excerpt
I put it down like an offering in front of my nonno. He was flushed with wine, talking and smoking a crooked cigar. It took him a while to finish his sentence, and a little while longer to see that I had dumped four Ballantine’s in a soggy paper bag on the dining-room table.
He took a drag on his stogie, looked at me seriously through the thick blue smoke. Behind him my father was just coming in from the kitchen with a fresh pack of Camels. He took it all in. I could see the words forming behind the dark look on his face. He was going to say what the hell is this, he was really annoyed, and Pasquale saw it as soon as he turned around. I blushed, a hard sunburn eating my face. Then Pasquale howled with laughter. He gave me a big, wet, smacking kiss on the forehead, and he waved his big arms, tears streaming from his eyes, his large body shaking with delight.
“I tell you dissa kid, he gonna be somebody. He bring me birra for my compleanno!”
He looked down at me with his blurry blue-green eyes.
“I tell you, figlio mio, I don’ like to hurt your feelings, but I can’t drink this Ballantine’s. To me it smellsa like a cat box.”
He got up from his chair, still rumbling with the laughter of an actor, saving my ass, and charged off into the kitchen. My father’s eyes were sharp with the right questions, but just then my nonno returned with his beer pail. My father gave way. It was Pasquale’s party after all. Maybe I’d get shit tomorrow, but when Pasquale put his big bear arm around my father and they both laughed, I knew it was o.k. Pasquale put his other arm over my shoulder.
“Buon idea, caro,” he said, trying to be serious the way adults try to be serious when they’re talking absurdities to children.
“I din’ know tilla you come in, but I like to have a birra all night long.”
He looked at my father and they buried it between them.
“Be a pony espresso. Go get me a pail of Pabst.”
He slipped a folded five-dollar bill into my sweaty palm and I scooted out of there under the kind, uproarious laughter that fell like salvation over my head. Through the window, I heard it subside and ease back into those intense, mysterious, bright-eyed conversations I had no way of entering.
By the time I got to the park, Joey was beside himself.
Libros Libertad 