At Home in the Dark Read online

  He studied Angelina’s yard while he waited. A rotting wine press, a wooden barrel topped with greasy rainwater. Ivy covered the chainlink fence, and pale green baseball bats of Italian squash dangled nearly four feet to the ground.

  Cucuzza.

  His phallic namesake squash, which had led to the playground taunts that tempered his mettle. The early battles taught him into a peacemaker until a growth spurt turned him into a rangy bloodier of noses.

  A hunched form opened the inside door, and a wizened face jabbed a pointy chin his way.

  “Buongiorn Guiseppe,” she said, and shuffled back into the kitchen. “Your mother say you come.”

  So Ma had her number, but wanted him to visit the old broad.

  With arthritic fingers like the tangled white roots of a pulled root, she stirred the heady contents of a pot with a wooden spoon. A translucent crescent of squash rose to the top.

  Cucuzza. Of course.

  His father had loved it cooked with potatoes, hot peppers, and tomato sauce in a peasant stew called giambotta. Joey would sop up the sauce with bread, ignoring the watery squash until he took a cuff to the ear.

  “Sit, eat.”

  He dusted a vinyl chair with his pocket square and sat while she poured black coffee from a glass percolator and set out a plate of pizzelle, delicate waffle-shaped cookies snow-dusted with confectioner’s sugar.

  He went through the rituals of politeness, asked of family, listened to her aches and troubles. Her hand was cold when she touched his wrist, her eyes bright.

  “Angelina, I need you to tell me how to free somebody from the evil eye.”

  Her eyes turned steely serious. “I show you.”

  He left with a Corning-ware dish of stewed cucuzza and half of a long Italian loaf from Vitiello’s bakery.

  • • •

  Back in the kitchen of Vito’s Original Classic Neapolitan Pizza Pies, Vito stared at a steel mixing bowl filled with water. The kid was up front working the sparse lunch crowd, stumbling occasionally but eager to prove himself. Joey set a green bottle of olive oil next to the bowl.

  “Three drops in the water. One at a time.”

  Angelina had told him that someone unburdened by the fascina, the hold of the evil eye, would create three separate drops. He tried it himself in her kitchen.

  Vito scratched at his belly, then tilted the bottle over the water.

  One drop. Then two, three golden pearls floated atop the water in a lazy spin.

  They leaned in close.

  Slowly, the drops found each other and made a single orb that resembled nothing less than the yellow eye of the devil himself.

  They hadn’t waited for the water to settle, Joey thought. But it didn’t matter. Vito thought he was cursed, and the olive oil affirmed his belief.

  And he’d believe in the cure.

  Joey handed him a can of Morton’s salt.

  “Shake some in, say an Our Father. Do that three times.”

  Vito beseeched him with his pouchy eyes. Joey prayed with him in Italian, silently hoping that he wouldn’t burst into flames.

  “Now we do the test again?”

  “Don’t tempt fate, Vito.” He gripped the old man’s shoulder, still strong. “Angelina says you are free of the fascina.”

  Vito winced at the word, then hugged him.

  Joey wished such wards worked, but in his experience human nature was stronger than magic. He dropped his flour-speckled suit coat off at the dry cleaner, and brought Angelina’s dish to the office at the port, where the boys scarfed it down.

  “It’s Cucuzza’s cucuzza!” one gavone bellowed around a mouthful.

  Joey grabbed the crotch of his summer suit. “Eat this cucuzza.”

  They laughed as he told them the story. One asked him to put the mal occhio on his mother in-law. He went to his office to finish reading the papers and trade stocks before closing.

  • • •

  Aldo called him the next morning, crabbier than usual. Joey talked him down. They hadn’t met this week, and Aldo had a sit-down that afternoon, which always gave him the agita.

  “I feel like I got hit with the mal occhio. You wanna drizzle some olive oil and find out?”

  “After the meet. You got this. You’re a golden god.”

  “I don’t feel like one.”

  “You will tonight.”

  “Speaking of evil eyes, you gotta see Vito again. He’s busting my balls. Why’d I give that old fuck my number? He should be calling you.”

  “You wanted the quick vig on thirty gees. Doing street work, when you’re the big capita cazzo.”

