The Garage Apartment

By Hal Daniels

Now that his parents are divorced, teenager Andy Sadler and his mother Rose must fend for themselves in the suburban jungle of Whitestone, Queens, on the outskirts of New York City in the turbulent sixties. Andy, a shy only child, is one day ambushed by the beautiful young blond cashier at the Whitestone Bakery. He is instantly smitten by the lovely Katy Kelly, a Catholic school girl. (Andy attends the local public school.) So Andy barges into the bakery with the intent of striking up a conversation with the angel behind the register. But Johnny Vigorito, a local tough guy in a black leather jacket and a cherry red Ford Mustang, has gotten there first! Does Andy give up? Hell no!

Where does young Andy get the wisdom on how to win the heart of his girl? From the tenants in the garage apartment his mother has built to supply her and Andy with tenant income. The oddball inhabitants of the garage apartment lead Andy on a delightful coming-of-age journey through the mean streets of Queens and Long Island. So buckle up, readers, and get ready for a heartwarming adventure!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Apr 28, 2023
• ISBN: 9781662486821

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The Garage Apartment

Hal Daniels

Copyright © 2023 Hal Daniels

All rights reserved

First Edition

PAGE PUBLISHING

Conneaut Lake, PA

First originally published by Page Publishing 2023

ISBN 978-1-6624-8681-4 (pbk)

ISBN 978-1-6624-8682-1 (digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Works Cited

About the Author

Chapter 1

Life is a game of chance, Fred Silver told young Andy Sadler. You've got six billion assholes on the planet grabbing for the same brass ring. So of course, you're gonna lose sometimes. But if you've got the goods—and I do—you keep grabbing until you win, or you die trying.

He remembered it was oddly cold that morning for March in sunny South Florida. The climate is different from the northern part of the United States, and so is the architecture. As Andy Sadler drove his blue 1989 Camry down Ocean Drive on Hollywood beach, he noticed the eclectic nature of the landscape—Eisenhower-era two-story motels with long walkways nestled beside modern ten-story high-rise condos and hotels, all in pastel shades of teal, salmon, and beige. On the right, he saw the shimmering, blue Intracoastal Waterway. On the left, he saw condos and hotels with names like Positano, Chateau de Mer, Swan and Sand, The Tides, Aquarius, and Alexander Towers. Somewhere to his left stretched the endless Atlantic, hidden behind the parade of Art Deco structures.

At the end of the line lay the glittering Diplomatic Westin Hotel, a ten-story monument to opulence and high rollers. Andy had come to the Westin Diplomat to meet a blind date. Blindly, he had joined an Internet dating service, Harmonium.com, in the hope of finding a soulmate. However, he had found instead certifiable wackos and ladies who couldn't say no to too many giant nacho platters. (The ladies, it turns out, complain about all the con artists who lie about how much money—usually not too much—they have.) That morning, during spring break from the college where he taught, he had consented to meet Sharon, a psychologist. They both lived in Hollywood, so they agreed upon the Diplomat, a gigantic resort recently rebuilt and reopened. They had sat in the coffee shop.

I hear that many psychotherapists get into the profession because they, too, have mental problems, Andy joked while eyeing his date.

Sharon, a comely brunette, about forty, gazed at his cup of coffee. Yeah, I heard that, she mumbled.

So tell me about yourself.

I got into psychotherapy for many reasons, Sharon began nervously. I must tell you, I have a gift… I hear voices. I can speak to the dead. I can channel. Not many people can accept those of us who have the gift. I've been misdiagnosed as schizophrenic. But I'm not.

Why me? Andy thought to himself.

That's very interesting.

I'm writing a book exposing the psychiatric profession for what it is.

What is it?

You'll have to read the book. She laughed at her joke while drinking her bottle of apple juice. Sharon didn't do caffeine or alcohol.

This loon may be Dracula's soulmate. She may be Haley Joel Osment's soulmate. But she sure as hell ain't my soulmate.

