Christopher Green
What Could Go Wrong on a Night Like This
“But Iggy fucking hates you!”
“He takes my girl and Iggy fucking hates me? What’s wrong with this picture Ralphie?”
I take a long look over at the boy and shake my head and then toss a big charming smile right at him. I think that was the first time I ever heard him say Fuck. He looks back at me like I was some kind of mook, a regular bohunk. I should just pop him one for being such an asshole but hey, it’s closing in on Saturday night and the street’s full of excitement as it is. So instead, I stop right there, right in the middle of the sidewalk out front of Stinalski’s Sweet Shop so that everyone has to step around us and say to him “Sometime, Ralphie, sometimes you make me wish we weren’t cousins.”
“We ain’t.” he says.
“You gonna let that stand between you and me and a good time? Come on, we’re second cousins twice removed.” I give him a little finger flick that makes him flinch. “Besides that, I know and you know of Iggy’s unwarranted hatred of me, but does his parents? I think not. And tonight, that’s the important fact.” I turn around and do my little grooming thing in what was left of the mirror that hung on the other side the Sweet Shop’s dingy front window. Jeez, who would go in there for anything to eat with that window being so freaking filthy?
“Ah,” he waves his hand at me like some kinda Stella Baba and starts to walk away from me, but I knew I had him hooked, I knew we was gonna walk right into that Polish Club like we was first on the invitation list and that we was gonna have us a real good time.
I and Ralphie had both just graduated high school, we was out of Benedictine for good as of yesterday. To top it off, the fighting was almost over in Germany and that rat bastard Hitler got just what he deserved. They was just mopping up now, that’s what General George Patton said. We seen it on the newsreels just this morning, over at the RKO on 55th. The US Army was just about to sweep over the whole fuckin’ country and there was a whole lot of Pollacks from the neighborhood, including my uncle, kicking those Nazi bastards from the Rhine all the way to Berlin. So everyone who knew someone over there, which was probably the whole god damn theater, started hootin’ and hollerin’ like they all hit the number.
I ask you, what could go wrong with such a day? I wave at Ralphie as he sulks home, crossing Fleet Ave. and heading up and over toward East 55th quickly disappearing around the corner where Our Lady of Chiztahova kept a decidedly mournful, Catholic eye on the whole freaking’ neighborhood. It was like she was sad every time one of us made a sin. Oh and she knew. She knew.
“Let him light a candle. He needs to just go and light a god damn candle,” I mutter to no one in particular.
I just know it’s gonna to be a glorious night. I wasn’t gonna let some sanctimonious sourpuss ruin my night. Iggy and Angie were getting married and I was going to have a great time no matter what Ralphie has to say about it. Not that I don’t have a few surprises up my sleeve, but that’ll come later, after I take care of business.
For now, I’m left alone out on Fleet Ave., leaning against the building next to the Sweet Shop, lighting up a Lucky. On the other side of the street was Linka’s Beauty Parlor where it seemed like all the women from the neighborhood were out getting dolled up for the first official Saturday night of the summer.
I have to admit the mood of the neighborhood had changed for the better ever since the boys broke out of Belgium in the spring but this is the first time I seen the Stella Baba’s lined up outside of Linka’s. Not that they were all old ladies crammed in the hairdressers. I seen Millie, one of the girls Angie had as a maid, in the back of the shop under one of them new electric hair dryers getting herself a touch up before the party tonight. Since I was on the other side of the street, I seen all this through the buses and the trucks that were whizzing by like there was no more gas rationing or something, trying, just like me, to get the day over with and get home and get all gussied up for what was promising to be a magnificent Saturday night.
Really, I was just kinda catching my breath before going home and getting myself all dolled up for the night when you know who turns the corner all dressed up in her wedding gown and surrounded by five or six of the girls from Our Lady. She acts like she doesn’t even see that I’m there. Boy that hurt, and then that little shrew Elizabeth Jawolski sticks her tongue out at me on the sly, so no one else can see. So I give her the V sign ‘cause of the almost victory over there in Europe and then I lick the inside like I was hoping to do her sometime and she just screams and says “Eww!”
