A Matter of Love in da Bronx (18 page)

Shhhhhitttt! Where are you Mary Dolorosso?

Where are you, Sam Scopia? Where the hell are you? As if I ever smoked a pack of cigarettes in two hours in my whole life! Oh! Dark brown yuckky taste! Suffer! The last piece of Dentyne goes into the chompers at the first sign of hero making his appearance in the doorway, not before! Look! He's a proud man! He went home from work, showered, shaved, probably got tied up with one thing and another, and just will be a little bit... I don't have a little bit of time anymore, dumbbroad! It's time to go! Louisa isn't here on time, either! What do I tell her? I don't tell her anything! She probably has something smart, and wise and ridiculous to tell me about why this cugootz doesn't show up! That's it! Wouldn't give him another chance if he were the last watermelon on the block! I bet the son-of-a-bitch spotted me here, had a good laugh, and took off! Waiting to see what I do! How long I piss around here! Doesn't he know I have to wait for Louisa, or I wouldn't have been here ten seconds after six o'clock? Maybe he misunderstood? Maybe he thought like it was a different day? Or another time? No. Dumbbroad. You know what the story is. He's not going to show up. So forget it! Fucking Scopias! All of them! That's why he didn't show up! Afraid if he was caught with me my brother'd...cut his balls off! Yeah! Mary Dolorosso! You've never thought in such a crude, ugly manner before in your whole life! Now what's getting to you? Is he that important? If he is, why is he? Do you think it's The Last Best Chance Syndrome? Miss this Ringfingerring to win another thirty-year wait? Naw! They say there's a seat for every ass. It's just...it's just...this fellow seems so appealing. I can't even say why. I just like him. I feel it in my bones. Here it is, two hours and he's nowhere around, enough time for any excuse. So what do you feel beside tired? That balloon in my chest that gets bigger every time I breathe is disappointment, Lady. How sad the world has to be like this, everything in balance, one side equals the other: We'd have no joy if we had no sad. I understand too much the need for that to wish it were changed, I'd pray rather that I found only joy, happiness, good fortune, health, a long life. If I wasn't so practical I could dream on that for quite a bit, but the reality is I must get home whether Louisa shows up or not. Not that I don't care, but she can fend for herself. She's plenty smart. As if I don't know she had a date with Lou Harness, Sam's friend. She was wise enough to think not to tell me in case Sam didn't show up tonight, it wouldn't make me feel so bad knowing she came out a winner, and I shot a blank. She's a good friend. Who could watch television tonight? I'll get a lot of reading done, I see. I wouldn't if I could, stay in that room with Mom and Dad and their situation comedies, and canned laughter; their bickering; her bitching; his belching. How uglyhorrible! Maybe that's what it is, Sam, you represent the microaperature in my flatblack sphere of a world that'll give back to me my own life to live with a catechism of my own dogma, my own choices, and my own world! Maybe that's what it is, and if so, I wonder why I can't break free of my own accord? What support do I need to justify my existence, as it should be, not as others make it to be? I see the answer to that to be a circle in a circle. If I did just for myself, selfishly, narcissistically, I would be guilty of committing the same injustice to them, as they are to me. So, the question arises, simply, merely: Which end of the whip do you chose? Which victim would you rather be? Ah! Farewell, Sweet Prince! Farewell! You leave me unkissed, tethered to fruited thoughts of you! Dear Prince, though palaces, jewels, servants, lands and armies wait for me, I gotta catch my bus. Sorry.

He felt like the vegetablewagon horse. At the time he saw the animal, he was about five years old. The vendorman with the funny hat, shirtsleeves, heavy workshoes, a street muezzin hawking his wares. His horse collapsed right in his traces, just like that, on top of his legs, awkward, crookedangled. The aged beast tried to draw his breath with ghastly-sounding gasps. His head, flat to the near-melting tar of the street, had one huge eye reflecting the blue of the sky, yellowysquared teeth guarding a limp, wetted tongue hanging way out. If the agony of death was the animal's problem, that presented a bigger one to civilized man surrounding the scene, how to put
equus caballus
out of its misery. A shotgun was produced. It was aimed, and fired. That succeeded in missing the beast's head, but blasted apart a foreleg. The horse now had a problem breathing and bleeding. There were several moments in succession of high drama as the shotgun shell was ejected, reloaded, aimed again, and this time misfired. Aaaachhhh! Do something! Went the call. Stun him out of his misery! A mason's hammer was brought out. Whamthunk! The blow aimed about as well as the shotgun, missed the forehead, but broke his noseline cleanly. No more of that! For Lord's Mercy! Cut his throat! A blade came out totally unfamiliar with anything resembling a sharp edge. The noble beast was stabbed, and torn through hide and flesh, the jugulars safely hidden from its frenetic probing. The policeman who responded to the call for help almost threw up at the sight, but controlled himself long enough to mark an "X" from ear-to-eye and ear-to-eye, and hit the mark with one shot of his pistol. With it, he ended the beast's death throes, and also removed the burden of pain out of the eyes of Man.

