"FROM THE BLOCK"

Chapter One 

New Year’s Eve is amateur night. People who don’t hang out in bars nightly should just stay home and get drunk on New Year’s Eve and leave the rest of us alone. I have no idea who these people are, except for Mikey Lenihan and Patty Dunn, hunkered down at the end of the bar at their usual corner stools, totally oblivious to the fact that the place is actually jammed with people. Usually "Third Base" is a drinking bar, open at eight in the morning with a few hard cores who bring a cup of coffee and a Daily News and have a shot of Jameson’s for dessert before heading off to work. It continues with a steady stream of people who come through the hollow wood front door, warped at the bottom from decades of beer, vomit, and ammonia-soaked mops slopping up against it. And some nights, for some inexplicable reason, the place can get packed to the rafters.

"Who ordered the five Old Fashioneds?" shouts an overwhelmed Noel of Sligo into the mostly anonymous crowd of revelers taking advantage of the free corned beef and cabbage, party hats, and plastic "glass" of champagne at midnight. The hats aren’t really "hats" but colored tissue paper "crowns" that could easily double as toilet paper and probably will for some of the more sloppy, falling down New Year’s drunks. The champagne is the cheapest carbonated rotgut wine that makes a Thunderbird spritzer taste like Dom Perignon. But who cares? Everybody downwind of this former coal and ice store on the ground floor of a prewar apartment building at 116 Fort Independence Street knows that there isn’t a more delicious layout of corned beef and cabbage in the city. Not even at the Irish Consul on Fifth Avenue.

"Who the fuck ordered five fuckin’ ‘Old Fashioneds?’"

Noel must be in a really bad mood. Admittedly, he can curse like a stevedore, but normally never in front of women, children, or clergy.

"I beg your pardon, dear. Please excuse my foul mouth. I’m sorry, I just needed to catch your attention," Noel says, genuinely embarrassed as he hands the drinks to a chunky Puerto Rican lady in her fifties with a wall of hair sticking straight up and red fingernails that could definitely use a touch up job.

"Oh, that’s OK Noel, you look busy tonight. You’ve got to give me your recipe for the corned beef and cabbage. It comes out so stringy when I do it."

"Certainly, darling, come by any time when my hair’s not on fire like it is this fine evening."

Funny but Noel’s hair does look like it’s on fire. It’s carrot red and he must put some kind of gook in it to slick it back so perfectly. He’s got the Rock of Gibraltor for a jaw and a mouth overflowing with crooked teeth. Noel’s first night tending bar here was almost his last. Having just arrived off the boat from Sligo in Ireland, his introduction to the bar that would become his livelihood for the next twenty odd years was as Noel calls it, "mighty fucking dismal."

Twenty-four years ago, October 4th, 1955, was one of the darkest days in Bronx sports history. It was the day the Yankees finally lost to the Brooklyn Dodgers in the World Series. And not only that, it was the first World Series to be broadcast on television in color. And as Noel O’Hagan of Sligo has told the story, he arrived from Ireland on that fateful day to begin his life as a Bronx bartender at Third Base a local bar on the rise in the Irish neighborhood of Kingsbridge in the Northwest Bronx. Since Third Base didn’t have a color TV, as did Grecco’s down on Bailey Avenue, it was practically empty; but a few locals headed over to watch the game on the old Philco set sitting on a shelf in the corner. Nobody seemed to mind that a coat hanger wrapped with tin foil stuck out of the back of the set, and the fuzzy picture tended to roll every five seconds. As long as you could hear Mel Allen, and just barely watch Yogi and the Mick pummel the Dodgers into the Yankee Stadium clay, as they did for what seemed like every October for the past decade, it didn’t matter. Actually, the Yanks had beaten the Brooklyn bums five times, without a win for the Dodgers. But this year something was wrong. It actually went to seven games, and Mickey Mantle was injured and hardly playing. Noel had never seen a baseball game in his life and surmised that it was something like cricket or hurling. He was the lone bartender, and as the TV’s already tenuous picture started to fade even more, he was helplessly immersed into the ugly side of what is referred to in most other parts of the country as that "shitty New York temperament."

"Fix the goddamned TV, you stupid fucking donkey!"

"You off-the-boat moron! Use the fine tuner!"

"You potato-headed fucking mick! We’re missing the game!"

The Yanks were losing it, and so were the dozen or so patrons too lazy to walk down to Grecco’s to watch it on a brand new RCA color set. Noel immediately understood the importance of not just baseball, but the Yankees in the lives of the denizens of the Bronx. He received no tips that night and in fact several people broke their glasses in disgust on the barroom floor, prompting him to make a pact with himself that although he’d be a polite and courteous barkeeper, he’d never stand for that kind of abuse again. He also discovered the reason the bar was called Third Base was that it was the last stop before home. But to the regulars, it was home. It was their family. And everybody knows how fucked up families are.

I had to work today, and I haven’t called anybody to see what they’re up to tonight. Just like any night, the guys’ll probably just show up around eleven or twelve, check out who’s at the bar, and take it from there. No plans. No expectations. Just take it as it comes. Not that incredible things don’t sometimes happen. But things seem so much sweeter when you don’t expect it.

"Hey, Mikey, hey, Patty," I say to the guys squeezing through the unfamiliar faces, finally reaching them. They’re both forced even further into the corner of the bar than usual, right under the TV, next to the cigarette machine and the door to the ladies’ room, which like the men’s room has a stench emanating from a door that won’t quite close. I can only assume that since some women haven’t resorted to peeing between the parked cars on Fort Independence Street that it’s not quite the assault on the senses that the little boy’s room is.

