Friday, October 11

     The squealing brake shoes of the City Subway car slowing for the Park Avenue stop didn't awaken Rom.  Nor was it the sports car commercial playing softly on the small radio in the next room.  No, it was something else.  Something had been dropped outside his apartment door.
     Rom lifted his head.  It hurt.  He looked at his watch: seven, exactly.  His head went back into the pillow.  He had been dreaming, a weird, exciting dream.  Wait.  No!
     He sat up and looked around, then into the kitchen.  The wine bottle stood empty on the table next to something black.  His black shirt and pants sat in a heap in one corner.  His black Adidas rested, one upside down, by the chair.  He got out of bed and crossed to the table.  He picked up the black thing.  Yes, the two socks stapled together, with crude eye holes cut into them.  He groaned.
     Rom looked out the cracked kitchen window into the overcast day.  The old linoleum floor felt cold.  Rom tried turning the knob on the big cast-iron radiator under the window. Stuck.  His head and neck complained again, and he went into the bathroom, where he'd put the aspirin.  He looked at his face in the mirror.  It needed a shave and looked like hell, but at least the swelling had gone down from the beating he'd taken Tuesday night.  His lip was looking better, too, but there was darkness under his eyes, and the cut on his chin still looked angry and red.
     He popped two aspirin, filled his hand with water and threw it into his mouth.  He swallowed, but the aspirin felt stuck.  He put his mouth to the spigot and drank.
     Rom went back to the kitchen, filled the aluminum kettle and put it on the stove, then spooned some instant coffee into a mug.  He opened the front door and looked out.  At his feet was the Star-Ledger.  He bent over and picked it up, wincing from the new pain the movement brought, and took it back to the table and sat down.  Then, with a deep breath, he let the memory come: cutting the socks, stapling them; putting the "mask" on, taking it off.  Pocketing it, going outside.  Getting into the drab Datsun. Driving around slowly, looking for them.
     He remembered spotting the one with the pharaoh haircut wheeling down Park Avenue, past 11th Street, past the Newark Glass Company and down the alley that ran alongside the bridge over the railroad tracks.  He remembered parking, tying on the mask; the icy delirium of slinking down the alley, avoiding the broken glass, creeping past the darkened bamboo plants woven into the chain-link fence.  How he'd crouched and listened, waiting for the perfect moment.  The pissing contest!
     Rom laughed out loud, remembering the look on the thieves' faces, and how good it had felt to smash them senseless.   It was luck, he knew,  that he'd completed the "mission" — except for the near-collision with the squad car — without further incident.  He'd removed his mask a block before the firehouse, then with calm stealth leaned the bike in the doorway, walked across the street to the pay phone at the Sunoco station and given the fire dispatcher Curtis' first name and the building he lived in, and specific directions to the two bike thieves.
     Now Rom remembered the careful walk back up Park Avenue to his car and the thrill of seeing the police loading the two banged-up, piss-stained young men into the patrol car as he drove past the bridge.  Then the short ride home, a shower — blessedly hot at that late hour — and a celebratory lighting of the leftover joint he'd brought from Cassandra's.   He'd drifted off to untroubled sleep listening to the oldies station.
     Rom sighed. It had been an unbelievable week: Cassandra's assault; the crazy feelings she'd stirred in him; returning to Roseville and getting clobbered on his old street; the death sentence from the clinic.  But now this.  A vigilante.  At 40 years old, as a priest, in this neighborhood, in these times.  With a mask of two black socks.  Rom laughed out loud.

     The knock on the door jolted him silent.  After a moment came another knock.
     "Just a minute!"  Rom quickly donned his robe.  He took a deep breath and opened the door.
     There, in a red windbreaker and a Yankees cap, stood John Fitzgerald Lopez.  "Hey,"  he said, "are you sentimental or were you looking for a nice little place close to the crack dealers?"  Rom threw his arms around Lopez' sizeable frame and hugged his old friend.  "You better invite me in," Lopez said.  "Neighbors talk."
     Rom held Lopez at arm's length.  He looked at the 6'3" frame, the broad hispanic face, the patches of white in the close-cropped beard, the expanding waistline, the excellent porcelain caps on the front teeth.  "Lopy, you look great!"
