I Woke Next to the Corpse by Edward Drobinski - HTML preview

Page 19

So, getting back to the little, newly made man Tony (Toro) Calabrese, I used my well-honed shrug to show disinterest and that being a funeral director was no big thing to me, and it truly wasn’t. Bottom line, I only took the job as a replacement for the tire changing gig I had going at Pep Boys. I hated getting all greasy and dirty. I considered suggesting that I had done Tony (Toro) Calabrese a favor and that he owed me; but I had known him a long time, and didn’t think he’d appear to go for that negotiative crap, for the sake of argument choosing to brand my disinterest as bordering on personal insult. He’d likely have said; “Mark it on the ice.”

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We had a kind of understanding about rules. Some people follow them and some break them. Being totally predictable, both are games for losers. We did neither, as following them brings boring mediocrity, while an overt breaking of a rule brings many unwanted repercussions. We just ignored them and usually played dumb, and sometimes cited another conflicting and overriding rule to confuse matters. That was the fun part.

One example happened when we were about fourteen. One day when I hoofed it to George’s Candy Store, the usual hangout area for teenagers in the neighborhood, Toro was already there exchanging words which didn’t seem amicable with Pirozi, a similarly aged chucklehead and aspiring mob goon; his active ambition an admirable attribute to all. We little hoodies were relegated to the back room with the pinball machine, where we smoked the illegal loosies, most often unfiltered Lucky Strikes, which George sold at three for a nickel, which increased his profit margins a couple of hundred percent, and from there we didn’t disturb the proper patrons in our special place. Pirozi wasn’t a regular patron of George’s, just here and there. Most likely he was one who managed to get lost, take a wrong turn, somewhere during his three block trek from home. Making deductions and maintaining concentration weren’t strong suits in the Pirozi repertoire. His calling card always was looming.

I Woke Next to the Corpse