Spitting off tall buildings - By Dan Fante Page 0,44

of Mad Dog 20-20. I worked on my play as much as I could, and I always kept my appointments with Harry.

Sometimes, in those first weeks after the girls moved in, the sweltering afternoons were so fierce that sitting around in the closeness of the rooming house induced my brain’s software to thoughts of suicide and homicide. My solution was for the three of us to walk to Times Square to play video games or go to the $2 air cooled movies on Forty-second Street.

The twins would skate down Broadway on their rollerblades with me following. They were heartbreakers, always cheerful, friendly to everybody, with beautiful smiles and big eyes like their mom’s. The tourists and the people on the street loved them.

The only real children’s book I owned was The Wonderful Wizard Of Oz. At night Carrie was having bad dreams, being terrorized by spiders and two-foot-high red insects sucking her face off while she slept so, before lights out, to get her and Connie to relax and drift off, I began reading out loud from Oz. One chapter a night. They loved it. Right away the magic of the story had us all under its spell. When I’d get tired or too drunk to do a good job with the reading, one of the girls would take over. It became a nightly ritual.

Then our finances got worse and I had to pawn my electric typewriter and my own TV to raise money for food. I’d fallen two weeks behind on the rent for the second time. Dorobek, the manager, a jeweled scumbag at heart, exalted in his moment of victory by sneering as he delivered a pink, legal, three-day eviction slip to our room.

It was the next morning, early, when we heard a noise - the girls heard it. It woke them up. A scratching and a sort of whimpering drifted up from below, through our room’s two big open windows by the fire escape, then skidded across to their sleeping bags. The source appeared to be the garbage cans outside the first floor that Dorobek kept stacked near the rooming house’s entrance.

The girls shook me awake wanting permission to go downstairs to investigate.

Six kittens were the origin of the disturbance. Gray tabbies. The entire litter less than a week old. They’d been dispatched by their passing owner in a brown, taped-up grocery bag, then dumped in one of the heavy metal garbage cans. A cowardly act. And maybe a fatal crime too except that the perp lacked the balls to smother his victims by sealing the can’s lid.

The cats were orphans like the twin girls who would save them from the trash. Abandoned Munchkins. I never had a chance to say no.

Having more new roommates only worsened the financial deal. We were nearly penniless. My next Workman’s Comp check was still four days away and it had been weeks since their dad’s last phone call.

I decided to convene a house meeting. Each of us took a pen and paper and wrote down suggestions; every way we could think of to bring in some money. Connie acted as recording secretary for the best ideas.

We were unanimous. The proposal we all chose as number one was the one that would provide immediate cash. My idea. A street hustle. A way to use the twins’ personalities and little-girl appeal to mooch the New York tourists. I was sure it would work.

The story I made up for them was simple; the girls would say that their mom and dad had just been in a car wreck. The parents were driving back to the city from a weekend trip visiting family upstate. They’d run into a sleet storm on the thruway in their old Ford wagon with the bald tires. The car slid across the roadway head-on into a retaining wall. Both Mom and Dad were in the hospital in Albany. ICU. One (they chose their mom) had a punctured eye and grievous internal organ damage. She might also never walk again. But Dad was much worse off. A coma. Over the phone the ER doctor had mentioned the prospect of aneurism and extensive brain damage.

The scam went as follows: the twins would work their way up and down Broadway and Seventh Avenue in Times Square stopping to pitch anyone who was well dressed or looked like an out-of-towner. They’d act upset and show a palm-full of crushed bills, ones and fives, saying all they needed was twenty-two dollars and eight cents