About the Author As a native Manhattanite who has always been fascinated with people in teaching profession, Pete a. De Matteo was inspired to write this short story. All three protagonists are clearly outsiders. Pete a. De Matteo is a published and featured poet in Manhattanite Harold Serban’s “the poetry edge”.

Tony and family lived in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. Tony smoked five packs of cigarettes a day, too. He hated neither Black, nor Jew, nor Puerto Rican, nor gay. Nevertheless, he smoked and smoked and smoked himself half-blind each and every day.

His son was an Italian Stallion, a bodybuilder with skin the color of olives and intense, dark eyes that put Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt to shame. His daughter was model material; that’s how good-looking she was, but she was just too ethnic, too Sicilian-looking to really make it here in New York: they’d told her that beauties with indecipherable ethnicities had been preferred.

Tony di Pasquale had a phobia that had to do with being alone. Deliberately, he was forever surrounded by people regardless of their social standing, it seemed. It was as simple as that! He worked at the post office as a mail carrier. That way, he earned his money and could chain-smoke like some fiend, having the opportunity to constantly befriend and socialize with oh so many residents of the buildings that he served. Secretly, he had such a fear, even a phobia of being alone that it simply petrified him. Perhaps that was why he smoked so much.

Likewise, Tony Di Pasquale was an espresso drinker, maybe five cups a day. Tony had a snow white head of hair and mustache too.

Being friends and paison with his supervisor Gino Biondi, he’d always picked up the white-ethnic routes of Brooklyn: Bay Ridge, his own bensonhurst, Manhattan Beach, Gravesend, Mill Basin, and those kind of places. He’d subbed one week down in Brighton Beach where the Russians had taken over, many of whom, in his opinion, were sullen, clannish, and couldn’t speak a work of English.

It had been the week when all of them were getting their refugee assistance checks in the mail and he was going out of his mind with all of the long Russian names.

A little Mixtec lad from Oaxaca, Mexico, less inhibited than most had befriended him. He even spoke a bit of English. Tony loved the Mexican people in the Brighton Beach neighborhood too. They were simple, hard working, and respectable, just like his own, the Italians, the most good-looking people on the whole planet.


Not wanting to be alone, he let the Mexican kid accompany him and help him through his route that day. Some Jewish-American woman, her butt planted on a godforsaken lawn chair out on the sidewalk with a bunch of other yentas who hadn’t made it to Long island, threatened to report him. Tony ignored the witch, knowing that Gino Biondi would never do anything! After all, they where lifelong buddies from Bensonhurst.

The boy’s family was petrified, just frightened out of their wits. Basic communication was possible due to Tony’s knowledge of the Italian tongue, though. The youngster’s mother served the mail-carrier enchiladas with the stoicism and reserve that made the Mixtecs so renowned. Half impressed at her son’s little advancement and half-intimidated that they were surely going to be reported to the I.N.S., she was relieved to see Tony leave, but allowed her little son, named Ricardo, to accompany him nonetheless.

“Learned of love and ABCs, skinned our hearts and skinned our knees-goodbye papa, it’s hard to die, when all the birds are singin’ in the sky…” Tony would be humming, with his raspy smoker’s voice, laced with a thick New York street accent.

Ricardo would tag along behind time, whistling his own tune, helping Tony by carrying his big mail pack on his back too. Some middle-aged Russian women, heavily made up with platinum blonde hair, approached him immediately after he entered their dilapidated building.

“Vat you are doing with that boy, helping you carry that bag?”

Tony ignored here, feigning deafness.

“Where is normal Black man that brings mail? One demanded.

“Vacation, vacation, lady!” Tony barked at her.

The lady clucked her tongue and Tony wondered whether she had been good-looking as a young nubile girl back in Odessa.


***

Tony had a rich brother, Marco. Marco gave Tony loans from time to time but he thought his brother to be a simpleton. Marco was a Broadway producer of plays and musicals— a ‘ducer’, was how Tony’s beloved wife and kids, Brooklyn ‘till the end, referred to him as being. Tony was filled with envy of his brother and that was probably why he smoked like a fiend, he theorized.

Marco had the following if not many more possessions: a sinfully opulent Sutton Place co-op apartment, a palace on Star Island in Miami Beach, a Porsche Carerra, a 50-year-old wife who looked decades younger, his own island upstate in the 1000 Islands chain, etcetera. And here Tony was, nothing more than a mail-carrier who had never ever accepted his brother’s offers of more lucrative positions because of his pride.

Why Marco just didn’t support poor Tony and his family entirely in some luxury Manhattan apartment was beyond Tony. Brother Marco was truly one of the few people on the face of this Earth that Tony truly hated. Him and President George Bush, that was. And he know that hating anybody was a sin, especially his very own flesh and blood, for God’s sake!

Nevertheless, he studied the poor Mexican kid behind him and certainly counted his blessings; that was for sure. One of the few old Italian ladies invited him up to her apartment.

“What’s with the kid, for cryin’ out loud!” She demanded, her voice lit with fire.

