Unfinished Lives

By Mike Antonaccio

Tony Allante grows up in the citys poolrooms, learning the language and behavior that make him cool and one of the guys. Mixing with his friends, he is able to become one of them while hiding the fear of having to fight to protect himself, the fear of knowing hes a chicken. As he completes high school and enters college, his desires for moving up sociallymarrying the right kind of girl, becoming a physician, earning enormous sums of money, moving out of the neighborhoodmake him realize that he must forsake his unsophisticated boyhood friends and blighted neighborhood, without getting hurt in the process. But not before he gets what he wants from them.

Tony and his friends found The Phillipo Athletic and Social Club which is, in reality, an excuse for legally establishing a place to sell liquor and attract women. It is wildly successful, the club being filled every weekend with the loud, driving beat of their music, young women with the easy sexual mores of the late 60s, heavy drinking that seems a part of most young people growing up, and a desire to have a good time while the getting is good. Tony takes full advantage of the situation, drinking with the best of them and making it with as many women as he could during the summer before he goes off to college again to pursue his goal of becoming a physician and, ultimately, breaking his relationships with his past.

But Tonys goals are confused after he meets Jill, a beautiful young woman who, though she doesnt meet his standards for the wife hed planned, tests Tonys blueprint and decisions for his future. Unwillingly and unwittingly, Tony finds himself falling hard and fast for Jill and even throws over Joanne for her, an act which has serious and unanticipated consequencesincluding murder and his being an unwitting causative factor in her own and a friends death.

Tonys life doesnt work out the way hed planned. He doesnt marry the girl of his dreams, doesnt become wealthy, is unhappy in his work, and then, after 17 years, Jill calls him from out of the blue.

What does it all mean for Tony? What should he do? What will he do? Is this a chance to redeem himself and his mediocre life?

This is a story of young men and their women, healthy and full of life and its promises, of youthful sex and dreams, of the excesses committed while growing up and, finally, of how being untrue to yourself and others can ruin lives.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Apr 4, 2001
• ISBN: 9781462833344

Mike Antonaccio

Mike Antonaccio was born in 1943 in Yonkers, NY of immigrant Italian parents where he attended public schools up through Yonkers High School. He selected Duquesne University for his undergraduate studies where he received his B.S. in Pharmacy in 1966. He went on to the University of Michigan, receiving his Ph.D. in Pharmacology in 1970. He has worked for both large and small pharmaceutical companies, including Schering-Plough, Bristol-Myers Squibb and Human Genome Sciences. He was both an active researcher with over 250 published scientific papers and abstracts, as well as an executive officer in several companies, including Senior Vice President and Chief Scientific Officer, having broad experience in drug discovery, clinical research, new drug project management and regulatory affairs with the Food and Drug Administration. Married to Patty Antonaccio, he currently resides in New Hope, PA.

Book preview

1

An 18-wheel semi passed him on the left and pulled in a bit too soon to be safe, especially since traffic was heavy, as usual, and there was little room for maneuvering, for error. Normally, he would have shaken his fist and cursed and blown his horn, making a general spectacle of himself but he was driving on reflex now, and noticed very little. He hit the brakes instinctively and let the semi in. But today he didn’t even see it or smell it, didn’t even notice it, didn’t even care.

The first telephone call was imbedded in his brain and hardened into permanent memory, constantly being recalled to be played again and again. It was too improbable even for his imagination to have thought of in his wildest fantasies. After 17 years, a simple Tony, is that really you? cracked his memory open and dumped him back in that instant to where he had left his life in the summer of 1965, a time he had thought to be erased for all intents and purposes, every thing that had happened during that period of his life having been relegated to the memory dustbin, but now in that telephone instant, once again alive in all its inchoate power. What surprised him most, in retrospect, was the intensity of emotions, as if no time had passed, as if no other experiences had been lived, as if time had passed but his life had not been part of the passing, coccooned, hibernating, waiting just for this very call to awaken it and allow it to begin again. It wasn’t a jogging of memory; it became a total replay of everything since that time.

His reason told him that she would have aged just as he had, that 17 years had actually passed for both of them. But in his memory, she was exactly as he knew her then: not tall but tall-looking with perfectly formed legs and a poise that always reminded him of a fine and healthy animal, the corny but apt thoroughbred simile, smallish breasts but round and taut and smooth to the touch, piles of black hair that had a natural curl which wreathed what, at the time, was the most magnetically beautiful face he had known, and almost certainly since. And it was she that made him realize just how powerfully sexy an ass could be. The roundness of it, the tautness of the muscles, the smoothness of the skin, high and tight and with an understatement of movement that made men smile, even if they couldn’t verbalize why.