I wink at her and she turned all red and blustery and flips me the fist like she was born over there on Mayfield, in Little Italy, not here with the rest of us Pollacks. So much for that shrew Elizabeth pairing up with my cousin Ralphie tonight. The minute she sees us walking in together, it’s lights out for Ralphie. To me, no great loss, but to Ralphie… Well that boy has been after Elizabeth since first grade. What a sap he can be. If she ever says yes, Ralphie’s life is over, plain and simple. She’ll be pulling him around by his balls so hard his grandkids will feel it.
Well, I gotta make my rounds. Big AL wants to make sure I pick up today’s numbers haul before the night officially begins. It did him no good if I ran them late and it really did me no good if the chits and the coin came in late. We had what I liked to call a symbiotic relationship. That’s why me and Big Al are in this “partnership” as he calls it, our little business relationship. We both know the score. The guy before me was late once too often and well, let’s just says he ain’t playing baseball this summer. That’s enough incentive for me. I ain’t no mook.
Anyways, I think it’s gonna to be a good night for Big Al, and so it was going to be a good night for me. I was going to be putting some money in my pocket later on, so I started to whistle like I was Doris Day and set off to make them late afternoon rounds.
Of course Ralphie shows his mug a half hour early, all wound up tighter than Sister Donna Even Thinkaboutit’s coochie, fretting and worrying about everything like always. All the time I keep telling him to relax and just let life have a chance to happen. And he looks at me like I was some kind of Nazi or Jap or something.
At least he’s starting to care a little more about how he looks. I can tell because his hair smells like shit. That’s a sure sign that someone who never ever once let a comb touch his head suddenly discovers, like he was Magellan or something, that personal grooming ain’t such a bad idea. It’s probably that blue shit Wendell, the second seat barber over at Kowalski’s, uses all the time. Jeez, you can smell that shit from the street.
“Buddy boy,” I says as I walk down the steps, tightening up my tie. “You need to go a little less heavy on the … what ever it is you slopped on your hair tonight. You want the girls to notice, but you doesn’t have to smack them on the kisser with some god awful smell.”
He looks up at me like a wounded animal.
“Okay Mr. Perry Como,” he rebuts, “When was the last time you got laid?”
I put my pinky up in the air like that prissy music teacher use to do and sway down the rest of the stairs and say in as snotty a voice as I can muster on such short notice, “A gentleman never tells.”
He greets me with a sock to the side and I counter with a light tap to his chin and he grabs me doing the old ropa dope and so I muss up his hair and he stops.
“Hey. What’d you have to go and do that for,” he spits out as I release the hold I have on him.
“Your own good, Ralphie my boy, your own good.”
“Call me Ralph. I ain’t a kid no more. Call me Ralph.”
I was shocked, so I stand back and admire the lad, but for just a moment, and realized that the boy has some moxie after all. Who would have figured? Well, enough discovery for tonight, the night ain’t getting any younger.
“Sure, sure thing kiddo, from now on it’s Ralph.” I toss him one of my trademark winks.
We both stop in at the mirror my mom strategically placed right by the front door so we could both get one more look at ourselves before we left the house. Not that I needed it. I let Ralphie, I mean Ralph, sorry, it’s going to take some time, take the first shot at getting himself groomed all nice like. When he’s done combing his hair back into place, I take a quick gander at my puss.
“We best be getting on, I think I see a flaw.”
Ralphie, Ralph looks at me and gives me the how do you do and off we go, ready to have at it with the first Saturday night of a Nazi free summer.
“First things first, I gotta grab up Big Al’s package and make the drop or he’ll get seriously nervous like and no one wants to see Big Al nervous like that if they can help it.”
