m sure more than the one hundredth time, I told Ursie about my beginnings.  

“I was born prematurely on November 6, 1936 in a tenement on 110th Street.  The mid-wife and neighbor women who assisted my mother with my birth shook their heads, made the sign of the cross and went to tell my father that his first born son was not going to live.

“A sick little pigeon,”  was how they described me.  

My father ran to the bedroom to see for himself.  Their diagnosis missed seeing the strong little pigeon heart beating in my chest.  My father placed me on a clean sheet in a bureau drawer he emptied and carefully transported me to the kitchen where he placed me on the opened door of our stove.  There was no medical insurance back then, people had to use their own ingenuity to create an intensive care unit when the need arose.  It was there on that stove door that I remained in my bureau drawer incubator until the spring of  1937.  My father kept my sisters home from school for months to help care for me.  Seven days a week around the clock someone was there to turn my drawer so that I wouldn’t literally roast to death.  My skin was continually swiped with cotton rags that had been soaked in warmed olive oil and my mother told me years later that my skin was so thin and transparent she could see straight through me.  

        My mother was forty-five years old when I was born.  Her breasts didn’t produce a single drop of milk to feed me.  My father instructed my sisters to run downstairs and tell Señora Tomanelli (Nicky’s young and beautiful mother) of our dilemma.  Nicky Slits was born on November 2, 1936 and his mother’s breasts were brimming with nourishment. You must remember that back then it was quite a common practice in the poor immigrant enclaves of the city for a woman to nurse another’s child if the mother couldn’t or in some sad cases, wouldn’t.  Nicky and I suckled side by side for almost a year.  We were and remain ‘milk brothers’: a relationship much deeper than brothers bound by blood.  Our bodies grew strong and our friendship even stronger.”  

        Ursie rewarded me with a heartfelt kiss when I finished my story.  We sipped our wine and watched the snow continue to fall.  

“Angels having pillow fights,” that’s how Nicky explained the weather phenomenon to her when she was a child and he carried her in his arms to stand under the street lamp to catch snowflakes on her tongue.  

The story of my birth prompted me to ask Ursie, “When is your time of the month?”  

She replied nonchalantly,  “Oh, my womanhood hasn’t come yet, Mando.  When it does I’ll let you know.”  

For a second time I wanted to chop my head off.

        Her Uncle Nicky had used the term ‘womanhood’ when he related his version of the birds and the bees to her.  Did I neglect to mention that the bond between Ursie and her beloved Uncle Nicky had grown into a mother/daughter relationship?  Every year she hand delivered a homemade Mother’s Day card to Nicky and believe me when I tell you, the waterworks flowed like Niagra Falls.  Nicky cursed the pollen from every tree and plant known to mankind.  On Father’s Day Ursie honored me with a homemade card and too exhausted emotionally after I read the touching passage she wrote inside the card I didn’t try to invent an excuse, I cried openly upon receipt.  Our little girl had a way with words, still does.  

        Wine finished, we returned to bed and Ursie practiced her kissing positions; head held to the right then left, tongue in then out.  It was a most glorious morning when with an impish smile she told me, “Down South they allow older men to legally marry young girls, like myself. I read it in a book somewhere.”

Funnily enough I had been thinking about how I could claim Ursie as mine through marriage.  At that very moment I started to plan our future together.  I held her close as I made a mental note to call Ira Kalman, an attorney I kept on retainer.  He’d be able to secure all of Ursie’s identification papers and research the particulars of the states that sanctioned a legal marriage ceremony between a fourteen-year old girl and a twenty-eight year old man without establishing residency in the state.   

        I was inside Ursie when I asked her if she knew how much I loved her.

“Of course.  I’ve known since the day I told you to hold me tight and not let me fly away when we napped.  Don’t you remember?”  

I remembered.

        Ursie drew a hot bath and as we lay soaking in the spacious old claw footed tub I asked her where she flew while she slept.  

“I don’t want to talk about it, Mando.”

I told her that if we were to be married I had to know where she went flying off to in the middle of the night.  

She positioned herself on her back between my legs and folded my arms across her chest,

“I fly to a place, a boulevard of sorts, with a light stronger than the brightness of the sun.  The light doesn’t hurt my eyes and it’s very quiet until I come to a curve.  I peek around this curve and I see myself and what’s going to happen to me.  I see the people I’m going to be with, I hear voices and conversations, but I can never get to them to join in.  I’m never able to get past the curve. I wake sweating .  The only way I can keep myself from flying is to be held tightly.  When I was little girl I used to put a stone on my ponytail before I went to sleep and that worked some of the time.”

I promised I would hold her and never let go when she slept.  

        When Ursie was a little girl Nicky asked her if she went to Mass on Sunday morning and with terror in her eyes she shuddered ,  “Only when I’m forced to.”  

That suited us just fine and so started our Sunday morning ritual of going to Central Park and sitting on the bench closest to the Plaza Hotel.  We fed the pigeons, people watched and best of all just sat and talked.  Nicky always said it was his favorite place to be in the city.  

        I let my fingers tiptoe up Ursie’s spine when I asked,  “What are we going to tell Nicky?”

She grew quiet for just a moment,  “It’s not ‘what’ are we going to tell Uncle Nicky, we’ll tell him the truth of course.  It’s ‘where’ we tell him that will matter.  We’ll have to take him to ‘our bench’ and then he’ll be fine.”

        We returned to bed after our bath and the warmth of one another was most welcome.  Ursie wrapped her leg around my middle and pushed her clean self into my stomach and kissed my face.  I asked her if she wanted to have big wedding celebration, after all, I could well afford such a gala and I wanted her to be happy.  

She bolted upright,  “Absolutely not!  Just me, you and Uncle Nicky.”

I should have known better than to even ask.  She loathed long planned organized events.  

“They’re always a disappointment,” she would sigh.  