"Hiya, Jerry, how are ya?" Patty asks in his usual lilting voice. He’s one of the many guys from the neighborhood whose parents came over on the boat from Ireland, when they were in their teens or twenties, and never lost the thick Irish brogue. The kids all seem to have a trace of the old country in their manner of speech, and the more Irish whiskey they drink, the thicker it gets.

"Hey," grunts Mikey, barely audible and moving his eyes in my direction, but not his head.

"You guys see Stubby or anybody tonight?" I inquire.

Naturally, Patty’s the one to respond.

"No, Jerry. And we’ve been here since when, Mikey?" Patty says to his stool buddy Mikey.

"Fucking noon."

"Since fucking noon, Jerry, and we have not seen the honorable lad Stubby or any of his playmates all day, have we, Mikey?"

"No, and not Grumpy, Sneezy, Dopey, or Shitty either."

"There you go, Jerry. Not a one. By the way, have you noticed the unusual presence of delightful young females in the establishment this evening? A lad such as yourself may just find some pleasant new acquaintances this holiday evening, and perhaps a chance at a romantic interlude ."

"Yeah, just watch out for those two baggers," Mikey mumbles. In this case, making reference to a joke from fifth grade is about as close to "cuddly" Mikey ever gets. (The joke is that you need two bags to screw the girl...one to cover her face and one to cover the guy’s in case hers breaks.)

"Hello, Jerry, what can I get you?" Noel says, finally making it to our end of the bar.

"Just a Bud nip."

"That’s right lad, pace yourself," Noel says as he makes one sweeping move with his right hand pulling the small bottle of beer out of the ice in the sink, popping off the cap from a bottle opener under the bar, grabbing a coaster with his left hand, flipping it right next to Patty’s, and putting the beer on top.

"Happy New Year, son," he says as the knocks the bar, meaning it’s on the house.

Noel likes me a lot better now that I have a steady job, such as it is. Once I graduated from hanging out in parks and "kid" bars and moved up the ladder to this place, I went a year or two hanging out here without drinking or leaving a tip. I didn’t know it at the time, but it was only thanks to the grace and manners of Noel that I was allowed to remain a patron in good standing; but he was mighty pissed at me just the same. Once I was semi-gainfully employed and started paying for a beer or two, buying a round or two, and leaving a buck or two tip, he certainly noticed, and actually acknowledged my presence.

"Back atcha, Noel."

There really are some good looking girls in here tonight. Mostly Irish and Italian, but definitely several cute Puerto Ricans and Blacks, too. The neighborhood has been getting more integrated lately. But where in New York hasn’t been? As far as I can tell, they work and play just as hard as the rest of us, although I seem to sometimes be in the minority in that opinion with some of the old-timers around here.

"Yeah, I noticed the chicks tonight, Patty."

"You must be a fucking criminology major at college right?" Mikey barks at me.

"How’s that?"

"You know, with a fucking marvelous grasp of the obvious like that, you must be a criminology major."

"What are you on the fuckin’ rag for, Mikey? Can’t you even pretend to be civil even on fucking News Year’s fuckin’ Eve?"

That brought a smile to Mikey’s face as he picked up his Jameson and finished it off.

"You’re right kid. Have a shot on me."

Mikey’s one of those guys who’s only happy when he gets other people pissed off. And he’s good at it, too. And the more he drinks, the more he likes to get people enraged. And when he’s really stewed to the gills, and his friends won’t even listen to his idiotic rants, raves, and moronic challenges, he’ll try pulling his act on total strangers. We call him "the dentist" because he keeps drilling and drilling and drilling until he gets way under you skin and you can’t take him anymore. That’s why his nose is a little crooked. Only friends take shit like that. Not strangers. I’ve seen Patty save his life on more than one occasion.

"And how is college, Jerry?" Patty says in all seriousness. "Are you doing well? Getting good grades? When will you be graduating?"

Shit. Now he sounds like my parents. This is a constant source of anxiety for my parents, and yes, for me. I’m basically finished with school, having completed all my classes. But until I finish three final papers for three courses, I’m not graduating.

"Well, technically, I’m finished with school. But I have to write some papers before I can get my diploma."

"Yeah, I had the same dilemma," Mikey chimes in.

"You never even finished high school," says Patty.

"So what. Technically I’m finished with school, but because I didn’t hand in various papers, I never got my diploma from college. I’ve got you on a technicality, Jerry. We’re in the exact same boat. That’s why I’m here every night of the week drinking my life away. I got fucked on a technicality. Just like you."

"He’s right Jerry," Patty says with a knowing nod.

That’s why Mikey’s such a pain in the ass. Sometimes he’s too right.

Someday I might just go to Times Square for New Year’s Eve. I don’t think there are any real New Yorkers who go to that. Every cop I know who works it, calls it a "controlled riot." People come up to the cops to report robberies and assaults and the cops just laugh at them. Dumb tourists.

"Are you and Mikey staying here all night tonight, Patty?"

"I don’t know, what do you think, Mikey?" Patty confers with Mikey.

"Nah, I’ve got a limo coming at half past twelve filled with Viet Namese hookers, free blow, and all the hotdogs you can eat, and we’re going to Studio 54. Wanna come?"

