The Busboy

"Goodbye, David," she said bravely. "I... goodbye." Angela turned and left.

I went into the liquor room and closed the heavy door behind me, just like every day since I'd started doing that job. That time, though, it was different. There was no 7-Up. I grabbed a partial bottle of gin and took a long swig, saluting the end of a two-year relationship. Then I thought about being alone, unemployed, and living back at my mother's house with my little brothers. I put the gin down and grabbed a half-full bottle of Crown Royal, just pouring it into my mouth and swallowing as fast as I could. I slid my back down the wall I was leaning on and wept.

Twenty minutes later, I had the urge to vomit. It turned out that puking was good for me that day. If not for emptying the contents of my stomach, I would have likely passed out somewhere and missed the finale.

I took my boxes home and hung my collection of three-piece suits and shirts in my basement bedroom. I couldn't say it was good to be home, but I told myself I'd make the best of it.

At six-thirty I stood outside the service delivery entrance just a few steps away from my former office. No Sunday banquets meant that that part of the building was dark. Carlos was coming down the long hallway to let me in. He had a big smile on his face. Not much got past those Cubans. Even suspecting what they'd done, I knew I'd miss them. We literally almost ran into Arthur as we were making our way to the Grille Room kitchen.

"Mr. David!" he said, a little shocked. "Sorry. I'm sorry. I heard you... left. Glad I gots to see you and say good-bye."

"Damn it, Arthur!" I used an elevated tone, "stop calling me 'mister'!" Then I smiled at him and extended my hand. Arthur surprised me when he stepped forward for a hug. We embraced warmly. I'd been a friend to that wise old man since I was fourteen.

"I love you, old man," I whispered, losing my voice a bit. "Thanks for everything, and I mean that."

He stood up tall on his toes and said quietly in my ear, "It broke my heart to... to have to take those pictures. I hopes they end up doing some good."

"You did the right thing," I assured him as we stepped back. "I'm only here for a last bit of business, then I'm off."

He smiled and headed in the other direction. He had a heart of gold, and whatever life threw at me over the subsequent decades, I'd always tried to emulate his kindness.

Pierre Khalil was at the table with his two dinner guests. One was the strong arm who'd repeatedly threatened Sammy V, and possibly done arson on one of his restaurants. The other was the newly-elected union president. He'd recently won the rank-and-file vote, promising to end corruption and pick up where his mysteriously-missing predecessor had left off. Those would have been the right things to say, even if the mob had purposefully inserted him. I was guessing, however, that he wasn't completely on board yet. Getting rid of him would have been very bad for organized crime in greater Detroit at that point; the meeting we were interrupting felt like a little warning.

It was no coincidence who was sitting at that table together. All three of them were about to get a hefty case of food poisoning.

Of the three, Pierre had the least body mass, and would be the most critically ill. He'd be in the hospital for a long time. It was highly unlikely he'd be able to keep angling to buy the club while fighting for his life.

Once again, Jimmy amazed me without surprising me. He was killing two birds - though not literally - with one stone, and letting Sammy get a little back for himself.

I stood next to Sammy, watching. The lightly-breaded veal - Siciliano-style - was searing in the sauté pan. Sammy unscrewed the top on the bottle labeled 'Castor Oil' and poured a liberal amount over the meat, letting it soak into the uncooked side. He then poured the remainder down the sink, with the water running. Pulling a vial from his chef coat, he popped the cap and added some of the green, finely-chopped substance to a two-ounce portion cup of Italian seasonings. He put the remainder into another pan and placed it under the radiant broiler until it turned to ash.

"You know what to do with these," he asked - or told me, depending on how you took him - as he handed me the vial and the bottle. He'd made sure I'd put on a pair of vinyl gloves first.

"Don't get it on your hands," he ordered. "That green shit is water hemlock. Don't get it in your fucking mouth either, capice?" I nodded, placed both items in a zip-lock freezer bag, and left, patting Sammy on the shoulder. It was all the goodbye necessary.

>

All three diners ended up in the emergency room that night. I burned the evidence in the basement fireplace at my mom's house. Pierre almost died. Ford was pissed. I felt bad for him, because he was a quality guy - nothing like his nephew. I heard from busboys who occasionally came into my new place of work that no one saw Pierre for almost a month, and when he did return, he weighed about one hundred forty pounds. I never asked about the other two, but I read about the union boss in the paper. He was back to work in about two weeks. Sammy disappeared - probably to Vegas with a new identity.

What happened after that night I left the club for the last time wasn't hard to follow. It was constantly in the news. Most people, including me, would have needed to be living under a rock to not hear.

The mobster from Las Vegas did buy the club, despite a federal bank robbery charge in the 1950s. Those kinds of convictions keep people from ever getting a liquor license in our state, but still, the application was approved. However, Jimmy's cousin never could get out from under the feds' constant pressure. Eventually, he disappeared, and in 1998, the club was bulldozed to the ground. Today, it's a shopping center anchored by a Walgreen's.

Most of the Midwest gangsters and their families - in fact, all Sicilian mafia - headed west as the Russian mob began taking over syndicated crime in major eastern U.S. cities in the early 1990s. Jimmy decided to stay and fight. One morning, his car exploded in his own driveway, when he started it. Although I knew karma had caught up with him, it still made me sad.

Joe found a woman who helped him get over his troubles. He ended up running one of the only hotels in Reno that wasn't lousy with mob connections.

Angela may have been in the paper too, but I must confess to checking up on her out of curiosity. She had been special to me, after all. I'd decided, rather than determined, that she hadn't been dastardly. She was naïve to a fault. At least that was the version I wanted to believe.

