Night Avenue

On Fridays and Saturdays I worked doubles. I’d start at 3:00 in the afternoon then we’d close the place down around 3:00 am. By that time, the drunks would groan and bellyache for just one more pie and it was all I could do not to take a spatula to their asses. Like I hadn’t been on my feet all fuckin’ day long. I’d be so tired that I’d fall asleep on the F-train, then crawl into bed without even showering. My bed would start to stink of dough and cheese, but what did I care? Useless to change the sheets because it would just get that way the next night and the next. I lived in Williamsburg which ten years ago was a clapboard shithole, and now it was an expensive clapboard shithole. In ‘99 the rent was $575 a month, now the Hassids are charging more than a thousand. And this ain’t Manhattan, so there’s no rent control. I had to get a roommate last year. Luckily he’s a suit so I don’t see him around too much. He’s also got some girlfriend in Fort Greene, so I wait for him to tell me he’s gonna move out any day now, and that will suck ‘cause I can barely pay the rent as it is.

I got off the G-I-hope-it-fuckin’-gets-here-train on Sunday at 5:00 a.m. after waiting for the damn thing for an hour. Trains don’t like us night people. Even they’re prejudice, running fine and on-time for the suits from Long Island, but anybody who needs it, really needs it, it’s not there for them.

I fell into bed without brushing my teeth, then remembered to set the clock.

There was nothing to dream about.

✫ ✫ ✫ ✫ ✫ ✫

When I woke up, it was late; I was late. I was always late. It’s why Mike said I didn’t get the manager position. Truth be told, that was okay with me. I didn’t really want the responsibility of making sure the mozzarella made it from Jersey on time, that the dough was risen properly, that there weren’t any malfunctions with the coal oven, which there always were. It was just easier to go to work and let someone else deal with it. I threw on a pair of jeans and the shop’s t-shirt. Mike had an idea about us switching to golf shirts and I told him to go fuck himself; I wasn’t wearing that. Somehow, in those seven hours I managed to lose my apron in the pile of shit on my floor. I could get another one at the shop. Pair of Chucks and I was out the door.

✫ ✫ ✫ ✫ ✫ ✫

When I got there, Mike yelled the obvious about me being late, as if I didn’t know. I got to work prepping the pies. You take the dough out gently, never punching or kneading it. Just gingerly massage it like you’re driving with a steering wheel. Then, when it’s good and elongated, you can start tossing it. The toss may look like some piece of showmanship, but there’s a reason for it. Makes the dough uniform in size and thickness. I gotta tell you, once you get the toss down, there’s never a time you don’t enjoy showing it off. It feels good to have that firm mound of dough in your hands, then it becomes elastic – stretched, but delicate. After that, before the dough starts shrinking, you add the tomato sauce, mozzarella and basil. Slide it into the oven and cook it just as the cheese melts. Then some asshole comes in and orders a large with pineapple and sundried tomatoes and we tell him to go to hell. This is old-school Italy shit. California Pizza Kitchen is in Times Square, buddy. My day goes on like that with people spilling over from Coney Island – Puerto Ricans, old Jews, the occasional Russian, and tourists. We serve ‘em all if they’re willing to wait 40 minutes for their pie to cook. Then, you look at the clock and it’s 2:00 am, time to start clean-up.
So I was putting the coals in the firebox with Mike watching me like I’d never done it before.

“What?” I said.

“Nothing,” he said, “you just dragging your feet. I got my shit all put away and I’d like to get out of here before the sun comes up.”

“Then go,” I said.

“Can’t go ‘til you get your shit cleaned up,.”

“Leave me the key.”

“Yeah right. Just hurry up and stop arguing with me,” he said.

I took the cornmeal container to the back room and that’s when I heard it. In books, they call it a ‘report’, but that’s the stupidest name ever. It’s not anything so subtle. It’s like a tomato can falling from a high shelf; the sound of the subway screetching on bad breaks; fireworks that you shouldn’t be shooting off. When I came out to see what had happened, Mike was on the floor. Three guys were standing over him, wearing masks and looking like Halloween trick-or-treaters.

“You!” they growled.