Sam never forgot it, remembering the scene again when he had to admit she'd stood him up. He wished he could low out the pain like a cow. He knew if he loosed a tear he'd release a life's dam of them from which he could never recover, so he held himself in tight wishing instead for a shotgun blast, or a hammer blow, or knife thrust, or an X-marks the spot to his brain. Clouded as his eyes were with his self-involvement he was able to discern the apparition in the window of the moving bus. Rub them hard! Look again! See! See! See!

--Louisa! I mean, Mary! I mean...! What happened? What did I do? I missed her! Mary! Mary! Mary! Holy Jesus Christ Almighty God! It's stopping! People! Get out of my way! Hit me car, I'll kill you! Rap! Knock! Bam! On the window! Jump up and down to see to be sure! Mary! Mary! Mary!

Who calls? What commotion is this? Lord! Did that frighten me! Oh! Look! It's him! Sol! I mean, Sal! I mean, Sam! He knows it's me! Calling my name! --SAM! SAM! Don't go away! I'll get the window down! How do you get the window open? Oh! Help! Open Sesame!

--Mary! You came!

--Yes! I came!

--You did! You did! I missed you! I'm so sorry! Stop the bus from moving! Make it stop! I have to tell her...

Why is this thing going away? He must've been waiting for me, and I didn't see him! What a fool I am! --No, Sam! I can't get off! I'll be home too late!

--You must! I must talk to you! I must see you! Oh! I can't...run...any...more... Here! Take this! Take it! When, Mary? When? Gasp...

--Wednesday night! Same time! Same place!

--What?

--Be...

--There! Oh! Jesus! I must've run half-way home! I think I'm going to die! Oh! I can't! Not now that I found her again! Oh! If I don't feel like that Vegetablewagon horse when he first fell!

As Mary turned back square in her seat a smile crept over her face. She would never go to meet a date or do anything like that again.

He watched the bus move on as he hugged a lamppole for support the better to admonish himself. He would never go to meet a date or do anything like that again.

The star-splangled acknowledgement reverberated throughout his body for what was mentally a timeless, distantless walk that night. Mary Came! That was it. That was the fact. That alone was enough to light a beacon to dispel most of the black ugliness of his self-imposed withdrawal from the world, whether he was aware of this or not, instinctively his soul scintillated. However consciously clear this message received, the fissure in his armorclad deepself so definite it would never again be Sam-hermetic. Naturally, in his case, the fact was accepted grossly out of proportion for purposes of self-preservation, an end to itself, Nature's manner of stockpiling spare parts which would come in handy even if never used. Sam Scopia, Virile Male, was excellent inventory, extravagant fertilizer. This was how the human computer was directed to compute, and so computed. Garbage in, garbage out; self-esteem in, love out. The vaporous writing on the blackboard of his skymind merely said you are a worthwhile person! This was the fringe benefit derived from the direct: Mary came! There was no way he could contain the exultation, not after getting so close to atomsmashing despair. The result turned him into a somnambulist. For blocks on miles, he looked with unseeing eyes, walked on frictionless feet, passed through static seconds the whole and entire night.