Ralph, it’s going to take a while to get use to that, just nods and follows me back to the alley where I had stashed the goods like there was nothing out of the ordinary about suddenly being appointed my junior bagman.
Big Al was all mobbed up. He was rumored to have run with Al Capone in Chicago back when it was illegal to take a drink. I don’t know if any of that is true, but I do know he has the gorillas to make whatever he says is true, true. Like I told you before, they busted up the last guy who had my route pretty bad so I watch my P’s and Q’s, if you know what I mean.
Anyway, it’s all a piece of cake. I know all the drops and the guys behind the counter know me and they all treat me good. I drop off the chits in the morning, people fill them out, I pick them up in the late afternoon along with the money and drop it all off over at Big Al’s joint called, you guessed it, Big Al’s. It’s off of Broadway, right across from my uncle’s bar, the Hi Fi.
At this point one might wonder what’s an Eye Talian doing running numbers in a Pollack neighborhood? One might wonder if there wasn’t a Pollack somewhere’s with enough gumbtion to run a numbers racket? But you see, Big Al had his feet in both worlds, one might say, being that his momma was a Pollack like all of us around here, except for the occasional BoHunk or some Slovenian or something, and his dad was straight off the boat from Italy, a real meatball. They say he ran with Mussolini before he was Mussolini. I guess that mob shit runs in the family. Hey, to each his own I always say.
About my uncle, it’s a sad business. He had to close it down, the Hi Fi, when he shipped out overseas. Just didn’t trust anyone to mind his business. Not even my dad, his big brother, who already had his hands full anyways over at Republic Steel. They say some of his regulars still go by to shake the door handle every now and then just to see if somehow Sam came back in the middle of the night and took his place back behind the bar. Fought in the Battle of the Bulge, my uncle did, got himself a purple heart to boot. Well, it’s gonna be interesting to see if Big Al takes kindly to renewed competition from my uncle when he gets back home. But that ain’t my problem just yet. I’m sure it’ll be a little sticky for me, but hey, live for today, right?
This would be the perfect time, you know, to let you know a little something about my disposition, the way I look at life, so to speak. You see, I look at life like a series of events that may be connected and then again may not be. You never really know about things like that. Sure you could spend a lot of time grousing about it, but in the end, what good does that do you?
If I was talking to you face to face right now, I’d make the sign of the cross, like a babushka wearing Baba warding off the evil spirits or whatever, just to emphasis and to make you see I was real serious like. You gotta believe me now; I ain’t saying nothin’ bad about the church and all. I’m just saying. Since we ain’t yakking face to face and you’re reading this, you’ll just have to take my word on all this.
So anyways, I take life as it comes. Never get too excited and never get too upset, I always say. So that would be my creed, I guess. Never let things bother you, especially the little crap. Or at the very least, never look like a mook and get all fussy about shit because all you gotta do is wait for a minute or two and something else will come by and change everything. And if you get all upset and distracted, well, you might just miss that one golden moment, that one great opportunity as it comes waltzing right at you. But because you’re too damn preoccupied getting all fussy, usually about shit you ain’t even got any control of in the first place, you just up and miss everything. And if there is one thing I learned from watching the moms and dads and wives in this neighborhood putting up one of them gold stars in a window each time a father or a husband or a son got himself killed in the war, life can be cut down, just like that. And then, what’ve you got.
Like Ralph getting all excited about Iggy hating me. Don’t get me wrong, it’s good to get upset now and then, you gotta let off some steam or you could just explode or something. But that’s what dames are for, to go dancing or watch a movie or just hang around with them now and then. They have this, them dames, this kind a calming effect on men. But you gotta be careful you don’t overdo it, get too cozy like, or they’ll reach right out and take your balls away from you and never, ever will they give them back. And that’s another reason why I am all so concerned about my cousin, Ralph. If he hooks up with that Elizabeth and doesn’t show her what’s what, well he can just kiss them balls of his good bye.