     "Wish l could say the same.  What the fuck  hit you?"
     They stepped inside and Rom closed the door.  "Welcome wagon.  Tuesday night."
     "You got mugged?" Lopez examined the cuts and the puffy eye.
     " ‘Mugged' is such an inadequate word.  Let's just say I was cold-cocked, thrown to the ground and pummeled."
     "Christ!  I couldn't believe it when Cassandra said you moved to Frankie Giordano's.  Didn't you take a good look at this neighborhood before you rented?  You coulda stayed with me, fer chrissakes.  Or Cassandra.  She got a spare room."
     "Ah, I wanted some privacy, actually, to do some writing.  It's OK.  I've been initiated.  And besides, I'll only be here another week."  The kettle began to whistle.  "Want some coffee?"
     Lopez looked around.  "Why not?   I've had my shots."
     Rom smiled.  "How'd you find me?"
     Lopy sat down at the table and scanned the Ledger.   "I asked some kid on the stoop which apartment the white guy lived in."
     "Very funny."
     "You think I'm kidding?  Actually, we're doing two stories right in your neighborhood here."
     "Oh, that's right," said Rom. "You're a cameraman on a news crew.  Which station is it?"
     "WBLT.  Sent us over here to do Van Heuter's 100th anniversary.  The chocolate factory down near Park."
     "Oh yeah. Love that smell."
     "Hmff," said Lopez.  "So we get the call on the way, and there's some kid had his bike stolen, and it was returned to the firehouse."
     "A bike?  Stop the presses."
    "It gets better.  So we go to the firehouse, we're set up, we start taping, and the fuckin' fire bell starts ringin' like a bastard.  Wham, they're outta there.  The dispatcher says "Stick around, it's probably a false alarm.' "
     "Probably."
     "Yeah, so we put the chocolate people back an hour, and I had some time to kill."
     Rom busied himself with the coffee.  "Glad you did."
     "So here's the good part," Lopez said.  He took out a pack of Camel Filters.  "Mind if I smoke?"
     "I don't care if you burn," said Rom, finishing the old joke.
     "Hey, from a priest, that don't sound too funny."
     "Sorry.  Finish your story."
     "So last night the dispatcher gets a call from somebody who tells ‘em he retrieved the kid's bike and where they can find the guys who did it.  So the dispatcher calls the cops, they go there, to the bridge on Park Avenue, over the tracks?  They find two guys down there knocked stupid.  Coupla black kids, 16 and 18.  They tell the cops some guy with a mask clocked ‘em with a railroad tie.  They admitted taking the bike.  One of the cops was at the firehouse.  Says the guys pissed all over themselves or something.  Whaddaya think?"
     Rom rubbed his neck.  "Too much."
     "He confirmed this guy with the mask.  Almost ran him over at Park and Roseville.  Is that weird or what?"
     "Definitely."
     "Yeah, well. I  thought I'd drop in and say hi.  Melody's down at the firehouse.  She's gonna beep me when the firemen get back."
     "Melody?"
     "Melody Marven.  She who must be obeyed.  The on-camera talent."
     "Sounds exciting to me.  Cameraman on a news crew."
     "Yeah, you would think.  But Melody pissed somebody off at the station, and they got her doin' the cute stories.  Last week it was the trout that swam up into somebody's toilet."
     "What?!"
     "Ah, the guy planted it.  Some jerkoff in Jersey City."
     "Hmmm."  Rom had filled the two mugs and set them on the table.  "Sorry there's no milk or sugar.  I'm behind on my shopping."
     "Don't worry about it.   We should do something while you're here, anyway.  How much time you got?"
     After a pause, Rom said, "About a week.  Then I ship out."
     Lopez scribbled on a note pad.  He tore the page out and handed it to Rom.  "That's my address and phone number, in case you lost it.  I got a little place on Bank Street.  Rent-controlled!  Guess how much rent I pay."  His eyes were wide.  "For four rooms in the West Village.  Guess!"  Without waiting for an answer, he continued.  "How about 220 a month?"  Lopez regarded Rom triumphantly.  He took a puff, looked around and smiled.  "Of course, it's nothing like this palace."  He squinted.  "Tell me if I'm wrong.  Isn't this the apartment Frankie had that summer, where we all hung out?"