Eating any meal that wasn’t served in familiar surroundings and prepared by the people she loved didn’t tempt Ursie, though she did love to go out for coffee and desert.  Socializing with  the gaggle of women that served as bridesmaids would not be on her list of favorite things to do. Ursie had a misogynous streak.  To top it off, Ursie didn’t dance, so there went my wedding waltz.  Not to worry, I knew it wouldn’t detract from the thickness of her wedding purse.

        The snow kept falling as Ursie and I lie safe and warm in our bed talking about all sorts of things. We ate our untouched breakfast for lunch and took a short nap.  A second nap lasted until morning when we awoke to the scrape of the snowplows cleaning the streets.  We bathed and dressed and headed to the law offices of Ira Kalman, the brightest criminal defense attorney in New York City.  I instructed Ursie to say nothing more than ‘hello’.  If he asked her any questions she was to smile and not utter a word, nothing.  If I asked her any questions she was to answer quietly with her hand over her mouth allowing only me to hear her response.  

        We stepped off of the elevator and were received immediately.  Ira was a diminutive man with a penchant for ugly bow ties that he often coordinated to match his worm colored complexion.  In the courtroom, before the jury, he was a viper.  Ira was a master storyteller who incorporated a simple to understand working man’s vernacular into his closing argument when defending a client.  He never bored a jury with any of that go numb and fall asleep legalese crap.  The little son of a bitch left the jury wanting more after his summation and the prosecutors knew they lost another case to Ira Kalman when the audience of twelve cheered, “Bravo!” with their eyes.  

    I greeted Ira cordially and told him exactly what I wanted done regarding Ursie’s identification papers.  I instructed him that from the very moment our meeting concluded Ursie was to be addressed as ‘Mrs. Lupiano’ and she was to be treated with respect and given access to anything that was mine.  

Ira knew who paid the rent for his opulent digs,  “I understand perfectly Mr. Lupiano.  May I offer you both my congratulations.”

        Ursie and I were no more than twenty steps out of the skyscraper that housed Ira’s offices when federal agents, with their guns drawn, circled, then cuffed me and hustled me to a waiting vehicle.

“Call Uncle Nicky and go back and tell Ira what happened.  Go now, honey,”  I shouted over my shoulder.  

Stunned, she just stood there.  

       There was no bail.  I did eighteen months upstate. I experienced panic attacks and couldn’t eat or sleep for that stretch.  All I could think about was my Ursie, was she okay?  Nicky got a few messages to me, but nothing about Ursie.  Every night for eighteen months I stuffed the slab of foam that was my pillow into my mouth and thought about Ursie as I masturbated into a sock.

        Nicky Slits had a car waiting for me on the day that I was released.  I ordered the driver to take me to the club where I was welcomed by my crew.  

I pulled Nicky into the garden and asked him straight out, “Where’s Ursie?”

He started bawling, “She’s gone, Boss.  She graduated early from high school and I haven’t seen her since.  Not a word.”  

I vomited onto Fat Anthony’s just planted onion bulbs.  

        Nicky helped me upstairs to my quarters and begged me to sip from the pony glass filled with ‘Fernet’ :  a shellac colored Italian antacid best describes the horrible tasting curative.  I was pale and weak and I couldn’t stop shaking.  Nicky Slits held a washcloth that he soaked in cold water and rubbing alcohol on the back of my neck and warned me,  “Boss, Don Tomaso has a banquet planned for your homecoming.  He’s going to elevate your position.  Your territory will double.  We’ll be rich, Boss.  You gotta pull it together for this.  This is everything we’ve been workin’ for since we’re kids.”

        Slits stood by my side as I greeted the members of my crew who came to welcome me home.  Don Tomaso arrived and thank God the attention was diverted to him.  I kissed his hand to show my respect.  He pinched both of my cheeks before he kissed them, quite an honor in our culture.  He was letting every one know that he had known me since childhood;  ‘like a son’ was what the illiterate bastard was trying to convey.  He positioned his security detail strategically and signaled for us to retire to the table.  He insisted that I take the seat of honor, the seat to the right of him.  I felt dizzy when he motioned for Nicky Slits to sit next to me.  Nicky tapped my shoe with his foot, a comforting sign we concocted when we were kids during High Mass and I was on the verge of losing my insides.  

“You can make it my brother,” Nicky whispered as the priest swung his golden pot of incense spewing its vile wafting poison under my nose.  

        Don Tomaso announced my promotion and the perimeter of my expanded territory before the first glass of wine was finished.  The waiters hired for the event arrived with the clams oreganato when the front door of the club opened and in walked Ursie kissing  her way through the tightest security in the city.  She knew every one of the Don’s hired muscle since she was a little girl.  She was wearing a thin, cream colored pencil skirt that hugged her lower abdomen and everything else I’d been dreaming about for the last year and a half.  Her formfitting silk top supported fully developed breasts with perfectly aligned sturdy nipples, the iron prongs on Fat Anthony’s garden rake came to mind.  Her high heels clicked softly as she strode deliberately to Don Tomaso to greet him in his native tongue and kiss his hand.

     She apologized for interrupting his dinner conference then explained that she had an appointment with me and had to give me an important message.  Without permission, she turned her back to Don Tomaso and bent at the waist positioning her round bottom not ten inches from the old man’s face: permission granted.  She placed her hands on my thigh keeping her arms rigid, as though she was going to do a few pushups.  

Her hair fell like a velvet curtain hiding our faces when she whispered into my ear, “ I’ll  be waiting in Uncle Nicky’s car.  He left the door unlocked.”  

        She straightened and tossed her hair back as I fingered a cigar that lay next to my lighter.  

“Would you like me to light your cigar?’

She didn’t wait for me to reply.  She picked that cigar up and wrapped her fist around it and pumped it slowly in her mouth.  She let her tongue circle the tip of my cigar and then returned it to her mouth pumping faster.  She clipped the tip of my cigar and for the first time that evening she made direct eye contact with me as she slipped the fragrant rod she made moist and pliant into my mouth and smiled slyly,  “ Deliziosa !”

