Fiend sneaks down the lane, hauling his lawn chair
past the marshy yard full of oompah-ing bullfrogs
and buzzing insects sawing away
at their own carapaces.
Fiend is on the prowl, sharkish smile not fooling
anyone (and neither do his humble plaid shirt and
Payless Shoes discount high-tops).
He's come around a time or two before,
putting the scare on the good citizens,
the Neighborhood Watch Committee
and children under 10.
There were rumors of near-rapes, hideous screams,
locks gouged clean out of doors, and
dark forms crouched under porch steps.
That's kid stuff for Fiend, he sniffs,
urging his shuffling steps
toward a pool of light where a lone street lamp
marks the end of the road, the ideal place
to set up your chair
if you happen to like watching epic disasters.
Any minute, it will come, the cataclysm
predicted on everyone's flat screen TV, the fear of fears
about to be made manifest one block away:
a falling satellite!
Friday, September 30, 2011
Friday, September 16, 2011
In For A Penny
At the soiree with 47 beautiful people,
you sidled up to me just as I slipped on
my Party Mask of Indifference.
The floor vibrated with dance steps,
(the tune, in case you need to know,
in case you want to make it “our song,”
was Soul Sacrifice by Santana)
and you were a glowing object on my periphery.
“Dance?” you asked.
I turned, seeing you for the first time, taking in
your loose-limbed posture, your frank and curious eyes
and answered, “Sure, why not?”
Some hours later when the crowd had thinned,
you placed your hand on mine and leaned in close.
“I’d like to take you home,” you said.
“To meet your mother?”
“Something like that,” you laughed.
With no more sureness than a baby bird
about to take its first, precarious flight,
I contemplated gravity.
I judged your pull to be non-fatal.
I answered, “Sure, why not?”
you sidled up to me just as I slipped on
my Party Mask of Indifference.
The floor vibrated with dance steps,
(the tune, in case you need to know,
in case you want to make it “our song,”
was Soul Sacrifice by Santana)
and you were a glowing object on my periphery.
“Dance?” you asked.
I turned, seeing you for the first time, taking in
your loose-limbed posture, your frank and curious eyes
and answered, “Sure, why not?”
Some hours later when the crowd had thinned,
you placed your hand on mine and leaned in close.
“I’d like to take you home,” you said.
“To meet your mother?”
“Something like that,” you laughed.
With no more sureness than a baby bird
about to take its first, precarious flight,
I contemplated gravity.
I judged your pull to be non-fatal.
I answered, “Sure, why not?”
Wednesday, September 14, 2011
TonTon Macoute
Baby Doc Duvalier, round-faced and syphilitic,
rode into Port-Au-Prince in a Cadillac Escalade
with two inches of expensive shirt cuff showing.
He waved to the throngs, his soft hands making semicircles,
his hair pomaded, looking like money.
From inside the armored car, one starving sugar cane worker
looked just like the next.
My little people, he said, my little ones.They still love me.
My country needs me, he told reporters
who had gathered in the rain at the Palace of Justice
where he stood in shined shoes and bespoke suit.
In the streets, people shouted his name and burned fires.
A distant drumbeat rolled towards the capitol. Was that thunder,
a gathering army, or the dead rising from their shallow graves
to demand their pound of flesh, at last,
from the robber son of a robber baron?
Once upon a time, the people cowered at the mention of the TonTon Macoute.
But after floods, earthquakes and hurricanes,
what could the Haitians possibly have left to fear?
Baby Doc, who once ate blood oranges
while standing on the corpses of his enemies, smirked for the cameras.
The world shuddered.
rode into Port-Au-Prince in a Cadillac Escalade
with two inches of expensive shirt cuff showing.
He waved to the throngs, his soft hands making semicircles,
his hair pomaded, looking like money.
From inside the armored car, one starving sugar cane worker
looked just like the next.
My little people, he said, my little ones.They still love me.
My country needs me, he told reporters
who had gathered in the rain at the Palace of Justice
where he stood in shined shoes and bespoke suit.
In the streets, people shouted his name and burned fires.
A distant drumbeat rolled towards the capitol. Was that thunder,
a gathering army, or the dead rising from their shallow graves
to demand their pound of flesh, at last,
from the robber son of a robber baron?
Once upon a time, the people cowered at the mention of the TonTon Macoute.
But after floods, earthquakes and hurricanes,
what could the Haitians possibly have left to fear?