But the two features that caused him a sharp little pain in his chest, a catch in his breath, and an awakening twinge between his legs were her eyes and her laugh. Black-haired women with blue eyes were always a magnet to him but hers went beyond that. The eyes were more than just blue; they were a slice of sunny May sky, the color, Tony smiled, of Johnny Desidario’s 1964 GTO. Magnets are what he had found them, something wonderful and almost terrible on their own, and yet, lucky for him, he thought, she didn’t realize the power in those eyes of hers. Surrounded with that raven black hair that was thick and full and fell to her shoulders in a natural flip, her face was made perfect to him by a small, straight nose that was so different from those he was so used to seeing. Add a laugh that was deep and throaty, just short of masculine, hard and real with a sexiness that came from the guileless-ness of what power was in it, and he was lost to her. He had been lost to her right from the very beginning when they first met.

That’s how he remembered her best, from that initial impression and those good early days.

Their first meeting didn’t seem improbable at the time. There were plenty of women who came to the club in those days. Plenty of good-looking women too. The club was a wild success in every way, a success beyond anyone’s wildest speculation. There were a few clubs around in the early sixties and they had been around a long time. They had been started by Italian immigrant men who needed a place to go to get away from the confines of home, family and the dreariness of their work, to smoke, to drink, to play a little poker, to talk sports, to drink espresso, to look at the women walking by; in short, to escape, to be young and unattached again with a future full of hope. But the new, young first generation of Italian-Americans wanted to expand the original unspoken but understood charter of the clubs to include women, not exclude them. They needed a place where they could meet women on their own turf and terms, and they needed to be able to do it cheaply. So the original Social and Athletic Clubs of the older men gradually gave way to the drinking and dancing clubs of their male offspring in the sixties.

And what extraordinary clubs they were. It really was quite simple in concept. A bunch of guys got enough seed money together to charter the club with the state. Formally, for legal purposes, it was incorporated as the usual Social and Athletic club. This allowed the club to sell alcoholic beverages to members and guests and keep the profit for use by the club. Once a place was rented, the rest was easy. Any ground floor apartment would do for a start but since everyone drank themselves into a stupor almost every night, the profits came quickly and furiously enough to actually buy a small building in the neighborhood and convert it to a real club; in this case, the, Phillipo Social and Athletic Club. Phillipo had been a neighborhood kid who developed brain cancer when he was a sophomore in high school, had slowly vegetated until he ultimately was obliged to leave school in his senior year and then quietly died alone in his parents’ apartment the following year, largely forgotten by his former friends. One night in a maudlin drunken state, Dante DeLuca had recalled a pleasant but not particularly memorable day at the shore with Bobby Phillipo and the club was permanently named after him since no one could think of a better name anyway.

When the members found themselves a building to buy after leaving the original apartment that served as their first club, much to the relief and joy of the other apartment dwellers, things moved quickly. Many of the members were carpenters, electricians and masons so the renovation of the new club went quickly and cheaply since no one even considered charging for their time and efforts. Having established a place to come on a regular basis, the original club members found themselves besieged with guests, many of whom turned out to be gorgeous girls who, in turn, having heard of the free drinks, good times and good looking guys attracted still more of the same.