Sharon excused herself to go to the ladies' room. Luckily for Andy, she had a weak bladder. This was her second trip to the toilet.

Hell, I know I'm not perfect, but this woman is not the one. I'm outa here.

He pulled his cell phone from his pocket. He dialed Sharon's number, reached her in the bathroom, and told her he had an appointment and couldn't stay. Bolting from the hotel, like a racehorse with fifty lengths to make up, he raced out the front door and across the street to the parking garage. He sat in his blue Camry for an hour and hid from Sharon. There he sat alone and pondered his future.

Andy was fifty-two years old and divorced. There were no children. He taught English and writing at the community college. But his salary was modest. His big hope was the crime-thriller novel he was trying to peddle. However, he needed an agent for that, and so far, no one was biting.

This computer dating bites, he thought. Why would an attractive woman in her thirties pay $169 for six months when she can meet men for free? Hell, even I was able to meet new women for free when I was in my twenties and thirties.

An hour passed. Andy decided to reenter the hotel and sit by the pool. He would order lunch. He walked through the sliding glass doors, and poof, there she was. Andy stood in the doorjamb and stared at the blond woman in the bulky blue sweater who was sitting at a table, sipping coffee. He wasn't one hundred percent sure it was her. But it sure looked like her. The middle-aged blond lady with a cute face gazed up and noticed him staring. She stared back as if she recognized him. Andy gulped some air and tiptoed toward her table.

Excuse me, ma'am, I know this is awkward. My name is Andy Sadler. Your name wouldn't be Katy Kelly, would it?

The blond dropped her spoon and started yelling.

Oh my god! It's you. I never thought I'd see you again. But I sure as hell dreamed of it.

The two waitresses on duty turned toward the blond lady and glared at her as if she were butt naked and dancing the Macarena in the middle of the coffee shop.

Sit, Andy, sit. We have thirty years to make up.

He sat down opposite her. Katy Kelly, you were my first love. I really fell hard for you.

Katy Kelly beamed while sizing up her old friend. I know, Andy. You look well. You still have the same cute, curly brown hair.

But not as much of it, he added.

And you've added some pounds…like we all have. I've thought about you many times.

You still in New York?

She nodded. How about you, Andy? You down here?

He nodded too. Can't beat the weather. He looked up at the gray skies. You wouldn't know it today, though.

Andy continued, What brings you to the sunshine state?

I came down on Friday with my girlfriend. She's not feeling well. She's up in the room, sleeping in. We're going back to New York tomorrow.

She looked at his blue dress shirt for what seemed like minutes. She wanted to ask him a question that refused to come out of her mouth. Finally, it emerged.

So, Andy, you married?

Divorced for two years now.

Kids?

He studied his black leather gym shoes. None. How 'bout you?

Two, she replied, holding up two fingers. But they're in their twenties. They can take care of themselves while I'm gone.

Did you marry that John guy, the contractor?

Katy sipped on her coffee. A tear coursed down her left cheek. John died five years ago. She choked back the tears.

Andy walked to her side. I'm sorry to hear that.

She regained her composure. He had cancer the last two years. It was very difficult.

I bet you loved him very much.

She dried her face with her napkin. Actually, the marriage was a disaster the last five years. I caught him cheating. She got up. Excuse me. I have to go to the bathroom. Have a seat. We have some catching up to do. I'll be right back.

He watched her walk away. She had gained forty pounds since he had last seen her in 1969. She still had that beautiful, shining Irish face with the rosy red cheeks and the sleek blond hair, the mane that had seduced him when he was seventeen.

Maybe if she can drop forty pounds, we can relive the past, he mused.

Five minutes later, Katy returned to the table.

Now where were we? she asked, fully composed with dry cheeks.

I think we were about to revisit the past. You still in Whitestone?

No, but I think about it. John and I bought a house in Baldwin on the South Shore.

I know it.

Andy, do you remember how we met?

Of course.

Tell me about it.