     Rom's smile was wide.  "It took you long enough."
     "Where I hit you with the dart?"
     The two laughed.  "Let's not get into that again," said Rom.
     "Christ, talk about a coincidence.  Does everything work OK?"
     "Ah, good enough.  I won't be retiring here."
     "Let's hope not."  Lopez glanced over to where Rom had left the makeshift mask.  "Still leaving your socks lying around, I see."  He frowned.  "Pretty bad shape, too.  Aren't they paying you?"
     Rom rose and snatched up the crude mask.  He jammed it into his robe pocket. "Whoops!  No Good Housekeeping award this year," he said.
     Lopez sipped his coffee.  "Hey, don't mind me.  You should see my place"
     "Hey, maybe tomorrow I will.  I'm supposed to check in at the archdiocese.  Over on E. 91st."
     "Well, that's what subways are for.  Just don't touch anything."
     Rom laughed.  "I won't."
     Lopez' beeper sounded.  He took it out of his pocket, checked the message on it and shut it off.  "Musta been a false alarm," he said, rising.  "Hey, call Cassandra.  She wants to talk to you."
     Rom tried not to blush. He hugged Lopez again.  "It's good to see you, Lopy."
     "Hah!  Nobody's called me that in years.  Hell, Cassandra still calls me ‘Hector.'  It bugs the shit out of me."
     "Yeah, she said."
     Lopez opened the door and stepped into the hallway.  "You been over to the old places, I guess."
     "Yeah.  My old house seems to be part of the local cottage industry."
     "Yeah, well, you've seen Casa Lopez?"
     "I saw what's left of it," said Rom, remembering the burnt-out shell he'd driven past a few days earlier.
     Lopez took another puff, then dropped the butt to the hall floor and stepped on it. "Well," he said, the words forming little bursts of smoke, "at least we have pictures of it."  He started down the hall.  "Hey, drop by the firehouse if you want to meet Melody.  Wear your priest clothes.  You'll make her day.  The firemen will have to hose her down."
     Both men laughed.  Lopez started down the stairs, his voice echoing after him.  "Be careful."  Now he turned and looked at Rom.  "There's a nutcase on the loose around here."
     Rom stood in the doorway.  "Yeah, I'll be careful."

     Twenty minutes later, feeling like he was returning to the scene of a crime, Rom found himself loitering around the main bays of the Park Avenue firehouse, home of Ladder No. 7 and Engine No. 15.  He was part of a motley assemblage of firefighters, cops, neighborhood kids, idle passersby and a few street people.
     The WBLT crew van, with its satellite transmission dish bolted to the roof, sat outside. Inside, Lopez' camera was recording a tender scene.  Curtis Walden, standing proudly next to his recovered bicycle, was shaking hands with the resident firefighters.  Melody Marven, a thin but beautiful blonde, was wrapping up the interview.  She wore a smartly tailored maroon suit, a crisp white blouse and, Rom noticed, sneakers.  She leaned over to one fireman and asked how it felt to be a hero.  She put the microphone in front of his face.
     "Well, all of us love being heros when we really are," said the young black man.  The name tag on his blue cotton shirt read "Anthony Miller, NFD."  "But this time we were, uh, just the middleman, really.  We held the bike for the kid.  The real hero is the Son of Zorro.  He went and recovered it, and believe me, most of us would rather go into a burning building than, uh, confront some of the characters in this neighborhood."
     Melody laughed, an annoying, high-pitched titter.  "‘Son of Zorro?'"
     "Yeah, that's what we call this guy.  We figure he's too young to be the real Zorro, who is, uh, probably retired by now."  Behind him, his comrades erupted into laughter.
     Melody faced the camera again.  "Well, it looks like everybody's happy at this firehouse.  The courageous firefighters here have something to take their minds off the dangerous job they share, and a young boy has his bicycle back thanks to the brave, some say foolhardy, efforts of a man in a mask who did his good deed and vanished back into the night. From Newark, this is Melody Marven, Channel 6 News Patrol."
     She stood there a moment, smile frozen, then nodded and said "Cut!"  The firefighters behind her applauded.  She smiled at them, gave a little bow and after a moment turned to the firefighter she'd been interviewing.  "There's one thing I always wanted to know," she said.  "Why do you guys wear red suspenders?"