        Ursie turned to Don Tomaso , kissed his hand and thanked him.  She kissed her Uncle Nicky then glided from the club, hips swinging.  Every guest at that function, except Nicky Slits, wanted to see her shimmering, tick-tocking hair fanned out across their bedtime pillow.  

“Buona sera,” she waved.  

Hot blood rushed to my head. I felt my prick skyrocket and I prayed that the fucking table wouldn’t overturn sending clams oreganato flying this way and that.  I watched as all those who came to welcome me home pulled the skirt of the tablecloth up and over their crotches to conceal their arousal, all those, except her Uncle Nicky.  The story of Ursie’s oral ballet with my cigar became legend, perpetuated by the old Don himself.  

Don Tomaso crossed his ancient legs to hide a joy he hadn’t known in a long while and dismissed me from the table as he smiled and licked his chin with his wine stained tongue,  “Bella ragazza.”

I kissed his hand, grabbed Nicky’s car keys and was out the door.

        I was quivering as I drove down Bruckner Boulevard having agreed to Ursie’s request to drive to Jones off of West Fourth in Greenwich Village.  I couldn’t make it and took a hard right into St. Raymond’s Cemetery.  Ursie was out of her skirt and had my pants off  before I killed the ignition.  Without a word we satiated our physical ravishment of one another witnessed only by the elegantly carved headstones in the old section of the cemetery.  I thanked God that I was above ground and not a skeleton spectator in the loge of the graveyard.   

        Once downtown I parked Nicky’s car, but not before I tucked the pistol he kept under the driver’s seat into the back of my waistband.  

“Hold my arm, Mando.  I’ll die of embarrassment if I turn an ankle.  These shoes are killing me.”

“Why wear them?”  I asked as I lit a cigar.  I was dying for a smoke.  

She pecked at my cheek and held my folded arm,  “I wanted to look fabulous for you on both approach and departure.”

I laughed and gently bit her lip in appreciation.  

        With the acumen of a professional tour guide she articulately narrated our stroll as we made our way through the neighborhood to Jones Street.

“There’s our butcher shop. Great sweet and hot sausage.  There’s our grocery store, “Donato’s”.  Wait until you taste their mozzarella, you’ll love it.  She pointed out the Chinese laundry,  the bread only bakery and her favorite cafe, “Randazzo’s”.

“Espresso almost as good as Uncle Nicky’s,”  she promised.  

She pressed her nose to the window of the “Jon Vie” pastry shop and patted her tummy,  “Scrumptious cream puffs.”

        In the middle of the block she stopped at brownstone No.8,  “Welcome home.”

She smiled and handed me a set of keys.  I squeezed her hand and opened the front door without a bit of resistance from my new set of house keys.  I felt at home as soon as I entered the apartment.

Ursie continued with her tour guide spiel,  “This is our parlor. The couch is as comfy as marshmallows and it doesn’t itch.  See how big it is, Mando?  We’ll both fit to take a nap.  Do you like it?”

I gave her a kiss of approval as she led me into an enormous dining area where I couldn’t believe my eyes, an old oak table very similar to the one I ate at when I was a kid.  

“I got the set at a thrift store.  Is it a close match to your mother’s dining room table, the one you always tell me about in your stories?”

I smiled as I ran my hand along the edge of the table, “Yes it is, Ursie.”

        She pulled me into the bright and tidy kitchen set up exactly as my kitchen in the club:  olive oil, vinegar and cooking wine in huge bottles with cork stoppers, a pretty ceramic bowl filled with fresh lemons stacked in a high circle, a strand of garlic bulbs thumb tacked to the crown molding of the doorway.  Wooden spoons, cast iron skillets and cotton dish towels stood at the ready on the counter.  I was home and grateful to be there.  

          A trip down the hallway revealed two large storage closets; both empty.  Ursie laughed as she mimicked the most eloquent maitre’d in the city (the one who let doves fly around the restaurant as he worked) and welcomed me into my very own bathroom.  Witch Hazel and my favorite brand of razor blades with a brand new razor handle, cotton balls and ear swabs and more than one dozen thick white towels and wash cloths were there just for me.  Peroxide and toothpowder and a new toothbrush and talcum and deodorant;  all there for me to feel welcomed and at home.  The newest girlie magazines rested in a rack within easy reach of the commode,

“For Uncle Nicky when he visits,” she winked.  

        At the end of the hallway she put all of her strength into her shoulder and pushed open a door that led to a fairly large wooden porch.  An old formica table with unmatched chairs was strewn with buckets of soil and bundles of balsa wood tomato stakes. Clay flower pots and assorted gardening tools lay about.  

“I think this might be a nice place to read your newspaper in the morning.”

She gave me a hug and pulled me back into the home she created for me.  

        The next stop on her tour was the northeast corner of the apartment.  

With the grace of a game show hostess she threw two lace curtained french doors wide open,  “Ta dah! Your office!  I hope you’ll be comfortable here.”  

Neatly arranged on a massive desk was a telephone, a box of my favorite cigars accompanied by a large crystal ashtray and a gold Dunhill lighter.  Pens and pencils and writing tablets were placed  on the left hand side of the desk blotter to accommodate me, I was a lefty.  Two wing backed leather chairs situated in front of the desk were ready to receive business associates.  A small divan with an antique cocktail table was placed at an angle in front of the fireplace in the room.  Ursie had two photographs framed for the mantle:  my smiling father holding me in his arms in front of our tenement and one of Nicky Slits and me sitting on our mother’s laps on the front stoop.  A radio pre-set to my favorite station was within arms reach of the desk.  I was overwhelmed by Ursie’s attention to detail when it came to pleasing me.

        The final stop on her tour was our bedroom, a generous area with walls painted the color of buttercream cake frosting.  The bed was king-sized and made up with a satin quilt and pillows.  A waist high dresser with twelve drawers and a scalloped mirror took up an entire wall.  She stocked the dresser with the silk boxer shorts I favored and at least three dozen pairs of the thin black socks that I wore exclusively.   Monogrammed handkerchiefs, collared shirts and cashmere sweaters filled the remaining drawer space.  A roomy club chair and hassock almost identical to the one in the club was positioned in front of the fireplace with a small smoking table to the left of the chair.  The vast cedar lined closet would be big enough for both our wardrobes.

