The Zamboni was gone, the shimmery ice rendered clear as glass. A set of goals had been positioned at either end of the rink and a stream of well-padded hockey players in full gear was circling the ice. “Come back to work.”
“After making a total ass of myself?”
“Come back to work,” Becky repeated, grabbing his wrist and squeezing as hard as she could. “I’ll teach you the rope so crap like that doesn’t happen again. Or, if it does, God forbid, you won’t go ballistic with a spaz attack.” Curtis stared at her dumbly, a sad smile creasing his slightly parted lips. Becky Borelli was not to be denied. “Come back to work at Nagel’s Bagels.”
“Spoke to Curtis earlier this evening.” Becky was sipping a cut of Twinning’s tea laced with honey at the kitchen table.
Mrs. Borelli, who was mending the hem on a dress, looked up. “That so?” Becky told her about her clandestine visit to the Finch Arena.
“Normally, I’d have told you to mind your own business.” She pushed the needle through the cloth and pulled the thread taut. “Is he a good skater?” Becky told her mother about the scratch spin.
During the winter Olympics, she watched the American figure skaters run through their arsenal of spectacular moves usually culminating in the final, gravity-defying triple axel. It was one thing to sit on a couch a thousand miles away, but in person, the experience was sublime. At the arena a cluster of girls, several of whom were considerably older than Curtis, were practicing spins, but none convincingly. Either their limbs went askew throwing their torso out of whack. Or they began smoothly enough, perfectly centered, only to end up in a disjointed, wobbly heap eight to ten feet away from the original mark.
“Miraculous,” Becky blurted the word with wistful insistence. “His scratch spin was perfectly miraculous.”
Mrs. Borelli adjusted the silver thimble, wedging it tighter on her index finger. “Yes, I’m sure it was.”
Becky’s eyes clouded over. “What do we ever do that’s even half as special?”
Mrs. Borelli looked up from her sewing with an amused expression. “Baking bread and feeding the masses – that’s miracle enough.”
Baking bread and feeding the masses… Becky sat quietly watching her mother sew. This was their life - baking bread and pastries for the working class families of Federal Hill. She still had to wash her hair before going to bed. Rising, she brushed her mother’s cheek with a feathery kiss and turned to leave.
“He’s gifted.” Mrs. Borelli threw the words out in an offhand manner not bothering to raise her head from her sewing.
“What’s that?” She shuffled back to where her mother was sitting.
“I know Curtis’ mother from Saint Gregory’s. The family doesn’t like to make a big deal about his uniqueness, but it just slipped out when we were commiserating one day after Mass.”
“Yeah?”
“According to Mrs. Stedman, there are five levels of gifted intelligence ranging from bright to profoundly gifted. Her son falls in the ‘exceptional’ category.”
“Exactly how exceptional?”
“One in every thirty thousand people is exceptional, which puts him in the 99.997th percentile.”
Becky paused to digest the information. In the short time that he worked at the pastry shop, Curtis never once acted smug or superior. At the ice rink, if anything, he seemed humbled by Becky’s insistence that he return to the bakery. “I suppose that explains his talent as a skater.”
“No,” her mother corrected. “According to Mrs. Stedman, Curtis may be a good skater but that’s not his special forte.”
“The clarinet?”
“Not that either.” Mrs. Borelli removed the thimble and laid the material on the table, smoothing the new seam with the palm of her hands. “History,” she said emphatically. “Ancient history back before the time of Christ.” “But according to his mother, the boy tends to get it jumbled up with current events in his oversized brain. That’s why she thought it might be a good thing if Curtis got a job in the real world. Little did we know ….”
Becky took a shower, washed her hair then styled the limp, chestnut-colored strands with the curling iron. One in every thirty thousand people… It didn’t just make her feel dumb, but downright ridiculous.
There she was at the Finch Arena initially making fun of Curtis Stedman only to discover that the boy sweeping confectioner’s sugar and King Arthur flour from the bakery floor was an underage Einstein! But how could she have thought any different? From the first day he arrived at the bakery, Curtis seemed fogbound, loopy, eccentric, spaced-out - just a tad out to lunch. It took the ‘gifted child’ half an hour to figure out how to manage a mop and pail where he wasn’t sloshing sudsy water all over the display room floor. But then it went with the territory—all these ‘gifted’ types were like that. Becky remembered her physics teacher commenting that Einstein didn’t speak until he was two.
Asynchronicity. That was the loopy, twenty-five cent word Mrs. Stedman used when explaining to Becky’s mother why her teenage son sometimes seemed ham-fisted or dull-witted undertaking simple chores. Gifted children developed unevenly, their hypersensitive, overdeveloped craniums far outstripping everything else in their genetic makeup.
Becky propped the hot curling iron on a metal stand and reached for a brush. A weird incident earlier in the week should have sent up a red flag. On Tuesday, Becky found Curtis sprawled on the bakery floor. “There’s a wrinkle in my sock,” he explained, waving a sneaker fitfully in the air. The boy ran a probing finger over his instep then slipped the sneaker back on but immediately removed it a second time.
Becky glanced at his foot. “I don’t see a wrinkle.”
“Well, I can feel it and the damn thing’s driving me nuts.”
Becky shrugged and went off to wait on a customer. A half hour later, she spied Curtis near the industrial mixer with the same shoe off and turning the offending sock inside out.
On another occasion, she found Curtis at the front of the store fidgeting and glancing over his shoulder at the far wall.
“What’s wrong?”
“That clock’s ridiculously loud.”
