Spitting off tall buildings - By Dan Fante Page 0,4

clothes on the dressing-room table in a heap and pulled the cord turning off the light.

‘Look. Okay,’ I said, surprised, squinting in the blackness. ‘I’ll be here tomorrow.’

Mrs. Lupo didn’t answer. The darkness had covered her exit. I turned and caught sight of her making her way up the first few flower-carpeted stairs twenty feet away. ‘Hey, okay,’ I called again. ‘I’ll be here.’

She paused, turned back in my direction: ‘Three p.m. sharp. Tomorrow. Tuesday, Mr. Dante. You don’t work on Monday. Monday is your off day. Take the uniform with you.’

‘Right. I know about Monday.’

Her voice was echoing in the basement like the announcer at Shea Stadium. ‘Report to Eddy. After the first week, if he thinks you’ve got promise he’ll make a recommendation to me. I decide whether to put you on full time. I call the temp company.’ Then she bellowed, ‘Understood?’

‘Okay,’ I yelled back.

Her dark eyes met mine from the staircase. ‘Dante’s an Italian name. You’re Italian?’

‘On my father’s side.’

‘Northern Italian?’

‘Half Italian.’

She assembled a small, pleated, triumphant smile. ‘Go home. Be here tomorrow.’ Then she spun around and I watched as she bounced up the rest of the carpeted stairs. An ancient gymnast in spy shoes.

Chapter Three

THE NEXT DAY I arrived late again at almost three-thirty because I got up with a hangover and then forgot to bring Herrera’s subway instructions and came off the train at an express stop instead of exiting at the Twelfth Street station. I had to walk back from West Fourth Street. The attendant guy at the Times Square booth had told me the wrong train to get on. In New York the booth guys at the subway don’t give a rat’s dick because they’ll never see you again so, when they’re not sure about an answer to a question on which train to take to get somewhere, they give out bunk directions. Doing it they get a little cheap thrill.

There had been no sleep all that night because of the swarming in my brain. I’d drunk several beers and a bottle of Nyquil then read for hours but my interior brain foam could not be silenced. Around dawn, as one roomer after another ran the hot shower water through the rattling pipes and opened and shut the clanking bathroom door in the hall, I tried writing on my play, hoping it would help. Working now on Act I, Scene iii. I typed non-stop for two hours. Afterward, exhausted, I still couldn’t sleep so I dressed and went out, ate breakfast at the diner where I found out LaVonne worked the afternoon and night shift, then returned to my room. I read what I’d written on the play, hated it, tore it to shithell then fell asleep in a chair about eleven o’clock.

In the men’s changing area in the theater basement I got into my roll-up white shirt, bow tie and tux, then went upstairs and asked around the other staff until someone pointed out Eddy the Assistant Manager outside on the sidewalk smoking cigarettes, conversing with a neighborhood guy.

He was taller than his wrinkled, rat-faced aunt; big-nosed and witless. When he saw me coming he intentionally turned his back. I realized he’d identified my tux and had simply chosen to stiff me.

Waiting there looking at his back, I allowed myself to stand like a fool for half a minute or more, being dipped in the conversation piss of him and the street guy. When I felt the knot of anger in my stomach ready to pop, I interrupted. ‘Hey, excuse me,’ I said. ‘Are you Eddy?’

He twisted his face, then looked at me. Because the neighborhood guy was his audience and because I’d cut into his conversation, I would be made to suck shit. ‘Yea, I’m Eddy. Whaz up? Who wants me?’

‘My name is Bruno. I’m the new usher.’

He had me. ‘New usha?’ he sneered. ‘Wha new fuckin’ usha?’

‘Mrs. Lupo hired me yesterday.’

‘Mudda’s fuckin’ cunt! Da ol’ bitch hiah’s someone and don tell me fuckin’ dick! Den she fuckin’ dumps it on me on hah fuckin’ day off! Mudda’s fuckin’ cunt!’

‘What do you want me to do?’

‘Do? Go ta fuckin’ woik. Wha da fuck else izz zah?’

‘I’m supposed to be trained.’

‘Oh, okay! Fuck me! Ya know, fuck me!’

I couldn’t leave and the other guy was fully engaged in the performance. Eddy looked at his watch, sucked quickly at the cigarette pinched between his lips and his rodent snout, then issued instructions: ‘Okay,’ he said, ‘we got us a fuckin’ show