Ursie showed me her bathroom,  “You may use it in an emergency or by invitation only,” she laughed.

        Ursie left me with instructions to ‘get comfortable’  while she went to the kitchen to pour a glass of wine for each of us.  She returned wearing a lacy bra and panties, silk stocking held up by a waist cinching garter belt and very high heeled shoes.

“Welcome home,”  she said as we clinked glasses.  

I drained my glass in one swallow and finished undressing her.  I couldn’t stop kissing her and telling her how much I loved her and missed her and that’s when she collapsed to the hardwood floor crying,  “You left me!  You promised you would never leave me! What happened?  What did you do that was so terrible that they took you away from me?”  

        I scooped her up from the floor and helped her to our bed and as we lay there I told her the part of the truth I felt she could handle,  “I didn’t pay my income taxes and that’s why I had to go away.  I promise you it will never happen again.  Can you forgive me?”  

She forgave me with an intimate ferocity that spawned the renewal of our passion.  Her body had become womanly, she was supple and her physical maturity was new to me and for three days and nights I could barely let go of her.  I searched for the words to express my feelings to her, but all I could utter was, “I love you,” more than a million times, I’m sure.

        The next morning I sat on the sofa and watched as Ursie prepared our coffee and decided that this would be good time for her to answer a few questions for me,  “How’d you get this apartment, honey?  Where’d you get the money to put all of this together?”  

She placed our demi tasse cups on the coffee table and sat close to me,  “From our lawyer, Mr. Kalman.  The day that I finished school I took the subway to his office and told him that I needed to have an apartment and money until my husband (she giggled) returned home.  

He told me, “You’re not married yet, Missy.”  

I reminded him that it was your wish for me to be addressed as ‘Mrs. Lupiano’  and treated with respect and if he didn’t honor your request I would call Uncle Nicky.  He started sweating and turned the color of wet newspaper and had to melt a pill on his tongue before he could speak.  

“Mrs. Lupiano, he said,   your problem will be resolved  before the close of the business day.”  

“I think he’s afraid of Uncle Nicky.  His secretary, gave me twelve thousand dollars and told me to call her if I needed anything at all.  I’ve been here six months and never called her once, Mando.”

        I grabbed her by the shoulders, perhaps, a little too tightly,  “Ira’s known you’ve been here for the last six months? Is that what you’re telling me, Ursie?”  

“I told him not to say a word, attorney/client privilege and all that nonsense.  Don’t be angry with me, Mando, please.  Let’s be happy and call Uncle Nicky and tell him to meet us at our bench.  Pretty please?”  

I wasn’t upset with Ursie, it was that fucking little ferret, Ira, that I wanted to choke to death.  I’d deal with him soon enough.  I calmed myself and asked Ursie in a very civil tone if there was anything else that happened while I was away that I should know about.  

She smiled, “Yes, my womanhood came down a week after they took you away from me.  It comes every time there’s a full moon in the sky.”  

        Nicky Slits met us at our bench and sobbed when we told him of our marriage plans.

“I knew it, I knew it, I knew it!”  was all he could say at first, but then like a typical ‘mother of the bride’ he wanted to know if his little girl was happy.  

Ursie and I hugged him and explained to him how much we loved one another.  He cursed the maple trees in Central Park claiming that they were infested with microscopic parasites that invaded his eyelashes causing his eyes to tear so.

“Mite allergy.  It’s a fuckin’ curse!”  

Before he departed Nicky agreed to pick us up the following morning at six for the drive south to be married.

        Ursie and I walked to West 47th Street to buy weddings bands at “Nasi’s Fine Jewelry Emporium” where an ancient Hassid whipped out a tray of gaudy diamond encrusted rings that Ursie politely pushed away,  “Simple gold bands, please.”  

My wife never wore a piece of jewelry other than her wedding band.  She stood her ground and actually defied me when I presented her with expensive pieces of jewelry over the years, “Take it back.  I refuse to wear anything that may have caused a fellow human being to be beaten and hobbled for pilfering a little something on the job.”  The horrific punishments that the diamond and gold mine owners employed to control their impoverished workers disgusted her.  She read about their barbaric  practices somewhere in one of her books.

        The drive south was one big “Joe Franklin” moment.  Now, if you’re not from the city let me tell you about Joe Franklin: he’s a media personality who reminisces with showbiz folks presumed to be dead for years.  We weren’t fifty miles out of town when Nicky had to pull over and ask me to drive.  He and Ursie were sobbing when they recalled the five in a row weekends in 1957 they went to the Interboro Theatre on Tremont Avenue to see the movie about the little baby deer whose mother was killed by a hunter.  It was their all time favorite movie.  Nicky claimed it was the first movie that made him cry.  Yeah, right, Nicky.  

       Nicky asked her if she remembered the excuse notes he used to write for her to give to her teachers when she didn’t do her arithmetic homework.  They laughed and concluded that they must have buried a hundred aunts, uncles and cousins during her school years.  Nicky would cut out an obituary notice from the newspaper and paste it to his note for her teacher,  “Ursilina was too upset over the death of her beloved aunt, Concetta Vigliotti, to do her arithmetic homework.  I will see to it that she does the lesson once her grief has passed.”  

Never happened.  I once tried to help her with her lessons.  She went catatonic on me when I asked her to memorize the multiplication tables..  

        For almost eight hours Nicky and Ursie sat in the back seat hugging and laughing and crying as they reviewed every moment of our lives together.  They revisited all of our wonderful holidays, our trips to Orchard Beach to teach her how to swim, the summer Ursie learned how to ride a two wheeler bicycle and the time we had to soak her hair with kerosene when she came home from school with head lice.  Ursie swore her favorite Saturday afternoon activity was eating the ‘Harry Steven’s’ Manhattan clam chowder  at the horse track. Nicky told Ursie how proud he was of her,  “You were never a bit of trouble, honey, such a good girl.  I love you so much.”  

