Rachel Cann is in love with Ferlinghetti.

Never, Ever Bring This Up Again (August 20, 2009. Issue 8.)

The last time Anthony called I recognized his voice immediately. “What’s the matter? Looking for something easy?” I had asked.  He hung up and never called back. This time I guess he just needed to tell me his problems. Five years ago when I was living in Florida he flew there just for one day because I’m a good listener. It wasn’t till I poured him back on the plane, a huddled mess, that I found a whole bottle of my Kahlua missing. He says he’s been on the wagon ever since, but this time he’s not in my apartment five minutes before he throws me a plastic zip lock bag with maybe seven or eight hundred dollars worth of coke in it. He’s wearing jeans, a white cotton shirt, open at the neck and tennis shoe.

“Do you like coke?” he asks.

“No. I tried it once and all it did was make me grind my teeth. It’s pot I like.”

“I’ll get you all you want next time.”

There won’t be a next time. His luck must be running out. He’s going to jail.  He used to take me every week to the police station in East Boston to drop off a package of protection money. Cops knew him so well that once when I’d lost track of him I had to call the police station. They’d found a dead body upstairs from one of his bars, or traces of a dead body. It was so long ago, I can’t even remember. But the cops did. “Oh, that Anthony,” the cop on the desk said, laughing. “Sure, he’s been behaving himself.”

Anyone who knows him knows he’s in the numbers business, that Anthony just didn’t have it in him to do whatever it takes to collect monies owed. The trouble was, that time he flew to Florida, he owed everyone in town, the higher-ups, and the pressure nearly killed him. That, and the weight . He’s always had a problem with his weight, but today he’s looking thinner than I’ve ever seen, and I wonder if the coke has got him.

I waggle a finger at him. “I know someone with a stainless steel septum from that stuff.” I don’t, really, but I did know someone who knew someone who got a lesion on the brain from it.

“This is only the third time. Swear-to-God! It makes me horny as hell. I just spent five hours in bed with my wife, just blowing her. She must have come ten times. Me, I couldn’t get off.”

“Not blow, Tony—eat.”

“Eat, blow, what’s the difference?  This time they got me. Conspiracy and five counts of mail fraud over the bar.”  He takes a hunk of coke big enough to turn on my whole apartment building and throws it in his mouth like a jelly bean. “Try it, it’s good.”

“I dunno. I’m too scared. This could be crack.”

“Whaddayou kidding? Crack? This is the finest, I’m telling you. Try it!”

I’m still afraid but I get my crystal wedding dish that has one handle broken from not packing it well when I moved. I have only one of the two candelabras that came with it, one having been borrowed and broken by one of my quasi-daughters. That’s the bond I have with Anthony. Not only do we have mutual friends, we both love kids, even though sometimes they break our hearts. I took Tracey in even though her father told me she was no good, but when I think about my broken candelabra I get angry, start smashing a piece of coke with a matchbook cover. Decisions.  Decisions.  Should I? 

“I have a bad heart,” I say, finally. “I shouldn’t.”

“Does that mean you can’t have sex?”

“It means I can’t have too many cups of coffee and smoke at the same time, let alone coke.”

“This is ninety-five percent pure.”

“You dumb asshole. Are you dealing? Do you know what they will do to you if they catch you? And what do you mean conspiracy? What is this mail fraud?” I wet my   pinky, daub a little coke on it, just so I don’t feel like an old fart, and rub my gums. “What bar? The one next to the airport that you’ve been trying to sell?” I drove out there one night, dressed in red, and Anthony said I looked fat. When the entertainers got up to sing, I didn’t know they were lip synching transvestites. I never cease to amaze myself.

“No, to both questions. I had another bar that burned in Union Square.”

“Did you torch it?”

“No. But they tried to indict me for it.”

“What happened?”

“Statute of limitations, but they’re going to try to bring it into this other beef. Some fancy Latin name, contra something or other.”

“I know conspiracy. I had seven years of Latin. But tell me about mail fraud so I never do it.”  

“You know how you smash up your car in an accident and the guy writes you an estimate and you ask him to make it higher than what it would really cost to fix? Everybody does it.”

“Yeah…. You smashed up your car?”

“No, the bar. They got me with fourteen different bills marked ‘paid’ the workmen did. The minute you put it into the mail, that estimate, that’s mail fraud.”

“Fourteen different people are going to testify against you? Oh, Anthony. Time to get out of Dodge.”

I’m rolling up a dollar and tooting the damn white stuff, hardly believing I ‘m so stupid.  Life in the fast lane. You take what it brings. And you know going into it what the penalties are. I thought my son was cold and unfeeling when he said that after my other quasi-daughter was found dead, but now I agree with him.

“Do you believe fourteen different people can prove I threatened them and forced them to write these inflated bills?”

“If the government pays them I do.”

“Have you any idea what the lawyer is charging?”

“Fifty G’s?”

“Bingo. Right on the money. How did you know?”

“I had a friend in Florida who was in jail for dealing. He was from Columbia so they called him the Columbian Connection. He said they used to drop the stuff from planes onto Governor Connelly’s ranch in Texas. And there’s one lawyer who has never lost a drug case in Florida. For fifty grand, years ago, you could buy off the judge and the prosecutor. When do you go to court?”

“Wednesday. But I think we can get a continuance for six months. In six months I can make the money dealing coke.  I can’t leave Heidi with no money. She’ll never make it.”  He pops another hunk into his mouth. Anthony has a lot of mouths to feed: four kids with his girlfriend, then he married Heidi and had four more.  He’s got two gorgeous, curly-haired boys, both with the name of Anthony. He’s such a sucker he would never get a passport and leave the country.

