The creeping sun found its way across my body as I lay sprawled across our front stoop. Too tired to move my hands from under my legs I squeezed my eyes shut and fought off the dry heaves. I lay motionless as warmth made its way from the top of my head towards my exposed neck, creeping forward like the incoming tide. I had been here a while and was covered with the dew of September, the smell of grass and the indiscriminate warmth of the reaching sun. I rolled over to move my face from the light, towards remaining darkness. The brick stairs’ sharp edges jabbed into my ribs as I pulled myself to the side of the stoop. Hanging my head over the side I puked. Sweat beaded across my forehead as I tried to heave in silence. Though dad had left for work awhile ago, it was too early to wake mom or the neighbors with the sound of my retching. This silent act concluded, I found a comfortable position, my head dangling over the side of the stoop like that of a broken doll.
I didn’t notice as Mr. Esposito slowly pulled his brick red van up to our house. Opening one eye, I squinted and spied Mr. Esposito staring at me. His round moon face was methodically shaking from side to side as he soaked in the view; the view of a shipwrecked me. He wore his usual Cheshire cat smile and a ragged engineer’s hat. His thick left arm dangled from the window of his van as he quietly drummed sausage fingers on the door. Respecting the silence of morning, he leaned out of his van and somewhere between whisper and holler sized me up.
“What. The. Fuck. Beasley, are you fucking kidding me? Are you gonna be able to work today? We got a huge installation in Paterson. Look at you. Can you even lift your fuck’n head? You look like a goddamn homeless person.”
In one motion, I rolled from my side, wiped my mouth and pushed off the stoop, plowing towards the van like a rogue wave. Mr. Esposito’s eyes followed me through the windshield as I made my way across the wet grass and passed in front of his van. I poured myself into the passenger seat and nodded forward past his smirk, “Let’s roll.”
“Fuck’n indestructible teenagers. You fuck yourself up all night and you’re able to walk into the next day’s work. A-fucking-mazing. I need you strong today, OK? Let’s dump some coffee in you before we head to the site. Shit, are you sober? Cause if you’re not, I can’t have you working for me today. Lot’s of moving parts, Bease, lot’s of moving parts. I don’t want to look up and see you cutting off your fucking arm or something. And if you do bleed out you’re on your own cause I ain’t got no insurance for ya.”
That much I knew. Mr. Esposito’s son, Nico, was among my closest friends. He and his dad were chipping away at bills as a result of an uninsured nail gun accident. Earlier this summer on a job in Totowa Nico had been shot as a nail pierced a wall and tore through his shoulder. He had required surgery. Insurance was a luxury. As a result of the injury he had hemorrhaged much of his blood; and money. Not easy.
Nico and I had known each other since they moved to town after his parents’ divorce. As children, hockey and the sense of feeling like the oil in the vinegar bowl bound us together. As teens we partied and confided in each other. We passed time as we filled his room with smoke and Zappa or got baked cruising around in my parents’ 76 impala station wagon. Our conversations ranged from who we wanted to fuck to relationships with our parents. As time slipped past us we dug deeper in our conversations and a decades long relationship surfaced.
Through my many visits to Nico’s house and dozens of dinners with his family I came to know Mr. Esposito. Mr. Esposito worked out of a well stocked machine shop crammed into a two story garage in the backyard. Light leaking from under barn doors, the wafting of soft music and grey smoke flowing from the blackened stovepipe indicated Mr. Esposito was in the shop. As a result of my comfort with the family, if there was no answer at Nico’s front door I simply walked around the house towards the shop looking for the telltale signs of Mr. Esposito. As often as not, Nico was out and I ended up chatting with his dad.
As time floated past us Mr. Esposito and I became friends. Though his first response to any statement or question was almost always, a “Fuck’em, Beasely. Just fuck’em,” his follow-up conversation was more nuanced. Over time he opened up and he began to share the struggles associated with family and his small trade business. We became friends. He was a craftsman, installing complicated conveyer systems and huge machines. Clients scheduled him for installation jobs and Mr. Esposito arrived as mammoth containers of equipment coursed onto factory receiving docks. He was charged with the installation, testing and integration of automated tools into mechanical production lines. The machines were forged in the Rust Belt and shipped to the NYC area for assembly. There was no software and no concept of manufacturer’s quality control. This was 100% heavy iron and shit was always missing. Every job dealt with missing parts, missing electrical components, missing safety systems and always missing nuts and bolts. As was the case with his home life, Mr. Esposito’s job represented a scramble to get a gaggle of complicated things working as a unit.
Mr. Esposito prepared for each job with prefab work in his shop, building required fasteners and securing parts before the installation date. Prefab time was rather pleasant as a sense of urgency had yet to arrive to the job and beer flowed freely. If I was around I helped Mr. Esposito during prefab welding and subsystems assembly. I was paid in beer.