     Amid the ensuing laughter and horseplay, Lopez noticed Rom and went over to him. "Whaddaya think?" he asked him.
     "Uh, to keep their pants up?" said Rom.
     "No, not that."  Now he lowered his voice.  "Whaddaya think of Miss Newsperson?"
     Rom, dressed in his blacks, put his hands into his pants pockets and rocked on his heels a couple times, sizing up the woman appreciatively.  But before he could answer, Curtis came over and offered his hand to Lopez.  "Thank you for coming to do this for me," he said to Lopez.
     The boy whispered into Lopez' ear.  "Can I look in your camera again?"
     "Well, OK, but just for a minute."  Lopez hefted the camera onto Curtis' shoulder and adjusted the eyepiece for him. He turned the camera toward Rom.  "Here, see if you can work the focus."
     As the boy's nimble fingers worked the control, the image of a smiling man in a black suit came into focus.  The astonished young man moved his head away from the camera and looked directly at Rom.  "Hey, you're a priest?!  I know you!"
     Rom winked. "Hey, can't a guy be a priest?"
     "Why you living at the Norfifth?" asked Curtis.  "Don't you have a church?"
     "Well, remember when I told you I'll only be here a short while?  I'm on my way to a new assignment."
     The boy's mother came over and collected him, and Lopez started putting his gear away.  Rom, feeling a bit ridiculous around the real heros of the fire department, was about to leave when Lopez called him over to the van, where the newswoman was now standing, flipping through pages of notes.  "Melody, I'd like you to meet an old friend, Rom Soriano — excuse me, Father Rom Soriano.  Rom, Melody Marven."
     "Well!" said Melody.  She took a deep breath and her eyes sparkled.  They shook hands. "I don't remember priests being quite so handsome when I was going to church."  Rom saw Lopez roll his eyes and go back to his packing.
     "What church was that, Melody?" asked Rom.
     "St. Mary's in Kutztown, Pennsylvania.  I don't suppose you've ever heard of it.  The whole thing could fit into this firehouse."
     Rom smiled broadly. "Sorry."
     Melody needlessly adjusted a few strands of hair behind one ear.  "I hope you won't ask how long it's been."
     Rom kept smiling.
     "I mean," she said, "since I've been to church."  Her annoying little laugh quickly followed.
     The sound man emerged from the van and called Melody to the phone.  She shook hands again with Rom, and let the eye contact linger for a moment.  "You look like you've been in a fight, Father."
     "Just wrestling with temptation," Rom said.  They laughed.
     "Nice meeting you."   She turned to Lopez.  "All your friends should be so charming, Fitz."
     Rom raised his eyebrows and looked at Lopez, now busily winding a cable.  "Fitz?"
     "Ah, shaddap!"

     After the news van pulled away, Rom reintroduced himself to the dispatcher, who quickly placed Rom as the man who'd needed a phone book the other day to find a rental car.  After obliging the dispatcher by blessing the firehouse, Rom borrowed his phone again, this time setting up a lunch date with Cassandra.
     Following a nap and a shower, Rom, dressed in jeans and sweater, got into the old Datsun and drove toward Route 280.  He navigated the double-park obstacle course of Sixth Street, past Orange Street and the new police bunker, continued over the highway and turned left onto a  litter-strewn access road alongside it.
     Rom visualized the apartment house that had once stood on the spot he was driving through and remembered with a smile the building's old, lurching elevator, and how he'd gotten to second base there with Lorraine Carmody at Bobby Morrisey's 13th-birthday party.
     Rom merged onto the highway and felt a sad tingle as he drove through the space where familiar streets, houses and backyards had once been.  Then the highway rose and swung over the City Subway and Erie-Lackawanna tracks and headed east, across the Stickel Bridge over the Passaic River,  through Harrison, to the New Jersey Turnpike.
     Rom got on at Interchange 15W and headed north.  As he passed over the swamps of Hudson County he tried to sort out everything that had been happening to him. Was he losing his mind?  Funny, he didn't really feel bad.  Excited, fatalistic, but not bad, not about the bicycle.  Perhaps the incident was just a crazy gesture, a single out-of-control moment caused by a few days of bad stress.  A fluke.  He was lucky to have made it through in one piece.  He would have lunch with Cassandra, then go back and continue writing.  But he would leave out that chapter.  "Son of Zorro," indeed!
