Sometimes in This Life

By Don Frankel

Its 1919 and Henrich Danek Stendal is leaving his native Hungary behind. Having survived World War I, hes heading for America and New York City with his family in tow. His memories of the Great War resound in his mind, as does another deeply buried memory. There is no turning back.

It is also 1979 in New York City and Daniel Henry Stone is a wild, young man who never backs away from a fight. Hes worked as a cook and a bartender most of his young life, but now hes landed a gem of a job as a renting agent in a large, thirty-two building complex. But thats just the tip of the iceberg. This building complex just might go co-op, and he could cash in on the deal of a lifetime.

Their lives, although sixty years apart, will intersect in both action and thought, through the women they meet, the fortunes they seek, and the battles they wage. The mystery of their connection is both endearing and timeless.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Archway Publishing
• Release date: Mar 29, 2017
• ISBN: 9781480845275

Don Frankel

Don Frankel is a New York City writer whose many short stories and articles paint a loving portrait of the people and the City of New York. Dons website is nyuge.com.

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Sometimes in

this life

Don Frankel

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Copyright © 2017 Don Frankel.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Archway Publishing

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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ISBN: 978-1-4808-4526-8 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4808-4527-5 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017904466

Archway Publishing rev. date: 03/27/2017

Contents

October 1919

October 1979

October 1919

October 1979

October 1979

October 1919

November 1979

November 1919

November 1979

November 1919

November 1979

November 1919

November 1979

December 1919

December 1979

January 1920

January 1980

January 1920

February 1980

March 1920

March 1980

March 1920

March 1980

March 1920

March 1980

April 1980

April 1920

May 1980

May 1951

Three Bunches of Grapes, the Duke, and the Queen of Hearts

Time Is Money

For Gary Emmerman

I’ve often speculated why you don’t return to America. Did you abscond with the church funds? Run off with a senator’s wife? I like to think you killed a man. It’s the Romantic in me.

—Captain Renault, Casablanca (1942)

October 1919

H enrich Stendal was lying on the bed and slowly drifting off to sleep. He could feel the engines turning in fine rhythm and the huge ship cutting through the ocean like a scythe through wheat—moving forward, inexorably forward. There was no turning back. There never was.

He had almost fallen asleep when the man’s face appeared, his mouth open. The man’s tongue was protruding out slightly to the left. The eyes were dull—not questioning, not comprehending. They were looking up to Henrich, still at that point having no idea.

And then Henrich was awake. But he didn’t move. He did not stir. He did not get up. He let the rhythmic movement of the ship lull him back to semiconsciousness.

He knew his wife and mother-in-law were in the next room of their two-room suite on the second deck. He’d paid a pretty penny for it, but then he had the money. He could have had the top deck but did not want to draw any attention. They could all be comfortable here and go unnoticed. He knew his daughter was not there, because if she were, he would have been able to feel it. There was something about her, besides her budding fourteen-year-old beauty and her rich auburn hair, that always reminded him of the forest in the fall, something he could not quite understand but could always feel. There was something in her demeanor, something in her being, something calm, gentle, good, and caring. If she was just anywhere nearby, he was happy and content in a way that he could never, ever, remember feeling. She could just be sitting, reading, or knitting on the other side of the room. He did not even need to talk to her or be aware of her in any other way than her just being somewhere near. He had never been a particularly religious man, not even before the war, but she made him believe that, beyond all the pain in this life, there could still be something ever so precious. There had to be a God.

He caught his breath, and a smile ran though him warmly and deeply, even if it didn’t turn his lips.

Away in the war, he had missed her more than his two sons, more than his wife. No, she wasn’t outside in the other room. If she were, he’d know it. She was probably up on deck getting some sun, feeling the wind and the ship cutting through the water. His mind found a sense of mirth as he realized the little bastard would be up there too—the youngest one, the dark one, who Henrich was not sure was his own. He would be darting all over the deck in search for something. This little, dark one was curious and observant—too observant.

Henrich’s eyes opened slightly at that thought but then closed, and he drifted off to his afternoon nap.

October 1979

D aniel Henry Stone sat in the car. It was Monday morning, the start of the workweek. He was early but could see that Cassidy, his boss, was already there. Cassidy’s dark blue Chevy, the company car, was parked in front of the little construction trailer that had become their of fice.

It was a beautiful day, the kind of perfect weather you got in New York City at this time of year. This early in the morning, the temperature would be in the midsixties and wouldn’t get any higher than the low seventies. The sun was out, the sky was a beautiful shade of blue with just some light, wispy clouds, and it was as good a day as any to get fired. And he was going to get fired as sure as God made little green apples. You simply couldn’t punch out the assistant building manager on a Friday night and not get fired.

It wouldn’t be the first time he’d gotten fired for punching someone out, but that other time was different. He’d wanted to punch that guy out, and he’d done it in the office where he worked. And that wasn’t much of a job, just taking orders for ads over the phone for some small-time paper in Forest Hills, the Forest Hills Shopper. It was a weekly, and there were only a couple of articles in it. The rest of it was a bunch of ads for the local stores. But it did run a few obituaries. He’d even written a few of those, though it didn’t pay much. After that, he was back to cooking and bartending, which is what he usually did.

He turned over this latest fight in his mind again. He couldn’t see how he could have avoided it. It involved him, Cassidy, and Milton Cooper, the assistant building manager and ex-heavyweight contender. Danny himself was only a middleweight. Cooper was maybe two or three inches taller than Danny’s own five feet eight inches, but Cooper had to be over 210, which gave him a fifty-pound advantage. Most of it was in his middle.