"Yes, Jerry, we’ll be here until the morning sun is bright enough to illuminate the sidewalk pizzas to guide us home."

"Patty, you are wasting your time at the Sanitation Department. You should be an Irish poet, doing one-man shows at some SoHo artist loft," I tell Patty, only half kidding. "I think I’m going back to my building to check on Stubby and the guys. I’ll be back before midnight. After all, I wouldn’t want to miss Mikey turning into a fuckin’ rat when the clock strikes twelve. Noel, I’ll be back," I say as I put my bottle on top of a ten dollar bill and my coaster, signifying my return. I push my way through the corned beef and cabbage reeking revelers towards the door, and as I enter the no-man’s-land between the two door exits separated by a small four foot foyer, two of the most gorgeous Latinas I have ever laid my eyes on wearing real party hats I might add enter the space just as I do.

"You’re not leaving are you?" The one with the jet black wavy hair cascading down her back asks.

"Oh, uh, I’ll be back," I mutter.

"We’ll be looking for you!" she sings with come-hither eyes, her equally enticing friend giggling as they push their way into the bar.

I exit and begin my walk down the long hill, thinking to myself what a jerk I am. Why didn’t I say something like: "I changed my mind." or "Not anymore." I know why I didn’t say those lines...because when it comes to beautiful women, I’m like every other guy around here: a total ignoramus.

It’s not all that cold tonight. Maybe forty degrees. That’s great for New Year’s. I mean there are St. Patrick’s Day parades that take place on colder days. I feel particularly comfortable because I’m able to wear my trusty old jean jacket with a sweater and a down vest underneath. I always feel a little more comfortable with my jean jacket. Especially these days, when it seems everybody’s wearing such goofy shit like wide lapeled white blazers with shocking pink shirts and skinny black ties. Once "Saturday Night Fever" hit, it was like a guido explosion. "Guido" is the term we use for stereotypical Italian life-style and "look" which has dominated the New York scene since...probably the 1920s, but really took off in the fifties. We had a brief respite in the late sixties and into the early seventies when it was cool to look like a hippy. But here in the late seventies, it’s as if the Beatles, Woodstock, and the Grateful Dead never existed. I mean it’s freaking New Year’s Eve 1978 going into the last year of the seventies, and you look around in some of these clubs, and you’d think we went from doo wop straight to disco.

Believe me, I’ve got nothing against Italians, especially since I’m half Italian on my father’s side, but come on! This whole disco thing takes the absolute worst of Italian culture and shoves it down everybody’s throat. Sure, Italians like to dress nice; so how does that translate into polyester floral shirts and white bell-bottoms with black vinyl belts? "Guido" doesn’t just mean Italians only. There are Irish guidos; Polish guidos; Puerto Rican guidos; Albanian; Russian; Jewish; even Black guidos. They drive Monte Carlos, wear pinky rings, get perms, put stuff in their hair, and in the summer they wear those "wife-beater shirts" (white undershirt tank tops) and listen to fucking disco!

"What the..." I say out loud to no one, as I round the downhill bend which my building, the same building Stubby lives in, is just around, as three cop cars zoom past me without their sirens on, but going at least seventy miles an hour. And a split second later, I can hear sirens coming from the other direction, getting closer. I pick up my pace to a jog and can now see and hear a definite situation from a little over a block away. Assorted sirens and cop cars screeching to a halt, with fat cops pulling out billy clubs running into my building. Shit!

I break into a full-blown run down the hill just as a cop holds up his billy club horizontally right in front of me at throat level.

"Hold it right there," the chunky Fiftieth Precinct Irish cop shouts at me. The Fiftieth used to be where they sent cops just before they retired so they could take it easy during their last year of street duty. But the past couple of years, they’ve gotten more than they’ve bargained for. With the influx of drugs and drug dealers, there’s just as much action here as any other part of the city.

"I live here!"

"That’s your problem."

I hate wiseass cops.

"What’s going on?"

"Some of your neighbors decided to celebrate New Year’s with some dangerous noise makers, SHIT!"

The cop and I are both scared shitless when we hear some kind of enormous crashing sound coming from the courtyard of my building and turn to see a mass of bodies tumbling through the plate glass doors, down the five steps onto the front courtyard of the building.

"Motherfuckers don’t make a fucking move or I’ll fucking blow your brains out," the cop who was talking to me screams at the top of this lungs. Now, the slowly moving five or six bodies that just had the ride of their lives through the front door of my building (which, by the way, has been there for about two years since they decided to upgrade the front of the building by tearing out all the shrubbery, covering everything with concrete, and replacing a beautiful ornate cast iron double door that was probably handcrafted in Europe in the 1890s, with an aluminum door that hasn’t closed right since day one) begin to stir.

I can see two cops separating themselves from the pile of bodies as I hop up the three stairs from the sidewalk onto the courtyard. There are screams and curses from both men and women in the cavernous tiled lobby of my building with guttural sounds of agony, pain, and threats, from probably a dozen people just beyond the main entrance to the lobby.

"Mr. Lynch..." I whisper.

Holy shit. Among the half dozen or so men who are now coming to their feet after crashing through the plate glass door and tumbling down the stairs is Bobby Lynch’s father. And now I can see Bobby Lynch coming to his knees with the help of a cop. Two other cops come over, one Black and one Puerto Rican, each with a billy club in one hand, and they begin to lift two Puerto Rican men in their thirties to their feet.