     At Exit 16E he paid the toll, swept into Secaucus, crossed Paterson Plank Road and, thanks to Cassandra's excellent directions, quickly found the Landmark Business Complex, which she'd helpfully explained was the site of a former hog slaughterhouse.  At exactly one p.m. Rom found her in the Hilton lounge, her face behind the first edition of the Jersey Journal.  When he sat down across from her in the booth, she dropped her paper and her jaw.
     "What hit you?" she said.
     "Funny.  Your brother asked me the same thing this morning."
     "You saw Hector?"
     "He dropped in.  Apparently Van Hootie's or something is a hundred years old."
     "Van Heuter's."  Cassandra accepted a white wine from the waiter, an effeminate hispanic with a "Tito" name tag, who regarded Rom and stood by for his order.
     Rom looked at Cassandra.  "Well, I'm on terra incognita with a lovely lady.  This calls for a medium-dry vodka martini, lemon peel — "
     " — Shaken, not stirred," said Cassandra.  The waiter gave a smart-ass roll of the eyes and ambled  away writing.   "Actually," she continued, "in the novels Mr. Bond orders gin Martinis."
     "Yes, and in fact orders them stirred, not shaken."
     "You look like you've been shaken and stirred," she said.  "C'mon, let's have it."
     Rom told her about his roughing-up Tuesday night.  She smoked a Marlboro and listened angrily.  Then suddenly her face lit up and she grabbed the Journal from the seat next to her.  "Oh!  Wait'll you hear this."  She flipped through the pages.  "And it happened right in your neighborhood.  Here it is."  She folded the paper and animatedly read Rom the story headlined "Masked Man Foils Thieves."
     Rom fought the rising color in his face and struggled to maintain a bemused expression.  When Cassandra finished, she put the paper down and looked at him.  "Can you believe it?  And where was this guy when you were getting mugged?"
     Rom shrugged his shoulders elaborately.  "Good question.  What a weirdo, huh?"
     Cassandra thought a moment.  "Yeah, probably a weirdo, but . . . "
     "But what?"
     She tilted her head a bit.  "Something my father used to say: ‘How far that little candle throws his beams!  So shines a good deed in a naughty world.'"
     Rom squinted.
    "Shakespeare," she said.  "Merchant of Venice."
     "Of course. Your old man was a big Shakespeare fan."
      "Seriously, I admire this guy, whoever he is.  I'm not sure he's all there, but he's got something."
     "Think so?"
     She leaned toward him.  "Let's put it this way, Rom: Even if you were nuts, would you put on a mask and go single-handed into a situation like that?"
     Rom raised his eyebrows, gave a small shrug.  "Well — "
     "That is bravery," said Cassandra.  "I love that."
     Rom looked at her dark, happy eyes, so slightly crossed, that now lit up the table.  "Yeah," he said, "I guess the guy is OK."

     A few feet away, Bernard LaPlaca looked at his watch, downed the rest of his Beck's and, shielded by the high partition and by Tito delivering Rom's martini, slipped out of the lounge.  He walked quickly across the plaza to the Landmark Building and took the elevator up to the Travel Set offices, where he said a quick "Sorry I'm late" to a frowning Rachel McDonough before scurrying into his cubicle at the copy desk.
     But forty minutes later he was on a bench in the plaza, his face behind a USA Today, when the couple parted outside the restaurant.  He watched as Cassandra hugged the man — "Rome," what a stupid name — and went back across the plaza toward their office.  LaPlaca dipped the paper occasionally to watch the man wander around the plaza.   After a couple minutes LaPlaca got up and casually began window shopping.  The man, La Placa now saw, had stopped outside the Seasons Boutique, a shop specializing in the sentimental trappings of holidays.  The man looked around, and LaPlaca pretended to inspect a travel agency window.  In its reflection he saw the man look at the Halloween wares in the boutique window, then enter.
     When LaPlaca ambled in a moment later, the man Cassandra had been with was inspecting a display of simple black felt masks.