Tony had been in on it all, right from the start. He used to hang out at Andy’s pool room with the guys and that had been fun, even though they had been pulled in by the cops once or twice for gambling, but that had been mostly for show and no one took any particular note. The pool room was located on a small street that connected two larger and busy streets that housed several types of small businesses with storefronts, which were, in turn, the bottom floors of tenement buildings, including two bakeries, two delicatessens, a butcher shop, a laundromat and three bars. It was obvious by simply looking at these establishments that, while they performed important and necessary functions for the people who lived in the neighborhood, none of the storeowners was getting rich. Andy’s storefront didn’t even have a sign anywhere to inform passersby what might be behind the two dirty windows covered by two even dirtier curtains in front of the store. The pool room itself consisted of a single pool table in the front room and two large card tables in the back room. The two rooms were separated by a partition with a door. In the front room, when nothing was happening in the back, Andy could always be found behind a glass counter that contained nothing in it but a few bags of Planters peanuts. These and a bottle of Yoo-hoo or Coke located in a small, thoroughly grimy, at one time white, refrigerator in a corner by the counter, the only two beverages that Andy carried, were often the lunches of several of the regulars who hung out at the pool room. This was a result of it being only two blocks from the high school which they all attended and which let them out for lunch during the week. Naturally, the regulars inevitably chose to spend their lunch hour playing a couple of games of pool or a few hands of poker, even if it meant that lunch would consist of a soft drink and peanuts that day. No one ever complained or suggested to Andy that he might consider expanding his food and beverage choices beyond the meager offerings he currently had simply because that’s the way things had been since anyone could remember and no one even thought to change them. Besides, one chose one’s words carefully when speaking to Andy. He seemed to be in a perpetually bad mood, broken only by outbursts of the most vile cursing anyone had heard anywhere, admired for its novelty and vehemence. In addition, Andy was a big man, though clearly beginning to decline physically in the unforgiving eyes of teenaged boys. He was somewhere around fifty years of age, over six feet tall, somewhere around 250 pounds, a large, still heavily muscled chest pressing against the ubiquitous checkered flannel shirt he always wore, with short arms but well-developed biceps clearly demarcated through the sleeves of his shirt. He was going to flab now, several folds of it hanging over his belt but everyone who spent any time in the pool room was well aware of the power still remaining in that body. Andy had a quick temper as well as a curmudgeonly attitude but had learned to vent his anger relatively safely, after spending some hard time for assault charges, by punching the teenagers who got on his wrong side on the arms and legs. These punches were checked as much as possible by Andy but they still left young arms and legs painfully immobile for hours with subsequent black and blue bruises that were hard to explain to parents who didn’t want their children hanging around the pool room to begin with.

The interior of the place was dreary, the walls having been painted a two-tone green, almost black on the bottom half of the walls and a deep forest green on the top. It was an enamel paint that should have caught and reflected any light in the room but years of unwashed grime from the smoke thousands of cigarettes and total neglect of cleaning had completely dimmed any shining possibilities of the walls or ceilings. The front room was large enough to hold comfortably a single pool table that was constantly in use. Although obviously very old, the table was kept in top-notch condition since it was a matter of local pride that some of the best pool players in the city hung out at Andy’s. An uneven table with a tilt or a ripped and tattered felt cloth would simply be unacceptable to anyone with any interest at all in playing real pool. The only light in the front room consisted of the large fluorescent lamp directly over the pool table which provided excellent visibility for anyone playing the game but threw only uneven reflections of light interspersed with the moving shadows of the players beyond the table itself. Thick smoke from cigarettes and the occasional cigar formed a constant, slowly moving, moebius layer just below the fluorescent lamp, kept in motion by the slow, precise movements of the players. Tony felt a sense of poetry in the click-clacking of the balls, the quiet pride and confidence of the better players, the graceful bending of muscled backs as they sighted their next shot with squinted eyes from the cigarette dangling from parted lips.

The back room of the pool room with its two large tables was used for card game gambling of all sorts, depending on the time of day and the day of the week. During the daytime of weekdays, the card games consisted primarily of progressive gin since there seldom were sufficient guys around, or sufficient money that guys might have, to justify a game of poker. The stakes were, as a consequence, usually low and provided only a passing interest in winning for the sake of money alone. It was a pleasant way to spend a languid afternoon. During the weekends, and especially weekend nights, some serious poker games were held at both tables. One table usually had the higher stake of a dollar and two, which meant that mostly adults played and came to the pool room only for the card game, although some of the younger guys would sometimes nervously join the game at some point to try their luck. The other table was used for the lower stake game of quarter and a half which attracted only the younger guys of the group. The games were where Andy made most of his money, taking a small share of each pot as a fee for the use of his tables and rooms. He was a surprisingly unobtrusive figure for his size, moving only infrequently to reach for his share of the pots but otherwise standing Buddha-like at the edge of the sitting players, careful to keep his large shadow from covering any of the card action.

The lighting in the back room was even worse than that in the pool room, consisting only of single bare bulbs covered by a battered, circular metal reflector over each table. The ubiquitous heavy cigarette smoke was even heavier here when the poker game was on, given the concentration of players over a single area. Although the card games were clearly illegal and known to everyone in the neighborhood, no one could remember Andy having been busted for them. It was an accepted part of the neighborhood life which caused no trouble and allowed people some enjoyment so the cops looked the other way.