--Mary! I love you! Open your window and look down on me! Look! Here! In the light! There! The silent lift on the sill, the shushing soliloquy signaling wanted danger, the wave of the arm, and then! There! In a twilight of the gilding moon one side of her face etching into the portaled recesses of his heart!
Cara
!
Carissima
mia
! Nowhere in the world could you be too far for me to walk to find you! And here I am! Show me once again your sylphed face that should I be impressed from thee I will bedazzle Paradise with what up there now I see of you. Yes, I understand. The need to be discreet. Let me pronounce it just once more for the entire world to hear: Mary! I love you! Shhhh! Yes! I'll come around to the front entranceway where doorclicks tell me you want to see me still. Fly! Fly up the shaft to you, there, waiting, palms up, hands out. A tremble grasping a tremble. Lead me up to our petaled ground, to the rooftop with the starstippled mantle of our world. How soft, warm and giving do I find the instrument of your soul. How is it such untapped ecstasy is our alone? For certainly such bliss was overlooked by the gods, and how jealous they must be now as eager lips taste eager lips repositing heat from bloodscorch creating thunderbolts of devine desire to be unleashed in a succession of penultimate grandpassions in search of the ultimate caress. Hold me! Hold me! Dear Love! That in your touch I know our worlds do meet! Untethered were we before 'cept in the tremulant thoughts of our yearning for each other unlike anything known on earth save angels whose wishes were fulfilled to possess a unity such as ours! Indeed! Theirs was a wasted moment, the matches falling far short of their expectations, a mere emberflick compared to the glowing comet of our love. And there the tale that tells of my adoration which is but a glister to the consuming conflagration made unsurpassable by the infinite purity of a union with a responding true noble love. I withhold not a scintilla, ask not an iota, and give impeccable whate'er my capacity allows. In humble adulation of the neverending essence of the elixir of this love can I but inadequately portend the grandeur of the powers from which it derives, and the superrefined and providential good fortune that had it befall on me. To that capricious throw and bit, Amen! Yes! Yes! As there is no straightflowing river did I turn to find you, to see you, or perish hellforglorygone! --I had to see you, Mary. You cannot mind, nor turn me away or there is naught but agony to share! I walked from Eden Farms. Yes! I don't care how far it was, but straightaway did I come, familiar as I am with once acomings here. I'm not surprised at your surprise to be unsurprised. You had to have known from the instant our eyes met this night that holding each otherlike this is no mystery, merely the correct and orderly functioning of the universe. We, together, here, are as much in ceremony as the winds, stars, waters, earth, and warm and passionate things. Listen to me, will you! An erudite on matters I have come to meet in so brief a span of time, and, yet, were I to have spent my lifetime in their learning I would know them no better. I know that! I know that as I know my thoughts materialize in the stratosphere where the concept for all earthly doings is programmed which allow only three variables: the call of the soul; the prerogative of choice; and luck, capricious luck. How do I know that? How can I not know that when we are here, you and I? It may be an unreachable success for one to so yearn, and plead, and seek so clear the same illustrious point in space, but when it is the object of two souls, two choices, and compatible luck there is an inevitability that transcends all materializations, all conceptuals, all fictile beings. It's so simple! Were the world to end, we would continue to exist! I must believe that, not as any grand plan, merely as the near-invisible filament that concatenates me with this world. You wonder, perhaps, why I wait not for your response. A redundancy! A unity is not one and another. A unity is not another and one. A unity is a third! Separate and distinct from one or another--whole unto itself. Indivisible. So, if I say it, do you not say it? So why say it at all? To put it to the spheres? Not near so much as to meet this world's exigencies, that though you may know of it unsaid I want the exquisite pleasure of seeing you accept it hot from my heart to my lips to your eyes to your heart! You would know it no more if I said it; you would know it no less if I didn't, but Ah! The fulfillment supreme of these consubstantial enraptured mortals! How I know that! Simply to touch you! Let me. Have my sensations run rampant with my desire for you even though constrained by the barest, briefest palpation. How cool your skin does feel to my touch while I, my own, be sensed as molten lava. Dare I dream then of the consummate consummation of this love? Perhaps by infinite degrees through each moment of our lives, but ask this not for I would be frazzlebrained before we went from instant one to instant two. Even now, as I enshrine you in my arms, I find the harmonics of our realized perfection cause refractions in the stars. See? Look! How brighter than the sun would blaze the moon was I to possess you at so ripe an hour. My Sweetest Love! Give me the oxymoron that tells of my passion and restraint; my joy and pain; my audacity and feebleness; my clearness and obscurity. How little I do understand and turn to feelings, insensitive guardians of understandings and behavior, the last repository of considered actions and reactions. Right or wrong, they are mine! They are ours! And I want them rather than misjudge objectivity and endure an unameliorating achromatic muddygrey life. And why should I even consider that when we have, indeed, each other? There is no need to deal with amorphous subtleties when separated I carry your taste from my lips to my loins, your face a retinal hologram to my heart, your odor olibanum to my soul. But why all this posturing, then? Why so many thoughts upon thoughts that drives me wild with their abstractions? If all is so perfect, where then is the imperfection that makes it so? Dare I say? Do I acknowledge the villain? Voicing question or doubt changes not the answer. Yes. Here it is: How do I make you love me? Let me ask you first, in my wildest dreams, can you love me? Will you love me? Compassionate condonation! Mary!
Do
you love me? How do I...? How do I...? How do I make you love me...?