Philadelphia Noir - Carlin Romano [72]
He frightened all of the Bella Vista womenfolk and small children who passed him on the sidewalk as he went to or from his job at our friendly neighborhood corporate chain-store pharmacy, wearing a logo-emblazoned uniform and visor. Though what the visor was for was anybody’s guess. He walked with an elongated stride, as if he were imitating Homo erectus—and badly—swinging his brown bag lunch stiffly, grinning weirdly to no one in particular. There wasn’t a woman who wouldn’t shudder instinctively at his sight, assuming he was a serial killer until proven innocent. Imagine our spine-crawling response when we found out that he was the guy behind the counter who developed our personal family snapshots. For us, the Digital Age couldn’t come too soon.
Grendel’s Mother was almost as strange to behold when she emerged from the back door on shopping day, barely a head taller than the grocery cart she stole from the Superfresh on 11th Street. A sturdy woman, she wore the black widow’s housedress of the Old Country, with her white hair pulled straight back in a bun. The crone drove that rusty piece of junk to and from the market with such road rage that innocent bystanders could only pray she wasn’t packing her meat cleaver. The top-heavy wire basket nearly tipped over at times as she pushed on, having no respect for obstacles she couldn’t see, oblivious to the unpredictable cobblestones, crooked sidewalks, and crumbling curbs, making such an unholy racket I could hear her two blocks away.
It was hard enough trying to concentrate while she was threatening to chop up her son like poultry—I kept thinking, Eeewwww … she’ll have to pluck him.
One day their homicidal promises were so convincing that I actually picked up the phone to call 911.
I’ll stab you in your sleep!
Not if I smother you first—you crazy old bitch. Gimme the money. I know you got it, Ma.
I could hear him rifling through kitchen cupboards, popping the lids off of old tin flour canisters, throwing cereal boxes and canned goods hither and yon.
Where’d ja hide it, damnit?!
Holding the phone, I hesitated, wondering if callers were required to identify themselves. Hmm. I had to think about this. After all, it’s a big deal to call the cops on your neighbors. Did I really want to get involved? Obviously, some families just yelled a lot and said awful things. That’s just how they “communicated.” And I had never actually witnessed any physical abuse.
I decided to defer to the collective wisdom of my Bella Vista elders, whose official word on the street was invariably: I didn’t see nuthin.
But I sure did hear a lot: and it was mostly from colorful characters who charmed the hell out of me. The Happy Guy who strolled down our street every day at lunchtime, for instance, belting out a respectable version of “Volare.” Or the trio of highly seasoned bookies who worked our block and the local convenience store, assuming their positions every day on this or that corner, in rotation. Aging wiseguys with chewy old skin like the Italian dry sausages hanging on strings from the ceiling of Claudio’s in the market. The way they made themselves laugh at their own jokes never failed to crack me up from afar.
When I passed these bookies on the street, they were flirty, but always respectful, and they took to greeting me playfully with a nickname: Hey, Smiley.
Between these guys and the nosey neighbor ladies (of which I soon became one, being home all day), I felt relatively secure. Not to worry, hon, one of the native grandmas reassured me when we first moved in as newlyweds. They only kill each other.
Good to know, I humbly thanked her.
And then she asked me why I wasn’t pregnant yet—a question she continued to ask every time she saw me for the rest of her life, which she lived out mostly sitting in her folding lawn chair in