“This is a bachelor apartment,” Mary reminded him. “Very few frills.”
“It’s a prison cell. I’m a bachelor, and I have furniture. A sofa. Sconces. And lamps with shades.” Ralph eyed the studio, imagining what he could do to make it presentable. “It doesn’t take much to make a cinder-block room a home.”
“I’ll get to it someday,” Nicky promised. “Or you will.”
“That’s right. You’re a decorator,” Mark reminded Ralph, not that he had to. “To you, every room is a blank canvas. Including a prison cell.”
“Hey, hey, hey,” Nicky teased Mark defensively.
“You know what I meant.” Mark chuckled.
“In the world there are those who make beauty and those who appreciate it. You see a lowly medicine cabinet, and I see the hall of mirrors at Versailles. It’s all about the imagination,” Ralph mused.
Nicky clapped his hands. “Let’s have cake.”
“Have you had dinner?” Ralph felt badly he hadn’t made a dip and brought crackers. He looked at Mary, who made a face.
“I’ve got a sandwich.”
“How were the streets today?” Mark uncorked the wine.
Nicky emptied his pockets into his can of change. “Passengers were generous. Stop lights were long. Green lights were brief. And I squeezed my share of lemons.”
“There’s a color scheme for you.”
“Those are the last three colors I want to see when I come home,” Nicky assured Mark.
“Why don’t you get another job?” Ralph suggested. “You’re a capable person.”
“I know how to drive.”
“So do I, but I don’t do it for money.”
“Maybe he likes to drive,” Mary defended Nicky gently.
“It’s a terrible job,” Ralph insisted. “Surly people. Crowds. Traffic jams. I don’t know how you don’t go crazy.”
“My mind is elsewhere.”
“Daydreaming.” Mary cut the cake.
“A great philosopher, I don’t know who, or maybe it was a playwright, I don’t know who he was either—”
“Mark, this may be the worst windup to a birthday toast I have ever heard.”
“Sorry, honey, I can’t remember—anyway, whoever it was, he said that in your daydreams you will find your purpose.” Mark poured wine into paper cups.
“If that’s true, I should be in a hut in Honolulu, sipping a Singapore Sling and eating wild boar off the bone roasted on a spit on the beach,” Ralph joked.
Tropical drinks made Nicky think of Peachy DePino, which managed to make him feel even worse on his birthday.
“How old are you, Nick?” Mary handed him a piece of cake.
Ralph took a bite of his slice. “Must we go into the gory details?”
“I didn’t ask you, I asked him.”
“I am thirty-two years old.”
“You’ve still got lots of time,” Mary assured him.
“For what?” Nicky wanted to know.
“To hit it big.” Mary toasted him.
“Oh yeah. That’s why I’m here.” Nicky toasted his friends. “And that’s why you’re here: to remind me why I’m here.” The tap of the paper cups sounded as hollow as his birthday wish, so this year, Nicky wouldn’t make one.
*
Nicky lay in bed, smoking a cigarette. Across the room, on the kitchen table, his birthday cake had been reduced to pink rubble on the gold cardboard doily. The scrape of the snow shovel on the sidewalk outside was getting on his nerves as the super pushed it back and forth in front of his window. Nicky could see Mr. Guarnieri’s pajama pants peeking out over his galoshes where his coveralls fell short of the top of the boots. It gave Nicky no comfort that somebody in the world actually had a worse job than he did.
Nicky figured he was destined to live underground for the rest of his life. He had lived in the basement on Montrose Street, and here he was again, subterranean, like a rusty pipe. The same was true of his career as a hack. Evidently he had a hard time breaking with tradition. He knew the streets of Manhattan and its five boroughs as well as he knew the grid of Philadelphia. Nicky Castone’s map of the world was anyplace he could take a fare on a meter.
Nicky had propped his birthday cards on the windowsill, just as he had done in his room in South Philly. He reached up and pulled the two cards off the ledge. A large one, with a felt yellow, black, and white bumblebee on the front, read Cousin, You are the Bee’s Knees and opened to say Have the sweetest birthday! It was signed by every member of the family residing at 810 Montrose, including Dominic III, who had written Hi in black crayon. Nicky set it aside and picked up the other card, which had a foil cake on the front with a message in blue glitter: You Are Special. Inside, the poem read:
You are special
Don’t forget it
Here’s your cake
Come and get it!
It was signed: Happy Birthday, Nicky. We miss you around here. Mrs. Mooney.
Nicky didn’t pine for his old life, because after three years in New York, he was living the same life he had been living in South Philly, except in this incarnation, he was isolated, without a family, a fiancée, a night job at Borelli’s, or his old friendships to sustain him. When he was brutally honest with himself, he admitted that he had only lost ground in his move to New York City.
What Nicky did have was a routine. He went to work, drove a cab, returned home, and counted his tips. If he saw a pretty girl on the street, he might smile at her, but wouldn’t pursue it beyond the pleasantry. He couldn’t remember the last time a woman had turned his head. He thought about calling Mamie Confalone, but he had nothing to offer her. When he went deep blue in his mood, and loneliness gnawed at him with a toothless hunger, he considered moving to another place entirely or even returning to South Philly. He imagined what it would be like to get an apartment near Montrose Street and look into the windows of 810 instead of out of them. That didn’t sit well with him either, so he stayed put.
Tomorrow, he’d make a change. Nicky wouldn’t wait for the new year (1953!) to start over, like every other crumb bum in the world—no, he would beat the crowd and start over fresh in the morning, resolute to crawl out of this hole and find the light. With a glimmer of hope, he put out the cigarette, threw his legs over the side of the bed, and went to the bathroom to brush his teeth. He leaned over the sink, looked in the mirror, and thought, Everything must change.
*