An Indian Summer day, a mellowing afternoon sun, warm orange and bright. The lunch crowd was long gone when Vinny walked in around 3:30 with his tiny cell phone to his ear, which he held with the bare ass tips of his forefinger and thumb. He passed the bar and me by, and then paced back and forth near the kitchen and restrooms. I heard him finger the pay phone’s change slot a few times. It was Tuesday. Since he was here, the rest would probably follow soon, like last week and the week before. I slid open the cooler top. Good, plenty of frost over Miller Lite. The Mexicans hadn’t depleted the stock last night in their revelries. They were nowhere to be seen. Siesta time, probably napping upstairs or in the basement.
Vinny stepped slowly up to the bar. He didn’t even look at me. He just leaned against the bar on his elbow and nodded. I could hear the faint voice crackle from the mini speaker I knew was the size of a dime. He listened and gazed at his manicured free hand. I could have done a few things then to prepare for the shift change at five, but I knew that once I walked away he’d be ready for me and I didn’t want to make him wait. Here I was only in my second month of bartending, and I didn’t know where else to go and I didn’t want to leave. These guys always made me nervous. It was as though Lenny were watching me through them. Whenever they ordered a cocktail it was as though Lenny were there to taste it as well. I glanced around to make sure everything was just right. Sinatra and Martin were in the disc player that I knew. I’d heard those twice already. I had my own selection on. Avant-garde trumpeter, Toshinori Kondo and D.J. Krush played unabrassive, free floating, mellow bluesy jazz notes mixed with ambient pulse vibes. Ki-Oku. I think that’ll be all right, I thought. Well, we’ll see.
The T.V. was on CNN. Bulldozers, cranes and trucks continually chugged the broken steel and concrete of the World Trade Center out of the hole of Ground Zero as the stars and stripes flapped overhead. It was still as fresh as waking up to a new day.
“Hey Steve,” Vinny set down his cell phone on the bar, “how about a drink?” He searched the bottles up and down the shelves.
The front door squeaked open and Gino strode in on long legs.
“Lappy!” He shouted.
“G-no!” Vinny cracked into an enormous smile. They opened their arms to each other, embraced and patted backs hard.
“Miller Lite.” Gino raised a finger. He plopped down on a stool and his cell phone chirped right away. Vinny motioned to me and put his finger over his lips.
“Yeah? No, I’m still here at work. Gimme another hour, I’ll be home. He snapped the phone cover shut and tucked it into the pocket of his black leather jacket.
“Or it depends on traffic, right G-note?”
“Nah, that one don’t work no more. It’s a worn out trick a long time now.” He took a good hard pull at his beer. “I can only stay for one or two.”
Vinny threw up his arms. “Motherfucker. That’s it! So no cards? How’m I supposed to win back my money?”
Gino chuckled, “It’s good for you. You’ll just lose more, jack-off. ‘sides nobody else can make it today. Mikie’s stuck at work, Tommy don’t return my calls and Davie’s out in Skokie doing a job. Hey, how’d you do in Vegas anyways?”
Vinny waved him off and started to collect himself. He rubbed his chin and examined the selection of spirits again.
“I see. About as good as with me two weeks ago when you lost your shirt.” Gino said. His attention drifted up to the T.V. and he winced as the footage flashed by, the same video segments of Bin Laden in the desert, in caves, firing an AK-47 and speaking to his followers always with his head shrouded, his eyes blazing. Gino fished around in his pockets till he found his cigarettes and then his lighter. Vinny shook his head as the bottles stumped. His choices were not vast.
“Fuck Osama, Steve. You hear that? Get me that stock channel, will ya?” He lit his cigarette. I glanced over at his beer. Only an inch remained. Suds rolled down the interior of the bottle.
“Yeah Steve, and I need a drink too.” Vinny finally said. It sounded like he still needed help though.
“What’re you in the mood for? Your vodka and tonic? A Manhattan? A martini?”
“I don’t know.” He started to bite his thumb then pulled it away quickly.