Mr. Lynch and Bobby are too shaken to even notice me at this point.

Another big crash in the lobby has everyone jerking their heads to see what’s next.

"Fuck you, you spic motherfuckers! I’ll fucking kill you, you spic bastard."

Oh, no. Fucking Billy Brosnon. Shit. This asshole has to always fuck things up on somebody else’s block. If there was ever a more explosive, violent, moron on the face of the earth, he must’ve been riding with Attilla the Hun. He got kicked out of seventh grade in Visitation for throwing a desk out a classroom window onto Monsignor McNulty’s Bonneville. I was surprised he made it as far as seventh grade without landing in prison or getting killed.

I could now see Billy holding his side as if he was injured. The cop holding onto his neck yells for two ambulances.

Billy comes into my building a lot these days. There’s a drug dealer on the top floor. In my own fucking building. And because of shitheads like Brosnon, he stays in business. I’ll tell you this, if Mr. McHugh were still alive, there wouldn’t be a drug dealer in the building. That tough old drunken mick would’ve crashed through his front door and beat his brains out with his sawed-off baseball bat. But those good old days are long gone.

"You fucking spics think you can do whatever the fuck you want and get away with it! Well, not anymore, not anymore, not anyfuckingmore, you motherfuckers!" Brosnon yells, totally out of control, and being led past the group of cops with Mr. Lynch and Bobby towards the awaiting ambulance.

"That mother fucker is crazy! He’s fucking crazy!" A Puerto Rican man yells as he is being led down the stairs in handcuffs. I guess he got to know Brosnon pretty quickly. Some people don’t find out what a lunatic he is for months, or weeks, or days. He must’ve found out in a minute or two, passing in the hall. He’s the guy who just moved into the Donneghey’s old apartment. The Donneghey’s were there for about ten years, and Mrs. Donneghey grew up in the building her whole life. This was where she moved after she got married. But now that they have kids, they decided to move to Jersey. Poor kids.

I’ve never even seen the new Puerto Rican guy. I don’t even know if he’s got a family or what, and he must’ve moved in six months ago. Leave it to Brosnon to find him.

"Prisco, Prisco, Prisco, call me, call me!" A young Puerto Rican woman with a baby in her arms sobs after the man being led away. And right behind her is another Puerto Rican man holding a bloody towel to his face as he is being led through the courtyard to the other ambulance.

A scuffle breaks out in the center of the courtyard.

"You assholes, what are you doing?" Mr. Lynch shouts to the cop putting cuffs on him and his son, Bobby.

Mr. Lynch in cuffs? Being arrested? Mr. Lynch who’s an usher at church and a member of the Sanitation Department Emerald Society, not to mention the Holy Name Society? I’ve never, ever heard him curse. He once banned me from hanging out with Bobby, who’s two years younger than I am, because I said the word "lousy." I mean I was in third grade, but "lousy?"

And out of nowhere, a blinding flash. Then another and another and another and another. A photographer is sticking his camera lens in Mr. Lynch’s face snapping pictures like a Japanese tourist in Times Square.

"Get that damn thing out of my face, goddammit," Mr. Lynch screams at the photographer. "Get that guy out of here!"

"If you don’t want to be in put in a zoo, don’t act like an animal," the photographer snaps back at him.

He’s got New York Daily News written all over his camera bag. Great. The News is read by everybody in the neighborhood and just about everyone in the city. Poor Mr. Lynch is going to be plastered all over the paper on New Year’s Day. What a damn shame. You’d think the prick photographer could let him suffer in private.

One by one the perpetrators were led to the ambulances or squad cars, with flash bulbs blasting away, as a couple of guys with greasy hair and cheap Alexander’s Department Store suits were escorting witnesses back to their apartments for just the facts m’am.

"Jerry!"

Stubby. Shouting from his fifth floor apartment.

"Want me to buzz you in?" he yells, making reference to the fact that there are no more front doors.

"Yeah, I forgot my keys."

Stubby and I are the only two kids left in the building from the old days. His parents moved out three years ago leaving him with the $160 a month three bedroom apartment. My parents are still living here, but I have no idea what’s going to happen when my dad retires this year. I figure they’ll split the year between here and Hollywood, Florida where Uncle Vito bought a large house when he retired.

The lobby looks like a war zone. There are splotches of blood on the tiny black and white tiled floor, shattered mirror glass all over the place, and blood-stained white towels scattered around.

I don’t have to go far since our apartment is right next to the lobby elevator. A quick turn of the four locks on the door and a fast "anybody home?" means all is quiet on the Pellicano front. But the elevator is occupied. Two cops are in there examining various stains, marks, and I guess, evidence.

"This elevator’s out of service; get some exercise," a pissed-off cop yells at me, due to the fact that he’s working on New Year’s and hates his miserable life.

These aren’t just five short flights. These old prewar behemoths have huge stairways. I’m pooped by the time I get to the fifth floor and bang on Stubby’s heavily secured steel door.

"Who’s there?"

"Police, open up."

The door whips open, blowing a gust of pot aroma into the hall.

"Don’t even fuck around like that, shithead."

"Well what are you asking ‘who’s there’ for? You knew it was me."

"I always ask ‘who’s there.’ I should stop after twenty seven years just because it’s you?"

