red.
Their lips were purple and wet and slick as the underside of a lily pad. Mary said that she didn't care if the punk look was the rage, they looked like cheap whores. No doubt about it, they looked a bit tawdry. They looked wanton. They looked wicked and nasty. They looked terrific.
The guys, between the three of them, were wearing more gold than Fort Knox. Necklaces, crucifixes, St. Chris medals, St. Francis medals, St. Jude, St. Anthony, St. Peter, and so on. Rings, I.D. bracelets, watches, buckles. If they tried to board a plane at Logan Airport the metal detector would get a hernia. They wore continental-cut jackets with a little sheen to them, black calfskin boots with heels- they needed the heels to be taller than their datesand pants that were skin-tight at the crotch to show the world that they were hung like seed bulls. Their hair looked a lot like their dates' hair. All of them had mustaches; one also wore a beard. Their white silk shirts had big collars and were open to the navel, this to reveal both the array of chains and charms and medals and the chest rugs. Each guy's bosom looked like a coconut-fiber doormat. I've heard it rumored that Caesare's Men's Boutique sells not only hairpieces but chest rugs too, for those who aren't naturally endowed. I could use one. Another item that purports to move well at Caesare's is a padded-cup jock for guys who want to look hung like a seed bull but aren't. I could use one…
'Well at least you can tell the boys from the girls here,' I said.
'That's refreshing anyway.' Never had I seen such blatant sexuality; never was human sexual dimorphism more exaggerated.
'And don't bother staring at their pants, Mary; they're just wearing those padded jocks.'
'If I have another glass of wine I think I'll go check,' she said.
'By the way, I notice you haven't taken your eyes off that tall girl's ass since she walked in.'
'Huh?'
'Don't 'huh' me, buster. How would you like me to dress like that?'
'I'd love it.'
'Hey Joe! Joey!' A fat man with an enormous mustache was working his way over to our table. Joe jumped up and pumped his hand. Then his arm slowed down. He was looking at the man's face. He had obviously been crying.
'Joey-' the man said quickly, and he leaned over and whispered in Joe's ear.
'I know.'
'Oh, sorry,' the man said, turning to us, 'didn't mean to do that. Something sad just happened. Sorry.'
Then he turned back to Joe again and leaned over him. 'Can you come for a few minutes anyhow?'
'Yes,' answered Joe. 'We'll be right over when we finish.'
The fat man left, his eyes glancing to and fro- as if looking for others to accost. We dove into our ice cream, and Joe explained that they had Andy Santuccio laid out at Langone's funeral parlor a couple of blocks away and that he was going to stop by and pay his respects. We said we'd come along.
The place was crowded. People of all shapes and ages milled about, talking in low tones. They kissed each other, embraced, sobbed quietly, and said the rosary. About half spoke English, half Italian. There was a lot of black, especially worn by the older women. Men wore dark hats. It almost resembled a congregation of Orthodox Jews on the Lower East Side. The parlor room which held the remains was packed with flowers. Two old aunts stood at the casket, shaking hands with mourners and wiping their eyes. Many people came and went from the chapel room. The only things missing were the street procession and the men with the trumpets following behind, playing the dirge. Otherwise it very closely resembled the Sicilian funeral scene in The Godfather. I made this observation to Joe, who suddenly realized something.
'Follow me,' he said, leading us back past the offices to a small room crammed with mementos and pictures on all the walls. Joe looked through several volumes of photographs and newspaper clippings before showing me a picture of Hanover Street crowded to overflowing with spectators as a pair of hearses inched down the street. All the men wore hats: skimmers, fedoras, bowlers, even top hats. The women wore wide hats with flowers on top and big, full-skirted dresses. The hearses looked about 1920s vintage.
'What's this?' I asked him.
'The funeral procession of Sacco and Vanzetti. Look. See the armbands worn by all the mourners? Look, here's another one.'
He turned the page and I saw a grisly photo of two dead men on slabs. They were partially draped, but their upper torsos and heads were visible. Their faces had the vacant, collapsed look of death. Then Joe turned another page and we saw the two men formally laid out in suits, placed in caskets with the lids propped open, and covered with flowers, much as poor young Andy was next
door. But a crowd was tightly pressed around the corpses. The people in the crowd were holding up a huge banner, which read: DID You SEE WHAT I DID TO THOSE ANARCHIST BASTARDS THE OTHER DAY?
'Do you know about that quote, Doc?'
'Yeah. It was supposedly said by the judge at the trial, Webster Thayer, when he was playing golf with friends in Worcester. It showed he was just a wee bit biased. It doesn't say very much for American jurisprudence, does it?'
'Nah. It sure doesn't.'
The fat man with the watery eyes and walrus mustache came into the room and looked at the pictures with us for a few minutes. He kept apologizing for interrupting us and Joe kept telling him he wasn't. His name was Gus Giordano, and I liked him immediately and intensely. Like Moe Abramson, he seemed to be a giving person.
'So sad,' he said, looking down at the photographs of the funeral procession. 'So very sad.'
Big drops were falling on the pictures. Giordano was crying. He wiped his eyes and looked at Mary. He managed a weak smile and she hugged him.
'But you should see the real thing. The films of it. Joey, you know Frank Bertoni?'
'Never heard of him.'
'He lives just up the street. He's a film nut, you know? Collects all kinds of old movies. He's put together a film based on old newsreels of the trial. Took him years to get all the footage. We've shown it at Sons of Italy and sometimes-'
'Wait a minute,' said Joe, looking up quickly. 'Hey, I think I've seen that film. It's like old-time movies? Like Chaplin?'
'That's it,' said Giordano. 'Well, if you've seen it already.. .'
'But we haven't,' said Mary. 'Do you think it's possible for us to-'
'For you, the world,' said Giordano, and went to a phone.
He returned in less than five minutes and handed Joe a slip of paper with a name and address on it.
'He's a great guy and he loves to show the film; it's his pride and joy. I'd go too but I really should stay awhile. Arrivederla.'
After Joe spent another ten minutes pumping hands and giving hugs, we left Langone's and walked four blocks to the apartment building of Frank Bertoni, who let us in at the front door and walked us up two floors. He was young and blondish and wore wire-rimmed granny glasses. His apartment was small but neat, the walls covered with old movie posters. There was a photo of Charlie Chaplin in a repairman's suit, wielding a huge wrench to giant machinery. There were posters featuring Gable and Lombard, Tracy and Hepburn, Jane Russell, and lots more.
Frank had prepared for our arrival; armchairs were set up in the living room in a row facing a screen. Behind the seats sat a projector on a table. He switched the projector on, the house lights off. The whirring of the projector was the only noise in the room. The movie was silent, the seconds ticked off by a line like a radar blip that moved counterclockwise in a circle: 5… 4… 3… 2… 1. ..and
then we saw the title in black and white: THE NEVER-ENDING WRONG
a film by
Francis J. Bertoni
The window was open, and the street noises of babbling pedestrians and car traffic that filtered up through the window were a natural accompaniment to the crowd scenes and protests we saw on film. The film was, of course, a spliced collection of the original film footage. The moving images on the screen bore all the earmarks of age, with ropelike streaks that moved back and forth across the pictures, making them look like it was raining, and great white blobs and {lashes that exploded continually all over the screen. Most striking, though, was the high-