Don't you remember?

Of course, I do, she demurred. I want to hear it from you.

A thin, road-weary waitress approached. You ready to order?

Andy scanned the menu. I'll take a tuna salad on toast with a side of coleslaw.

To drink?

Diet Coke. How about you? I'm buying.

Katy smiled. Andy felt the blood rush to his head as she beamed and ordered lunch. It felt like old times. The server walked back toward the kitchen. Andy looked at his accidental date. All right, he began. I'll tell you how we met, but first, I'm gonna go back to the very beginning and give you the back story.

Is it boring?

He cupped his head in his hands. Aaach! You sound like my students.

You're a teacher?

Professor, he corrected. Never call me teacher.

Why not?

Because, he said, I am more than a teacher. I really teach. In the public schools, they're lucky if nobody gets killed.

Okay, I will never call you teacher. Do you really have to give all the boring details?

Why not?

I just want to hear about the sex.

He spit out the water he was sipping. He looked at her, amazed and amused. You could be more discreet.

I'm sorry. I really am.

Andy picked up a napkin and sopped up the water he had spilled all over the menu. He studied his audience, collected his thoughts, and began his tale.

Chapter 2

Clang chunk, clang chunk, clang chunk!

I was six, and I loved the sound of workers building the three miles long Throgs Neck Bridge, connecting Fort Schuyler in the Bronx to Bayside in Queens.

Clang chunk, clang chunk, clang chunk!

Working from barges anchored in Long Island Sound, the men would pound the bridge's twin 360-feet tall towers into the sand beneath the Sound with their pile drivers, making that sound from dawn to dusk.

Clang chunk, clang chunk, clang chunk!

They would make that onerous sound from 1957 when construction began until the Throgs Neck opened in 1961. Expected to divert 16 million vehicles away from the neighboring Bronx-Whitestone Bridge, the Throgs Neck project, which also included construction of the Clearview Expressway, instead opened the door for millions of harried Bronx residents to escape to northern Queens and Nassau County on Long Island, where they hoped to find suburban Shangri-La. All I knew was that I loved that sound.

Clang chunk, clang chunk, clang chunk!

Six months before construction began, my family had moved to Whitestone, on the western banks of Long Island Sound. We had moved from Westchester County, north of the Bronx, because my father wanted to be closer to his work in Manhattan, which lay twenty miles to the west. We were living in a new apartment development then. It was first called Levitt House, after its builder, Bill Levitt, the same man who had designed Levittown on Long Island. Two years later, the name of the apartment buildings would be changed to the present name, Le Havre (the harbor in French).

Although my father was now closer to his work (he managed the sales division of a lighting manufacturer), he increasingly came home late, sometimes as late as 10:00 p.m.

Whitestone was evolving back then. On the one hand, you had the new bridge, which would open up the neighborhood to the northern invaders from the Bronx and Westchester. But on the other hand, you had an ancient little red schoolhouse where I learned to read as a bashful first grader.

The Beechhurst section of town, where I grew up, became a haven for upwardly mobile Jewish Americans. Often, these new settlers would stop in Whitestone for several years and then continue on in their futile search for greener pastures. This search would transport them seven miles to the east to the tony greens of Great Neck and Roslyn on the North Shore of the Sound.

In the fifties and sixties, Whitestone became sort of a melting pot. I played stickball with the Irish kids who lived beyond the wall. But I also engaged in dirt bomb and ice ball fights with them. Sometimes, we would chuck horse chestnuts, newly fallen from a grove of stately horse chestnut trees, at each other. My friends, mostly Jewish, formed a de facto little gang of chestnut throwers. The Irish lads did likewise. Fortunately, nobody got seriously injured, although I do remember taking a chestnut in the butt on at least one occasion. I was ten years old.

However, on no occasion did I ever hear a disparaging word or slight from the members of the other gang. No Jew Boy or Kike. We were all just kids having fun, trying to hurt each other.