Angela married a professional tennis player and had two kids. I hoped she lived happily ever after. I didn't get much farther than that one tidbit, but I got the sense that she'd course-corrected. Then again, I didn't know much about the professional tennis circuit. I could imagine Jimmy leaning in close and telling me that all the matches were rigged by the sports book in Las Vegas.

Pierre, at the age of seventy-two, has been, and still is, in trouble with state and federal agencies for Ponzi-scheme activities, racketeering, and money laundering in America's southwest. Some people never learn, but I'll bet that he always completes a thorough inspection of his food before he eats it.

As for me, well, I'd just finished slicing a pound of salami for a customer three weeks after leaving the club that night. I'd gotten the job I had applied for as a clerk in the chain convenience store and deli: Dawson's. My baby-blue smock, complete with a name tag, was a far cry from my former uniform. The hours were flexible, so I could finally work on my degree.

I came around the counter to ring up the salami and other goods for the customer, and I noticed two others waiting in line. As was always the case, I didn't make eye contact with those people until it was their turn. After telling the man to have a nice day, I looked up at the next guy, but something caught my eye.

There, behind him, looking a little nervous, was Lisa.

When it was her turn, I smiled and greeted her warmly. "What are you doing all the way out here?" I asked.

"I came to see you." She said it with glee, but also a hint of apprehension.

"Oh?" was my sophisticated response.

"Yeah, I wanted to see how you were doing," she told me. "Honestly, I just wanted to talk to you. I heard from my cousins, that you left the club, and also... that woman, Angela."

Uh-oh, I thought. She knew about Angela, and I could tell she didn't like her. "Well, I can talk in between customers, if you don't mind the interruptions."

She nodded, and then seemed stuck on what to say. I felt her timidity.

"Where's your baby?" I asked, putting my foot squarely in my mouth.

Her face changed in an instant. "I lost the... my baby in the fifth month."

"Oh, no, Lisa," I replied with the most sympathy I could muster. "I'm so sorry about that. Are you okay, though?"

Her smile returned. "Yeah. I was sad for several months, but yes, plowing ahead."

"You still married?" I did it again.

"Yes, I mean no, I mean," she paused, some tears forming.

"Oh shit, Lisa." I tried to be conciliatory. "I'm asking too many questions - and not good ones, I'm afraid."

"No," she said quickly, "it's okay. My husband died three weeks ago Saturday. Well, he was killed - in some kind of drug deal gone bad. I was staying with my sister, trying to see if he could get it together and if we could continue with our marriage. But he couldn't."

Suddenly, the neighborhood where I'd driven the Cuban brothers came back to me.

Fuckin' Jimmy. There was a lot in those two silent words. A very evil man had been very good to me in a very evil way - and in a way that was, setting all morality aside, impressive as anything.

I think she could see the shocked look on my mug.

"I... don't... know what to say." I was overwhelmed with thoughts and emotions.

She saved me. "It's alright," she said not nearly as sadly as I'd expected. "Things weren't great at the end. They weren't at the beginning either."

"Did you love him?" I stupidly asked.

"No," she answered with a deep sigh. "But you know that already, I hope. I wouldn't be here if I had. I feel bad that he's dead - maybe more that I'm a widow at twenty. He was very angry, about... well, how his life turned out. The baby and I were like anchors around his neck, and all he ever did was lash out. He never wanted a baby or a marriage. He just never bothered to realize I didn't either. Me, the baby, and my family were like the enemy to him. I finally had to leave, and go to my sister's house."

I didn't say anything, so she continued. "I would have probably come to see you sooner, but I didn't want to cause problems in your... with that other woman. And to be honest, after Christmas Eve back last year, I at least knew you didn't hate me, so..."

The Lisa standing before me was a far different version of the girl I'd fallen in love with pre-picnic table. She'd had to grow up quickly and painfully. She was winning my heart all over again.

"I'm sorry things have been so hard on you, Lisa," I said. I knew in that instant that I'd never tell her about my last ride for Jimmy. There'd be no point or anything good to come from it.

I decided I was failing miserably with all my questions, so I tried to change the subject.

"Yeah," I said, chuckling, "I've got a birthday coming up. I guess I'm going to make it to twenty after all - knock on wood." And I did for effect. "You've got one coming up too - just a few days before Valentine's Day, if memory serves me."

"I do," she said with a sweet stare. "That's actually why I came in. I was wondering if we might do something... together."

And we did - again, and again, and again.

And that's how I became a wise old geezer - a father, grandfather, and great-grandfather, with a wonderful wife named Lisa, going on forty-five years.

Had events in both of our lives not unfolded exactly as they had, I doubt that Lisa and I would have ever gotten back together. Her side was clear-cut. She'd made a dreadful mistake, and then she'd paid dearly for it. Lisa had shown remorse for that mistake from the beginning, and then she'd returned to her first love with a keener awareness - thanks to a little help from a guardian devil named Jimmy Leone. For me, Angela had been my second love, but she'd also been a replacement for love lost. The problem was that I'd already replaced Lisa with my job. Angela had seen me as the guy who'd come to her rescue the night her father died - her knight in shining armor. Not all knights are princes, though, and I hadn't been hers. We'd both known that long before we'd officially called it quits, but at least we'd finally faced up to reality.

Lisa found her prince, and she makes me feel special all the time. She recently gave me an interesting gift for my sixty-fifth birthday. A framed Ray Liotta quote as the character, Henry Hill:

"For as long as I can remember I always wanted to be a gangster. To me that was better than being president of the United States. To be a gangster was to own the world."

It was sweet and quite thoughtful, which was one of the things I loved most about her. Yet, my favorite lines came from Joe Pesci in the desert scene from Casino:

"Your fuckin' ass! You could have had the food and beverage job without going on television! You're makin' a big fuckin' spectacle of yourself!"

It was a decent movie, for sure, but those kinds of scenes played out almost daily at the club. Some days I even missed them.