        A little after two I pulled into the main square of a small town littered with Civil War cannons, statues of generals and confederate flags flapping in the breeze.  We found the Justice of the Peace and filled out the necessary paperwork for Ursie and I to be married.  The clerk informed me that we would have to take a blood test and it would be at least an hour before the results would be returned.  I instructed Nicky to go and take a nap in the car before the long drive home.  Ursie and I went to a small diner and had a cup of coffee. We walked along the main street of the town and wondered how people could live there, it was such a quiet place, not a bit of action.  We were neither impressed with the town, nor its cross-eyed, pale haired citizens and by the way, we did not experience any of the “southern hospitality” you always hear about.  The townsfolk we encountered were downright surly towards us.  

        With Nicky Slits standing witness Ursie and I were married in a ceremony that lasted less than five minutes.  Two hours into the drive home Nicky was still singing along to the radio music.  I placed my suit jacket across my new wife’s lap, she felt a chill.  

“I should have worn panties,”  she whispered into my ear.   

I slid my hand between her legs and massaged her, but not before I arranged my jacket to completely obstruct Nicky’s view in the mirror of my intimacy with his little girl, now my wife.  She burrowed into my neck to stifle her soft moans and slept for the remainder of the trip and all I could think about was getting her home to our bed before I too, fell asleep.

        The city’s traffic woke us.  It was a little before midnight and our neighborhood was alive with noise and light and vibrant people  breathing in energy and living life.  The restaurants and shops and newspaper stands were opened and conducting business.  Nicky dropped us off in front of the brownstone and then went to park the car.  Once inside Ursie kissed me and whispered, “Wash your hands.”   

        Nicky joined us and presented Ursie with a thick envelope, “For your wedding purse.  He also gave her a small wrapped gift and asked her to please open it.   Nicky enlarged one of those four for a quarter photographs that you took in a booth at the  five and dime.  It was a photo of Ursie, Nicky and me taken in December 1958  when we went to Woolworth’s to buy Christmas ornaments for the tree we were putting up in the club.  Ursie was about nine years old.

        The two of them hugged and cried and Ursie told her Uncle Nicky if there was ever a fire in the apartment (God forbid) she would only care about saving her husband and the photograph he just gave her,  “I’ll treasure it forever, thank you Uncle Nicky.”  

I thanked my best friend and secured the wedding envelope in the locked drawer of my desk.  

Nicky clapped his hands,  “C’mon, let’s go to ‘Randazzo’s’ and have a drink.  Let’s celebrate.”

        Nicky drank two bottles of good champagne while Ursie and I sipped a glass of red wine and then an espresso.  The owner (the only proprietor on the street who knew of my reputation) put out a complimentary antipasto tray for us to pick on while he and his employees attended to our every need. One flick of my cigar and the ashtray was emptied immediately.  It was a wonderful evening.  I insisted on paying the bill over the objections of old man Randazzo and then I tipped the entire staff. With help from two of Randazzo’s strong young waiters we maneuvered Nicky,  who was too drunk to drive, to our couch.  

        I stripped my milk brother to his shorts and undershirt and Ursie covered him with a soft cotton blanket.  

“No wool, it will aggravate his allergies,”  she laughed as she kissed his forehead.  

Once in our bedroom I locked the door and took my new wife and loved her with all of the passion that dwelled within me.  She was so sweet to me, letting me linger on her new self as long as I wanted to.  She told me she had a special wedding gift for me that I would receive as soon as her Uncle Nicky departed.

She licked her lips and promised me,   “Deliziosa!”

        The following day we took turns holding Nicky’s head as he ejected the previous night’s bubbly into the toilet bowl.  He took a shower while Ursie prepared him dry toast and hot tea.  She insisted that he drink the ginger ale she set out for him.  He belched his way back to life in no time and was soon on his way to the club to tell all those from the neighborhood of our marriage.

“Boss,  I’ll tell everybody you’ll be around in about two weeks.  That’ll give ‘em time to get their ‘boosta’ ready.  A ‘boosta’ is the Italian slang for a wedding envelope filled with money.  Our people didn’t give toasters as wedding gifts.  If we wanted to toast bread we could pierce it with a fucking fork and dangle it over the open flame of the kitchen stove.  We didn’t need a fucking appliance to do that for us.  Cash was the only acceptable wedding gift in our social arena.  

         I asked Ursie to join me in my office as I counted the money in the envelope Nicky gave her.  The fifty thousand was all there.  The exchange of money between crew members was merely a formality.  That fifty grand would go back and forth a hundred more times in our lifetime; weddings, funerals, legal fees, those sort of things.  I returned the money to the locked drawer of  my desk and watched as my little wife practiced writing her new name, ‘Mrs. Ursalina Lupiano,’ over and over again on a writing tablet.  We retreated to a relaxing bath then enjoyed a Caesar salad made from scratch for supper.  Ursie prepared our expresso and wine, which we took to our bedroom.

        I was sitting in my chair smoking a cigar and drinking my espresso when Ursie mentioned that she would soon give me my special wedding gift and wanted to know if I would need help getting into the position I favored when I masturbated myself.  I almost choked to death laughing.

“I have a wife now.  I no longer need to do that.”

She got very quiet and I could tell from her eyes that this wasn’t a trifling matter to her.  I held her on my lap and asked her to justify her need to see me gratify myself sexually.  Quite out of character she demanded that I trust her or our marriage was doomed and went on to tell me that for the year and a half that I was away she spent all of her free time at the ‘lion library’ (that’s what her Uncle Nicky called the 42nd Street library when he took her there to research her school reports).  She read books on sex and marriage, “ A husband and wife must witness one another masturbating to guarantee a successful and exciting marriage,” she quoted from one of the books she read.  