The crowd in the pool room was young, consisting largely of teenage kids from the immediate and surrounding tenements of the neighborhood but also attracting some of the better pool players in the city who had heard of the proficiency of some of the players at Andy’s and came to see for themselves and sometimes offer a challenge, always for money. Very seldom did any passersby stop at the pool room, for good reason. To anyone passing by, the place was clearly a hangout, maybe even a private club where strangers were not made welcome. In nice weather, the ancient metal frame chairs with their heart-shaped, twisted metal backs were brought outside to the sidewalk where the pool room regulars congregated, sitting and standing, cursing in a good natured and, to them, inoffensive manner, rough-housing, often unintentionally but effectively blocking the sidewalk from pedestrian traffic. More often than not, people crossed the street to avoid having to maneuver their way through the boisterous, and to some, threatening, crowd of youths blocking the sidewalk.

The pool room could sometimes be a cruel place, even for regulars who were not considered cool enough to be accepted as part of the crowd but who came anyway, hopelessly attracted to the comaraderie of the young men and an unbearable longing to be accepted as one of them. One of the sadder cases was Johnny Lazzo who was immediately given the pejorative rhyming nickname of Johnny Fatzo. The reason was obvious. Lazzo was only about five feet six inches tall or so but weighed almost three hundred pounds. Tony thought it was pitiful the way he tried to imitate the pool room guys, dressing in too-tight jeans with his huge belly hanging over his leather belt buckle, a cigarette always dangling from his lips. He was unmercifully teased by several of the regulars, in particular Falco Reggino, whom Tony avoided, convinced that he was pyschopathologically sadistic.

The rule of the pool table was that the winner of any eight-ball game would continue to play until he lost, the next winner continuing to play until he lost and so on. Falco was a terrific pool player, as were most of the regulars, and was having a particularly good night when it became Lazzo’s turn to play.

Falco immediately began ragging him.

Hey Fatzo! We only allow humans to play at this table, not tubs of shit. He was standing behind Lazzo who had his back toward him, trying to ignore Falco and not saying anything, looking to see what his next shot might be. Falco took his cue stick and brought it sharply up between Lazzo’s legs and continued up the crack of his ass. Lazzo jumped with pain, a look of surprise and distress on his porcine face, the usual onlookers howling with laughter. He turned quickly and angrily toward Falco who was grinning from ear to ear, a lighted cigarette held almost daintily upward between his thumb and forefinger.

What, are you pissed? You gonna do something about it, Tubby?, mocked Falco.

Lazzo seemed to remember where he was, the look of anger transmuting to a piteous plea. Why did you do that, Falco? It ain’t fucking right. I got a right to shoot without being disturbed, he whined, kneading his crotch all the while.

You got a right? You got a right?, bellowed Reggino, his malevolent smile turning into rage. Fat fucks like you got nothing. I’ll tell you what kind of right you got. You got the right to get burned, burned like this, as he brought his lit cigarette down on to Lazzo’s exposed arm. And like this, once again bringing the cigarette down, this time onto Lazzo’s neck.

Lazzo let out a yelp each time and finally managed to get out of Falco’s reach. With a pained, pathetic look on his face and rubbing his neck where he had been burned, Lazzo cried out, You know, you’re fucking sick! They ought to lock you up, you crazy bastard!, looking for all the world like he might burst into tears at any second, and walked out of the pool room down the street to wherever he lived, which no one seemed to know or care about.

The pool room crowd laughed at these antics of Reggino, but it was an uneasy laugh brought about more by the uncomfortable feeling of not knowing how to respond to such blatant sadism rather than actually wanting to laugh at what most secretly felt was cruel treatment, even if the person was as grossly fat as Lazzo. Part of it was also the understanding, or at least the hope, that if you were an accepted regular at the poolroom, then Reggino would concentrate his attention on those who weren’t. It was an uneasy relationship between Reggino and the others but one that seemed to work. Tony was to recoil in horrified surprise in later years when he learned that Falco had become a cop.

Tony hung around with an undefined but regular group of the poolroom crowd that consisted primarily of Zeke Lanotta, Halfie Lattugo and Dante DeLuca. There were others that formed a much larger nucleus of regulars but none were as close to Tony as these three. They had grown up together in the neighborhood, gone through elementary, middle and high school together and were now making their ways into adulthood, each in their own way.

Tony understood that one of the reasons he liked these particular friends was that they weren’t as physical, as tough as the rest of the crowd. He hated the idea, the knowledge that he was pretty chicken-shit when it came to fighting. It seemed that any thoughts of being in a fight with anyone caused his knees to weaken and he would have to consciously will himself to think of something else. Although he desperately wanted to be as tough as most of the other guys, he assiduously avoided any possibility of getting into a fight and was pretty good at covering his ass about it.

