“You go, boy. Something gots to stop these rednecks. It’s beginning to cramp my dating life,” he said.
“I know.”
“Cops won’t do anything as long as it’s us fags being beat. After this publicity stunt stops, it will be business as usual.”
“I’m going to do something, Froggy.”
“What are you, the Lone Straight Ranger?”
“Maybe.”
“You’re not kidding.” Froggy had a rare serious moment. “There ain’t many like you, Mr. Duffy Dombrowski.”
“I get that a lot.”
“You all right with me. If I can ever do anything for you-you say so. And I don’t mean anything in the bushes, either.”
“I’ll keep that in mind, Froggy,” I said.
After my conversation with Froggy, I decided to leave the park and skip the speeches. The night had gotten weird enough and I just wanted to go home and get some sleep. I was going to have to go through my record collection to find a song too.
18
Today was the day slated for all of us to head out to the new halfway house for a tour of the facility while it was under construction, followed by an all-day retreat with the staffs and boards of both agencies. Retreats are the goofiest waste of time ever imagined, and the only redeeming thing about them is that they afford me time to think. Usually, that meant thinking absolutely nothing about the topic at hand.
The Michelin Woman didn’t say a word about my records, which meant she looked at them and they were acceptable. She kind of operated in an evil “no news is good news” mode, except it ought to be more like “no bad news sucks.” Trina saved a large piece of my ass with the tip and the fact that she stuck her neck out for me meant a lot. I still had ten good charts and about sixty-five shitty charts, so I was far, far away from being out of the woods.
Hymie asked if he could ride out with me today. Even if he had to bring up the record-keeping business, I still looked forward to sharing the forty-five minute ride out to Kingsville with him. The plan was to meet at Simon’s Deli, where Hymie and a handful of businessmen of his vintage held court every workday morning. Simon’s was west of Crawford’s industrial section, and it was almost exactly the same as it was when it opened in the 1930s. Old man Simon came up from Brooklyn after working in his grandfather’s deli, and he pretty much duplicated the business. Crawford had a good-size Jewish population made up of the men and women who migrated from the city, and they made Simon’s a little haven of their old home. Sid Simon, the grandson of the original owner, still wrote the daily specials on his grandfather’s old chalkboard, still wore the old-fashioned white apron, and still wiped down the wrought-iron ice-cream-store-style chairs and tables after each party left. As America continues to go through its drive-through-ization on its way to the kids’ soccer games, Simon’s was a throwback and a welcome alternative.
Even though Hymie and his friends were mostly retired and had turned their businesses over to their sons, they kept the ritual that they had started forty or fifty years ago. It’s what the opportunistic yuppies of today call networking, except these old businessmen got together because they not only wanted to succeed business-wise, they also cared about each other’s camaraderie. Today’s yuppie sees every relationship as an opportunity to advance something or to get leverage on something else.
I walked through Simon’s front door at exactly seven thirty, and there was Hymie at the corner table with his posse of Bernie, Duke, George, and Henry. I knew each of the guys from these occasional breakfast meetings that Hymie invited me to.
“Abi gezunt, gentlemen,” I said, taking the seat next to Duke and across from Hymie.
“This goy protege of yours… Hymie,” Duke said. “Did you get him to convert yet? I got a rabbi who will do the circumcision.”
“You hear that, son?” George said, making a scissoring motion with his fingers. “Do you know what that means to your schmeckel?”
“Meshugeh, son, pay no attention to these old men,” Henry said. “Get some of Simon’s lox. They’re very good this morning, though the bagels are too chewy.”
I took Henry’s advice and got the lox on a sesame bagel with cream cheese. He was right on both counts, the lox were very good and the sesame bagel was a tad chewy. Nonetheless, it was a nice way to start the day.
Hymie finished up and we bid our farewells to the crew with Hymie taking care of everyone’s check. The men took turns each morning picking up the tab, and they all accused Duke of ordering more extravagantly when someone else was paying. We climbed into Hymie’s 2006 Cadillac DTS, the model that used to be called the DeVille. I guess technically it still was, though GM had gone to great lengths to try to distance the current Cadillacs from the cars of their heritage. It was a silly strategy, in my opinion. I highly doubted that the Generation Xers and the rappers and whatever demographic represents today’s youth would be interested in DeVilles, regardless of what they did to them. That’s precisely why I liked them.
Now, they’re advertised in goofy magazines like Maxim or Stuff and are all muscled up to look “extreme”- whatever the hell that is. The result is you get old guys with osteoporosis and three hairs left on their heads putting on their cardigans and getting into some vehicle that looks like a car that could win at Daytona. The paradox of the situation is that guys like Hymie have been trading in one DeVille for the other every two years and wouldn’t entertain a single thought of doing anything else. So you get cars that can go 160 miles per hour in second gear and they’re driven by eighty-year-olds who go forty in the right-hand lane of the highway with their left turn signal on in perpetuity.
“You got any fights on the horizon, Duff?” Hymie asked, puffing on his Garcia Vega.
“There won’t be any fights for a little while,” I said.
“Why?” Hymie said.
“There was a bit of an incident in Kentucky.”
“What kind of incident?”
“The guy said some awful things about Smitty. Then he said some bad stuff about my mom and dad and being Irish and Polish. With all the stuff I’ve been dealing with, I lost it.”
“What happened?” There was concern in Hymie’s voice.
“I knocked him out,” I said.
“And for that you get suspended?”
“I did it with a thumb and elbow. I broke the guy’s jaw.”
“You are a crazy Irishman.” He looked at me and laughed, playfully slapping me in the face.
“Son, tell me about this paperwork problem you got.” He changed the subject, but kept his eyes on the road and didn’t change his expression.
“Ah, Hymie, it’s my own damn fault. Most of the paperwork is bullshit. I’d rather spend the time with the people than writing about it.”
“This Claudia, she’s none too happy. It could cost you your job, you know.”
“I know that, Hymie, and I make no excuses. I should do it.”
“Son, the place needs you. You’re the soul of the place. I’ve never been a big one on regulations, but you can’t ignore them.”
“You’re absolutely right.”
“You know I try not to interfere with how the place is run. If she wants you to go for legitimate reasons, I won’t intervene.”
“I understand that and wouldn’t expect you to.”
We were quiet for a while after that. He was direct and honorable in how he handled things with people. Good news or bad news, he delivered it directly and without manipulation. Hunched over, short, bald, about 140 pounds, with thick glasses, he was a man’s man.