Stubby didn’t get his nickname from being short and fat, but from his last name, Stubenz. Stubby may not sound like the kind of nickname a kid would want to hang onto, but it beat "Stupid Stubenz" which really rolls off the tongue of a fifth grader. Plus the fact that his real name is Francis makes the moniker even that much more preferable. No, Stubby isn’t stubby in stature. He’s more like Smokey The Bear. Big-boned, big-waisted, long-legged, thick-necked, fat-fingered, and thunder-thighs are all accurate descriptions. And top it all off with a shock of fuzzy black locks that reach the top of his ever-present army fatigue shirt and you get the picture. But he’s no clod. If he had maybe a couple less inches on the waist, and traded them in for a couple in height, he probably would’ve been a starter on the All Hallows High School varsity team, and who knows what that would’ve led to. Instead, he graduated Bronx Community College and got a job with the city like almost every person on the planet that I know or am related to. He’s a track worker with the Transit Authority, which means he does everything from retrieving body parts to putting down rat poison. I still think he has the talent to go after his real dream of being an FM radio deejay.

This apartment sure doesn’t look like it did when Mr. and Mrs. Stubenz ruled the roost. Stubby’s idea of interior decorating is scamming someone with a car to drive around Riverdale on Tuesday nights to see what people with money are putting out on the sidewalk for garbage pick up early the next morning. And he wonders why he can’t get rid of roaches. It’s not that he doesn’t have money. He makes an OK buck as a track worker for Transit. But if we don’t call him "Stubby," we call him "two slices and a coke" because that’s about the extent of his living expenses. He’s probably going to buy this building in a few years from that slumlord Geller. I think I prefer Geller.

Sitting on the red velvet sofa with gold trim and white wooden legs, trying to get the last seed out of a tiny pile of pot from the inside crease of an opened "Live At The Fillmore East" Allman Brothers album is Terry Byrne. He’s Stubby’s buddy from Inwood who works with him in the hole (the subway tunnels). I didn’t know somebody could smoke pot every hour on the hour, seven days a week, and still have a pulse, but Terry is living proof. He’s the only guy I know that makes me look fat and healthy, and I’ve been mistaken for an anemic junkie on more than one occasion. His thin, sandy hair is tied into a long ponytail, and it’s been said that he has a look not unlike Neil Young’s. And I think that’s the only reason he has a very good track record hooking up with the barefoot hippy chicks at concerts. That, and the fact that he’s a walking drugstore.

On the other side of the room, sitting in a barber’s chair reading a book that looks like it came out of the stuffing from the sofa that Terry’s sitting on is, Merrill Cottle. Stubby and Merrill were three years ahead of me at Visitation Grammar School; the local Catholic school that believe it or not, up until five years ago was absolutely free to attend. Which is why every classroom had sixty five kids and nuns with brass yardsticks to keep us all in line. Actually, Merrill is only two years older than I am, but he skipped a grade. Merrill is soft. With his round features and thin eyes, if someone told you he was Somoan or part Korean, you’d believe them. But he’s much too large to be part Chinese. And he has a natural Afro. Not like the permed Afros that everybody from Irish to Italians are getting, but a real pick worthy natural ‘fro. Merrill isn’t working right now. He graduated from City College, summa cum laude with a degree in philosophy, but still lives with his father in an apartment above Third Base.

Merrill started hanging out with Stubby and the rest of us during high school when most of his friends from up the hill started beating up hippies, Jews, and anybody else who had more on the ball than they did. Sometimes he’s so smart he’s scary. Sometimes he’s so weird it’s even scarier. And sometimes he’s balls to the walls hilarious.

"What the hell happened in the lobby?"

Terry and Merrill, being too intensely preoccupied in their respective endeavors, ignore me. Stubby is over by the stereo, which is balanced on a board across two wooden milk crates, which are impossible to find these days.

"Hey, where’s the Live At The Fillmore East album cover?"

"I’ll be finished in a minute, Stub," Terry says, careful that the sound waves from his voice won’t disturb any microfibers of marijuana.

"Have you heard this Talking Heads album, Jerry? I just got it over at Cousins for $2.49. You gotta hear this Psycho Killer.’"

"Why the fuck are Mr. Lynch and Bobby in a paddy wagon, blood all over the lobby, the last mirror that wasn’t broken shattered, and Brosnon and some Puerto Rican guy on the way to Montefiore Hospital?"

"Oh, yeah," Stubby says as he puts The Talking Heads on his new Zenith stereo with round "surround sound" speakers.

"Well, from what I could pick up from Mrs. Ryan, Brosnon was in the elevator with one of his buddies, going up to the sixth floor to cop no doubt, and the two new Puerto Rican guys in the building, who I guess are cousins, got in on the second floor. They exchanged dirty looks and when the Puerto Rican guy said ‘Happy New Year’ to Brosnon, Mr. Charm School reciprocated by saying, ‘Same to you,’ and flicked his lit cigarette right into the guy’s face. So the fight starts, a knife comes out, punches thrown, people stuck, mirror smashed, cops called. The end."

"Well, what about Mr. Lynch?"

"From what I can tell, Bobby was probably the one with Brosnon in the elevator. Mr. Lynch must’ve stumbled onto it and got caught up in the colorful cultural exchange program."

"Why’d they bust him?"

"I heard it was ‘incite to riot.’"

"Are you serious?" Merrill says finally looking up from the dusty pages of what I can now see is The Stranger by Camus. And his perturbed, pensive expression flashes to uproarious laughter.