Baby Doc, who once ate blood oranges
while standing on the corpses of his enemies, smirked for the cameras.
The world shuddered.
You Only Get One Question
I met her husband in a greasy coffee shop on the run-down side of town -- his choice. I suppose he thought the locale fit my role. I had been loving his wife, after all. That made me trash.
He was a middle-aged tugboat carrying 400 pounds of fat on swollen ankles and too-small feet. He’d come with a bad attitude. They always do. They never consider why their wives go looking elsewhere for pleasure. Or maybe they do consider, but the answer that comes back is the only one they can sit with: Some bad influence (me) is to blame for their darling Dottie or sweet little Sally-Jo going astray.
“Jesus, how old are you anyway?” he asked.
“That’s a boring question,” I said. “Of all the things you could ask at a time like this, you want a number?”
He dumped five sugar packets into some oily-looking coffee while I watched his eyes: they reminded me of kidney beans wrapped in dough.
“I mean, if you want to talk numbers, how much do you weigh?” I asked him back. “That could figure into this, you know.”
“Listen, you,” he snarled. “Who the fuck do you think you are?
“Sorry pal,” I said, “you only get one question here at the exit interview corral. The answer is 26. And now, if you’ll excuse me, there’s a circuit court clerk waiting for me at a Marriott Courtyard, over in Huntsville. She bought herself some sexy new underwear online, and it would be rude to keep her waiting. Rude is what cost her husband his bed privileges.”
It was true, I thought, steering my Camaro onto the bypass. Marriage has a fatal flaw. I would not go so far as to say familiarity breeds contempt. But that kind of rude indifference, of taking the wife for granted, can feel like contempt. After years go by with no touching, the little gal feels bad about herself.
I come along, tell her she’s desirable, tell her things I’m going to do to her, feed her need until all she can think about is me. Before she knows it, she’s renting motel rooms for us to sneak away. She feels so alive that she’s practically vibrating, like a high-school girl right before a date with the town bad boy. Her fat fuck of a husband who left her untouched for four years while he watched televised football with Sara Lee in his lap has no call blaming me.
I was playing World of Warcraft (Rise of the Zandalari) the first time my phone rang for an exit interview. Some shitbird of a lawyer found my number behind the visor of his old lady’s Lexus and got curious. He demanded a meet-up: Saturday morning, Eastdale Country Club, he’d give up his second nine holes just to see me. Wooeee!Lucky me.
That’s the thing, see. The husbands come to the meet all bowed up for a bush-pissing contest between two dogs. But I show up in full androgyny theater: black distressed jeans, high-heeled boots, black t-shirt, cubic Z earring, heavy cologne, lip gloss. The guys get massively confused.
Shitbird’s eyes almost crossed when he saw me. I could see the word bubble over his head. Boy? Girl? He was trying to put his cookies-and-cream Mary-Lou together with me, but he couldn’t figure me for the top or the bottom.
I learned something that day: lawyers are no better than anyone else at asking the right first question. His was, “What the hell was your number doing in my wife’s car?”
“She must have put it there.”
And then I was gone.
I look at it this way. If the guy wants information, if he wants to fix things between him and the wife, he should be asking her. Not me.
And if he’s asking his wife the questions, there’s only one relevant question to ask.
Not, “who’s this punk?” Or “how long has this been going on?”
The only question that matters, the only one she wants to hear is, “How can I make you happy?”
Thursday, September 1, 2011
Mrs. Entwhistle Starts a Business
One day a couple of weeks ago, I heard an urgent voice with a Brooklyn accent in my head. It was a middle-aged woman who would not take no for an answer: She wanted to start her own business. She's not the first character who appeared to me out of nowhere. Just the loudest. This is the story she spoke to me.
My Crystelle is not what you’d call a big earner. So the other day, when I goes in the salon for my usual, I slips her a $50.
“Mrs. Entwhistle, what’s this for?” she says, but I notice there’s no hand hesitation on the way to her pocket.
“Honey,” I says, “it’s because I got real pain-in-the-ass hair,” and I also notice she don’t deny it.
So later, when she finishes my comb-out, real full, extra spray, like I like it, I asks her, I says, “Crystelle honey, you know I ain’t the kind to poke my beak in your business, but I can’t help asking how much you take in a week, on account of this place being so small and all, and there’s never hardly any clientele.”