“I’m sick over this. What do you stand to do?”

“Thirty years. A fucking joke. I’ll be an old man when I get out.”

“Are you out on bail?”

“Personal recog…recognicance. And then, of course, they’re going to try to say I’m connected with those no-good bastards up town. I’m nothing but a piece of shit. Nothing but a working slob. You know that. My wife’s a good broad to have put up with me through all the drinking. I was pretty bad.”

Anthony’s had his fingers in legitimate pies that I know of like sub shops, dry cleaning places, and diners, anywhere he could put a phone. I remember beating with my fists on the back of his brown leather jacket because he wouldn’t give me back the five grand I’d loaned him so he could get visitation rights. I think he was the first unmarried man in Massachusetts to win a case like that and I was happy to help him, but when he was unable to pay me back I had to go to a higher-up. Anthony was scared to death and he paid. Twice, he says. I needed the money for my own custody fight.

“I’m proud of you for quitting drinking.”

“Sixteen years of marriage and the sex is better than ever. Toes, fingers, I even suck armpits!”

“So, you’ve finally grown up. Coke. Sex. The whole thing. I’m happy for you. How’s your daughter, Whitney?” Whitney was the most rotten kid you can ever imagine, so spoiled and unmanageable, it’s a wonder his wife married him. She’d roll on the floor and scream till he gave her what she wanted. What’s even more amazing is what a nice young lady she turned out to be. You never can tell with kids.

“Whitney’s starting college. Every time my wife sees that picture of you in our album when we took the kids to Disneyworld, she goes ballistic. I tell her we’re just platonic. But today I want to go down on you. Right now. Let’s go. The only thing I ask is you grade me on a scale of one to ten. I know I can count on you to tell me the truth. You don’t have to do anything but lie back and enjoy.”  

“I don’t understand why you think you can come to me and expect me to lie down just like that as if I weren’t a lady.” The coke has me feeling I could lie down with a gorilla right now, but my heart has hardened against Anthony. Chasing nickels, driving cab, the way I do, with Whitney going to Europe three time the same year, is a definite downer.

“It’s the coke,” he explains, cupping his hand and touching himself. The corners to his lips turn down. “All I can think of is how to get rid of this pressure. I can’t even get hard. Go to the store and get me a sandwich and a pack of cigarettes and I’ll tell you all about it.”

He reaches into his pocket and gives me five twenties. I give him back four. Bad as I need it, taking money from him is an honor he doesn’t deserve. I never had to fuck anybody to survive, thank God. But I spend the twenty in a flash and buy coffee, lemon juice, anything I can carry. I almost drop the bag when I come through the door it’s so heavy. Tony is on the phone with a cigarette stuck into the middle of his upper lip where he used to have a tooth missing. It always reminded me of Ollie from the kiddie show Kukla, Fran.and Ollie, when he did that, and I can’t help but smile at the familiar gesture. When he drops his partial with the tip of his tongue, I gasp.  I kiss him on the back of his still-fleshy neck.

“Yankees,” says Anthony, “seventeen to a line.” I add pickles to his plate.

“Baltimore, six-fifty to five.” I put the chain on the door lock.

“Minnesota, six to a nickel. “ I whisper in his ear: “I thought you quit booking.”

“Milwaukee, twenty-two to a dime.” I light up a cigarette. First pack I’ve bought in six weeks. I hate myself for doing it but the pressure of his visit, the news that he might be going to jail, the little time we have to tell our stories, the frustration of being me, this neat little package I try to keep wrapped is ready to explode.

“Montreal,” says Anthony, “five to seven-fifty.” Nothing today? Okay.” He hangs up the phone and takes a bite of his sandwich. “I’m not going to kid you. I went down the list till I came to your name. It’s my wife’s daughter. Sixteen. She’s throwing herself at me and driving me crazy.”

Thank you, God. In my mind, I am climbing off Anthony’s face. To him, I say: “Your wife will never forgive you.”

“I had it all planned. I went up to her room three times. I was going to buy her a car. For nothing, just because I love her. Whether she would do it with me or not I was going to buy it for her. I didn’t want to do anything to her, really. But I wanted to take her into the shower and wash her all over. The thought of touching her was driving me crazy. I had to get out of the house, go somewhere, do something before I did something I’d be sorry for the rest of my life. You must think I’m terrible. She’s just a kid. My own wife’s daughter!”

“Sixteen today is not like when we were sixteen. But don’t kid yourself. The first time she’s mad at her mother, she’d throw it in her face.”

“You think so?” For all of his faults, malice is foreign to him.

“I know so.  I was a teenager. I have a teenager. I know how kids are.”

“I must be going crazy,” says Anthony.

“It’s normal,” I say. “I think. I was in this encounter group, once, and a minister there said he got aroused just changing his baby’s diaper!”

“I feel better already,” says Tony. “What time is your kid coming home? When can we get together? I’ll never forget the first time you offered yourself to me. I was more shocked than anything else.”

“Never, ever bring that up again! Won’t you  let me forget it?” It was the night before Christmas and he came by with a Styrofoam candy cane to hang on the wall (it wouldn’t have lasted an hour on the door of the project where we lived) and a little Christmas tree for the living room. “I was just a kid, shattered by my divorce, with a maturity factor of one. I think I was shell-shocked that anybody would want me, grateful for even a pat on the head. But I’m grown up now, Anthony, just like you and I don’t need to make excuses for when I say no.”

“So what’s the bottom line? All bull-shitting aside.”

 I love Anthony as much as I ever did, deciding I deserve better than a contemptible schmuck. “No,” I answer. “Never, ever again."