There had been times, though, when there were no other options and he had to deal with it, mostly situations of his own making. Like that time in high school with Mike Mariano. He still wasn’t quite sure how it all had happened, why he was standing in an open field in the park staring wildly across at Mike Marino, trying to worm his way out of having to fight, to defend himself. Mike Marino was small, maybe five feet four inches tall, very slim but wiry with the hidden strength of tightly packed coils of thin muscle strands that made him look even more dangerous than if he had been muscle bound. This is what Tony had not noticed before, had not paid any attention to before he had foolishly bragged last week in an offhanded, unnecessary manner in a show of needless bravado in front of his friends who were all claiming various levels of fighting abilities, each trying to outdo each other. The memory was clear and painful in his mind.

Yeah, well I showed his ass all about punching when he said those things about my girl, Santos bragged. Bip! Bip! Two punches in the stomach and when he doubled over, I whacked him with a monster right hand punch upside his head!, he laughed uproariously as he demonstrated to the group how he had actually knocked out Tom Mullins in the basketball court behind the school.

The rest of the group shouted their approval and waited until the noise subsided before the next one spoke up.

Hey Dante! Remember last summer when we were at Jones Beach and that big fuck came up to us making like he was Charles Atlas or something?, asked Tommy Caprese as he grunted in satisfaction with the memory. He really thought he was something with that big hairy chest, trying to show off to the girls on the beach, but we showed him what was what, right Dante? Yeah, we showed him what he was really made of!, laughed Tommy.

I made some innocent comment to one of the girls on a blanket as I passed by them to get to the water and this big gaffone takes a personal offense that I should have talked to one of the girls he was with. so he starts to come up to me, blowing his chest out and pumping up his muscles and trying to look real mean, you know?. Tommy was obviously enjoying himself as he held center stage with the rest of the group hanging on to his every word, grinning and waiting to hear how it would all come out.

Hey, you!, he goes to me. Why don’t you keep your comments to yourself. I looked at him, then at Dante who I gave the sign to get to the side of the fucker. Then I says to him, ‘Yeah, and why don’t you take that ice cream cone and shove it up in your big ass.’ Well, this guy’s eyes open up real wide and his mouth makes like a big O of surprise, cried Tommy as he doubled over, spat out a laugh and slapped his knee. Then his face gets all red and now he’s really pissed, so he throws away his ice cream cone and comes at me, all clumsy like these over-developed freaks are, you know? But me and Dante played it perfect, just as if we practiced it all the time. As this guy is coming at me and picking up steam, Dante sticks his leg out and the guy trips and starts falling right into me with this funny surprise look on his face. Just as his head is right here at my stomach level, Tommy made a cutting hand motion at his waist, indicating where the head was, I wound back real hard and hit the fucker right in the side of the head with all my might. And you know it really hurt like hell too but that fucker never moved once he hit the boardwalk . I mean he was out, right Dante?", roared Tommy once more as he stuck out the flat palm of his hand to Dante who slapped it back hard, giving him five and laughing with the rest of the bunch.

Tony recalled with a bit of nausea as he swallowed some bile at his own story that day. He had wanted very badly to be one of the guys, to have a story to tell that would make them laugh and be proud of. So he lied and made one up. He didn’t think it would hurt anyone and he certainly didn’t think it would end with him facing Mike Marino in an open field with a couple of dozen schoolmates staring at him and wondering what it was he would do now.

The story had been simple. He had claimed that he had cold-conked a guy who had given him the finger when he asked him to please move as he was trying to reach one of the girls in his homeroom class out in back.

so I was real polite and everything and this asshole gives me the finger like I said something bad about his family or something, laughed Tony nervously as he looked around at the guys to see what effect he was having. So I went up to him and asked him why he was doing that when I was only politely asking to get by him and he makes like he was going to hit me so I come up real fast with a right hook and nail him in the jaw before he even saw it coming. Man, you shoulda seen the look on his face when he was on the ground and staring back at me. I made to go after him but he moved real quick and I never got a second shot at him, Tony nodded as he finished his story triumphantly, assessing the impact.

But Al Torrino frowned and snorted at him. You’re full of shit, Tony. You couldn’t fight your way out of a wet paper bag and you know it. Who the hell do you thing you’re kidding with that story, huh?

several of the guys nodded their heads and grinned broadly at Tony, wondering what his response would be to this challenge of Torrino’s.

Tony, angry at potentially being made a fool of instead of being a hero like the rest of them, responded, What the fuck do you know, Torrino? Were you there or something? And I didn’t hear you talking about any fights you won so what are you getting on my case for?

Torrino moved menacingly closer to Tony, a sneer on his face as he asked, Oh yeah, big shot? So who was it that you hit? Probably someone we never heard of, right? Why didn’t you tell us his name? ‘Cause it never really happened, right, you little lying cocksucker?