So for me, as I said before, I takes things as they come. Which is why I have this happy go lucky outlook, you see. If you’re wondering’ why I keep spouting off all that “what could go wrong” shit, well, that’s just how I look at life.
We get around to the back of the house and I see that something ain’t right. Something’s wrong about how the alley way looks. I see a loose board and then it hits me right between the eyes like a Bob Feller fastball gone wild.
“The bag’s fucking gone, Ralphie! It was right here an hour ago. I‘m dead I tell ya, I’m dead. Fuck. Big Al’s gonna bust my fucking arms. Jesus. There was like $ 35.00 in there. Where am I gonna get that kind of money? And the chits. If this gets out everyone’s gonna claim they had the number and I’ll be up to my eyeballs in shit.”
You see my mom caught me once with Big Al’s money bag in the house and she threatened to kick me right out on the street if I ever brought that evil back into her house again. So I cut out a few boards from the back of our garage on the Alley side and rigged it up so that no one really could see what I was doing, including my mother. But now. Fuck!!!!
“Calm down, Stevie. Are you sure you checked the right boards?”
I shoot him a look that would have shut him up an hour ago but now, well he just thinks this is all so funny. He told me not to get tangled up with Big Al’s business. He’s the one who took a job over at the Hardware store when Mr. Zelinski’s son, Stosh, got himself called up last year. I just ain’t made for that kinda life. I gotta be free to move around. It’s just my nature.
Now you might think that I had it coming with all that, you know hubris. Or like I think Sister Anna called it, unfettered pride. Anyway, what with all that yammering about what could go wrong I should have expected something to go wrong. Right? Sort of balance out the ticket. But all that is is just one of my trademark sayings. You know, like Captain Marvel and Shazam. It wouldn’t be a complete Stevie Jezkulski day unless someone somewheres heard me say ‘what could go wrong” at least once. Cool as a cucumber, I am. So when something dramatic like Big Al’s drop not being where I put it just an hour or so ago, well, I have a reputation, especially with Ralphie… Ralph.
So I notch up my tie closer to my neck and straighten out my sports coat to gather up my composure and turn to Ralph and say, again cool as a cucumber, “Yea, Ralph, it’s the right boards. Why else would there be any loose boards if someone hadn’t come in and grabbed up Big Al’s drop? What kinda mook do you think I am?”
“Who could a took it?” Ralph asks like he was asking for Ketchup over at the diner. I’m getting just a little curious, here.
Ralph couldn’t hold off any more. Right there in front of me he falls down to the ground, in his new $ 30.00 suit, mind you, and can’t stop laughing.
“You should a seen your face. You should a seen your face,” the boy keeps repeating. Meanwhile, I figure out right away that Ralphie had pulled a fast one on me. Only he can’t keep the gag going any longer than a minute or two cause that’s just how he is.
“All right, all right, all ready. I get it. Sweet Jesus Ralphie, at least you could a carried the gag out a little longer. I might have even broke a sweat. Now get up. Come on. Stop laughing, will you?” I reach down and give him a hand up and knock some dirt off the back of his coat.
We stop by Big Al’s after Ralphie gets the drop from the garbage can to take care of that part of the night’s business. Big Al knows I’m going to my old girlfriend’s wedding and he is just tickled pink about the whole situation.
“Don’t let some two bit broad get you in a fight you can’t win. It wouldn’t be good for my main bagman to show up with a busted up puss to collect come Monday.” He growls while barely suppressing a belly laugh.
“Gee, Big Al, you’re all heart. All heart, I tell ya.”
“Bring that mangy cousin of yours in and have yourselves a few beers on me. I see someone’s over there inside your uncle’s joint.” Big Al walks and kind of waddles back toward his office with my bag under his shoulder. They don’t call him Big Al for nothing. “Set ‘em up, Wayne. But don’t let ‘em get too sauced. I don’t want nobody seeing a couple of pimply faced kids staggering out of my establishment. I gotta reputation to worry about, no?”