“Look Mrs. Benedetti, would ya’ stop worryin’ because I ain’t no child molest….”

“No, you ain’t no child molester ‘cuz I can spot ‘em a mile away and I’d throw you outto’ my house quicker than a bat farts in the sky above Manhattan. She served the two of them rich Italian pastry and strong espresso, complaining about how clannish the Russian émigrés were. “Tony, they ain’t got no sentiment like us Italians ‘cuz they’re cold as ice, see?”

“So why ain’t ya’ in Bensonhurst with your own kind like I am, then?”

“Would you get offo’ me– I ain’t got the stinkin’ money to move!”

The little boy gulped down his pastry and smiled at Mrs. Benedetti, who looked at him like he was a Martian of sorts. Afterward, he told her that the pastry was yummy, though. She was forever smiling.

***

That Saturday, Tony’s kids were all occupied with gym workouts and dates. The wife had gone to Atlantic City with ‘the gals’, as she did twice a month. Plus, those gloomy Russians had truly saddened poor Tony and he felt lonely— really, really lonely.

Not knowing anything better to do, he sat down on a bench in a yard with a basketball court in ii, chain-smoking and reading the Daily News. Some day off, he thought especially since it was July and he could have been having a lot of fun, fun, fun, providing the right kind of people had been around him. He just couldn’t take this torture anymore, even if it was self-induced. Everybody special had abandoned him today, it seemed.

Actually relieved, of all things, when a clearly alcoholic man dressed in filthy rags shuffled into the yard and took a seat, he realized how long his self-esteem really was and he blamed his rich phony-bologna Manhattanite brother Marco for this.

The wasted old man shuffled his feet and looked like he was dancing to a salsa or merengue beat. He asked Tony if he could take a quick look at his newspaper.

‘yeah, sure, go ‘head, champ.’

Tony coughed his distinctive Tony cough, which sounded like somebody going ‘umhummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmma’, cursing the humidity and chain-lighting still another cigarette.

‘Hey, bud, smokin’s bad for you!’, said the bum, coughing up a storm himself.

‘So what else is new?’ Tony went, even addin’ an extra fake cough for good measure. The two sat there criticizing every politician under the sun who belonged to the Republican Party. Tony di Pasquale felt a little less lonely, but it was as if he was getting a drug of some sort-an illicit fix to help him forget about how dysfunctional and impatient he was with anything less than utter perfection. He knew that his family certainly wouldn’t approve of him conversing with this lout. The decrepit specimen of self-destruction asked Tony to buy him a bottle of cheap booze.

Tony, miraculously enough, refused to honor his wishes.

‘you want food, you got it, chief, but I ain’t contributing to your alcoholism, that’s for sure.’

The bum felt like cursing Tony out but kept his mouth shut ‘cuz there was always a chance that he’d give in. The two shuffled over to Conti’s pizza place then. Conti looked at Tony like he’d lost his mind or something. He grabbed Tony’s shoulder and guided him just outside of the entrance.

‘do me a big favor, di Pasquale, and don’t bring liced - up drunks that stink to high heavens over here again.’

Conti ran about 400 pounds and had a the kind of really hot temper that only the streets of south Brooklyn can produce.

‘Would you get offo’ me, Conti!’ Tony was goin’.

Conti shook his head rapidly and grinded his teeth: ‘look, pal, i can’t throw your buddy, or whatever he is, out ‘cuz I’d have every bum advocate and the stinking New York post on my ass, but don’t involve me no more when you feel like playin’ Jesus Christ, okay?’

Tony nodded and grabbed his new companion by the arm and complied with Conti’s wishes, ‘cuz Conti was mafia, no doubt. The two went back to the courtyard and the lout told Tony that he needed a place to crash for the night.

He told Tony that the homeless shelters were dangerous and that he was more comfortable sleeping on the streets. Upon deciding what to do, Tony’s mouth became parched, his heart racing and his hands trembling. He had to let the man sleep on his couch or he’d just die. He knew that his wife and kids would throw sh–fits.

His wife would threaten him with divorce, as she’d done hosts upon hosts of times, but what of it? He’d survive.

He was a companionship addict and there just wasn’t a twelve step program in existence to suit his needs. ‘then go to sex & love addicts anonymous,’ his daughter had ranted after his most previous escapade, when he’d invited a nearly paralyzed, 90 year old Chinese woman home for dinner.

Tony and the smelly lout drank espresso and shot the bull. Tony eventually relented and poured some liquor into his new friend’s coffee as they now sat at his kitchen table. His son was first to arrive at around 6 pm.

Tony Jr. The body builder, gave his father the silent treatment and retreated to his bedroom immediately, slamming the door as he did so. Tony rolled his eyes to the heavens and poured more liquor into the dysfunctional man’s coffee cup. The loud belched loudly and boorishly, proud of his lack of breeding, it seemed.

Tony jr. Blasted led zeppelin on his stereo.

Two hours later, his beloved daughter arrived with her boyfriend, the son of an alleged south Brooklyn mafia hit-man.