No, you’re wrong, Al, just as you usually are, replied Tony, feeling the color rise in his face as mixtures of fear, embarrassment and anger worked together to come to a response. He instinctively sought for faces and sizes of people in his mind he could give so that he wouldn’t be found out but would satisfy the guys. He quickly thought of and eliminated several: too big, too small, too well-known. Then it came to him—Mike Marino. Small but big enough to be respectable, known to the guys but only by sight and in a different crowd and neighborhood, and, best of all, from another school so it was unlikely that the word would reach him about what he said.

I didn’t want to embarrass the guy but just to satisfy you, Torrino, I’ll give you his name: Mike Marino. so how does that grab you, smart-ass?, smirked Tony, smug in the satisfaction of having bested Torrino at something.

And the guys had nodded and been satisfied and it had ended as a pleasing day for Tony.

But Marino had heard after all, probably from that prick Torrino. And here he was, face to face with him, looking for all the world like he was ready and able to kick the shit out of Tony at he drop of a hat, certainly if he made the wrong response to his questions.

Tony’s palms were wet and slippery, the sweat curiously cool on his hands. He was conscious of his heart beating very fast and hard and he could even feel its beating in his ears: ka-THUMP, ka-THUMP, ka-THUMP, a sound he would remember with a vague, unpleasant association when, later in his adult life, he practiced medicine and listened to the nervous heartbeats of seriously ill patients.

His arms stiff at his sides and his hands rolled into fists, Marino was asking Tony,

so you kicked my ass, huh Allante? Is that what you been telling everybody? Is that what you said you can do?, squealed Marino threateningly as he edged closer to Tony. His voice was irritatingly high-pitched but there was no doubting the ferocity behind it. And that only increased Tony’s level of discomfort. Here he was face to face with a short, skinny, squealy kid surrounded by his classmates and he was actually afraid of him! Worse than that, he wanted desperately to get out of this situation and if it meant lying, he would do it to save face.

Look, Marino, I don’t know where you got your information but you got it wrong. I never said anything to anybody about me kicking anybody’s ass. Who told you that anyway?, asked Tony in a demanding but quavering tone.

So I got it wrong, huh? Does that mean that you can’t kick my ass? And does that mean that I can kick yours then, huh, you chicken fuck?, squealed Marino, edging closer towards Tony.

This wasn’t going well, thought Tony. As he thought furiously of how to get out of this rapidly-becoming-more-dangerous situation, the sweat that had begun in his palms began to form in little droplets on his forehead, to bead and then come together and run down his face. This was becoming intolerable. Tony blurted out the words in panic.

I’m not saying nothing about nothing. Look, let’s be reasonable about this, Marino. I don’t want to fight and I don’t see any reason for either of us to get hurt over something that never happened. Why don’t we just forget about it and call it even, suggested Tony, his heart pounding in his brain.

Because you’re a lying, chicken-shit bastard and if you don’t fight me, you’re lower than that dog shit over there, Marino replied as he pointed to a fresh pile of dog shit some twenty feet away. The crowd was tittering and giggling at the situation, tense and yet eager for something to happen.

Tony realized that he had to make a decision right then and there: fight or walk away; there were no alternatives, time for discussion now gone. The decision came easily to him.

I ain’t fighting nobody when there’s no good reason, said Tony as he turned away from Marino and started to walk away. There were scattered boos from the crowd.

But it was no good. To his horror, Tony felt Marino grab him by the shoulder and turn him around and, as he did so, gave him a furious punch directly into his gut which took Tony’s breath and doubled him up as he fell to the ground in a heap. There was sporadic clapping from the crowd.

Now get up and fight, you piece of shit, cried Marino over Tony, his face crimson and eager for more.

But Tony didn’t move and only moaned as he fought for air. Marino gave Tony a kick in the back, then turned and kicked a turd from the pile of dogshit on to Tony’s pants as he walked away. The crowd murmered its approval, even a few more claps following his back as they began to disperse.

Tony remained writhing on the ground for the next ten minutes, waiting for the crowd to disperse, until he was alone; nobody stayed to help him so he eventually got up off the ground by himself and made his way home. Not too bad an ending, thought Tony. I could have really gotten myself hurt. But he did, he did, only he didn’t realize it for a long time.