I flipped through the channels on the cable box, past soap operas, music videos, cartoons, talk shows, talk shows, numerous infomercials promising washboard abs, youth and beauty, sex appeal, power, shiney cars, golf greens with tiny flapping flags, more talk shows, till at last I see the tell tale numbers and symbols scroll by.
“There you go.” Gino pointed with cigarette and scrunched his eyebrows together.
“Okay, Vinny.” I motioned to him and waited.
“I had this drink in Vegas. Can you make it?”
“If I have everything, sure.”
“You do. Vodka, cranberry juice and pineapple juice. Shaken. Pour it in a collins glass. Make it nice, nice.” he waved me off.
I mixed it together, shook it up. It poured out a frothy, icy pink, bubble gum pink. I set it down in front of Vinny.
“Nice.” He smiled faintly.
Gino looked over his shoulder, glanced up at Vinny with bulging eyes. “What’re you going flamingo fag on us, or what? The fuck is that? Shit Steve, give the lady an umbrella for her drink!”
Vinny took a sip and licked the froth off his upper lip, while Gino shook his head. What had become of Vinny? He was usually so conservative, a vodka and tonic man with a lime. Never even a twist.
“Met a couple broads in Vegas.” He shrugged. “This what they drank. Yeah, foofey. But good.”
“When in Rome, huh? Did you fuck ‘em both?” Gino asked and watched Vinny’s lips curl and he nodded just slightly enough to answer. Gino peeled off that mighty laugh of his, that mad guffaw, that pig in wet mud laugh, the laugh that was almost a cough: “Ahhhh-hah-hah-hah-hah-haaaah!”
Suddenly the door jerked and squeaked open. Vinny set down his cocktail. Gino stopped pounding the bar and hooting. He straightened up a little but continued to slouch. I looked over expecting to see more of Lenny’s friends enter the bar ready to get loaded on Miller Lites and win or lose in a mighty, smoky card game at the big round table in the dim rear of the dining room.
“Mmmmm...” Vinny smacked quietly enough for us just to hear.
She was indeed quite succulent- shoulder length reddish brown hair pulled back into a tight pony tail held by a red flower braid, tanned soft clear face, almond colored eyes, juicy crimson lipsticked full lips and a walk that swayed her curvy hips so back and forth that you couldn’t wait to see her ass. We all tried to crane and peer around for a view, but she faced us. We had to wait. She wore a tight orange-red, Indian pattered shirt and light blue, low rider jeans. How those jeans rode her.
The three of us exhaled.
“Hi!” her eyes lit up at all of us, and she smiled straight, bright white teeth. “Is there a manager I could talk to?”
“Nah.” Gino barked and then began to go sloppy and slouch again. “He ain’t here right now.”
“Well,” she breathed. She put her hand on her hip, it womped out round just right, and she thought for a long pause.
“I can help you.” Vinny stepped forward. Gino coughed into his fist. “The owner’s my best friend. Known him since grade school. From the same block and the same church even.”
“Hey Steve, gimme another Lite.” Gino pushed the empty bottle to me.
“Yeah, Steve. Make her a cocktail too. I’m sorry what’s your name?”
“Rachel.” she smiled.
“My name’s Vincent. This is Gino, another friend of Lenny’s.” Gino grunted to her as he raised a fresh beer.
“I’m Steve.” I reached over and shook her hand. It was slender, soft and warm. She seemed overwhelmed, her eyes slowly shifted around. She stood stiff and still. She crinkled her freckled nose.
“Yeah Steve. Make Rachel here a drink. Same thing I’m having.” He pulled out a barstool and motioned for her to sit down. I mixed Rachel’s drink, shook it good till my hand froze to the shaker and poured. She remained standing.
“So Vincent,” she fluttered her eyelashes gently, “you want me to fill out an application? Do you know if there’s even a job?”
“Oh yeah.” Vinny nodded quickly, “There’s definitely a job here for you, Rachel. Don’t worry now. Have your drink.”
“Oh.” She flashed that white smile as I set down her drink. “That does look good.”
“There you go.” Vinny tapped out a number on his cell phone with a buffed fingernail and leaned against the bar again.