The guns didn’t look real. I could imagine these guys wandering through Chinatown, passing through the whispering women – “Gucci, Prada, Louis Vuitton”– until they came upon an old Chinese man who looked like he was just waiting for the light to change. There would be an imperceptible signal and they’d follow the man down Mott over to Pell. They’d trail him up some rickety stairs, up another flight then another. He’d open the door to an apartment and they’d wonder what they’d gotten themselves into, that maybe this man was out to exterminate anyone who wasn’t Chinese and they’d be walking into some place outfitted for surgery where he’d cut off all their limbs just to see what would happen. Instead, they’d pass a woman feeding a baby in the living room, then the man would take them into a tiny closet. He’d press a panel and they’d be in another whole room, stuffed with handbags, wallets, jeans, jewelry, and row upon row of watches. He’d open a crate and there would be the guns, lined up like a third world armory. He’d take one out, an M-4 or an HK416 – the guys wouldn’t know the difference – and maybe as they hefted them to their shoulders, they would think the guns weren’t real either, because nothing from Chinatown is real. They would pull the trigger and hear the click and the man would watch. Then he’d show them how to load one, being careful to take the bullets out as soon as he put them in. He’d quote a price in broken English that was exorbitant, but the guys would be too afraid to negotiate, even though the man lived for negotiation. The guys would speak to each other in hushed voices, but plainly in front of the man, believing he couldn’t understand what they were saying. They’d come to an agreement that they’d get their investment back – that night if they wanted – and that it was worth it. They were real HK’s, after all. ‘Said so right on the side.

As they turned to me, the guns looked like plastic toys you’d buy for a kid at Christmas, then you’d find buried under a Millennium Falcon, a Slip and Slide and some Easter decorations in the outside storage bin.

“Open the cash register,” the shortest of them said, his voice high.

I looked down at Mike. They had shot him in the mouth, his face was a Halloween mask of gore. The skin had flapped open, exposing his gums and cheekbones. His nose was gone. It wasn’t a clean shot by any means, but a shaky one, like the gunman meant for something more artistic, but didn’t have the skill to accomplish what he had seen so many times in the movies. There was, of course, blood. So much blood, that I could only see corn syrup with red food dye, the type we’d make for fun when we were kids.

“Open the cash register,” another guy said. His voice was deeper, calmer.

I went over to the register and punched in the numbers. When I opened it, it was empty. Fuckin’ Mike had already put the deposit in the safe.

“You killed the wrong guy,” I said, my voice smaller than I expected.

“Where’s the money?” the little one said, looking over my shoulder and seeing the empty till.

“You killed the wrong guy, I said again, my voice cracking. I cleared my throat but the mound of phlegm was still there, lingering, “That guy, Mike, the one on the floor, he already put the deposit in the safe, and I ain’t got the combination,” I said.
“Fuck, Fuck, Fuck,” the tall one by the door said, “Chris, you said this was going to be easy!”

“Don’t use my name!” the little one hissed.

“Let’s get the fuck out of here,” the calm guy said.

“Nah, we’re gonna take care of this one, first,” the little guy said, hoisting the gun and aiming at me.

Lou, the owner, kept a bowie knife in the cabinet under the register. If I got the cabinet open, I could reach it. But what was I going to do, stab each guy in turn? And what if the knife wasn’t sharp enough to go into the flesh? What if, rather than sinking the blade into the fat and muscle like butter, I ended up sawing into the skin? You just never knew about these things. Suddenly, knife sharpness seemed like something else we should’ve been keeping up with, like coal delivery or soda fountain maintenance.

Although I was having a hard time believing the guns were real, I felt the wrongness of the gunmen being there, like they were trespassing in my own apartment. Although my livelihood consisted of serving strangers in that restaurant, these guys being here was as wrong as men in a child’s dollhouse.

There was a lot of testosterone in that tiny room, and I knew they could just start shooting for kicks. I had to get the fuck out of there. What these assholes didn’t know, because they’ve probably never worked a day in their lives, was that the New York fire code required every business to have two exits.

“Look,” I said, “we keep some petty cash in the back, if I give it to you, will you get the fuck out of here?”

“How much?”

“A grand,” I said, making it up.

“Fuck yeah,” Chris said, “hell, if I knew this place was stashing a grand every night, I would’ve done this a long time ago.”

I started to move to the back when Chris wised up and sent the tall one who was watching the door with me. We went down the hall and passed the back door. I tried not to look at it, so I wouldn’t tip the guy off. It was so close, but I knew the minute I turned in that direction he’d probably shoot. I was keenly aware of time; as the seconds ticked by, I was more and more of a liability to them and they’d feel the need to get rid of me – to hell with a life sentence at Rikers.

