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The Albany VFW family gathering room is filled with all sorts of grieving people of all ages, genders, and economic status from white trash to upper middle class. Most of them are overweight, and there are more old people than younger, although there are some obnoxious great-grandchildren running around already fueled up by their respective sugar highs. One thing they all have in common is, now that the funeral for the old man is over, they’re all starved as fuck.
Located at the far end of the room are two long foldable tables that are covered in rectangular aluminum foil pans that contain everything from ziti and meatballs to chicken parm, to chicken wings, to chicken fricassee, to meatloaf and mashed potatoes covered in gravy. All this food is being washed down by cans of cold Budweiser available for a nominal cash payment from behind the bar on the opposite side of the room. No one seems to mind that the floor is covered in ugly linoleum, the walls in cheap pink and blue acrylic wallcovering, the ceiling acoustical tile, and the harsh lighting provided by drop-in fixtures that give off a buzzing noise like the light they’re emitting contains deadly radiation.
Two late forty-something, muscular men who go by the names Stan and Tony (the former Polish and the latter Italian), occupy one of maybe fifteen round tables. The table is closest to the entrance, just in case they need to make a quick exit, which is entirely possible considering they have no business being there.
“You see, Tone,” Stan says, wiping his mouth, not with a napkin but with the paper tablecloth, “I told you this would work. These fucking post-funeral buffets are killer. You know how much this shit would cost us if we had to pay for it in a restaurant?”
“No,” Tony says, stuffing his pie-hole with a spoonful of beef stroganoff, which he endearingly refers to as beef-stroke-me-off. “How the fuck much?” With his mouth full of food his words sound like Ow the uck mush?
Stan steals a long few beats to calculate the estimated costs in his brain.
Finally, giving up, he says, “A lot. More than we can afford on our salaries carting flowers all over the city for that coffee with milk colored fairy.”
“He’s mulatto,” Tony says, dipping some overly buttered Italian bread into some stroke-me-off sauce and shoving it in his mouth before he’s swallowed what’s already in it. “Raymond can’t help who his parents were.”
Again, his words are distorted by all that food in his cheeks and mouth, but Stan understands him just fine. He doesn’t even mind that he can see him chewing his food when he talks. Tony and Stan are close. Almost like brothers. They even share a studio apartment together. Not that they have any choice in the matter.
Finally, Tony swallows what’s in his mouth, and he wipes his mouth with a napkin.
“How’d you find this buffet anyway?” he asks while he considers heading up to the food table for some ziti, meatballs, and sauce.
“Simple, I just went online and went to the obits in the Times Union Newspaper. If I’m in the mood for Italian food, I look for guineas who’ve bought the farm, like the guy they just buried.”
“What’s his name, Costello?” Tony asks.
“Yeah, like Abbott and Costello,” Stan says. “I feel like Polish food, I look for somebody with a pollock last name. I want to drink a million beers and eat corn beef and cabbage, I look for a mick who’s bought it. Soul food, like ribs and chicken, requires a Black dude dying, but for obvious reasons, that’s a little more tricky.”
“Well, you done good, Stan,” Tony says. “I gotta hand it to ya.”
He’s just about to get up to make his third trip to the food table when three houses approach the table. Rather, not houses necessarily, but three men who are easily six feet two inches minimum and who are no strangers to the weight room. They are each wearing black baseball hats that say, Army Rangers on them. All three of them are holding cans of Budweiser beer.
Tony might be a musclehead himself, but at five feet five inches, he knows better than to make a fuss with three professionally trained killers like these men clearly appear to be. The same goes for Stan, who might sport some decent biceps, but at five feet seven and carrying a beer gut that makes him look like he swallowed a basketball, he refuses to look the three visitors in the eyes.
“Excuse us, gentlemen,” The man in the middle says.
He’s sporting a three-day growth on his round face and steely blue eyes.
“I don’t recall seeing you guys around the VFW hall,” he says.
“Oh, we belong to another one,” Stan lies.
Tony gives him a look across the table like, Are you fucking stupid?
But then the Italian meathead feels even stupider having asked the question in the first place since he clearly knows the answer.
“Yeah, which one?” Scruffy Ranger presses.
Stan swallows something that looks like a brick.
“Oh, ummm, you know,” he says. “The one across the river in Troy.”
“The Collar City VFW?” says Scruffy Ranger.
“That’s it,” Tony jumps in.
“What conflicts you two in? Afghanistan? Syria? Iraq? All three like most of the brave young vets who pickle their livers around here?”
“All of ‘em,” Stan says, his mouth still overly filled with a future coronary. “Others too.”
“Wow,” says Scruffy Ranger. “So naturally you...um warriors...fought side-by-side the old man.”
“Oh sure,” Tony says. “Lots of times.”
“That’s funny, Scruffy Ranger says, “Because the old man was in World War Two and he died at the ripe old age of ninety-seven. You guys look pretty fucking good for being in your late nineties.”
Stan swallows what’s in his mouth. Suddenly, his stomach feels like it’s full of concrete. Tony feels his pulse racing and he’s a little short of breath. He eyes Stan from across the table. He doesn’t need to say a word since his wide eyes say it all.
“Run!”