While I was in there settling up with Big Al, Ralph tells me that someone was indeed inside the Hi Fi. Looked like my Aunt Sophie cleaning off the dust, he says. Maybe she heard something from my uncle, maybe he was coming home soon. I wonder how much longer I can keep the numbers going with Big Al after it gets out my uncle’s coming home from the war. Well, like I says before, why worry until you have too, am I right or wrong here? So me and Ralph head on back in to Big Al’s to kill some time and get a start on the night.
Now the Polish Club Hall was in the basement of the Alliance of Poles building over on Broadway, close by the where the ball fields are. It’s still early, around 7:00, so it ain’t gonna get dark for a while. I don’t want to get there right at the start since we might beat the bride and we ain’t gonna get in the joint if her mother’s still hanging around at the door.
You gotta know this, if you ain’t a Pollack, that it’s a well known fact even the Stella Baba’s have a few glasses of red wine at a Polish wedding, so the later we get there, the easier it’s gonna be to mosey on in without someone raising an alarm about the bride’s ex being there. So we have to kill some time, I figure, about an hour or so, until all that nice nice at the beginning of the night is over and done with and everybody has had a few.
All we gotta do is walk in like we owned the place, stick a fin in the money box and head right over to the bar and pound down a few. And since the bar is behind the wall where the band plays, we can get in and get comfortable before any of Angie’s bridesmaids or Iggy’s boys sees me. That’s the plan.
The sun was just starting to go down as we come out of Big Al’s. It’s a big red ball tonight. The steel mill’s blast furnace is really pumping out the smoke and all the iron in the air makes the sun look so close so you feel like you can reach out and touch it. I make Ralph stop and look at the sun.
“Boy, someday soon, we ain’t gonna have the time to just stand here and take a look at the kind of sun. It makes you feel lucky to be alive, don’t it Ralphie?” My trademark optimism is shining almost as bright as the sun. “Ralph, it’s gonna be a good night.” I throw my arm around his shoulder and, almost staggering, we head back onto our side of Broadway, the Polish side.
By the time we get to the Club, the party was in full swing. You could feel the music before you was reaching for the door. They must of shelled out the bucks because they were belting out a raucous version of “Don’t Fence Me In” and they wasn’t even trying to cram it into a polka. As we start to walk down that broad staircase that reminds you of walking into Public Hall or something cause its big enough for five or six guys to walk shoulder to shoulder down, you can feel the party in your gut. Now this staircase even has a landing halfway down which is where some of the guys from Benedictine are hanging out, too scared to ask their favorite girl to dance, killing time while sucking on their Camels.
We all say hey to each other and they part like I was Moses standing before the Red Sea. One of them mutters something like this is gonna get interesting. But I just fluff it off; let it roll right off my back. I ain’t gonna let none of these losers ruin my big night.
After we get passed the boys on the landing, the party reaches out and sucks us right in. The smell of over two hundred hard dancing, hard drinking and hard eating, perfumed and sweating Pollacks crammed into a room made for about 150 is something that you really have to experience in order to fully appreciate. It’s like some kind of magic elixir. But I guess the Eye Talians or the BoHunks would be the same. It’s the food. Kraut and Kielbasa, Roast Beef, Ham, stuffed cabbage, pierogies, cabbage and noodles; all of it being cooked right there in the kitchen behind the back wall. And pastries like you wouldn’t believe. It looks like they emptied out Titski’s Bakery. Don’t forget the ten layer wedding cake. All of that mingling around the smoke filled room and coming at you in the smell of Saturday night. And it was good.
Me and Ralph walked right up to the front table where they keep the money box and slide the envelope in with just enough flair to make sure at least a couple of aunts or uncles see us pony up before we went in. Now this wasn’t unusual, crashing a wedding like this. After all, it was the main source of entertainment in the Parish. We all did this whenever there was a big wedding. You could always get in as long as you slid an envelope into the money box. But tonight, I wanted to make sure they saw me so that later, it there was any trouble, at least someone could vouch that I put that envelope in the money box.