‘What’s he, crazy or what?’ asked the boy, fanning his hand in front of his nose.

‘Daddy, you promised,’ she was goin’, her tanning-parlor burn turning five shades redder than it normally was.

‘Would ya’ get offo’ me, little girl, please, ‘cuz this fellow’s a human being just like us, okay?”

‘Daddy,’ she said with great resolve, ‘I’m callin’ the police right now if you don’t get this guy outto’ here, and that’s a promise.’

The lout fended off tears of rejection and resignation, too. His quivering hands spilled the spiked coffee unto the always spotless tablecloth. Tony knew all too well that his wife would have a complete fit once she saw the stain, but he just didn’t give a rat’s ass. He was gettin’ his fix and that was all that concerned him.

His daughter’s boyfriend shook his head critically.

‘Let’s get outo’ here, gina.’

Gina looked at her boyfriend like he’d just lost it.

‘I can’t leave my very own father all alone with that moster!’

‘Your brother’ll protect him, okay?’

She pounded on her brother’s door and the blasting hard rock music came to an end. He opened the door, gesturing at his father and the lout: ‘he’s crazy bringin’ somebody like that into our house again!!’

‘I’ve had it and I’m leavin’, gina was goin’.

‘I’ll stick around, okay’, countered her brother, ‘cuz i wanna see the scene mom’s gonna make when she get’s back from Atlantic City.’

‘he needs a mental institution, a f—k– mental institution,’ hollered Gina at the top of her lungs.

‘You said it, not me!’ the boyfriend went. Gina and her beau left then.

‘I just can’t believe you, daddy!’

‘Would you stop treatin’ your old man like a piece of junk, gina’, Tony barked at her, moving his fist like he was going to slug her one.

***

After everyone had returned and the lout had spent the night on the sofa, stinkin’ up the whole house, Tony’s warped psychological high finally abated. He found himself even more depressed-more desperate than he’d ever been before his escapade. His initial purpose was to escape from himself and his depression, but he had obviously defeated himself royally.

Knowing not what to do, he did Sunday overtime and his degrading, thankless job at the post office, forcing himself to function despite his lack of will and sense of being completely lost.

The lout had even taken him as being a dysfunctional and wanted nothing to do with him ever again.

After work, he managed to climb into his dented, hubcapless, twenty year old caddy Sedan de Ville. After work, he’d drive over to Staten Island and visit his cousin, Louie the priest-that’s what he’d do.
***

Whilst driving there, some three car accident had occurred that day about halfway over the bridge, the North Atlantic and sandy hook glistening in the blinding late afternoon sunshine. The traffic even came to a complete halt for several hours.

Actually getting out and taking a good long illicit leak, Tony knew it was excusable considering the circumstances. He cursed himself for not buying one of those plastic pee containers that the cops allegedly used all the time to take emergency leaks in.

Seeking excitement in devious ways, as was his custom, he peed, aiming the steam directly onto the hubcaps of a young, innocent-looking blonde woman driving a Jeep Cherokee.

A man directly to her left in a Taurus station wagon, wearing a royal blue and silver yamulke opened his window and reprimanded Tony, telling him that he was a slob and should pee on his own tires.

‘Ain’t nothin’ like mindin’ your own business, pal,’ countered Tony, coughing his most effected, dramatic bronchial cough.

Tony flung the dirty old Caddy’s rattley door open, actually grabbing the baseball bat from under the seat he always kept there for protection. Slamming the door, he patted the bridge’s grid three times like Sanlot slugger or somebody.

The other drivers looked on discreetly with utter apprehension in their eyes. Even the guy with the yarmulke lost his bravado suddenly, wishing that he had minded his own business. Losing all restraint then, Tony began to pound the poor woman’s car with the bat, just as he did to the Jewish man’s car.

The other motorists made out like they were ignoring the mishap, except for an obese, really tough-looking man in a van filled with fishing poles, who got out and confronted Tony.

‘What the blazes ya’ doin’, wackjob!’

Tony coughed his cough, and then said: ‘well, what does it look like i’m doin’, boss?’

The man, undoubtably a former boxer of some sort, grappled with Tony, pinning him somehow to the bridge’s roadway, but quickly lost control, to everybody’s horror. Tony pounded him in his stomach with the bat.

But, just then, p.a. cops in motorcycles raced up and pointed their guns at poor Tony di Pasquale. The Jewish guy got right out of his car and explained to them what happened.

***

Tony was put in a straight jacket and was hospitalized that night. Medicated, he became tranquil. His sociability with his fellow patients knew no limits. He coughed his cough with even greater vigor.

And, he lived out the rest of his entire life chain-smokin’ up a storm, befriending bizarre strangers, coughing his cough, and more than occasionally, annoying his family.

Then, after an inevitable and unsightly tumor appeared on his neck one day, he knew he finally had cancer. Chemo delayed it from lickin’ him for awhile, but he finally went.

Tears of sorrow and simultaneous joy were shed at his funeral. In his coffin laid a carton of his favorite cigarettes, merits, his family members knowing all too well that he was surely better off dead than alive.