        Now, you must realize the only reason I took a breath of life sustaining oxygen was to make my wife happy and content, I loved her  more than anyone or anything, so she would have her way.  She allowed me to finish my coffee, then shooed me to my bathroom to freshen up.  When I returned the drapes were drawn and the flame of one tiny votive candle on the mantle belly danced in the breeze from the opened transom window.  

        Once on our bed she splayed my legs and hummed as she spread a thin coat of Vaseline on my prick and the palm of my left hand.  

She rolled me to my side and begged, “Please trust me.”

She spread my cheeks and used her tall man finger to lubricate me before she inserted a red silk scarf knotted more than ten times into my rear cavity.  

“Shh, shh,”  she soothed me.  

She left to wash her hands then returned to sit on her heels between my legs wearing sheer panties and a camisole that covered her to her midriff.  She played with her navel and told me to masturbate, but I was not to tell her what I was thinking about.

“I’ll have to use my imagination to decide what you’re fantasizing about.  That’s what it said in the book I read.”  

I thought,  “Jesus Christ Almighty, if every wife came equipped with the knowledge to make their husbands feel what I was feeling, infidelity and who knows, perhaps, even divorce could be eradicated.”

        My wife reminded me of a youngster on a family vacation at Yellowstone Park waiting for ‘Old Faithful’ to blow.  With the intensity of a documentarian she barely blinked her eyes as she watched me pleasure myself.  She wrapped the length of the silk scarf not inside of my body securely around her hand and waited.  I knew what would eventually happen, several of the guys in my crew had been to Hong Kong on those sex junket vacations and at least half the population I met in prison claimed to have a girlfriend who silk scarfed them at least once a week.  

        What a liberating experience it was to touch myself between my legs without having to be clandestine about my actions.  When Nicky and I were kids we’d venture into the rat infested abandoned warehouses in the city to discuss what was going on with our maturing bodies.  We’d whisper remedies to one another as we tried to figure out a cure for our malady before we each found a private space to relieve ourselves of the poison that caused us to feel the way we did.  I once lost control and ejaculated all over my pants, but thank God, Nicky, always prepared with an exit strategy ran with me to the nearest johnny pump and helped me to flush my sin into the sewers of the city.  We were soaked and when we got home our mothers beat us with their wooden spoons because they thought we’d been swimming in the East River.  Ursie sensed it was time for me to achieve splendor and with the might of a burly first mate she ripped that silk scarf from me as though she was starting up the engine of a trans-Atlantic ocean freighter.  I shot my load and blacked out.   

        I awoke nine hours later cradled in my wife’s arms with my mouth latched onto her breast suckling from an innate instinct, not desire.  She kissed the crown of my head and kneaded my shoulder,  “Good morning, my husband.  Did you sleep well?”

All I could think about was the passage of time and the transition of roles the people in my life had:  Nicky, my neighbor, my milk brother, my best friend and closest business ally, the best man at my wedding and now my Mother-in-law.  Ursie:  a kid I tried to help, my best friend under the age of ten, my young lover, my wife and now with her maternal and caring ways, my mother.  I thought of the changing roles in my life: the earner, the protector, the father figure, the lover, the husband and now, helpless in my wife’s arms, her little boy.  Her bad little boy.  Life sure was fucking crazy.

        I had to relieve myself and couldn’t without my wife’s help, my legs were pudding.  I was five feet eleven inches and two hundred and ten pounds, yet Ursie supported my weight to take care of business and even shook me dry.  She returned me to our bed and helped me to eat from the breakfast tray she prepared, peppers, eggs, onions and potatoes, my favorite.  

She held my coffee cup for me and suggested,  “Once you get your strength back you can teach me how to masturbate. Okay?’

My strength did return and let me tell you, my wife was one quick study.

        By the end of the week I was pretty much back to my old self when I called Nicky and told him to meet me at Ira’s office.  I left Ursie  alone in the apartment and told her she was not to answer the phone, venture outside or open the door for anyone other than myself and I would be back in a couple of hours.  I considered myself a very contemporary guy, but not when it came to my wife and my home.  If I wasn’t present men were not allowed to enter my home and be alone with my wife, no one,  not a repairman, not a neighbor, not a family member, not Nicky.  That’s just the way it was and Ursie understood this and obeyed me having grown up in a home with identical restrictions placed upon her mother and come to think of it, every other married woman in our neighborhood.  

        Nicky and I strode into Ira’s office unannounced and I gave him an open handed smack,

“If you ever call my wife ‘Missy’ again I’ll kill you, motherfucker.  Do you understand me, Ira?”  I’m very unhappy with you, Ira.  Make me happy, Ira.  Tell me what you’re going to do to make me happy you little bastard before I fucking kill you where you stand.”  

Ira sought refuge under his desk but, Nicky yanked him out from under by his hair and held his switchblade to his neck.  Ira begged for his life and for some reason that calmed me, he was so pathetic;  brilliant, but a weakling, not a man, a real fucking pussy.  Nicky threw him into his office chair and crushed his chest into the desk before he gave him a crewcut with his knife.  

    Nicky and I persuaded Ira to mend his ways and make us happy and he agreed wholeheartedly before he pulled an envelope from a folder on his desk.

“Here’s the information you wanted on that lawyer, Larsen, and here’s the list of the judges now on your payroll.”  

I pinched both of Ira’s cheeks hard and kissed him on the forehead.

“I’m starting to feel happy, Ira. One last thing, who do I send the rent to?”  I asked as I lit a cigar in his ‘no smoking’ office.  

Ira choked on the cigar smoke I blew into his face and informed Nicky and I that we owned the building at No.8 Jones Street;  it was a part of our joint real estate portfolio.  I flicked my cigar ashes into Ira’s lap and told him I wanted an inventory of all the investments he made for Nicky and me and I wanted it in five business days.  He agreed.

        Before Nicky and I left his office my milk brother whispered something into his ear causing Ira to lay prone on his office floor and melt a pill on his tongue,  He shook like a chandelier in a California earthquake.  

“What did you say to him, Slits?”  I wanted to know as we rode the elevator to the ground floor.  