Right away Ralph spots Elizabeth out there on the dance floor with a guy all dolled up in his rented tux. It ain’t nobody from the neighborhood but it looks as if Elizabeth is getting really comfortable with this out of town palooka. So comfortable that Ralph is swaying back and forth like some kind of animal on the prowl.
“Hold it down, Tarzan. We just got here and Jane hasn’t even picked up your scent.”
This seems to break the self imposed tension and I can see his shoulder blades relax. He shrugs and follows me into the bar. What bothers me about this whole thing is how fast Angie goes and falls all over Iggy. It’s because of her I took up with Big Al. She called me a loser and said I should join up in the Army or the Navy right outa high school. Now I’m as patriotic as the next guy, but I want to have a little fun before I go out and defend my country. Beside that, I ain’t even gonna be eighteen until next September. But miss high and mighty didn’t seem to factor that in her little laid out plan.
As soon as I’m out of the picture, along comes Iggy, like five days after I tell her we’re yesterday’s news. Iggy signed up real quick after he takes up with Angie and is headed for basic training at the end of June. That’s why they got married so quick after graduation. Personally, I think she wants to play the martyr, have someone to pine over. She’s always been so dramatic. It’s gotta be that cause Iggy didn’t get anywhere with her. How do I know this? Well, if I didn’t get anywhere with Angie, no one could. I rest my case. And if he got married just so he could have a crack at her, then he’s a bigger fool than I figured.
But tonight, my plan is to dance with Angie one more time just to show her what she is gonna miss. Well, that and to get a little drunk and have some fun watching Ralphie here watch Elizabeth. But that is it. My fighting days are over. Let the mooks fight it out. I prefer to stand and watch and consol the girls after their boyfriends get themselves pummeled.
After about an hour of developing deep new friendships with the out of town boys hanging out in the Polish Clubs bar throwing back all the free liquor we could handle, swapping dirty stories and singing dirty songs, Ralphie points out they was just about ready to start with the dollar dance. I tell Ralph he could probably get a dance with Elizabeth, but she would charge him two bucks. He tells me to shut up and I tell him to shut up and before we know it we was almost on the edge of the dance floor yammering back and forth like a couple of, you guessed it, Stella Babas.
Now the surprising thing in this whole escapade is that neither Angie nor Iggy know we was there yet so we still hung out in the back, you know, behind a few of the widowed aunts. By now everyone’s eaten their fill so the guys start lining up to dance with the bride while Iggy has planted himself over by the stage, watching with a scowl as he tosses back more than a few shots of whiskey. He looks like he wants no part of all those guys with their mitts pawing on his woman. Woman, yesterday she was just a girl and now she’s a woman.
The band is getting ready and starts the dollar dancing off with a real crisp version of the biggest Polka of all; In Heaven There is no Beer. Everyone goes nuts and the dance floor is jumping. It’s a good thing this hall is in the basement. By the looks of things, those two are gonna to go home and throw all that money on the bed and roll around in all the dough they rake in from the dollar dancing. At least that was what I’d do. So what’s got Iggy all up and in it.
I get in line and make sure I still got a buck in my pocket while Ralph starts to focus in more and more on Elizabeth. Now she is still out there making a show with that handsome out of town relative of Iggy’s. Ralph has got himself a snoot full and I’m getting a little drunk myself, just like everyone else in that steaming room. By now, there are so many guys waiting in line that no one’s gonna get more than one twirl around the floor with the beaming bride.
And then he spots me.