Zeke had been Tony’s most intimate friend, the one he shared his secrets with, expressed his desires to, got the angriest with and cursed the most at. Although Zeke had grown up in the neighborhood, his parents also Italian immigrants much like Tony’s in age and appearance, he had moved away from the neighborhood three years ago to a much more affluent area of the city. Zeke’s father had a steady job with the city that somehow involved maintenance of county parks. It was low paying work but he had somehow managed to afford to move his family out of the neighborhood and into what was considered to be the ultimate dream for the others on the block: a single family home with an attached garage and a lawn to mow. Tony got the definite feeling in talking around and hearing snippets of quiet conversation at Zeke’s house that Zeke’s father was involved in something more than his job description, something vaguely illegal, and his new house certainly strengthened that impression. But nobody minded since Mike, Zeke’s father, was a very pleasant fellow, well liked by everyone in the neighborhood, even the guys at the poolroom. He always seemed to be in a good mood and always joked or had a good word for anyone he met in the street when he took his weekly outing to the neighborhood to buy his favorite foods. Besides, the fact of the matter was that he had made his dream come true, no matter how he did it, and that meant that maybe they could too. They wished him the best.

Despite his new house and neighborhood, Zeke still hung around the poolroom, much as he did before he moved. He had a new car now, a ball-crushing ‘61 Chevy 409 that left rubber in all four gears just like the song said, but he hadn’t changed any. He was much like Tony in his feelings toward the poolroom and that probably accounted for much of their closeness. Zeke wasn’t very big, maybe five-eight or so, but, like most every other male in the neighborhood, had been weightlifting for the last four years and had a powerfully-developed torso. He had no particular health reasons for doing it but, rather, wanted badly to fit into what he felt was the coolest group in the city and that meant being visibly muscular. More than that, the poolroom had an edge of danger that excited Zeke and made him want to be a participant. There was nothing he enjoyed more than to feel part of a powerful group of guys he felt could intimidate or beat any other rivals under any circumstance. He felt untouchable and safe in the cocoon of the poolroom and its inhabitants. A graduate of the same high school as everyone else who managed to make it all the way through, he had decided against college and had, like his father and undoubtedly with his help, gotten a rather low-paying but ultimately influential city job as an inspector that would eventually pay off handsomely in future graft as he grew into the job.

Halfie Lattugo’s real name was Philip but no one who knew him called him that. Halfie was short for Half-a-man, which referred to his stature but not any other part of him. He was only five-feet, three inches tall but was also powerfully built like most all of the others in the group. He only allowed his friends to use his nickname since it was an endearment from them—though he certainly couldn’t have expressed it in such language—but which he considered an insult from anyone else. Although no one ever referred to his height if at all possible since it was such a sensitive subject with him, and although he showed no apparent irritation at his size, it seemed that he had gone to great lengths to show that he could be as tough and bad as anyone else in the gang. For example, despite his diminutive height, he had tried out for football and, to the surprise of those who didn’t know him well, had managed not only to make first-string but was also runner-up as All City linebacker. What he lacked in size, he more than made up for in tenacity and daring. It was almost comical, but somehow also thrilling, to see him not quite lost in the crowd of overgrown football players on the playing field, often chasing down and throwing himself into the tackle of some of the best players in the league. If Halfie had set out to make a point, he succeeded. No one who knew him dared to make a joke about his height, either deliberately or in jest.

One time in the summer after high school, everyone who wasn’t playing pool was sitting outside of the poolroom bullshitting and clowning around. It was a warm sunday evening and the chairs had been moved out to the sidewalk. Those who were fast enough to grab them first sat backwards, their arms resting on the backs of the metal framework. The others found comfort on anything that was available including parked cars and stoops. As often happened on sundays, several players from another poolroom across town had driven to Andy’s to see just how good these guys were and challenge them to a game of sixty four. The mood was challengingly friendly as the game rules were outlined and players introduced. As Halfie was introduced, one of the visiting players half-joked, Hey, that’s a real accurate name. Where’s your other half?. As he turned, laughing, to the rest of his friends who were sharing his joke, Halfie spun him around and caught him with a hard right swing that sent him flying across the small bay area of the front window and through the glass itself. The visitor came crashing down onto the sidewalk, thousands of shards of glass falling on and around him and several of the guys in the immediate area.

General pandemonium broke out for a moment as everyone scrambled to escape the flying body and surrounding glass that accompanied it. Curses and shouts flew along with everything else as they reflexly turned and ran from the potential danger. As the body hit and quickly righted itself, everyone slowly realized what had happened and that only pride and nothing else had been wounded, there was a great deal of laughing, shouting and cursing as everyone congratulated Halfie on his punch.

