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

Page 25

used for storage as there was an access door down a small alley, where no one but Sangi had recently gone.

Sangi got under there, and patiently waited for class to get underway when he used his immense geography book to smash away at the bleacher underpinnings. He made quite a racket, and he was yelling; “B-b-b-b-bombs” over and over. It was only after everyone ran out screaming that he came out laughing maniacally.

Having pulled off his scam perfectly, he couldn’t stop cracking up as a few minutes after the school was evacuated and the firemen were going room to room, slowly and sheepishly picking

I Woke Next to the Corpse Page 26

around, while their complaining that either the Office of Defense Mobilization or the Federal Civil Defense Administration should have been the ones called in for the investigation provided further fuel for his mirth. Though his accomplishment was popularly under-appreciated at the time, and most adults didn’t find it a gas at all, and he was never honored with the

“Best Class Comedian” popularly designated vote, he did have his un-counted coterie of fanatical, fresh-faced fans, who always adamantly claimed; “Sangi won,” but were thwarted in their attempts to prove that; even being denied an official recount by the corrupt school powers that be.

Some people are cursed by being so far ahead of their time that others lose their desired conceptual duality of past and present. I’ll bet that Sangi is still laughing today after the temporary respite necessitated by his interrogation by cops, during which, under the advice of counsel, he avoided any criminal charges by signing a document which basically said that he didn’t do anything wrong, but would never do it again; a forerunner to the Securities and Exchange Commission’s standard

“investigative” boilerplate.

No doubt this made it even funnier for Sangi and me, but for Toro this same dope was taken as a finding of a patsy. So, Toro picked Sangi’s lock and placed some ash cans with timing devices

I Woke Next to the Corpse Page 27

in Sangi’s locker, knowing that when it hit the fan there would be a less than cursory investigation, and the pimpled comedy wannabee would be blamed.

And he was; the repercussions of which I neither know nor care to know. The patsy set himself up for it. End of old story.

I gazed out the window again, focusing on what I could see of the driveway. There was still nothing there, and I wondered if a change in plans was wise. But there was a complication. I realized that before I could change something, that something would first have to exist. So I settled into the well-travelled road without a sign called “Inertia Lane.”

I Woke Next to the Corpse Page 28

Tony (Toro) Calabrese

It has become apparent to me that this whole thing is abominably out of order, especially if one limits themselves to thinking in a totally plebian, solipsistic, and chronological manner. This particular segment is not an egregious offender in that regard, but I just thought of it right now, and it seems appropriate to mention it here. Otherwise I’d have forgotten about it. If you haven’t already, you’ll learn that the intelligencia fawn over compositions which are most likely simply sloppy and/or ham fisted; often deeming it new and creative, obviously clichéd in the most clever of ways to use the cliché. Yeah, right. Their possible intent of being disingenuous, sarcastic, or condescending is competently hidden by the best of them; and the others are not worthy of any more discussion than is dutifully supplied by their flunkified, suck-up, fan boys and girls.

High-brow aesthetic considerations temporarily aside, Tony (Toro) Calabrese was my best friend and partner at different times during my early life; I guess something like a cereal you abandon once in a while only to discover worse. He was as Italian as anyone whose family came from Sicily and felt the standard need to deny his Sicilian heritage under the implied threat of mayhem; especially when in the presence of other Italians. I’m not certain, but often consider the possibility

I Woke Next to the Corpse