  “It’s easy money. That vig paid for your new coat.”

  “When do I see this coat?”

  “The apartment. Wear it today. Ciao.”

  • • •

  Joey wore the two-button pale blue silk Isaia sport coat over faded gray jeans and a matching snug shirt.

  Peter stoked the oven, raking the coals with a shovel.

  Vito stared into a bowl of oil-dotted water. “I can’t cook anymore. Tell Mister Quattrocchi to take my business. I die soon.”

  “Talk to me.”

  The old man flicked his eyes toward his grandnephew.

  “Wait outside kid,” Joey said. “Go play on your phone.”

  He flinched, but left under the withering stare.

  Vito told him, in stuttering broken English. “Today, I see the face of the dead.”

  Joey held back the look that said he was pazzo.

  “My family is from Bari. My uncles, they were fisherman who go to America, but my mother and father run a little restaurant by the water.”

  Joey prepared for more ancient history.

  “We fed the soldiers. Italian, then English and American. Then the Germans raid the harbor with screaming bomber planes. One ship was full of mustard gas. The Americans say no, but the gas rolled in and kill my family.”

  He looked down. “My mother put a wet towel over my face, but she breathe in too much.”

  “Condoglianze.”

  “I am orphan. The Americans put me on a train to Napoli. I apprentice in a pizzeria, make good money. So I come here.”

  That morning, he came to make dough and sauce, and was met with a blast of heat and a glow from the oven.

  “The oven was flaming like the fires of hell. A young girl stirring the coals. She screams at me, tears gold chains from her neck and throws them in the fire.” His eyes went away, like he was talking about the past.

  “She scoop up the coals in her hand and throws them at me.”

  He held up his apron. It was scorched with a black mark, burned with a scatter of pinholes like a shotgun blast.

  “I drive home, pray the rosary. Peter calls me, asks why I leave the door unlocked. I come back, everything is clean. The oven is empty.”

  “Who was she?”

  Vito pulled a gold chain from his shirt and kissed the large pendant of Jesus wearing the crown of thorns. “The evil eye, showing me my family in hell. Lies, to hurt me.”

  Joey looked into the bowl. The gleaming oil stared back as one big eye.

  “Make your pies, Mister Vito. I’ll fix this.”

  Outside, he found the kid leaning on the bricks, one knee bent like a flamingo as he thumbed his phone. He looked too much of a chooch to be pulling one over on anybody. And what motive? He was partners with the crazy old bastard. If they couldn’t pay the vig, one of Aldo’s apes would break his clean-shaven arms.

  “You like slinging pizza dough for a living?”

  Peter shrugged. “Uncle Veet put me through college after my father died from 9/11. He was a fireman. Took a ferry over to help dig for weeks. It got into his lungs.”

  Joey nodded. They had watched the towers go down from Newark harbor, helpless.

  “You see anything when you got here this morning?”

  The kid shook his head, eyes rattling like dice. “The oven was empty.”

  “Think maybe your uncle’s got ol
dtimer’s disease?” Joey switched gears to dockworker talk. He liked smart people thinking he was ignorant and easily fooled.

  “You mean Alzheimer’s? He doesn’t forget a thing, Mister C. He’s as good with numbers as I am, and I have a degree in Finance. I took a little psych, too. He’s got a lot guilt. My uncles broke his heart.”

  Family shit. The only think Joey hated more than eating cucuzza was dealing with other people’s family shit.

  He thought about it in the privacy of the Alfa Romeo as the Beastie Boys rapped about Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego on the stereo.

  Guilt meant lies. He could lean on the old man, but vecchioni could be stubborn. What scared people of that age was more frightening than pain or death.

  The sons would talk. They couldn’t want Vito’s competition. There were a thousand pizza joints in Jersey, but one more Original Vito’s Neapolitan Pizzas diluted the brand. And the old man had public sympathy.

  • • •

  Joey killed a few hours at the port listening to the dock boss complain, then drove over the black steel dinosaur skeleton of the Pulaski skyway into the lesser hell of late morning traffic. An hour later he emerged in the labyrinth of huddled four-story brick buildings that was Hoboken. The neighborhood had gentrified into a sixth borough of New York, a haven for frat boys and trust fund kids who skipped Williamsburg after draining it dry of cool.