The focal point of Mr. Esposito’s home shop was an over sized wood burning stove. Regardless of the weather we eventually found ourselves sitting around the stove, feet up, tipping beers. When nights turned cool we tended the fire. When words escaped us, I stared into the stove and Mr. Esposito slowly rubbed his chest with a never ending swirling motion accompanied by his Cheshire cat smile.
This particular summer evening was wonderfully warm and there was no fire to tend. As we downed our Millers his questions poked around my edges, trying to see if there was an ember worth tending.
“You flunked out of what is it, ULowell, or something like that, right, Bease?”
“Yup, fucked up and flunked out,” I shrugged.
He shrugged back, “Besides jerking off and pissing away your time with me, what are you doing now?”
“I’m working in a warehouse down by The Meadowlands. I drive a forklift and unload trucks. I’m like one of the only white guys there. Everyone else is Puerto Rican or something so I guess I’m learning Spanish. ‘Come meirda’. That means eat shit.”
“What else?” Mr. Esposito asked.
“Que pasa, that means…”
He cut me off, “No you dumb fuck, what else are you doing in general? You know, besides working in a fuck’n warehouse.”
“Oh, ah in September I’m taking classes at Bergen. I’m not looking forward to it, ya know. I never really studied in high school and I just kinda floated by. Shit, at college, they don’t give a shit about you, ya know. You’re on your own. All I did was get drunk, get into fights and get wasted. I still can’t believe those douche bags flushed me out. I guess I shoulda gone to classes and done the work. I didn’t know they’d be so hard core, ya know?”
Mr. Esposito took his worn boots from the stove and leaned forward, putting his large round face into mine. I could see the creases and deep lines under his whiskers. His pores were huge and many were filled with black soot. He smelled of sweat, Camel no filters and beer. His battle against life’s tide had taken its toll. He looked older that his 36 years.
“Let me fuck’n tell you something, kid. In this world, you are on your own. All the fucking time. This ain’t fuck’n high school where you float by and fuck some cheerleader. This is the fuck’n real work and you are fucked if you think you are making it floating down the river like some fuck’n useless leaf. Fucked! Totally, totally fucked!”
“Shit, I don’t want to be some leaf or twig or whatever you called it, Mr. Esposito. I wanna be more than that, ya know?” Catching the lamp light, Mr. Esposito bobbed his hand up and down as he traced his arm from right to left, creating a floating shadow – creating a floating leaf – across the shop wall. After downing my remaining High Life, I continued, “Man, maybe I better study at Bergen or something.”
“Maybe you should try to study the fuck out of that community college and think about what you want to do with your life, son. Huh?” My head bobbed up and down as he sized me up, “Listen what are you doing for work while you’re at Bergen? Are you gonna keep working at the warehouse when classes start?’
“I ah, I guess I’m gonna see if they need me part time cause classes are in the afternoon ya know? That’ll suck if they didn’t need me. That will really fuck’n suck. I don’t want to just leach off my parents, ya know?”
He eyed me, “Yeah I know. And believe me when I tell you they don’t want you leaching off them either, numb nuts. Especially if you’re flunk’n out of school and being a fuck’n unemployed burnout. Listen, if the warehouse doesn’t need you just let me know. I can always use a body on the job. I can’t install systems with just two arms. So, let me know.”
A week later the owner of the warehouse took a pass on my suggestion for part time work with a sharp response, “No. Full time or nothing. You decide and tell me tomorrow. I don’t need no college kid. I need a fork lift driver.”
So I took Mr. Esposito up on his offer and began helping him out when I did not have classes.
I was starting my third gig with Mr. Esposito when he found me slumped on the stoop that morning. On the first job we installed two refrigeration units in a hot dog factory in Brooklyn. The place was horrifically dirty and caused a month long gap in my ability to eat chilidogs after emptying a nickel bag. The second job focused on the repair of a conveyer system in Paterson. I crawled around under a 20 year old system handing Mr. Esposito parts and tools as he barked orders and random curses in my direction. Today, we were heading back to Paterson to install a multi-tiered conveyer belt system.
Before heading into Paterson, we stopped in town to grab coffee at Sherbert’s store. As Mr. Esposito swung the van into an open parking space in front of the store I became sick. With tools, hanging buckets and parts still rattling in the back of the van I cracked the door open and heaved into the street. Mr. Esposito tilted his head as he witnessed his lone employee prepare for the job. “Nice, Bease. Nice. You coming in or waiting in the truck?”