“Yeah tits? Vinny. Hey, I’m interviewing a beautiful young lady just walked into the Bella. Call me back and give me the green light when she can come in and meet you.” He flipped the cover shut and shrugged. “Voice mail. Don’t worry, sweetie. You’re in for sure.”
“Are you sure? She turned her head and looked at him from the corner of her eye. She was someone who probably had it easy when it came to employment opportunities, I thought, as long as it was a man opening the door for her. To these guys she was someone who would bring sex appeal to the restaurant and she was fresh meat to flirt and play with. Perhaps she would relax enough to sit on one of the guys’ laps, give a quick massage or even more than that. Maybe she could be passed around. You never knew what kind of freak you could potentially bring into the Bella Italia.
“I’m sure, Rachel. Yeah, me and Lenny. I know him since we were kids. You waitress before?”
“Yes.”
“Oh yeah? Where?”
“Carmichaels.”
“Oh yeah, that place out in the suburbs there. Not like this place. Not like this place.”
“I hope so.” She sucked on her drink.
“Steve, why don’t you mix us up a couple more. Gino, you okay?”
“Nah, bottle’s only half full. Pull me out another. Fuck it.”
Rachel laughed at Gino as he slouched further and inhaled the rest of his beer. He licked his lips and felt over the ashtray for his smoldering cigarette while his eyes followed the stock numbers. His fingers found it and he raised it up to his hopsy breath, laughed back at her and pinched his lips around the butt.
“I can’t believe this is happening.” Rachel said.
“What do you mean?” Vinny asked.
“I came in here for a job and you’re trying to get me loaded.”
“Yeah, well welcome to the Bella Italia., This is your future.” Vinny smiled. “You’ll have only good times here, sweetie. Yeah, you’ll make some money too.”
“And you!” Rachel tossed back her hair and pointed at Gino.
“Huh?” he said, mouth agape, face gone slack.
“You’re so hilarious. I can’t get over you. Look at you!”
“He’s queer, you know. Can’t you tell, Rachel?” Vinny gestured with his drink, all frothy pink ice cubes now.
Gino paused to look up at the T.V. Then he turned back to smile mischievously at Vinny. He nodded at the remains of the foofey cocktail in Vinny’s hand as if to say, Look who’s talking. I chuckled. This should be interesting. I poured a little more vodka into the shaker this time, shook everything together again, and, viola, set them down before Vinny and Rachel atop virgin bar napkins.
“It’s okay if you are, Gino.” Rachel’s started to reach out to him, maybe to pat him on the back or gently caress his arm, “Are you?”
“Yeah.” Gino nodded quickly. “I found out when I was sixteen. A trucker deflowered me.” He took another swig. “Fuck. I thought I was going to die.” He said reflectively.
Vinny laughed. “Too big for you, huh?”
“Yeah, but what was worse was he was impatient. He had a delivery to make. Kept telling me that too. ‘I got a delivery to make! I got a delivery to make! I got-ta del-iv-er-y to make!
I laughed. Vinny laughed. Rachel laughed. Gino shook his head serious. This was too good. Gino kept a straight face, the fucking nut case.
“It ain’t funny. He pinned me down in his cab. Didn’t even take off his shirt or his Wonder Bread cap.”
Rachel raised her eyebrows, her mouth hung open. “Oh my God! Did it hurt?”
“Fuck yeah it hurt. What’re you nuts? Imagine shitting out a zucchini.”
Vinny and I doubled over in convulsions.
“And no kiss before and no cigarette after. That fuck! I’ll NEVER forgive him for that!” He stabbed the air with a finger. “Fuckin’ jack off!”
Rachel did it again. She started to reach out to him with her hand but stopped. She could play along too, it seemed.
“Where you okay? Where did you meet this guy?” She went back to her drink and pulled on her straw.
“At a rest stop.” He shrugged. “This was the sixties. I was hitchhiking.”
“To Woodstock?” she asked. She leaned on the bar. Vinny walked towards the front of the dining room pulling out his cell phone, and as he past her he took a good, long look at her ass.