Hey, not a bad shot for half a man!, cried Reggino who always enjoyed a little brutality.

Yeah, you must have been saving up for that for a long time, you sneaky little shit!, chimed in Johnny Giovanni with a grin on his face.

Even the challengers eventually joined in with the laughter once they determined that their friend hadn’t been seriously injured and learned why the punch had been thrown in the first place. The only one who seemed truly angry was Andy who was almost apoplectic as he cursed the sons-of-bitches who would have to pay every penny for the damage as he angrily swept up the broken glass and damned the day that brought him to this country.

Dante DeLuca was a very simple person and Tony often wondered what he found so appealing about him. He was the physical opposite of Halfie, a large bear of a person still not fully grown. Tony concluded that Dante’s charm lay in two aspects of his character: his easy-going personality and his gentleness that seemed so incongruous in such a large body. He had a fast, warm smile and was eager to please. Tony had never seen him in an angry mood nor had he ever seen or heard of him hurting anyone, despite his obvious capacity to do so. He was a bit of a clown at times, often using his weight and strength to play at will with anyone he chose to.

Tony was also drawn as, it seemed, were so many women to Dante’s amiable good looks. He was tall and big-boned but fluid and almost feminine in his movements, not a bit clumsy as his size might have suggested. Piles of thick, wavy black hair were combed straight back almost into a D.A., revealing a high, smooth forehead. Dark, almost black, eyes laughed over one of the straighter noses in the group, and surprisingly smallish teeth filled his almost perpetual smile. He was a real live Teddy bear that Tony had grown up and shared most everything with, a warm, comfortable presence he could emotionally snuggle up to.

Tony, Zeke, Halfie and Dante were friends before the club formed and during its heyday but, as often happens with male relationships, their friendship would not go far beyond that. Tony and Zeke would continue their close relationship after the club formed but Halfie would never join. Whether he was embarrassed about his height which would have been in stark contrast to both the other guys as well as the women who would become regulars at the club was never determined since no one would dare ask him. He was always a regular in the neighborhood, working with the bookies who frequented his father’s bar but he eventually lost the close relationship and contacts with his former friends.

still, Tony enjoyed going to the pool room. It was a rough, unrefined place but the crowd was sincere and open. You could say whatever you wanted, no matter how gross or cruel, and no one minded as long as you were able to get as well as you gave. Tony actually enjoyed the game of pool and became one of the better players. His parents hated the pool room and forbade Tony from going, especially when he had money in his pockets, since they knew from experience that he would most likely lose it in one of the card games being played at all times. Tony had gotten into several arguments with his mother about his going to the pool room—his father never seemed to care where he went as long as he didn’t get into any trouble—and finally gave up. He simply went without telling her. Of course, she could always tell when he had been there from the reek of cigarette smoke in his clothes and would begin once again to berate Tony about it. In the end, there was an uneasy truce between Tony and his mother, he declining to argue with her and she accepting a reasonable limit to his gambling. Neither of them were happy about it.

During the summers, several of the regulars would go over to one of the bars on the street and bring back several quarts of cold draft beer in cardboard containers which would be shared by anyone sitting in front of the pool room. Prodigious amounts would be consumed, especially on weekend nights.

Halfie’s father owned one of the many bars on the street so his place was the only one any of the poolroom regulars drank at or bought beer from. This wasn’t strictly from a sense of loyalty to Halfie. The tap beer at Pat’s—that was the name of the bar in simple recognition of Halfie’s old man’s name—was only a nickel a glass and it was always cold and fresh with a good head on it, the consequence of countless beers poured by Pat over the years. Legally, only a few of the poolroom crowd could drink since many of them had not reached 18 years of age, the legal drinking age at that time. But Pat disregarded that law, just as he did many others. Pat and his older son Billy were well-known bookies in the area, the bar serving as an obvious front since it was apparent that no one was going to make any money serving nickel-a-glass beer. This arrangement worked for everyone.

Tony spent several of his high school years at the pool room, the friends he made and the nucleus of regulars there forming the essence of a club without there being any actual membership or name or building. It was fun while it lasted.

But when they reached their late teens, interests changed and the pool room no longer had the attraction it once had. No one is quite certain who it was who first suggested that they form a club of their own, though everyone claimed to be the first to suggest it at some time or other. It was one of those ideas that catches fire and consumes everything in its path, assuming and breathing a life of its own. It was definitely an idea whose time had come. The area of town they lived in had many small and narrow streets with tenement houses that all had storefronts on the street level. When one of these became available only a few houses up from the pool room, it was taken as an almost supernatural sign that this was the