Alice is down in Chinatown, plotting the dramatic take-over of the East Village with Tom Scully and his scrawny girlfriend. I don't like the way Susan looks at Alice and she doesn't like the way Alice loves me. To her I'm a thug. The coke deal is back on and I'm waiting on Guadalcanal's call and he's waiting on his dealer's call. His dealer is a friend on Johnny Thunders. A junkie and like the Velvet Underground sang, "I'm just waiting for my man."
A common plaint in the East Village.
Once Guadalcanal calls I was planning on cooling off at the St. Mark's Cinema, but the temperance has fallen into the high 70s and I don't like the double-bill of two Robert Alda films; MASH and FOUR SEASONS.
My older brother Frank and his bride are down in New York for a wedding. Patty is shocked by the squalor of East Village. I've become blind to the burnt-out buildings,, the junkies, the bums, lack of trees, and the obvious atmosphere of moral depravations. Frank feels the same way as his wife having only lived in the suburbs.
"What are you going to do if Mom and Dad come to visit?" ask Frank inside my tenement apartment.
My father regularly travels to Basking Ridge NJ to meet with Bell Telephone engineers as an executive to New England Telephone.
"I'll save them from worry by meeting them in a better neighborhood."
"New York has them?" asked Patty, shutting the car window to avoid any contact with the urban blight of the Lower East Side.
Not many, but a few with good restaurants too."
Frank parked the car.
"Are we going inside?" Patty was scared.
"Yes, how bad could it be?"
"You'll see."
We climb three flights to 3E. The Lower East Side was a slum. This apartment was a wreck. Alice kept it clean, but not clean enough for suburbanites.
"Mom wouldn't like it here," interjected Frank.
"I know Nana used to say better a dump on a good street than a palace on a bad one." My Irish grandmother had only lived in Ireland as a child and Jamaica Plains. This apartment was no palace.
"Mom probably wouldn't like my living with Alice."
"I lived in sin with Patty."
"It wasn't sin."
I restrained from saying that Frank and Patty had been seeing each other when she was still married to someone in Washington.
"You have any protection?" Frank had a .38 at home.
I reached under the table.
""Just this." I held up a stiletto.
"You need something more than that."
I didn't mention Hakkim the Junkie. He was more dangerous than anyone on the South Shore.
"Alice wants a .25. She's from West Virginia. She grew up with guns."
"Always good to have something that can make a hole in someone. I don't really need my .38. You want it?"
"Want what?" Alice entered the apartment in her waitress drag. She had met Frank and Patty up in Boston. My brother had joked how she didn't shave under her arms or her legs. I hadn't like that comment and never mentioned it to Alice.
"A gun," answered Frank.
He has a .38. I told him it was too big."
"I could handle a .38 just fine." Alice sat next to me. She smelled of yogurt from the yogurt shop.
"Most weapons are used against someone you know. What if you shot Peter in a squabble?"
Just because I'm from West Virginia doesn't mean that we go around killing lovers. Heck, your home town Pittsburg is tougher than any Appalachian hollow." Alice was proud of her mountains and people there.
"Alice doesn't have much of a temper."
"Well, if you want it, it's yours. Just come up and get it."
"Okay."
We ended that subject, but the main reason I didn't want a gun was that I might actually use it and in the East Village I would run out of bullets before reaching the end of the hit list. Better I had an AK-47 and a pile of banana clips. A machine gun might make a difference on the Lower East Side. It certainly would take care of Hakkim.
AUGUST 20, 2021 - BROOKLYN
I still speak with Alice in LA, although I have bothered to tell her about my cancer. If fact I haven't told that many people to avoid my condition being the only topic on the menu. I just left NYU Hospital after a Co-vids Test prior to next week's procedure. It's a long walk to the Lex Avenue and I decided to travel over to Brooklyn via the East River Ferry under gray skies. I spoke with a Hassidic father of many. Like me all that mattered in life were his children and the Torah. I don't tell him about my plans to write the TORAH II. It's on the back burner. After getting off the ferry I sat under the Brooklyn Bridge. My body has run out of energy. I haven't had a drink in three weeks. Dakota told me if takes about two month to shake the withdrawal symptoms. Thankfully I don't have DTs or sweats or any desire to drink. Not yet and hopefully never.
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Much more to come.
