Spitting off tall buildings - By Dan Fante Page 0,6
the disturbance to Mrs. Lupo, who hurried to the balcony to demand that we follow her to her private office.
There, with the old Lupo in the role of hanging judge, Vic persisted in overdoing the deal, screaming words at me like ‘liar’ and ‘burglar’ and continuing to insist that I’d stolen his uniform jacket. He even stabbed my chest several times with his finger until I pushed it away and made him stop.
I explained that I’d picked the jacket off his hanger by mistake. But that only served to make him madder. He pounded her desk with a bony fist. I didn’t give a crap for private property, he screeched, for Loew’s Theaters. I was a punk, a hardened criminal type. One of us had to go. Him or me.
Copping a plea to save the gig turned out to be useless and stupid. I tried to put a more realistic spin on the deal by talking about my own uniform’s missing coat buttons and the sticky elbow, admitting that I’d simply wanted to ‘borrow’ his jacket for the day. Old Lupo might have been satisfied with that but Vic wouldn’t let up. The rant turned into a fit. Saliva flew, neck arteries throbbed. Stuff about my sneaking smokes on duty, sitting in the back row when I should have been doing balcony rounds, and leaving my post to take unauthorized piss breaks. He knew just what buttons to push to get Mrs. Lupo’s face wrinkles activated. I was dead. Bumped on the spot.
The next day I was in the ‘Cash, Ten-Items-Or-Less’ lane at a market and a lady in front of me had thirteen items in her shopping cart. A lady with a kid. A baby. Thirteen items.
While the line edged forward I counted her stuff over and over. The line was long and the closer we got to the checker the more edgy I got. When the woman set her groceries down on the moving ramp I informed the register guy that she had thirteen items, not ten as the sign specifically specified. I made the checker count the items, then I demanded that he not take her order. He smiled at the woman and the kid in the cart, made an excuse, then began ringing up her stuff anyway.
The deal escalated. I threatened the checker and started calling him fuck names. The child commenced to wail and a manager, complete with big smile and pocket pen protector, came over. He attempted to mediate but it was too late by then.
I swept the woman’s groceries off the counter onto the floor and on my way out I knocked over a tall display of Tropicana Orange Juice from Florida mounted on a vat containing a million little square ice cubes. Shit was everywhere.
Chapter Four
AFTER LOSING THE usher job I hit a flat spot. Herrera at the temp agency told me that Olson’s had a rule about not reassigning persons who had been fired from their assignment for cause. No second chances. So, instead of looking in the Times want-ads for work or making the rounds of the other temp agencies in midtown, I decided to take a day or two and remain in my room reading, going back to Tennessee Williams’ plays and some of David Mamet, writing if the urge presented itself.
On the third morning I woke up with an idea for a short story. The words began coming out, jumping from my fingers. A tale about a deaf eight-year-old kid and his dog Bugs. The kid spends most of his days in his room in his imagination because he doesn’t attend regular school.
By mid-afternoon I was near the end. Twenty pages. The boy in the story, Bartholomew, has discovered a sorcerer living on a gleaming silver button in the corner of his toy box. The tiny sorcerer shows Bartholomew many tricks and proves himself to have great mind power, moving objects around the room, changing the colors of the walls, having stuffed animals dance and do flips, then magically growing Bartholomew’s feet a foot long. Bartholomew is awestruck and they become fast friends. He is shown how to tap his own indwelling powers. By himself he tosses a plastic truck out the window, then transforms it to actual size in the street. Then he raises himself off the floor until his head grazes the ceiling. Turning to look in the mirror, he sees himself wearing a thick silver astronaut’s suit, piloting a spacecraft. Bartholomew implores his mentor to