But I blew it. The tall one was now between me and the door. I started rummaging through drawers in the desk to buy a few seconds. Then I remembered the water heater. It was an old model from God knows what decade. Mike kept meaning to get it replaced, but preferred instead to give us all strict instructions about keeping the safety valve open. Apparently there had been some sort of close call with it way before I started working there. It was a long shot, but I decided to go for it.

“Gimme a second,” I said, fumbling around behind the heater while the tall guy stood near me, “sometimes the manger hides some cash back here. You know, to pay off the politicians.”

It took me two seconds to shut the valve. I didn’t know how long it would take for the pressure to build. I did know I had to get out of there pronto and find a way to keep them in.

“Where’s the money, Flats?” the tall guy said from behind me.

I stopped. Flats was my nickname from high school. I got it because I couldn’t stand the school bus – the smell, the noise, the feel of vinyl that someone else had been jacking off on. I’d walk to school, a mile down Flatbush and back, while all the other kids passed me on the bus. I don’t know who came up with the name, but it stuck.

“How’d you know that’s my name?”

I could sense a split-second of panic before he said, “it’s on your name tag.”

My name tag said Paul and it was in my pocket. I’d taken it off after we served the last customer. But I didn’t say anything.
“Hurry it up,” he said, nudging the gun under some papers on the desk. And that’s when I heard it. The rasp. Johnny McLachlan, or Snowy CoughLand, as we’d called him in school. He’d had throat surgery in tenth grade and his voice had never recovered. If I were to lift his mask, there would be a scar across his neck. But it wasn’t the type of scar that ever made him appear tougher. It lay across his already prominent Adam’s apple like a necklace made of flesh, so you couldn’t look at anything else. And the kids had been mean about it. I had been mean about it. Back then, the slightest imperfection set us off. And Snowy CoughLand was full of imperfections. He was gangly and gross, not only because of the scar, but because he had some sort of skin problem. He left flakes everywhere he went. If he ever wore black, his shoulders looked like a universe of cast-away stars. You’d only see him in light-colored shirts that served to wash out his skin, skin the color the milky, stagnant puddles that mysteriously show up on the street in summertime. As far as I knew, he’d never gotten laid.

“Justin,” I said.

He shifted his weight uncomfortably, and I could tell it was him.

“Justin, what the fuck’re you doing? You know what Lou would do if he caught you?” I asked, knowing full well Lou wouldn’t do a whole lot. He may have been Italian and owned a pizza restaurant, but he was no gangster.

“Look, you won’t say anything, will you?” he asked, the rasp infiltrating his voice like his trachea was being filed down.

“Who’s out there with you?” I asked, but he shook his head, “those guys – would they shoot again?”

“Probably,” he said, shrinking against the wall.

“You ever do this before?”

“No.”

“Them?”

“I don’t think so.”

So it could go either way, they could get scared and take off, or they could shoot just for shits and giggles.

“Justin, I gotta tell you something,” I said, “I mean, I’m gonna tell you because you and me go way back, right? I mean, hell, we were in grade school together at PS 100, remember?”

“Yeah, I guess we were,” he said.

“Look, I just closed the safety valve on the water heater. In about five minutes, that thing’s gonna blow this place to the Boardwalk. But there’s a door right behind you. You and me, we gotta get out of here.”

I could see him hesitate for a second, considering some ancient sense of loyalty for a brotherhood of useless knights.
Lucky for me, he was a traitor.

✫ ✫ ✫ ✫ ✫ ✫

I had fantasized a million times about the place blowing up. Usually it was me walking up to the aftermath, then turning around and going back to bed.

I ushered Justin out the side door, then we moved a bunch of barrels and crates to block it. We worked fast, knowing that the place could go at any moment and for awhile, I forgot that I was free.

“Justin, you gotta get the fuck out of here,” I said.

“I know. I owe you one, Flats – I mean, Paul.”

“As far as I’m concerned there were only two gunmen and that’s all they’re gonna find. You think they’ll stay in there long enough?” I asked, starting to taste their blood and liking the flavor.

“I don’t know, man.”

“Here, give me that,” I said and took the gun from him. I darted back to the building and shoved it into one of the barrels while Justin took off. I bolted away and at that moment, the building went. The sound was like a rocket taking off and I’m told the water heater shot straight up into the air. Later, when they uncovered the bodies, they found the heater only two-feet from where it had been for forty-seven years. The force thrust me to the ground amidst a shower of wood and pipes and steel.
And all I could think was, I’m gonna be in a lot of trouble for this.