So she leans in close and whispers, she says, “Mrs. E, this place ain’t supposed to take in a lot of money on account of the boss has other businesses, and he launders the money over here that he makes over there.”
So now I’m confused, but I don’t say nothing, and I walk over to the off-track because it’s Ladies’ Day Thursday. I’m thinking how nice it would be to win big and open up a little bakery (but no wedding cakes, too much agita). So then I’m crossing Delancey and I sees my friend, Rhoda Lazinsky, on the opposite sidewalk by the green grocer, and I calls to her, I yells, “Rhodie, don’t buy the plums! They’re non-union!”
She gives me the A-okay and I keep walking, although these orthopedic inserts are real bastards until they’re broken in. Fortunately, I can afford a taxi. My Sollie, he makes a nice living, thank God. He likes to say, “The gravy train always has happy passengers.”
Which makes me think about what Crystelle said, and I’m thinking I have to ask Sollie (he knows everyone who’s anyone in Brooklyn and two more burroughs), what kind of “other businesses” was she talking about?
So at dinner, after the fish soup but before the roast chicken, I says to Sollie, I says, “Who owns the Bon-Ton Salon on west Delancey, and what other businesses do they own?”
Sollie starts buttering a slice of rye-with-caraway but he doesn’t say a word. I know him well enough to know I touched a nerve. Normally, nothing can stop him from business gossip (which he says is NOT gossip because it’s actual information, whereas women’s gossip is made up). When I sit down, leaving the chicken to get cold in the pan, Sollie sighs and swallows.
“You do,” he says.
I stare at him like a poodle in a butcher shop.
“What do you mean, I do?” I says.
“I mean, there is a corporation with your name on the letterhead that owns some nice small businesses, and the Bon-Ton is one of them.”
“Sollie,” I says, “are you telling me there’s stationery with the name Mayda Entwhistle on it that I never knew about?”
“Honey,” Sollie says, and I can tell he really wishes I’d bring in the chicken, “it happens all the time. Businessmen put companies or cars or property in their wives’ or children’s names so that if something ever happens, like a tax problem, the government can’t take those business away.”
“What exactly are those other businesses under your corporation, Sol Entwhistle?” I says. I’m still in shock. I’m thinking, “I’ve been paying to get my hair done for eight years at a salon I myself own?”
Sollie picks up his plate with an insulted expression and walks to the kitchen, but I notice he doesn’t take mine with. He serves himself both drumsticks and the livers.
Me, I’m waiting for an answer. For all I know, I already own a bakery.
Sollie chews for a few minutes and I finish a glass of Manishewitz (red, but not the sweet kind).
“You own,” Sollie says, putting down his fork and counting on his fingers, “the off-track on Delancey, the Bon-Ton, a bar in Queens where the clientele go to see women dance, and a two-storey building by the 125th Street subway full of dentists’ offices and one for electrolysis.”
He takes a sip of wine and smiles at me with red teeth.
Now my Sollie, I met him fresh out of the gate at the end of WW2, even before he took the cross-town bus home to see his Mama. I was working at the station where the troop trains came in, along with about a hundred other girls, to give our GIs a big welcome. Sollie stepped off the train with his rucksack and his wide brown eyes, and I knew right there my life’s work was going to be making that man smile. So of course I walked right up, hooked my arm through his and said, “Welcome home, soldier! What company were you in?”
Two months later, he puts a gold ring on my finger and we move upstairs from my father’s dry goods store. Sollie has a real head for business, and I can bake. For a while, I operate a little street cart where I sell hot cross buns and apple turnovers. Sollie uses the money from my cart to set up other street peddlers.
He always says, “Mayda, every dollar is just a seed to make more dollars grow.”
*****
On Friday morning I make a nice pot of Oolong tea and sit at the kitchen table to consider my situation. Part of me is miffed at Sollie for keeping secrets, but part of me is very proud that he has built up so many nice businesses. But all these years, it occurs to me, we haven’t exactly been living in high cotton. Someone has benefitted from these companies, and I’d like to know who. The Off-Track and the bar, I'm sure, are raking in the gelt.
Since I’d just had my hair done, I decide to go and visit my companies and introduce myself to my employees. Plus, I am very curious to know, who is the man who finds it necessary to launder proceeds through my beauty parlor? If this man is making excessive money, then shouldn’t he be sending more profits back to Sollie and me? I have a good mind to fire him. In fact, I decide right there to make Crystelle the manager of the Bon Ton.