I consider the fifties and sixties to be the Golden Age of American Jewry. Jews back then formed the largest group of immigrants in metropolitan New York. They have since been surpassed by the Italians. Jewish Americans had accomplished many wonders in New York. Why, Robert Moses, promoter of the Throgs Neck Bridge and the New York World's Fair, was a Jew. Add to him, New York Jews like Dr. Jonas Salk, inventor of the polio vaccine, R. H. Macy of you know what, and all those Broadway composers (Irving Berlin, Richard Rodgers, Oscar Hammerstein II, George Gershwin, Irving Berlin, Frank Loesser, Jerry Bock, Sheldon Hamick, David Adler, but not the great Cole Porter), and you get the picture.

I, for one, do not believe that Gentiles simply forgot to be anti-Semitic in the fifties and sixties in New York. Rather, Jewish population numbers and accomplishments, together with Holocaust guilt and genuine support for the new Jewish homeland in Israel, contributed to a general feeling of goodwill that we may never witness again.

When I returned to Long Island in 1993 for a yearlong sojourn, I found a different atmosphere. Anti-Semitic leaflets were distributed in Bayside, home to many thousands of Jews. The walls of a synagogue in Oceanside, Long Island, long a Jewish stronghold, were poisoned with hate-filled graffiti aimed at the Chosen People. Thankfully, Gentiles in the area rallied to the support of their Jewish neighbors. The hatred vanished again.

I also was delighted to find that on Rosh Hashanah, the first day of the Jewish New Year, Catholics greeted me with the kind words of Le Shana Tova (Hebrew for Happy New Year). In South Florida, many Jews don't even know what those words mean. The point is only in New York.

Whitestone was the kind of place where my friends and I would wear our Little League baseball uniforms to Hebrew School, held after the local public school let out at 3:00 p.m. In Hebrew School, we would study for our Bar Mitzvahs. But as soon as the five o'clock bell rang, we ran outside. Our mothers would whisk us away in a Ford or a Dodge to a raggedy grass and dirt baseball diamond, where we would play a game. Where else but in New York (and Whitestone in particular) could a kid wearing a purple and white flannel jersey bearing the name Bellacicco's Italian Bread study the Torah while anxiously anticipating a fastball right down the middle of home plate?

Chapter 3

So you're really leaving?

You bet your sweet ass I'm going!

How long before your new young whore throws you out?

Control yourself, Rose. Andy's listening.

Just get out. You'll hear from my lawyer next week.

I expected as much.

The next thing I remember hearing is the slam of the front door. I had been listening to the last spat ever between my father, Jack Sadler, and my mom, Rose, from the top of the stairs. We had moved to the two-story, brick and terra-cotta house three years before. It stood on Riverside Drive in Whitestone, across the street from Long Island Sound.

My father made his money as a sales manager for a lighting firm. He sold chandeliers, lamps, and track lighting to stores across the United States and Europe. He commanded a sales force of ten drunken reps with an iron fist. My father traveled all the time. When he returned home, he always bought a gift for me—a Stetson hat from Dallas, a Dodgers cap from Los Angeles, a Robot Commando from FAO Schwartz in Manhattan.

Because he was gone so often, I can't remember too many conversations with him. I do remember overhearing my mom complaining on the phone to her sister, Betty, that she suspected my father was doing more than leading sales meetings when he would stumble home, smelling of Dewar's, at two in the morning. When I was in ninth grade, he confessed to my mom that he had a girlfriend in Manhattan. She was twenty-nine, worked as a secretary for a fashion magazine, and lived in Greenwich Village.

When you're fifteen and an only child, you consider your father to be as solid as the living room wall. I mean, he is your foundation. He brings home the bacon, the milk, the soda, the pizza, and the Chocolate Graham Crackers. You never think your dad will leave your mom for another woman. That kind of nightmare only happens in crazy movies. It never happens on television, especially not in the fifties and sixties. Did Robert Young leave Jane Wyatt on