"Mr. Lynch! Incite to riot. He was my sponsor when I was confirmed. That’s so in-fucking-credible. Haahhahahahaha!"

And just as quickly, he reverts back to studying, with furrowed brow, his existentialist tome.

"This is fucked, Stubby," I say to Stubby as he reads the liner notes on the Talking Heads album.

"This is our home. Where we live. And right in the lobby there’s a bloody near race riot on New Year’s Eve. This is totally fucked."

"It was Brosnon, Jerry. If it wasn’t a Puerto Rican in the elevator, it could’ve been a fucking Klingon and Brosnon would’ve started something. And too bad it wasn’t a Klingon. He would’ve fuckin’ smoked him. For good."

"This sucks." I said out loud, but it was as if I was saying it in an empty room.

"You guys going to Third Base tonight?"

Just then I can hear pots and pans being banged together from an apartment window a few floors down.

Terry looks up from his botany project. "What time is it?"

I look at my watch, and see it’s 12:01 am. We missed it.

"It’s 12:01. We missed New Year’s, guys," breaking the news to them.

"Well, let’s just smoke the rest of this and then head out," Terry says, not fazed by the news.

The others agree with their indifferent silence.

"I’ll just get a head start and walk up there now," I tell them, knowing they won’t try to talk me out of it.

They didn’t.

"See ya up there."

Well, 1979 is sure starting off with a bang. As I grab the smoothly worn hardwood bannister, I notice that the round brass ornament that was on the landing post is missing. It was the last one in the entire building. As I hit the turnaround on the fourth floor landing, I can see freshly drawn graffiti reading Latin Eagles on the hall wall right next to the apartment where Tina Robustelli and her strange family lived for the five years, after her father left their house for a pack of cigarettes and never returned, until they moved to Jersey in 1972. In retrospect, we were so cruel to Tina and her family. We thought we were being clever and funny with our not-so-innocent practical jokes. What is it that drives kids into a Lord Of The Flies frenzy? I just hope Tina has found happiness in Jersey. That is, if such a thing is possible.

As I round the corner on the third floor, I can see at the bottom of the stairs a female sitting on the bottom step, head in hands. I can just barely hear her whimpering. I stop dead in my tracks wondering if I should go use the other stairs; but in that moment, she snaps her head around to look at who is approaching her as if she’s scared to death.

Holy shit. It’s Mary Markowski. Sweet, beautiful Mary. Mary Markowski, the object of every boy’s desire the summer after graduating from grammar school. She was one of those girls no one really noticed until the eighth grade boat ride when we all went for a dip at the Bear Mounain pool, and the girls debuted in their modest two-piece bathing suits. We had all fantasized what might be hidden under those Catholic schoolgirl jumpers, but had no idea how incredible Mary Markowski, Tina Robustelli, and Lois Peckerino actually were. I’m happy to report that I did in fact get close to tasting the fruit of Mary Markowski, even if it only consisted of wrestling on the damp centerfield grass of a baseball diamond in Van Cortlandt Park for several warm summer evenings the month after graduating high school. Mary defended herself like Sugar Ray Robinson, allowing me to touch only the most neutral body parts. I don’t know why people always refer to those wild Catholic schoolgirls. Oh yeah, there’s one in every graduating class, but 99.9% of those Catholic schoolgirls would just as soon knock you out with a left hook as let you get under thier bloomer elastic band.

Mary Markowski was just one of those girls. Beautifully thick, long, wavy blond hair. A "Barbie" doll turned-up nose and oriental blue eyes. And after several rounds of heavy petting in every imaginable location from a broken glass and garbage-filled alley to an empty subway car ride home on a Saturday night, Mary never once strayed from protecting her most sought-after assets. Oh, I tried. And tried and tried and tried. The Mary Markowski I knew, knew how to say "N-O."

"Mary?"

"Jeremiah?"

No one ever calls me Jeremiah. I hate when people call me Jeremiah. A couple of hot summer nights, I actually got into one of those wild, windmill-swinging slap matches we call "fights" over it. But I never minded when Mary called me that.

I could see that she’s been crying hard. For a while. Her baby-blue eyes made her look like an alien against the dark red streaks cutting across the whites of her eyes. And her black mascara running down her cheeks made her look like one of those sad female clowns that always scared the living be-Jesus out of me when I was a kid at the circus. Why the hell do they make SAD clowns anyway? What kind of sick psychology is behind that? "Let’s see, I’ve got all this clown makeup....should I make a funny face to make the kids laugh? Nah, let’s see how SAD I can make myself look! Yeah, I’ll look like I’m always crying! What fun!" ...sick bastards...

"Mary, what are you doing here? Are you alright?"

"Jeremiah, it’s so good to see you. Oh, Jeremiah..." her voice trailed off as she got up from sitting, and walked very slowly up the stairs to greet me. She isn’t wearing a jacket, but a tight-fitting, low-cut black and white horizontally striped blouse with more than a little bit of cleavage revealed. I don’t remember her breasts being that large, but when she pulled me close to give me a weak hug, I immediately had to remind myself that I was dealing with an old friend in a time of need. But, my, oh my, how she has developed into a gorgeous woman!

"Are you sure you’re OK, Mary?" I ask while she still has her head against my shoulder, with her face towards me, and I got a good strong whiff of her perfume. OK, Jerry stop it right there.....

"Yes, I’m OK, I’m OK."

Mary is fucked up. Stoned on pot, or maybe downers or qualudes.