  He parked in front of a hydrant next to a beauty spa and walked the block. Four old men held court at a card table next to a stoop and watched the neighborhood. Ground down by life, sandpaper stubble chins defying their morning shaves. Two of them tightened up at his approach, another puffed a black cigar that smelled like feet.

  “Joey C,” the last one said, with a respectful nod. A retired shipping man. “Good to see you.”

  “Buon dia, Skippy.”

  “What brings you here? Can’t be the ah’pizz.”

  “That bad?” Joey nodded toward Vito’s first pizzeria, rechristened Gavones.

  The smoker laughed. “Fiore won’t even sell him mozzarella no more.”

  “He sells this thing called a Garbage Pie,” Skippy said. “The kids line up for it. Puffing the marijuan right on the corner with those vape pens, clouds like someone oughtta be playing ‘Harlem Nocturne.’ ”

  The men shook their heads.

  “I’ll talk to him.”

  The new sign depicted a spike-haired guido caricature straight out of Jersey Shore, gripping a slice in a pumped fist dripping grease onto a muscle shirt. Joey pushed open the door, and heard the smoker mutter finocchio before it closed behind him.

  Inside, the place did a brisk early lunch business, mostly young people on phones yammering over pies smothered with everything from chicken fingers and mozzarella sticks to pineapple rings and bacon slices. The menu on the wall listed myriad combinations that made Joey’s head hurt.

  Worse, Lou Monte sang “Dominic the Italian Christmas Donkey” on the speakers. In September.

  A spray-tanned guy with stretch marked shoulders worked the oven, a beehive of checkered ceramic tiles with the color baked out of them. Vito’s first.

  Joey skipped the line. “Nunzio here?”

  “In the back, bro.”

  Past another kid working a deep fryer was an open door. Inside was a big refrigerator and a flour-scattered work table where the presumed Nunzio worked the dough. He flicked his eyes at Joey but kept rolling, setting softballs of pizza dough on wax paper-lined trays.

  Joey watched for a minute. “How you doing, Nunzi?”

  “You mind? Some of us gotta work for a living.” They were off Aldo’s turf, but the attitude took some balls. He admired it over the ass-kissing he usually got.

  “You seem to be doing all right. But your father, something’s got him upset.”

  Nunzio rolled his eyes. “When’s he not upset? He retired ten years ago. My mother, all she wanted was a vacation in the old country. She had to go alone on a Mario Perillo cruise. He wouldn’t leave the business alone for that long.”

  He paused for a quick sign of the cross, dabbing himself with flour. “May she rest in peace, sixty years with that stubborn vecchione.”

  Joey could smell the spite. A cheap, perfectionist father who hewed to tradition. He knew the sting well.

  “So Vito’s cheap. He took care of you and your kids.”

  “He’s tighter than a crab’s ass, and that’s waterproof.” He slapped a dough ball down.

  “You gotta bust his balls with this stoner shit? Calling it a garbage pie? He thinks you put the evil eye on him.”

  Nunzio laughed and started on a new bowl, mixing flour and water. “He’s always been superstitious. I heard he had the new place blessed by a priest. He cries the blues, but he wants for nothing. His problem is he’s got to run everything, and it’s not like the old days. We tried staying traditional, and almost sank like the Titanic. The ’merigons want gluten-free crust, vegan cheese. Crazy toppings.

  “He wanted money to open his own place, but it isn’t there. It all went into my brother’s fancy-ass place in Millburn and the grandkids’ college. My daughter and her husband make good money, but they can’t make that nut alone. Vito got to retire. Me, I’m gonna keel over in front of that oven before my day comes.”

  Once the steam settled, Joey went in. “He owes Aldo thirty large. One of you is either playing games with him or he’s losing his marbles. Either way, when he can’t pay, you know who we hit up.” You inherited street debt from your parents, your children. It was a curse you couldn’t dispel using salt and olive oil.

  “My little cousin couldn’t lend it to him?” He punched down the dough. “That’s who you should hit up. His partner?”

  “The kid can’t even afford to dress right.”

