Ted was awakened before his father by the Times banging off the front door. The kid who made the deliveries had a good arm, but wild. He reminded Ted of Sandy Koufax before he found control, or Nolan Ryan. Ted decided to go down to Benny’s kiosk for the Post and the Daily News. From down the block, he could see the old men loitering and squawking like a bunch of crows. A voice called out of the ether from the direction of the kiosk, “Ted! Teddy boy!” Ted looked and saw the top of Benny’s head.
“Morning, gentlemen,” Ted said.
“Mornin’, Ted,” the old men said in ragged unison.
Tango Sam danced forward. “Ted, you look terrific, very handsome, loan me fifty.”
Benny pushed the Post and the News toward Ted. “Knew we wouldn’t be seeing the old man today.”
Ivan added, “Not after the Sox lose, no.”
“And if we did, he’d be in the wheelchair,” Tango Sam said.
“Psychosomatic,” said Schtikker the Viennese. “Mind over matter.”
“Malaise days.”
“Am I the only one that cares about this Polanski thing?” asked Ivan, but that was apparently a nonstarter today. “Or the ozone?” Another nonstarter.
“One time,” said Benny, “as an experiment, when the Sox lost, I ripped out a page with an old box score from a day they won and replaced it in the paper. Your dad came in the wheelchair that morning.”
Tango Sam jumped in with some color commentary. “He’d fallen asleep when the Sox were down and assumed they’d lost.” The old men began and finished one another’s stories like they were of one mind, a hive. Sometimes it was like watching an a cappella group sing in the round, or a team of broadcasters narrating the game of life. Rizzuto and White times two.
Benny took over again. “We lied to him and told him they’d made a comeback. And I handed him the phony box score. He didn’t smell a fake. Guess what?”
“What?”
“Walked home,” said Ivan.
“Danced,” said Tango Sam.
They let Schtikker have the capper—
“Fuck you, wheelchair; fuck you, cane.”