"What are you doing here, Mary?"

"Oh, I was visiting a, uh, friend, and uh, we got into an argument, and, uh, I need a lift home."

"I don’t have a car, but I can get you a cab, no problem. Who’s your friend?"

"Oh, he lives on the sixth floor."

I get it. Fuck me. Ronnie Donnelly. The drug dealer on the sixth floor. Shit.

Then a loud shout echoes through the whole building amplified by the tiled floors and walls, "Maaarrrryyyyy. Come Back. I’m sorry."

Mary pushes me away and has a look on her face like she just remembered something. Not necessarily something good, but something urgent. For a moment she looked as though she was hearing voices. Her bloodshot eyes darting back and forth, and her head twitching like a poodle listening to a silent dog whistle. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, like a child getting ready to go underwater. When she opened her eyes again, she looked straight at me. In a sudden wave of clarity, she grabbed my hands. Hers were cold and clammy.

"Jeremiah, you’re a very sweet person. Someday I’m going to call you, and we’ll talk about old times, OK?"

"Uh, sure," I say, once again establishing myself as a world-class moron when talking to women.

And out of the clear blue, she slowly pulls me slowly towards her and places a tender, absolutely not platonic, kiss on the lips. I remember that kiss. How many times I tasted those lips, smelled her Prell-soaked hair, caressed her long neck as white as a new baseball with a mole on the left side, and desperately tried to contain myself and not even think about doing what I really wanted to do. How I lusted for her soft, slender body. How I made an embarrassing mess of my sheets several times a month by fantasizing about her nude body next to mine on the bottom bunk. If she had ever allowed me to sneak her away to some private place where I could rip off her clothes and make mad passionate love to her for hours, days, weeks, and months...I don’t know what would have happened. I’d probably be married to her, with two or three kids, working at the same deli job I had when we were going out in high school, living in this same building with no way out.

But this kiss wasn’t like that. I didn’t feel lust at all. Just pity.

"Yeah, call me, Mary. But please, Mary, take care of yourself, OK?"

"OK."

She turned away and used the railing to help her climb the steps back to Ronnie Donnelly’s apartment and drug emporium on the sixth floor.

Ronnie Donnelly is from St. John’s Parish about ten blocks away. A neighborhood that’s always been a little tougher than this one. St. John’s Grammar School was a lot bigger than Visitation. In fact, if you got kicked out of Visi, you’d wind up in St. John’s.

Back in high school we played basketball every day; rain or shine, sweltering or freezing. And every once in a while Ronnie Donnelly would come by for some game. Kevin Flynn, who was one of our gang but got kicked out of Visi in the sixth grade and went to St. John’s, would bring some guys from his class to play ball with us. Kevin was great in basketball. We called him "Chonk" because that was the sound his jump shot would make when it hit the back of the rim and ricocheted straight down for a basket. And one day Chonk brought Ronnie Donnelly around. Tall, slender and quick as a purse snatcher, Ronnie was better than everybody on both teams and the three or four guys sitting on the sideline waiting to get into the next game, except for the two best guys in the neighborhood, Pete McCardle who started on the Manhattan Prep varsity team, and Lenny Levine, a five-foot six-inch dynamo who was the sixth man on the varsity at Clinton. But Donnelly gave even them a run for their money.

In those years, we never drank beer out in the open in broad daylight. That was reserved for the cover of darkness. But Ronnie not only drank during the game, he had a pint of Southern Comfort he kept on the sideline. And after each twenty one point game, he’d pull out a pack of Marlboro’s and light up a joint. I mean, we weren’t angels, but right there? Across the street from the Church? I mean Mickey Brady lives in the building right across the street. What if his mother looked out the window and saw it? Yeah, I smoked pot once in a while in high school. Maybe at a concert where you were with twenty thousand other kids in total darkness, and even if you weren’t smoking, you’d get a contact high from the secondhand grass wafting by. But there was no doubt about it; Ronnie Donnelly scared me. To death. In fact, his best friend died at a Jefferson Airplane concert in Central Park in 1973 while they were hanging out doing drugs together. I never got the whole story.

I just hope Mary knows what she’s doing.

As I headed back up the long hill, I could hear the party going on in Third Base a block away. I tried to look in the front window to see what I was walking into, but couldn’t due to the extreme condensation on the inside of the window. But as I peered in, a finger on the inside began writing in the moisture: C-O-M-E-O-N-I-N-! Which wasn’t easy because, don’t forget, the person had to write backwards. I peeked through the two "O"s to see who the author of the provocative invitation was, and much to my pleasant surprise, it was the stunning Latina I saw when I was leaving just over an hour ago. Maybe ‘79 is my year!

I pushed open the doors and was hit with a strong smell of overheated bodies. The entire place was one undulating mass of drunks dancing to the blaring Seeburg jukebox that usually cranks with Frank Sinatra, The Clancy Brothers, or old Stones. I didn’t even know it, but the jukebox actually had disco on it. The sounds of The Village People had every ablebodied patron bouncing together in a mad unified frenzy to the homoerotic sounds of "Macho Man." As if that wasn’t a memorable enough sight, as I scanned the wild crowd, just soaking in the wonder of such a joyously improbable sight after what I had just witnessed, I see over in the corner, next to the TV in the corner by the door next to the ladies room next to the cigarette machine, Mikey Lenihan and Patty Dunn standing on their stools with blow ticklers in their mouths, totally topless. No shirts on. Just bare-naked soft, flabby guts happily gyrating to Macho Man with their cheesy red tissue crowns on their heads, and not a care in the world.

