A Brooklyn kind of guy. Old school. He smelled of spaghetti sauce
that needed refrigeration yesterday. Probably in his mid-70’s, still carrying a
flame for Annette Funicello.
“Tony”
Of course it’s Tony.
“They used to call me Tony B.” he told me, swelling a little with the memory.
“When I moved down here… it’s different. I just go by Tony, just
Tony, you know?”
That’s what Momo Rose called me, just Tony. You met her once
before she passed. She said that the “B” was for Tony Boy. Her boy, but we both
knew it wasn’t.
A bit surprised at how slowly he had been walking, somewhat
bowlegged, I asked Tony how he was doing.
“Ehh, I’m alive.” he shrugged.
“Doctor tells me I got a problem with my prostrate. They did
some tests, want to do some more. Fuck them.”
Working himself up, red-faced, he sputtered out a rehearsed
refusal “I ain’t letting three guys and that fat nurse get all up in my
business. It’s like a stage show with lights there between the troublemaker and
the recycle plant! They want to shoot a radiation bomb in me…right between the
troublemaker and the recycle plant. Fuck them.”
And with that descriptive little slice of life, Tony
shuffled off, never to be seen again. Not by me, anyway.
I’m sorry that I never got to know him well enough to ask why
they called him Tony B. Tony Brooklyn? Tony the Butcher? He did seem like he may have
been a tough guy. Funny that it wasn’t bullets to do Tony in though, it was a
problem he couldn’t get rid of with concrete blocks and deep water.
Tony was bumped off by an unseen enemy…somewhere between the
troublemaker and the recycle plant.
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