“Nah, I didn’t know where I was going. It turned into a real adventure too. I fucking bled for days. I dunno. I like it. That’s how I found out who I am.” He raised his bottle as if to toast, then upended it. The beer slid cold down his throat.
“Steve,” he set down the empty Miller Lite, “one last one.”
Rachel started her [third] cocktail. Gino rose and went back towards the kitchen to the washroom. Vinny’s phone chirped just as he closed it and came back to the bar. It was almost four-thirty.
“Yeah, Lenny.” Vinny raised a finger to Rachel to say, “You see! You see!”
“Yeah, this very sexy brown haired, brown-eyed girl walked in and stopped the whole fucking joint. No, just Gino, that bartender, Steve and I. Yeah, but... Look, I been taking real good care of her, you know. Interviewing her for the position. She’s perfect. No, not that position. Put her on for tomorrow.”
Rachel clapped her hands and laughed. “She’s perfect, Lenny. Yeah, I did. She’s got a great ass too. You’ll love her. She’ll be a great ass-et to the Bella.”
She just shook her head. She was taking all this so well, even though it was so insulting and must have made her feel uncomfortable. Sometimes you didn’t know if these were harmless or not. They were absurd and crass. Yes, they were definitely funny too. Perhaps they were testing her. She went along.
“Huh?” Vinny raised his head as though to listen closer. Gino return to his stool adjusting his belt. “Is that Lenny now?” Gino turned.
“Yeah, that’s Gino. Yeah, we’re having a great time here, Len. We got this hot babe here. Steve’s mixing up drinks, all we want, and giving them away for free.” He paused. “No shit, the cash register hasn’t rung once yet.” He winked at me. “Yeah, and we got the front door locked, sent the Mexicans in the kitchen out. People don’t know if we’re open or closed. They try the door, but it’s locked. Then they scratch their heads at the OPEN sign. They kept looking through the front windows till I had Steve here close all the shutters. Too distracting. We’re having quite a party here.” Long pause. I can hear Lenny’s voice buzzing. Vinny cracked up. He turned off his cell and set it down on the bar again.
“Well, what did he say?” Rachel wobbled a little. Her eyes were getting glassy. Vinny pulled out a stool and she finally sat down.
“He said to have a few more drinks, get to know me a little bit better, and come back in tomorrow for an interview. Around 1:30 was what he said. Oh and wear something nice.”
“An interview? I thought you were conducting the interview?”
Vinny looked caught for a moment, then I piped in. “Don’t worry about that. My interview lasted five minutes. And don’t overdress.”
Vinny moved back in. “Yeah, don’t do that. Don’t overdress. You don’t want too much on.” Vinny chuckled.
“You stupid fuck.” Gino said to him.
Vinny rapped lightly on the bar. “Hey Steve, you got anything else back there we can put on? I mean, what is this?” he glanced around the ceiling at the speakers. “This stuff makes me feel like a beatnik. Like I should be wearing a beret and sunglasses and beating on a bongo.” He plays air bongo.
The Kondo/Krush disc was just about finished anyways. Back to the well-worn Italian-American crooners. “I got Sinatra, Martin, Buddy Guy, a couple lounge music compilations and a few other blues CDs.”
“No rock? We need to rock now. We gotta ante up this party, right Rachel?”
“Yeah.”, she grinned big. “It’s way too mellow here.”
“Steve, how about another drink for Rachel. And another for me. And you need to make yourself one now too.”
I nodded. All right. The bartender should sample all drinks he’s not familiar with for quality assurance and future sales purposes, of course.
“Yeah, fuck it, Steve. Gimme another.” Gino pushed another empty away. “This is the last one.”
I opened another Miller Lite. Gino shook his head as he reached out for it. “Boy, am I gonna get the fuck beat outta me this time.” he leaned back and announced to us.
“Huh?” Rachel said. She reached over to Gino who bowed his head and shook it, clutching his forehead with a free big hand. Vinny looked lost for a moment, his eyes wandered around to each of us uncertain. He regained his composure, stood tall and nodded that he knew enough, more than enough to handle poor Rachel.
