Ted had put on his Yankee jacket for the morning chill, and Marty, in retaliatory response, had put his competing Boston Red Sox jacket on over his robe, as well as a Sox baseball cap for overkill. Marty used a cane these days, sometimes even a wheelchair, and he had to lean on Ted for support. There was a green magazine kiosk down at the end of Marty’s block where he went to get the paper—the Post. The Times he had delivered, but Marty didn’t really want to admit to reading the Post. Nobody did. Except for the sports. He went down there to talk to some other old men who had nothing to do but suck on the butt ends of the unlit, last thirds of cigars, complain, bullshit sports, and tell one another lies all morning long. These men had been in the neighborhood for as long as Ted could remember. While working as an advertising man his whole life, Marty had rarely hung out with them. But since retiring a couple of years ago, Marty had been spending more and more time on the corner, and this group of elders, this Polish Russian Black Italian Irish Greek chorus, had become his social life.
On the way to the magazine kiosk, apropos of nothing, Marty said, “Mariana.”
“What?”
“The nurse’s name is Mariana.”
“I didn’t ask.”
“You didn’t?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Huh.”
Marty seemed to know half the folks who walked by or perched at their windowsills. It seemed his persona as a crusty old fuck wasn’t just for Ted, but people in the neighborhood were more amused than irritated by him. As a young couple passed them pushing a toddler in a stroller, Marty whispered to the child, “Five and a half games, you little motherfucker.” The husband laughed and said, “Morning, Mr. Fullilove.” An old woman leaned out the window of her third-story perch and yelled, “Fullilove, you front-running son of a bitch!” Marty lifted his middle finger for her. She laughed. “I made some banana bread, Marty, is that Ted?” She asked like she’d seen him yesterday, and not fifteen years ago.
“Yes, hi, Mrs. Hager, it’s me.”
“Good Lord, Ted, it’s been ages. My, my, the years go by so fast.”
Marty yelled up at her, “Yes, sweet Betty, the years do go by so fast, but the days are so fucking long.” Betty seemed genuinely moved to see Ted, shaking her head at the confounding, slow-fast passage of time.
“I have banana bread for the both of you. Stop by on your way home.”
It took a surprisingly long while to navigate the one block to the kiosk at the corner. But this was Marty time. Ted would have to acclimate. The gray panthers were all loitering with absolutely no intent but to kill snail-paced time. Benny, the owner of the kiosk, was a dead ringer for Cheswick in Cuckoo’s Nest. Schtikker was a fat Austrian Jew, always jingling handfuls of quarters in his front pocket, like he was happily suffering from some form of numismatic elephantiasis. Ivan, a very light-skinned black man who constantly rolled cigarette butts from the street into the gutter with the tip of his cane, like a highly specialized, obsessive-compulsive sanitation worker. And a very dapper Tango Sam, who reminded you of Burt Lancaster grown old and who seemed to dance everywhere rather than walk. When they got to within shouting distance of the kiosk, Tango Sam spoke up: “Marty—you big macha you, the retired one of twelve vice presidents of the seventh-largest advertising firm on the East Coast, you look tremendous—loan me fifty.”
Marty cast a thumb at Ted. “You remember my ungrateful progeny? This is my adopted son, Lord Fenway, the peanut man from Yankee Stadium.”
All the men lowed, like a gray herd of grazing cattle. Benny spoke from behind the magazine rack of the kiosk, his face barely visible, he was so short. “Oy vey. Teddy. The little splinter, I haven’t seen you since you were yay big.” He held his hand an inch or two above his own head, because even yay big was a touch taller than he was. Benny always seemed on the verge of bittersweet tears. “I have Sports Illustrated for you. And the Post. You like girls? I have Playboy.”
“The jury’s out on that one,” Marty said.
Benny continued, “Shut up, Marty, I’m talking to a person who is still alive. I also have Oui and Club if you like less mystery. You hungry? Want some Goldenberg Chews? They have peanuts in them. Healthy. Protein.”
“Quite the amuse bouche they are, the Goldenbergs,” added Schtikker.
“No thanks, Benny, but thank you.”
Responding to some mystical prompt inside his own head, Ivan offered, “You see where Sweden banned the aerosol can?”
Tango Sam stepped forward and grasped Ted’s hand in both of his. “Teddy, you look tremendous, loan me fifty.”
“Hi, Tango Sam. Hi, Ivan.”
Ivan looked up from caning a cigarette butt to the gutter and said, “The Sox don’t have enough black players.”
All the men groaned together on cue. Schtikker piped up, “You can have that schvartze Reggie Jackson. He’s a cancer. And you’re not black anyway, Ivan, there is no black man named Ivan. It’s an impossibility. Like a unicorn. Or the Second Avenue subway. Hey, Marty, come over here, I read in Time magazine where you can guess a man’s age by sticking a thumb up his ass.”
“That was in Time magazine?” Ted asked.
Benny said, “I just feel bad for the rest of the Wallenda family.” As if he were in the middle of a conversation no one else could hear. But nothing, no matter how far off topic, could stop the crazy flow of these men; the lack of flow was, in fact, their flow.
“Or Newsweek,” Schtikker continued. “Mighta been Scientific American.”
“National Geographic.”
“The Advocate.”
“No fair, I thought I was next,” Ivan said.
“Only once a week now, Ivan, we talked about this.”
“It works.”
“Like the rings of a tree. He’s seventy-eight.”
“What is this Space Invaders thing? Anyone?”
“He’s right, I’m seventy-eight.”
Marty joined in, “Turns out his ass is a hundred, though.”
“With Dutch elm disease,” offered Tango Sam, “and a Japanese beetle infestation. Might have to cut it down to save his balls.”
Ted felt like riffing along with them. “Yeah, but I bet it’s the squirrels that are really annoying, hiding their nuts…” but he trailed off as he felt a change in temperature. Total silence. Like the popular E. F. Hutton commercials of the day. The old men turned and stared at Ted with outraged incredulity.
“What?” Ted asked. “His ass is like a tree, so it follows a squirrel might hide nuts in Ivan’s ass like in a tree. A tree. If his ass is a tree in this joke, then it’s possible a squirrel … I’m just…”
“That’s off-color,” Ivan said dismissively.
Schtikker seemed disgusted. “Marty, the lip on that kid. That is no way for a man to talk about another man’s cock and balls.”
Marty raised his hands in a gesture of peace. “I apologize, gentlemen. Jesus, Ted, who the fuck raised you?”
“Come on…” Ted protested.
Tango Sam tap-danced toward Ted. “Theodore, I alone love and forgive you. Loan me fifty.” And all the old men laughed in unison. A graybeard herd of laughter, Marty included. It was the first time he’d seen the old man laugh since the hospital. Ted smiled. If his father was laughing, Ted could be the butt of the joke.