Nicky laughed,  “I told him I’d slice his prick into bite sized pieces and feed the alley cats while I fucked his wife in the ass if he didn’t keep us happy.  I think he’s afraid of me.”  

              Nicky and I returned to Jones Street and secluded ourselves in my office while Ursie prepared lunch.  We agreed that Fat Anthony could best handle the Larsen matter and then we memorized the names of the judges on our payroll before Nicky shredded the list, burned the remnants and flushed the residue into oblivion.  I dispensed the assignments for my crew members to Nicky and told him that effective immediately our division of the organization was to keep a low profile.  Any crew member that couldn’t obey this order could find work elsewhere.  I told Nicky that it was our responsibility to earn for our people, not make the fucking headlines and damage our reputation.  It was my responsibility to my wife to stay out of prison.  

        Even though I was a knock around guy I realized it was my kind that kept the city running.  Not a road would get paved, not a box of tomatoes would make it across the bridge from New Jersey, not a shipping container would be unloaded, not a brick would be laid if it wasn’t for the men in my organization.  We operated much like a capitalistic government, except there was no red tape in our system.  We got things done and made money for every one, not just the guys at the top.  All of those involved in our business endeavors walked away with a piece of the financial action.  

        My new territory included the entire garment district in New York City and Nicky Slits was the only crew member with the experience (and the balls) to oversee this portion of the empire.  He was all business, one vicious motherfucker when it came to making collections, advancing funds at special interest rates and dealing with the factory owners and union representatives.  As a matter of fact, when the factory owners started to transfer their operations to Bejing, Nicky went straight to Chinatown to meet with the head of the Tang clan who facilitated the moves.   

“No problem.  You can manufacture all the fuckin’ clothes ya want, but they’ll sit on the dock ’til they rot. Ain’t a longshoreman on either coast that’s gonna crack open your containers.”

Nicky worked out a deal that prevented a bloody power struggle.  In Chinatown Nicky was known as the “Crazy Round Eye Dragon”.  They loved him in the whorehouses and restaurants down there, said he was a great tipper, made Sinatra look like a cheapskate. I put Fat Anthony in charge of our new construction projects and not a yard of cement was poured in the city that wasn’t mixed in one of our trucks.  The prosperity we generated exceeded any amount Nicky and I could have dreamed of when we were coming up in the ranks.

        The really big money came from our import business, the most dangerous subsidiary of our enterprise.  Nicky and I handled the product distribution nationwide.  Demand was high and we were earning millions for our organization as well as creating thousands of jobs.  Nicky always felt the drug rehabilitation industry owed us a kickback, after all we provided them with their clientele.  The bottom line was food, shelter and clothing;  Nicky and I would never go without again and we would do whatever we had to do to earn a dollar.   

        I had to run one last job by Nicky before we had lunch.

“I want a crew of master carpenters here at 7:00A:M tomorrow morning to hang security doors in the apartment and replace the wooden porch with something fireproof, wrought iron or brick, whatever.  I want everything done by six o’clock.  Can you handle that?”

Nicky nodded, “Done.”  

        I took Ursie to ‘Randazzo’s ‘ for coffee, my poor wife had been cooped up all day.  We laughed as Nicky flirted with the waitresses and all the young girls that strolled by the cafe.  He was such a whore.  The ladies were always attracted to Nicky;  he was tall, a hundred and ninety pounds with blue-black curly hair and he had the palest green eyes with double rows of thick, inky eyelashes.  I tried to remember my intimate life before Ursie and I couldn’t.  I’d been around the sexual block with various show girls, prostitutes and a few of the neighborhood girls, but if my life depended on it I couldn’t tell you their names or what they looked like or what we shared.  Ursie was it for me and I felt sorry that Nicky didn’t find that same passion with his wife.  I thanked God that my wife didn’t force me to reveal who I was thinking about when I masturbated, because it was only her that I envisioned in any sexual situation with me.  It was always just the two of us in any fantasy I created.

        That evening my wife added to our intimate repertoire, experimenting with all the positions and techniques she read about in her books while I was away.  The list of activities is too long to describe here, but I will share with you one of my favorites; the seesaw.  Ursie drenched me with scented oil and sat me on an old chair she found in a second hand furniture store: hard seat, armless, curly cue wrought iron back and legs.  Nicky and I occupied similar chairs when we were kids and managed to scrounge up enough money to treat ourselves to some ice cream.  She dropped to her knees and orally stimulated me to my maximum hardness before jumping onto me and using the balls of her feet as her propellant she rocked that chair back and forth while she plunged my prick deep inside of her.  She whispered erotic threats into my ear and kissed me savagely; biting my lip and tongue and neck and shoulders.  To this day I get an erection each time I encounter playground equipment.   

        The improvements I ordered for the apartment were completed on time.  The immigrant craftsmen Nicky pulled from our construction sites around the city to work at my home knew they would be well rewarded during the coming winter.  They would be the first on the union shape up rosters to get work when it was scarce, these zips were in the loop now. Ursie spent her day sorting through the piles of clothing her Uncle Nicky delivered to her.  She never set foot into a department store to buy an outfit.  She just cut out  pictures of the clothes she wanted from the high fashion magazines and Nicky used his juice in the garment district to create her wardrobe.  My wife never forgot what it was like to have to wear the same clothing for days at a time and when she tired of her wardrobe she always prepared a ‘clothes bag’ for her best friend, Netty Capuano.  

“Netty, please, help me.  Take these clothes and wear them in good health. I’ve gained ten pounds,” Ursie fibbed.  

Netty was Ursie’s only female friend.  When they were kids Ursie would come home from school and cry to her Uncle Nicky,  “Netty made me laugh so hard in school I peed my pants.  The teacher yelled at me and called me a ‘baby’.”

Nicky would throw her into a bubble bath and tease her and call her ‘piscia sotto’,  an Italian slang term of endearment for little kids who wet their pants.  