My first stop is the office building on 125th street. It’s very plain, and I’m right away thinking it could use a little color. I make a note to order plum wine awnings for all the windows and the front door. Inside, I locate the rental office, but it’s empty. I leave a post-it note on the door asking the agent to call me. I notice that the electrolysis business is empty, too.
Next, I taxi to Queens to see my bar. It is closed at 10 a.m., but I take notes just the same. The windows could use a good washing. Also, the neon sign that says “Girls, Girls, Girls” is flickering. We’ll need to order a new one.
Back in Brooklyn, I have the taxi drop me at the Off-Track and I go inside to have a word. Benny, the front-of-house manager, is pleasant But when I tell him I need to speak to the top man, he gets an expression like he ate a bad shrimp.
“No can do, Mrs. E,” he says. “This ain't a social club.”
When I tell him it’s urgent, his wrinkle multiplies.
“Benny, you look like a Sharpei,” I says. “Go in the back and ask the gentleman to come talk to a customer, will you please?”
Finally, Benny goes in the back room and five minutes later he comes out, followed by a small man with a long face and a comb-over.
“Yes Ma’am, how can I help you?” combover asks, although his voice don’t sound so helpful.
“My name is Mayda Entwhistle, wife of Sollie Entwhistle,” I says by way of introduction.
He gives me the dead eye.
“Entwhistle,” I repeat. I am waiting for the penny to drop. I mean, surely the man knows who his boss is.
“Lady, I don’t care if you’re a train whistle. I’m a busy man,” he says. “Is there a problem with a recent wager?”
“No, but there IS a problem if you don’t know who I am,” I says. “I am the owner of this betting parlor.”
The combover turns to Benny and they burst out laughing.
“Lady,” he says, “unless your name is Gambino, you ain’t the boss of squat.” Then he turns and disappears behind a pea-green metal door.
I’m so flustered, I leave without asking his name or laying a bet. I can’t wait to get home and talk to Sollie.
*****
“You WHAT???”
“I went to visit my businesses.”
“Mayda… you… aw shit Mayda.”
“SOLLIE!” He had never used that word in my presence before.
“Mayda, you can’t just go barging into places and tell employees who’ve never seen you that you are their boss. It’s just not done.”
“But I am their boss, Sollie. You told me so last night. You said my name was on the letterhead.”
“Mayda… that’s just for show. That’s just a ... paper trail.”
“I don’t understand Sollie. Am I, or am I not, the owner of the office building, bar, and Off-Track?”
“In a sense, Mayda. But not in the sense where you have control over operations. There are men who take care of that. And some of them are very powerful men.”
“Who is this Gambino? Is he one of those men?
Sollie’s skin takes on a greenish tone and his eyes grow narrow, like a pickerel's.
“What do you know about the Gambinos, Mayda?”
“Nothing Sollie. That’s what I was going to ask you!”
Sollie gestures to the loveseat in the living room and pours us each a glass of wine. For a while he sits very quiet, and then the story comes out. When he’s through, I understand that our original seed dollars have grown into a forest, and that it takes a lot of muscle to cut down the trees. As a result, Sollie (and I) have acquired some partners along the way. They run the businesses. I am merely the name on a shell corporation. I am never to rock the boat or visit the Gambinos or their associates ever again.
“Sollie,” I says when he finally stops talking, “I need a favor from you. I think it is a reasonable favor, all things considered. If the favor is granted, I will keep silent forevermore.”
“What is it, Mayda?” he says, sounding very weary.
“I want to open a bakery.”
“How big?” he asks.
“The whole ground floor of the building at the 125th Street subway stop, where the empty rental and electrolysis offices are.”
“And if I arrange this, you promise to be good and not make trouble?”
“My word of honor.”
“Okay,” he says, at last. “We’ll split the profits between us two. If the Gambinos come around, just tell them they get the benefit of fresh hot cross buns and coffee, whenever they like, but nothing more.”
Then, “Deal?” he says.
“Deal.”
My Crystelle is not what you’d call a big earner. So the other day, when I goes in the salon for my usual, I slips her a $50.
“Mrs. Entwhistle, what’s this for?” she says, but I notice there’s no hand hesitation on the way to her pocket.
“Honey,” I says, “it’s because I got real pain-in-the-ass hair,” and I also notice she don’t deny it.
