I stretched and tucked the blanket under my knees so the soft fabric formed a cocoon where only my head popped out. I closed my eyes and took Jack’s place alone with Chrissy, with Suzanne Somers, the actress who played Chrissy, with Mrs. Varnas, the cold-as-ice queen who left me for another continent, and there was this rush I felt when I saw the tiny triangle of fabric creep out of Julie Fischer’s tight black So Low pants. I rubbed my toes in the blanket and tugged on myself and stretched out my legs as if I were on the rack in the Medieval Times dungeon. My legs shook and my pelvis thrust and I burst out of the cocoon like a monarch in metamorphosis, and in my hand was a glob of translucent green sludge.
Uproar—I yelped and the canned laughter of the sitcom followed.
I rushed to the wet bar and scrubbed furiously and looked up at the list of Prominent Italians that started “Da Vinci, Alighieri, Fibonacci,” for guidance. I truly believed I was sick. Not in a degenerate kind of way, where I could be healed by the messianic teachings of Jesus Christ, but in the kind of way that required immediate medical attention.
I considered dialing 9-1-1, but after seeing my glob slither down the sink with the water, I rushed to the phone mounted on the wall and hit the large button with the green cross—poison control.
“Hello? Who is this?”
“Hello, I, uh… I think I’ve been poisoned.”
“What? Who is this? Why are you calling so late?”
“My name is Victor Ferraro and I think…”
“Vito? Is this some kind of prank? Where’s ya father? Why are you calling so late?”
I hung up—I forgot the preset had actually been connected to my Great Aunt Josephine. She was my father’s cousin’s mother on his… okay, I can’t remember. I never could keep track of everyone anyway.
I turned off the TV and went to sleep.
Nana’s side of the family owned Heights Hardware, a neighborhood establishment that continued to attract business despite the impending takeover by giants like Home Depot and Lowes. Nana would still work the registers with her sisters, all of whom went blonde years ago, as Italian women tend to do as they age.
“Hey boys, remember to look your uncles in the eye when you shake their hands and kiss your aunts on the cheek. And give Nana a big hug. Maybe she’ll slip ya some money.”
Uncle Shorty sat in a barber chair near the entrance with a gnawed-down fat cigar dangling from his lips.
“Who’s this one?” he would say as I shook his hand—I guess he couldn’t keep track of us either.
“Uncle Shorty, you remember Vito?” said my father.
“Oh, right, right, the ball player?”
I had often been referred to by my athletic abilities. I suppose “Writer of Epics” or “Warcraft Strategist” was not as prestigious a title in my extended family as I’d have hoped.
After we shook all of my uncles’ and/or cousins’ hands—I called the older ones uncles even if they were technically cousins—and kissed my aunts on the cheek, Tony and I snatched the price guns dangling from the side of the registers like battle-axes hanging in the arena at Medieval Times and got lost in the aisles of screws and paint swatches and WD-40.
“Hey Tony, have you ever had green sludge come out of your pisciali?”
Tony ran the price gun across a can of egg-shell-white paint: click—now it was $13.99. “What are you talking about? That sounds disgusting.”
“Well, am I sick?” I ran my gun across a bag of fertilizer: click—$0.59.
“Wait… were you playing with it?”
“Huh?” Click— $0.59 Phillips-head.
“Like, were you masturbating?”
“Mas-tur-bating?” I said, and repeated in my head: mas-tur-bating. I loved the way it sounded, like a verb for the actions of a king or lord: King Victor masturbated over his empire, which stretched from West Road to the faraway lands of Mendham, up to the mountains and lakes of Kittatinny, and down to the shores of Ocean City.
“Yeah, Vic, like playing with your pisciali?” Click— $13.99 gardening shears.
“Do you masturbate, Tony?”
“Have you seen that poster of Pamela Anderson Lee in my room?”
Click— $0.59 can of paint thinner.
“Hey Vito! Tony! Come here,” my father called down the aisle.
“Dad! Can I get this sign for the basement bathroom?” The sign read NO DUMPING. Tony and I started to laugh. “It’s only”—click—“fifty-nine cents!”
“What? Just come down here!”
I brought the sign with me.
“Vito, you remember Cousin Ricky, right?” I was familiar with the name but couldn’t’ve picked him out of a lineup if asked. “Cousin Rick played quarterback at University of Kansas.”
“Sure did.”
“Isn’t it true Gale Sayers called to recruit you, Rick?”
“Sure is.”
“Hear that, Vito? Gale Sayers.”
“Was he as fast as Deion Sanders?”
“Hear this, Rick? Kids these days like the jerks and showboats. Gale Sayers, now he was a classy player. He glided across that field. ‘I love Brian Piccolo,’” he said, reciting the famous quote from the film Brian’s Song. “‘I love Brian Piccolo.’ That James Caan, he’s Jewish but always playing Italians.”
“Hey Tony!” One of Nana’s sisters came storming down the aisle, her hair platinum, and purple veins popping out of her wrinkled arms.
“Aunt Josephine! How are you?”
Oh shit.
“Hey, yeah, hey Tony, why was Vito here calling me last night? Is everything okay? Vito, what happened? You okay? Look