        Sunday afternoon of that busy week Nicky Slits sent a car to chauffeur Ursie and me to my social club in the Bronx to collect her wedding purse endowments.  What a fabulous spread Nicky arranged for the event; lobster, clams, mussels, calamari. Sausage and peppers, veal cutlets, trays of pasta, the finest cuts of roasted meats, trays of cheese, bread and pastries, enough to feed the whole neighborhood.  Crew members from every branch of the organization showed up to offer their congratulations and money gifts to my wife and I.  The local businessmen and aspiring politicians all paid monetary tribute to our union.  Ursie’s entire family came to the party and ate like ‘gavones’, God bless them.  Her mother and that bastard Bellamari had the balls to get on the reception line and offer an envelope to her.  When my wife was a kid they never came looking for her when she spent weeks at a time with Nicky and me in the club, but now that she hit the mother lode through her marriage they wanted her to be a part of their life again.  Ursie returned the money later in the week making sure her mother was the recipient.

        When it turned dark the most spectacular fireworks display commenced from the rooftop of ‘Squillante’s Funeral Parlor”.  Nicky went all out for his little girl and was the perfect host that night.  He greeted everyone and made sure they had plenty to eat and drink.  He flirted with the old widows as well as the young girls from the neighborhood.  He granted small favors to a few men from our territory; jobs in construction for their sons, small interest free loans to get a business up and running, immigration and legal advice, those sort of perks.  I’ve never seen Nicky Slits so peacock proud.

 

        Ursie and I were married three years when Don Tomaso died.  The organization appointed me to replace him.  The new responsibilities were great and so was the power; at last, I was king of the hill.  Nicky and I celebrated by taking our wives to southern Florida and what a wonderful time we  had.  Ursie announced she was pregnant when we returned to New York.  

        Nicky went berserk buying toys, baby clothes, cribs, strollers and what not for his first ‘grandchild’.  Netty Capuano wanted to have a baby shower for Ursie and Nicky said, “No.  I’ll buy everything my grandchild needs. Just plan a big party.”  Ursie made sure she ate well and each evening we’d stroll through the Village because she read in one of her books that walking was the best exercise for the expectant mother.   

       Ursie was six months gone and we were returning from one of these strolls when we saw the cop cars and news trucks.  Something big went down.  I got Ursie into our apartment and went across the street to “Randazzo’s” to find out what the hell was going on in our usually quiet neighborhood.  

Old man Randazzo hung his head,  “I’m so sorry Don Lupiano.”

Nicky got hit when he was parking the car.  He’s was coming over to see us and deliver Ursie a box of her favorite pastries from Loscuito’s Bakery in the Bronx. The motherfuckers used automatic weapons to slaughter him forcing it to be a closed casket funeral.

        Ursie lost the baby and was never the same.  Francie and the kids moved to Florida and   we lost touch before the year was out.  I called in every marker owed me and not a single squawk about who killed Nicky Slits.  I put my money on the hotheaded kids in the Asian gangs, but no, they made tons of money with Nicky and offered their help in finding the bastards who whacked the well liked and respected Crazy Round Eye Dragon.  I swore on the soul of my mother that I would find out who killed my milk brother and that I would personally exact revenge on the motherfuckers.  

         The old adage, “Bad things happen in threes,” certainly held true for me.  Three months after Nicky’s hit I was pinched with nine kilos of pure product as I was en route to our cut house.  My regular delivery driver never showed up and I didn’t trust anyone else with the errand.  The defense Ira Kalman prepared for me was less than vigorous.  I fired his ass and entrusted the account numbers of my funds off shore to Netty Capuano after she promised she’d take care of Ursie and the brownstone while I served my twenty years hard time as a guest of the federal government.

        I’d just served my tenth year when Ursie died; a massive heart attack. Netty had her cremated  and wrote to tell me that she kept her ashes on the mantle. Ursie was afraid of the dark and made me promise her that she would be cremated and not buried.  The last ten years of my sentence  were a blur, there was no parole for me, in fact, the feds tacked on another year and a half because I refused to give up the source of my Mediterranean connection.  

       When I was released there wasn’t a car waiting for me; I rode the bus with the skells  into the Port Authority Bus Terminal.  No one knew I was out, not even Netty.  I entered the brownstone unnoticed through the back door and sat in the dark holding the urn that held Ursie’s ashes close to my heart.  I happened to glance across the room and through a gap in the drapes I saw Fat Anthony, Bellamari,  and the son of Randazzo drinking and talking at the bar of the cafe.  I couldn’t believe it, not Fat Anthony!  I didn’t like it, but I had to believe it, Fat Anthony had Nicky killed and set me up to get pinched.  I had a lot of time to think while I did my time and it clicked when I saw Fat Anthony and Bellamari together.  They were from the same village in Italy, a mountain town somewhere in Sicily.  Everyone knew those mountain zips were clan bound, absolutely primitive when it came to aiding one of their village brethren.  I’d never forgive myself for letting that get by me.  

        Netty showed up the following morning to clean the brownstone and found me asleep in my club chair holding Ursie’s ashes.  I asked her to set up a meeting for me with Fat Anthony  at Randazzo’s Cafe for the following evening at three A:M;  closing time.  

“Tell him I want to get our crew up and running again.  Tell him he’s the only one I’d even consider to take over Nicky Slits second in command position.”  

Netty was a stand up broad and set up everything just as I asked.  I went down to the union hall looking for the zips that worked in my home all those years ago.  I needed one more favor.

        The sophisticated homemade bomb obliterated ‘Randazzo’s’ .  Fat Anthony went for his gun, but he wasn’t quick enough,  I spit in his face and hit the detonator.  All the pain was gone.  A smiling Ursie was tethered to my heart up high over the neighborhood.  We made it around that curve Ursie always talked about and into a light filled dimension that I’m unable to describe.

 

 

Coreen Falco

© 2015 Coreen Falco

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. A screenplay version is available of this and all short stories by Coreen Falco. For permission requests, screenplays write to the publisher, addressed “Attention: Permissions Coordinator,” here.
 

— September 15, 2015