I’m only five, six guys from the front of the line when all of a sudden, Iggy starts coming at me like Joe Louis after Max Schmeling. Me, I stand there, cool as the cucumber in the salad, hitch up my tie and take the fighting stance without raising my mitts. Now Angie spots me and boy does she look steamed, her neck is getting red and that ain’t a good thing at all. But you know what, she doesn’t break her smile nor does she take her eyes off, except for that moment when she sees me, the guy who just tossed down a hard earned buck to dance with her. But Iggy? Well he keeps charging and all the guys around me fall away and so he has a clear shot right at me. I just know that all amateur odds makers in that hall are laying off money on who is gonna win the impending tussle, me or Iggy. It’s what Pollack’s do. Bet on everything.
Now I’m standing there all calm and collected like Robert Mitchum would and Iggy, well he just has one thing on his mind; bashing in my mug. It looks like I’m gonna have to break my rule and fight ‘cause I can’t let Iggy pop me. It would be, as Big AL would put it, bad for business. Turns out Iggy is drunker than anyone else so he don’t even stop but takes a swing. I duck down and so he hits nothing but air. Of course he tumbles down like the Walls of Jericho and bam, everything stops.
Nah it wasn’t the sound of Iggy hitting floor. It was the sound of the two wide doors at the other end of the hall being thrown open like a tornado hit ‘em. In comes this dame with her belly out to here. We didn’t need Sister Mary Francine to tell us that one was with child. Well she locked onto Iggy and the grounded groom was trapped, sitting on the floor in his rented tux stunned and speechless. All he could get out was a weak Fiona.
Oh yea, we all said to ourselves as we stood around gaping at the unfolding scene, it’s her come back. Fiona McAllister, the half Irish half Polish girl who moved out of the neighborhood back when we was in sixth grade. Right behind her was her two meaty brothers, a cousin or two and of course, old man McAllister with his belt in his hand. They was ready to fight and everyone knew it.
This is the time in a Polish Wedding where all hell should be breaking loose. It was expected. But this? Nothing could top a very pregnant girl bursting into a wedding and all but claiming the groom was the daddy. Well my friends, that beats them all.
Iggy is backward crab legging it as fast as his suddenly sober arms can take him. Angie, well the rest of her face had caught up with her neck and in another time at another place, all of the boys would be placing bets as to when her head would explode. The crowd was looking at Iggy, then at Fiona then back at Iggy.
“I can explain” mutters Iggy over and over again. But there ain’t no one in that hall gonna listen. That crowd was definitely on Fiona’s side even if she was half a Mick.
Meanwhile, I see, outa the corner of my eye, Elizabeth all wrapped up and in on Ralph like they was a Michelangelo statue or something, dancing as if the band was playing Sinatra even though the music has stopped dead. In her hand I see two bucks and I smile to myself before I turn back to the main event; the down fall of Iggy.
By this time Angie has stormed out of the room followed by all her maids, well, except for Elizabeth, and her mother. Fiona and her clan have Iggy backed in the corner by the kitchen and from the looks of things, they ain’t gonna let the boy out until he comes clean about that bundle of joy Fiona’s got growing inside.
Elizabeth and Ralph break out of their clutch and I can see they are walking hand in hand right at me. All of a sudden Elizabeth stops and gives me an uppercut I ain’t expecting. She busts me square on the jaw. Down I go like a sack of potatoes. Damn, that girl has got some pop in her punch. Ralph better learn to watch out for that right hook.
“What did you have to go and do that for?” I spit out with some blood along for the ride.
“That’s for all the shit you’ve given Ralphie over the years.” She’s in command now, shoving them two bucks down in her bra like she was Mae West’s little sister. “Come on Ralphie, you’re gonna walk me home.” Ralphie, she gets to call him Ralphie. I just sit there on the dance floor, flabbergasted, and watch her take Ralph off to wherever they was going. He turns around with a shit eating grin on his face, hunches his shoulders up like he’s saying what and gives me a really big wink.
One of the boys from the landing comes over and gives me a hand up. All I could say was, “What could go wrong on such a night?”