So later, when she finishes my comb-out, real full, extra spray, like I like it, I asks her, I says, “Crystelle honey, you know I ain’t the kind to poke my beak in your business, but I can’t help asking how much you take in a week, on account of this place being so small and all, and there’s never hardly any clientele.”
So she leans in close and whispers, she says, “Mrs. E, this place ain’t supposed to take in a lot of money on account of the boss has other businesses, and he launders the money over here that he makes over there.”
So now I’m confused, but I don’t say nothing, and I walk over to the off-track because it’s Ladies’ Day Thursday. I’m thinking how nice it would be to win big and open up a little bakery (but no wedding cakes, too much agita). So then I’m crossing Delancey and I sees my friend, Rhoda Lazinsky, on the opposite sidewalk by the green grocer, and I calls to her, I yells, “Rhodie, don’t buy the plums! They’re non-union!”
She gives me the A-okay and I keep walking, although these orthopedic inserts are real bastards until they’re broken in. Fortunately, I can afford a taxi. My Sollie, he makes a nice living, thank God. He likes to say, “The gravy train always has happy passengers.”
Which makes me think about what Crystelle said, and I’m thinking I have to ask Sollie (he knows everyone who’s anyone in Brooklyn and two more burroughs), what kind of “other businesses” was she talking about?
So at dinner, after the fish soup but before the roast chicken, I says to Sollie, I says, “Who owns the Bon-Ton Salon on west Delancey, and what other businesses do they own?”
Sollie starts buttering a slice of rye-with-caraway but he doesn’t say a word. I know him well enough to know I touched a nerve. Normally, nothing can stop him from business gossip (which he says is NOT gossip because it’s actual information, whereas women’s gossip is made up). When I sit down, leaving the chicken to get cold in the pan, Sollie sighs and swallows.
“You do,” he says.
I stare at him like a poodle in a butcher shop.
“What do you mean, I do?” I says.
“I mean, there is a corporation with your name on the letterhead that owns some nice small businesses, and the Bon-Ton is one of them.”
“Sollie,” I says, “are you telling me there’s stationery with the name Mayda Entwhistle on it that I never knew about?”
“Honey,” Sollie says, and I can tell he really wishes I’d bring in the chicken, “it happens all the time. Businessmen put companies or cars or property in their wives’ or children’s names so that if something ever happens, like a tax problem, the government can’t take those business away.”
“What exactly are those other businesses under your corporation, Sol Entwhistle?” I says. I’m still in shock. I’m thinking, “I’ve been paying to get my hair done for eight years at a salon I myself own?”
Sollie picks up his plate with an insulted expression and walks to the kitchen, but I notice he doesn’t take mine with. He serves himself both drumsticks and the livers.
Me, I’m waiting for an answer. For all I know, I already own a bakery.
Sollie chews for a few minutes and I finish a glass of Manishewitz (red, but not the sweet kind).
“You own,” Sollie says, putting down his fork and counting on his fingers, “the off-track on Delancey, the Bon-Ton, a bar in Queens where the clientele go to see women dance, and a two-storey building by the 125th Street subway full of dentists’ offices and one for electrolysis.”
He takes a sip of wine and smiles at me with red teeth.
Now my Sollie, I met him fresh out of the gate at the end of WW2, even before he took the cross-town bus home to see his Mama. I was working at the station where the troop trains came in, along with about a hundred other girls, to give our GIs a big welcome. Sollie stepped off the train with his rucksack and his wide brown eyes, and I knew right there my life’s work was going to be making that man smile. So of course I walked right up, hooked my arm through his and said, “Welcome home, soldier! What company were you in?”
Two months later, he puts a gold ring on my finger and we move upstairs from my father’s dry goods store. Sollie has a real head for business, and I can bake. For a while, I operate a little street cart where I sell hot cross buns and apple turnovers. Sollie uses the money from my cart to set up other street peddlers.
He always says, “Mayda, every dollar is just a seed to make more dollars grow.”
*****
On Friday morning I make a nice pot of Oolong tea and sit at the kitchen table to consider my situation. Part of me is miffed at Sollie for keeping secrets, but part of me is very proud that he has built up so many nice businesses. But all these years, it occurs to me, we haven’t exactly been living in high cotton. Someone has benefitted from these companies, and I’d like to know who. The Off-Track and the bar, I'm sure, are raking in the gelt.