“He’s got serious problems, Rachel.” He said.
Gino threw up his hand and with the other rose up the sweaty beer. He gulped down a large slug and smacked his lips. Rachel leaned on the bar, resting her hand in her other hand. Vinny took it all in, it’s all right with him. He stops enough to let it be as it is already. I am the bartender, amused, stimulated, confused, irritated, like a background. I know where my shaker is as well as my towel.
Gino couldn’t bear to watch the stocks any longer. I think he really wanted to see us flush out Osama Bin laden on CNN right there, pay per view, as though he were personally responsible for the entire recession. The bad news ticked across the screen. No trading today. His cell phone lay cold on the bar. He sighed and turned his full attention back to Vinny and Rachel. The Miller Lite rose again. He swallowed it whole in his mighty thirst. Why Lite? The bottle bangs down on the bar like a gavel, an exclamation point. That he is here and you are too, I reflect. Why would I think that?
Gino has the profile of a Roman aristocrat in marble immortality, beautiful. He has the chiseled cheeks, high and sharp, the sharp, perfect nose forty-five degree angle nose, the hair, close, salt and pepper black and curling. The eyes, however, are not blank marble, they are fierce brown dark lightning. They wander and are so present. The curling lip of his mouth caresses the brown glass lip of the beer bottle he holds, close, close.
“What problems?” Rachel asked. Gino put his hand over his face, and then to boost the drama of the moment, and his plight, furrowed his forehead and pinched above his nose and shuddered.
Vinny stepped back and shook his head. “It’s his boyfriend.”
Gino went right along. He sighed resignation. He hung his head low till his chin reach down to his heart. “He don’t like me in bars like this. And he don’t like me being late neither.” He said silently.
“You have a boyfriend. How cute.” Rachel said. Vinny chuckled and shifted.
“Cute? Fuck, you ain’t seen him. He’s six foot eight and weighs three hundred and sixty pounds. Cute? He got arms as thick as my legs. And he gets mad quick. What a short fuse he got.”
“Oh, but he must care so much about you that he doesn’t want you to get hurt or anything bad to happen to you.”
“Yeah,” Vinny laughed “remember that time he found you at Blister’s? He yanked you off that bar stool and pulled you right out to the street by your collar with your heels dragging.”
“I’ll never show my face around there no more. What a beating! Right there on the curb with the valet driver watching. The valet had to get eight guys to haul Francis off of me.”
“I remember that.” Vinny spat an ice cube out. “He wouldn’t let you out for weeks. Total house confinement.”
“Yeah like a princess locked in a tower.”
“Oh my God.” Rachel breathed.
“So here I am now with you guys and you may think it’s all nice, that we’re having a good ole time and there’s no harm done in all this fun. But I know what’s going to happen all too well. He’ll be waiting. See, most of the time he’s patient with me like that. He knows I gotta come home eventually. It’s only when I’m gone for a stretch that he hunts me down. But he’ll be waiting in that Lazyboy, cocked to the side, cause he busted a couple of the springs when he leaned over once and fell asleep. He’ll be waiting for me like that. He’ll be naked. He’s always naked. He’ll stare hard at me and lean forward like this, and with his finger go “come here”. Then I’m fucked!” He hung his head just as low again.
“He’ll get up” Gino continued as we leaned and laughed, “and grab me like some flimsy rag doll. He don’t care what gets broken either. I gotta clean it up and pay for it anyways. He tosses me around like a fucking helpless doll. And he gets hard doing this!”
“What? Rachel laughed. She choked and covered her mouth coughing. Vinny slapped the bar and howled with laughter. I slid down the wall and pounded it with a fist cracking up myself.
“This shit ain’t funny!” Gino exclaimed. “All this is foreplay compared to what comes next.” He shrugged. “I guess I got it good though with him.”
Vinny caught his breath. “Don’t they got some kinda group you can go to, Gino, that’ll help a guy like you get out of this, some kinda gay abuse hotline you can call?”
“I guess so. But th