But back to the business at hand...there she is! My guess is she’s Puerto Rican or possibly Cuban; but whatever she is, I’ve never seen a more exotic beauty in this bar before, although she does look slightly familiar. She’s wearing those designer jeans you have to be poured into and a flowered silk blouse with frills that go right up her neck, actually touching her chin. I can clearly see she has the kind of look one would normally only see on magazine racks in this neighborhood. And although this package is tightly wrapped, there isn’t one tiny bit of skin showing. Even the sleeves of her blouse are frilled right down to her long delicate hands tipped with long ruby red nails. She’s ignoring me, hiding behind the little white umbrella in her pink drink. I just need a sign. A subtle invitation. One little out-of-the-ordinary move, like an eyelash flutter, the slightest upturn of the corner of her mouth hinting at a smile, or the really, really, slow blink. It’s not quite a blink, but more of a slow motion blink where the female moves her eyes in your direction only for the duration of the slo-mo eyelid closing and by the time it’s finished, maybe two seconds have gone by. But for a guy, those two seconds set off a tidal wave of reactions that starts off somewhere at the base of the skull and explodes down the spinal cord surging through every vein, nerve-ending, and neuron in the body, culminating with a distinct sensation that your jeans are a size too small in the groin.

I’m still waiting, trying not to look too obvious as I notice that Mikey is now riding piggyback on Patty’s shoulders, both still shirtless, much to the enjoyment of the throng now forming a circle around them and clapping to the pulsating bass drum of Macho Man.

Aha! There it is! It wasn’t the slow motion eye close, but the more traditional eye contact with eye-lash flutter! Whoops. There it goes. Jeans...too tight.

Now I’m not exactly a bumbling idiot when it comes to meeting attractive women for the first time. But then again, Frank Sinatra I ain’t. I’ve gotten my cue, however, and I am going to follow-through on this one. But I’m no fool. There are no guarantees. I could push my way through the crowd, weasel my way into the conversation she is having with two friends, and be totally ignored as if the eye contact eyelash flutter maneuver never happened. Or worse yet, wind up buying several rounds of drinks for the threesome, based purely on the eye contact eyelash flutter maneuver, and THEN get the old "on your bike" as the Irish like to say. As the hormones soar through every cell of my being, I start to make my way across the bar. And just as I pass the entrance...

SLAM!

The front door swings open revealing a sight that will forever be imbedded into the memory-banks of every person in the bar regardless of their state of inebriation. Stubby, Merrill, and Terry come storming in not only shirtless, but stripped down to their loosely fitting, tattletale grey BVD briefs, waving their clothes in the air as they join in the Macho Man chorus. This is one of those nights when the zeitgeist is upon us, and it is good.

Oh, there have been nights when everyone in the bar seems to have a bug up their ass, and before the night is through some jerk, (usually Mikey Lenihan) says something stupid and a few minutes later Noel’s out from behind the bar mopping up blood and picking up teeth. Fortunately, this is one of those nights where everyone is riding a wave of pleasure; dancing, singing, drinking, and having friendly conversations with strangers you would ordinarily be thinking insults about in a crowded subway car.

The sight of three almost nude men, two of which are quite unsightly beyond their years, thanks to years of beer and "two slices and a coke," and the other one making Johnny Winter look tanned and toned, is cause for unanimous celebration. Mikey and Patty, still piggyback are dancing around the three gay caballeros with their huevos dancing pretty much in plain view. But it’s New Year’s! Screw it!

"Noel! Noel!" I scream at the top of my lungs across the bar.

"Yes, lad?"

"Gimme two double JDs on the rocks."

In a flash, Noel pours me the four plus shots of Jack Daniels in two tumblers, never taking his eye off the maniacs on the dance floor.

"Isn’t it grand, lad?" Noel says, giving me my drinks. Before he deposits my money in the cash register, I’ve already downed one double. I want to get in on the action. This kind of bizarre partying doesn’t happen every day. The bourbon hits my stomach, shocking my innards. Whew! I love Jack. In a matter of seconds, I can feel the effects of the smokey elixir spread through my brain cells. I close my eyes and count five Mississippis. Eyes open, I clutch my second tumbler and about as quick as you can down four ounces of water, the next bourbon bomb is coursing through my system.

"This is with m, son," Noel says as he pours himself a Jameson, and me another JD double.

"Bless you, Noel!"

"Here’s to your health!" Noel says as he flicks the shot down his throat. And still reeling from my second glass, this next glass doesn’t go down quite so smoothly. Hold on. Don’t gag. Down boy.

"Noel, a two-cent plain, please."

There. That does it. Suddenly my head is light. Buzzed. Not spinning, but leaning in circles. I’m going to enjoy this! I’m not so screwed up that I’m getting naked, that’s for sure. But I jump right into the middle of the action, and am greeted with much fanfare from the guys. We’re dancing, singing, bouncing off the walls and each other.

Now my head is spinning.

Oh, shit. Across the bar I can barely make her out through this Jack Daniels haze, but she’s leaving. Putting on their overcoats a group of three girls led by miss eyelash flutter have had enough. Oh, well, like Stubby says, "Chicks come and go but the boys go on forever."

And looking around at the spectacle that I’m right in the bull’s-eye of, I’m afraid he might be right.