Since I’d just had my hair done, I decide to go and visit my companies and introduce myself to my employees. Plus, I am very curious to know, who is the man who finds it necessary to launder proceeds through my beauty parlor? If this man is making excessive money, then shouldn’t he be sending more profits back to Sollie and me? I have a good mind to fire him. In fact, I decide right there to make Crystelle the manager of the Bon Ton.
My first stop is the office building on 125th street. It’s very plain, and I’m right away thinking it could use a little color. I make a note to order plum wine awnings for all the windows and the front door. Inside, I locate the rental office, but it’s empty. I leave a post-it note on the door asking the agent to call me. I notice that the electrolysis business is empty, too.
Next, I taxi to Queens to see my bar. It is closed at 10 a.m., but I take notes just the same. The windows could use a good washing. Also, the neon sign that says “Girls, Girls, Girls” is flickering. We’ll need to order a new one.
Back in Brooklyn, I have the taxi drop me at the Off-Track and I go inside to have a word. Benny, the front-of-house manager, is pleasant But when I tell him I need to speak to the top man, he gets an expression like he ate a bad shrimp.
“No can do, Mrs. E,” he says. “This ain't a social club.”
When I tell him it’s urgent, his wrinkle multiplies.
“Benny, you look like a Sharpei,” I says. “Go in the back and ask the gentleman to come talk to a customer, will you please?”
Finally, Benny goes in the back room and five minutes later he comes out, followed by a small man with a long face and a comb-over.
“Yes Ma’am, how can I help you?” combover asks, although his voice don’t sound so helpful.
“My name is Mayda Entwhistle, wife of Sollie Entwhistle,” I says by way of introduction.
He gives me the dead eye.
“Entwhistle,” I repeat. I am waiting for the penny to drop. I mean, surely the man knows who his boss is.
“Lady, I don’t care if you’re a train whistle. I’m a busy man,” he says. “Is there a problem with a recent wager?”
“No, but there IS a problem if you don’t know who I am,” I says. “I am the owner of this betting parlor.”
The combover turns to Benny and they burst out laughing.
“Lady,” he says, “unless your name is Gambino, you ain’t the boss of squat.” Then he turns and disappears behind a pea-green metal door.
I’m so flustered, I leave without asking his name or laying a bet. I can’t wait to get home and talk to Sollie.
*****
“You WHAT???”
“I went to visit my businesses.”
“Mayda… you… aw shit Mayda.”
“SOLLIE!” He had never used that word in my presence before.
“Mayda, you can’t just go barging into places and tell employees who’ve never seen you that you are their boss. It’s just not done.”
“But I am their boss, Sollie. You told me so last night. You said my name was on the letterhead.”
“Mayda… that’s just for show. That’s just a ... paper trail.”
“I don’t understand Sollie. Am I, or am I not, the owner of the office building, bar, and Off-Track?”
“In a sense, Mayda. But not in the sense where you have control over operations. There are men who take care of that. And some of them are very powerful men.”
“Who is this Gambino? Is he one of those men?
Sollie’s skin takes on a greenish tone and his eyes grow narrow, like a pickerel's.
“What do you know about the Gambinos, Mayda?”
“Nothing Sollie. That’s what I was going to ask you!”
Sollie gestures to the loveseat in the living room and pours us each a glass of wine. For a while he sits very quiet, and then the story comes out. When he’s through, I understand that our original seed dollars have grown into a forest, and that it takes a lot of muscle to cut down the trees. As a result, Sollie (and I) have acquired some partners along the way. They run the businesses. I am merely the name on a shell corporation. I am never to rock the boat or visit the Gambinos or their associates ever again.
“Sollie,” I says when he finally stops talking, “I need a favor from you. I think it is a reasonable favor, all things considered. If the favor is granted, I will keep silent forevermore.”
“What is it, Mayda?” he says, sounding very weary.
“I want to open a bakery.”
“How big?” he asks.
“The whole ground floor of the building at the 125th Street subway stop, where the empty rental and electrolysis offices are.”
“And if I arrange this, you promise to be good and not make trouble?”
“My word of honor.”
“Okay,” he says, at last. “We’ll split the profits between us two. If the Gambinos come around, just tell them they get the benefit of fresh hot cross buns and coffee, whenever they like, but nothing more.”
Then, “Deal?” he says.
“Deal.”
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