“I’m good. I’ll come in”
Sherbert’s was crammed with the flow of the morning crowd. White collar commuters grabbing their papers, blue collar guys like us grabbing coffee and muffins to go and the older guys, regulars, jabbering away at the counter offering commentary on the incoming crowd and news of the day. Mr Esposito ordered coffee to go and we were out of there within a minute. I was dizzy and wanted to puke.
Once in the van, we took a moment to peel back the plastic lids and nurse our coffees. I leaned back and closed my eyes as Mr. Esposito backed out and headed towards Rt. 20, a winding two lane river of commuters periodically interrupted by traffic lights and major intersections. As we turned onto the highway Mr. Esposito gunned it. He turned to me, “So, Bease, what’d ya do last night that got you so fucked up this morning?”
I opened my eyes and for the first time this morning thought of last night. “Whoa, shit, I went to the Paramus Drive-in last night with Mel. We got baked out of our minds and drank a fifth of Jack. Well, I think she only had like three shots. I had the rest.”
He cut to the chase, “Did you get laid?”
“Fuck yeah. We put the seats down in the wagon and screwed all night.”
“Anything else?” he probed.
“We twisted up a couple of fatties. Shit, we filled the entire car with smoke and just laid there in the fog screwing. It was awesome, man.”
He cocked his head at me, “No, man, I mean anything other than your boring teenage intercourse?”
I stared blankly.
He continued, “Ya know, after a couple of decades of fucking that shit gets boring. Ya got to experiment; ya know what I mean, Bease?”
“Ah, no, I don’t know, Mr. Esposito. Gett’n laid in a cloud of weed is good enough for me.”
He continued driving, alternating looks between me and the jockeying traffic. He pressed on the gas as he swerved into the right lane. “Bease, when you get to be my age, you get bored with just poking your carrot into the rabbit hole. You gotta keep it interesting. You gotta experiment with different things, ya know?” He eyed me then continued, “Let lose and try some new shit, young man. Experiment, my boy, experiment.”
He continued driving, slowing only for the annoying, randomly dispersed, red lights and then gunning forward once the light turned green.
His voice floated, “Bease, my boy, you don’t know what you’re missing.”
As we plowed forward on Rt. 20 he pushed back in his seat and craned his neck upwards, allowing his face to look up at the ceiling. He smiled his Cheshire cat smile. I alternated looks between Mr. Esposito and the traffic surging around us. He took a peak through the windshield and then closed his eyes, taking both hands off the wheel, slowly swirling his hands across his chest. His eyes closed as he arched his head upwards, obviously lost in his own adventure last evening. He continued rubbing himself, sharing his all too vivid recollection with me, “I gotta tell you, man there is nothing, nothing man, like having your lady straddle you, nice and warm on your chest, and then …”
My eyes bugged, “Mr. Esposito, look out! Brake, man, brakeeeee!” I screamed.
Broken from his trance, Mr. Esposito’s eyes snapped forward as we hurtled towards a line of cars waiting on a red light. He grabbed the wheel and slammed on the brakes. After driving at 70 MPH we weren’t about to stop in time. We skidded wildly as the line of stopped cars fast came upon us. Mr. Esposito swung the wheel to the right, scattering his tools and buckets, flying in an explosion behind us. We were pelted from all directions with wrenches, bolts and hot coffee and as the van slowly began to tilt sideways. Seeing an opening in the breakdown lane, Mr. Esposito swerved past the last car and slammed into the curb, knocking the remainder of his tools off the shelves in the back of the van. The smell of burning rubber caught up to us as we came to a stop on the curb.
He covered his eyes, and then squeezed his hands into his face. “Holy shit, Bease that was close. Too fuck’n close.” I opened the door and leaned out heaving my first few sips of coffee. The rest had soaked through my shirt as the hot liquid found a home on my chest during the crash. I didn’t feel the need to swirl my hands across the wetness.
The light turned green and traffic pulled away like an outgoing tide, leaving us behind. No one stopped to help. Mr. Esposito pulled his sausage fingers from his face and looked over at me, “Get used to it, Beasley. This is your life, man. You are floating along on your mother-fucking own.”
I stared at him, horrified at his words more so than our near miss.
“Want me to start on the flat?”
He jerked his thumb to the back of the van, “I’ll get the flat. Go get me the jack and then get that stuff back in the bins. And no more talking of trim. That shit almost killed us.”
“Got it,” I responded. I waded into the back of the van, and started filling bins, thinking talk of trim was not the issue here. The issue was whether I was going to float through life like a leaf or whether I want to stick an oar into the river and steer.
As I shoved fasteners into their bin, I jabbed the back of my hand on an edge. Blood began to flow from of a small but deep cut. I squeezed hard and startled Mr. Esposito as I screamed, “God damn it, I ain’t no fucking leaf.”
I better learn to study.