  “That’s how they all dress these days, like bums. He’s got cush, believe me. How you think he’s got time to make pizzas with Cheapo Vito?” He wiped flour off his hands, and Joey stepped back to avoid getting the dust on his new coat.

  “Kid thinks his shit don’t stink, just like my brother with his villa out in the ’burbs.” Nunzio carried a tray of dough to the icebox. “My son saw him with a hot broad all over him at the club. Me, I’m working seven days a week, I haven’t had my ashes hauled in a month.”

  Joey left Nunzio to his dough. If was too busy to get laid, he wouldn’t have time to prank his father over old grudges.

  • • •

  On the walk back to the car, he let the past creep in.

  Joey’s uncle on his mother’s side came for coffee every morning once his father left for work. Weary-eyed after the New York bars closed, he walked Joey to school before heading home to sleep. Taught him to laugh at life, introduced him to Mel Brooks movies, gave them a VCR when they cost a grand and weighed fifty pounds.

  After a bottle of red at Sunday dinner, his father would jab young Joey in the chest.

  You turn into a finocchio like your uncle, and I’ll put a bullet in your head.

  Joey thought the word had something to do with Pinocchio. His uncle did walk like he was on strings. When Joey grew older and his disinterest in girls became obvious, he took a beating from the old man. His uncle gave him the couch at his flat and a job as a runner. By then he learned that finocchio was Italian for fennel. The root looked like a man’s genitals, so the word served double duty as a slur toward gay men.

  At the card table, the smoker grinned at him around the stub of his cigar. Joey slapped it out of his mouth and sprayed him with embers. The other men cringed and shouted in surprise. “Next time the lit end goes up your ass.”

  Joey wiped the ashes off his jacket and squealed the Alfa’s tires up the street. He felt like hitting a heavy bag, taking a cold shower and a nooner. He headed towards the highway to brace the other son.

  What Nunzio said about Peter bothered him. If the kid was loaded, why did Vito go to the street for money? Maybe he spent the loan on tail, and this was his way out of it.

  The stereo
played Boz Scaggs, and Joey smiled. His uncle called him Scuzz Baggs. He had a funny name for everybody. Barry Manilow was Barry Cantaloupe. He loved wordplay and old euphemisms, like getting your ashes hauled.

  He called Aldo on the bluetooth. Before the sit-down, he would hit the sauna to steam himself of the poisons he drank to sleep. Alcoholism galloped Aldo’s family like a mudder at Monmouth racetrack.

  Aldo picked up without a word. Just heavy breath.

  “Babe. I’m sorry. I’m handling the Vito Ferro bullshit. Tell me who handles his trash?”

  “Off the top of my head?”

  “Save me a trip back.”

  “Maybe you should be back at the apartment in an hour. Bring me a prosciutto and mozz from Fiore’s.”

  “Love to, but I’m stuck on 280.” He wasn’t on the highway yet, but he was following a scent, however faint, and didn’t want to leave the trail.

  Besides, he wanted Aldo hungry and sharp for the sit-down, not sated and logy.

  “Tonight we’ll celebrate with a steak at Arthur’s on the water. I made reservations.” Joey touched the cornuto at his throat. It was the anniversary of their trip to Capri, where Aldo bought him the pendant made from the local coral.

  A low grumble as Aldo’s gears turned. He was no good with dates, but he’d know who hauled trash for the people who owed him money.

  “Exo carting. Terry Peru’s thing.”

  “Thanks babe. Pick you up at eight.”

  He looked the number up on his phone, weaving a little on the road.

  They had spent two weeks in Italy, including a trip to Sicily to find Aldo’s family village, where they learned Sicilian stiletto fighting from a ’Ndrangheta knife master. Joey had bought them matching handmade stilettos as an anniversary present. Eleventh was steel. He fingered the abalone handle of the stiletto in the pocket of his new coat. Silk was twelfth. Aldo miscounted.

  Joey smiled and tried to convince the gravelly-voiced receptionist of Exo Carting to put him through to her boss.

  She said he’d call back.

  • • •

  Interstate 280 turned into a parking lot in the hills. He made his way to the shoulder and rode it a half a mile, ignoring the horns of cars in the right lane that he sprayed with kicked-up debris.