I came to learn at thirteen, sitting on a shoe shine box, that the easiest way to remember something a girl told you, was to forget it once. Carried that lesson forward for sure. Hot afternoon in the first week of August; had been a good day so far; a lot of the bookies had all been invited to the same wedding, and they all needed their shoes shined for the occasion; already had over twenty five dollars in the box. Mario and Tony were standing by the telephone booth on the corner talking to each other with their hands. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but I’d seen this so often with just a twist of my head, out of the corner of my eyes, I could almost figure it out. Italians have a sign language all their own, kind of like learning how to speak Indian, they just understood one another. Whenever Nikki came over from Jonsies, we’d sometimes sit and mimic these guys. We had a lot of fun talking with our hands, while talking, the guys on the corner could also see us, and we’d all laugh. French kid, Greek girl, Italian bookies, was like an international event. Was getting ready to close up, pack it in and go home when she came running over from Jonsies. Sat down next to me, put her arm through mine, gave me a big smile. “Do you know what next Tuesday is?” Didn’t take long to respond. “It’s going to be the day before Wednesday?” Tugged on my arm, looked me square in the eyes with her big brown eyes,; “It’s going to be the first anniversary of the day we met.” I was a thirteen year old kid, and I didn’t know that girls recorded these events. Came next Tuesday, Beautiful Greek girl came running over to the shoe box stand wearing a golden, flowered, printed red dress. Suddenly remembered. Asked her to watch the shine box, Told her I had something special for her. Went running my ass off to Carpenter’s Florists down West Street. I did remember that she liked red carnations. There was a big refrigerator at the entrance to Carpenter’s. Saw a bunch of red carnations in a vase that also has some twiggly sticks with white flowers on them stuck between them. Paid Danny Carpenter for them, and ran my French ass back to the West End. There was one bookie who hadn’t come for his shine for the wedding, Nikki was polishing his shoes in her dress. Gave her the flowers, finished the shine for the bookie, waited for a response from my friend. Still had a smile on her face, asked me for my brown shoe polish, pulled it out of the box, handed it to her, Did. Greek took the can, opened the cover, rubbed the polish over her right index finger and told me to give her me my left arm, took the polish and got painted the date on my arm 8 /15
Posted on: Sun, 06 Oct 2013 23:47:25 +0000
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