They were in the Old Bailey in Kew Gardens having their payday-Friday after-work drink. It was the perfect place because Cassidy could have his drink and then jump on the Van Wyck nearby and be home in Long Beach twenty minutes later. It was also good for Cooper, who could drive home to Jamaica Estates no more than ten minutes away. And it was perfect for Danny because he lived around the corner and up the block. They’d done this half a dozen times, and all had gone well.

Cassidy didn’t really drink, which went against the Irish stereotype. Danny had noticed that Cassidy would sip the first drink a little and then let all the ice cubes melt and take off. He’d always buy the first round too. Cassidy had been a construction foreman, and he looked like one, with his broad shoulders and his big, strong hands that had seen a lot of work. He had done that for years before he’d gotten into real estate and managing buildings, so it was his way of having one with the men.

Cooper could drink—that was for sure—and that also went against type, as he was supposed to be Mr. Upright Protestant Man. Work hard, go to church, and be a member of one of their groups, the knights of something.

Danny couldn’t stand Cooper. Cassidy didn’t like him much either; he could tell that much. But Cooper was a member of those Knights—was it Templar? No. Those had been real knights in history. No, these were the knights of something else … Columbus? Pythias? Something. Whatever it was, the old man who owned the real estate company, Michael Mills, was a big shot in that thing, which Cooper liked to remind people of from time to time.

Danny’s big mistake was that he hadn’t left one drink after Cassidy. That was what he usually did, but then Brian the bartender told him that Virginia was coming on in an hour. The idea of having a few with the very beautiful and alluring Ms. Panama 1972 was too intriguing to just up and leave. She had that rich black hair, that incredible skin the color of coffee tempered with cream, and those black eyes to match. Those eyes would dance if he could get her to laugh, which he could do.

He had no plan to actually date her, as he knew she was dating a supreme court judge who was in the process of divorcing his wife for her, but he knew she liked him and thought he was cute—no, beautiful. She would say that too, because in an odd way, they looked alike, even though she was from Panama and his family from Eastern Europe. They had the same black hair, though hers was darker, and she had the same dark complexion as he did, his was just a shade lighter. His eyes were blue and hers black, but they both had a beauty mark in the same place on their left cheek. Because of these similarities, they would tease each other by saying the other was beautiful. A couple of drinks with her was worth sitting next to Cooper for a little while longer.

Cooper hadn’t even been talking to him. He was talking to O’Malley, a fine, white-haired old gent who looked like a judge in one of those old black-and-white movies: tall, slim, and refined. His demeanor belied the fact that he’d flown twenty-five missions in Europe in one of those B-17s. He’d been a navigator. Then he’d come home and very quietly made a million or two selling homes in Kew Gardens.

Cooper, with his curly, black, probably dyed hair that was beating a hasty retreat to the back of his head and his thick, black glasses perched halfway down his nose, was yakking about the next year’s election and how Jimmy Carter was going to get reelected—period. Cooper was opinionated and was some kind of something in his local the Democratic club, so he loved President Carter. But he wasn’t in his meeting hall, and everybody knew you did not mix alcohol with religion or politics—everyone who had any common sense, that is. Danny himself didn’t much care who was president and had no reason to butt in anyway, other than that he would have liked it if Cooper had shut up or just toned it down a bit. O’Malley was an old-school gentleman, so he would never start a fight. But the bad thing was, someone who you didn’t even know was listening might get all pissed off and come over, and a fight would ensue. That was why, if you had any sense, you did not mix alcohol with religion or politics. People got crazy.

All O’Malley said was something about the high interest rates and how people didn’t want to take out mortgages. He’d mentioned how hard it was to borrow to do business and how you needed to borrow to do business. At that point, Cooper got really loud, as he was on his fourth drink. But O’Malley did not raise his voice or do anything. That was the weird part. It was Cooper who got off the barstool and hit O’Malley for seemingly no reason at all. He hit an unsuspecting, older man right in the nose and probably broke it. O’Malley was more stunned than anything. He hadn’t even moved out of the way of the punch, as he just didn’t think it was coming.

But then Cooper turned around to Danny and said, And you! Then he threw a right hand right at Danny. Danny had been too close to move out of the way. He could have blocked it, but instead, he did the smart thing: he moved his head down, making the top of his head the target, and moved into the punch. Cooper’s hand came down short of where he thought it would, short circuiting most of the force of the punch and crushing his hand up against the hardest part of the human body, the skull.

Then, as Cooper screamed in pain and shook his hand, Danny took those precious moments to move quickly back and away from Cooper and the bar, giving himself some space. Then he quickly stripped off his sports coat, and that voice came on in his head, as it always did when he got into fights or other tight spots in his life. That voice, which whispered to him, came on now and reminded him that when in action, he must always have the earth firmly beneath him. He had to have balance. So he held up his left hand as if he were warning Cooper to stop, but really, it was to put his weight on the ball of his left foot to set up the right hand. If Cooper had stopped there, Danny would have as well, but the idiot came on screaming.

You little prick!

Then the voice came on again, telling Danny to take that extra split second and then go into action with everything he had.

Using his left hand to block Cooper’s vision, he curled his weight from his left leg back onto his right leg and then shot the right hand under Cooper’s eye level and into his gut. He was going for the solar plexus to end this as fast as he could. Fighting in a bar was not smart. Someone else could always join in. He’d gotten all his weight behind the punch but missed his target just slightly. The punch went in under the solar plexus and then came up, either because Cooper had moved forward or because of something else he couldn’t calculate, and Danny snapped it hard into Cooper’s gut. Cooper’s mouth opened, his glasses went flying, and he spun away and into the bar stools, stumbling down onto the floor as the bar stools fell all around him. It had been a helluva a punch.

Danny could see Cooper on all fours, spitting up something red and frothy, something mixed with blood. Maybe it