Becky gawked stupidly at the clock, the same one that had hung over the frosted tarallo and coconut macaroons for the past ten years back to when Morris Nagel still owned the bakery. In all that time she never found the clock a distraction. Even now, the second hand bumped along inconspicuously accompanied by a whisper-soft ticking. Being in the 99.997 percentile definitely had its drawbacks.
Morris Nagel and wife, Nadine, opened Nagel’s Bagels shortly after the Second World War. Most Rhode Island Jews settled the tony East Side of Providence, where they built synagogues, a YMHA sports facility, kosher establishments, gift stores and upscale boutiques. Why the orthodox Jew chose Federal Hill was a mystery as inscrutable as a Zen koan.
Immigrant and first-generation Italians favored the ‘Hill’. Accumulating a little money, they moved up to Smithfield or Cumberland. Well-heeled mobsters frequently took their tax-free wealth and settled respectable, upscale bedroom communities like Lincoln and Johnston. Swamp Yankees opted for the remote rural sections of Foster and Gloucester.
Over the years, numerous bakeries came and went from Federal Hill, but the local intelligentsia knew that, if you wanted a first-rate pignolati, a melt-in-your-mouth fig-filled cucidadi, cashew bar, quaresimale or a golden wandi dusted with powdered sugar, you had to go see the Jew!
Most mornings around ten, Mr. Giannini, the wraithlike owner of the Music Depot would stop by. “The usual?” Morris stood behind the counter, hands on hips.
Mr. Giannini ran a thumb and index finger reflexively through a meager moustache. “Yeah, same shit.”
Mrs. Borelli prepared a mocha latte cappuccino sliding it onto the counter next to a garlic bagel slathered with cream cheese shot through with orange flecks of smoked salmon and fresh chives. Then with an affable nod of
his bald head Morris Nagel barked something in a garbled, unintelligible tongue.
Mr. Giannini grabbed the paper plate off the counter. “Same to you Morris.”
The following day, the same bland ritual. One morning Becky asked, “That thing you say to Mr. Giannini—what does it mean?”
“Soll zyne in drehrt, fershtunkener Goniff!” Morris repeated the phrase with the same unfettered warmth that he reserved for the owner of the music store. “The phrase is an eclectic mix of Yiddish - a bastardize Medieval German - and ancient Hebrew.”
“So what’s it mean?”
“Soll zyne in drehrt, fershtunkener Goniff!” Again, the same hearty tone. “Rot in hell, you lousy crook!” Becky’s mouth fell open. “In his youth, that lowlife thug was a gifted violinist.” Morris added, deflecting the conversation elsewhere.
“You can’t be serious!”
Morris shook his head emphatically. “He recorded with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. There’s a picture of him with Arthur Fiedler hanging over the file cabinet in his office. I seen it with my own eyes!” The name meant nothing to Becky. “The conductor of the Boston Pops Orchestra,” Morris clarified.
So what happened?”
“Who the hell knows!” Morris raised his eyes and stared out the window in the direction of the Music Depot. “Soll zyne in drehrt, fershunkener Goniff!”
In the late sixties Morris Nagel retired and sold his business to Becky’s father, head for the past ten years “Don’t screw around. Use only the best ingredients.” Those were Morris’ final words before handing over the keys.
Tuesday was slow. Very little foot traffic, but business steadily picked up from midweek on. Nothing more was mention about Curtis’ crying jag or the macabre shenanigans at the Music Depot. Becky’s father taught the boy how to braid fancy bread loafs and baste the tops with butter before dusting the surface with poppy seeds, caraway, oat flakes or sesame.
At two o’clock on Friday afternoon, a pudgy, bald-headed man with a mottled nose like a cherry tomato pulled up at the curb in a rust-pocked Volare minivan. “Bladder’s ready to explode. Gotta use the crapper.” He disappeared into the bathroom.
When he reemerged the man strolled into the back and said something to Becky’s parents before returning to the front of the store. “Just made a run to New York. Picked up some decent shit.” He glanced uncertainly at Curtis. “If you’re interested,” he qualified, running a hand repeatedly over his hairless head in an aimless stroking gesture. “What size you take?”
“Size what?” Curtis asked.
“Waist.”
“Thirty-two.”
The bald man chuckled good-naturedly. “I ain’t seen thirty-two since a week after I left my mother’s womb.” He surveyed Curtis from the waist down. “Yah, I got plenty of thirties. Inseam should be no problem either.” The man rushed out the door.
“That’s Uncle Harry. We call him ‘Hot Stuff’”. Through the plate glass window, they could see the squat fellow hurrying door to door. A minute passed. A stream of people converged on the rusty minivan. He threw the rear cargo lid up and was handing out jeans and sweatshirts.
“It’s all designer stuff. Top shelf,” Becky said. “Same name brands you see in the posh shops on Fifth Avenue or Newbury Street in Boston except a fraction of the price.”
A middle-aged woman who Curtis recognized from the pizza joint at the end of the street was rushing off with an armload of clothing. “If it’s such a good deal, how come you don’t grab something?”
Becky shrugged. “My folks don’t appreciate what Uncle Harry does for a living.” She turned away from the window. “Lie down with dogs, get up with fleas. That’s what my mother says about people like him.”
Curtis took one last look. Outside in the street, the crowd had thinned. Uncle Harry, A.K.A. Hot Stuff, was stuffing a bulky wad of bills into his pocket. “My mother and Uncle Harry had a falling out. She hardly talks to him anymore.”
Becky’s uncle was a devout Catholic. He attended church every Sunday, observing all holy days of obligation. He even put up five thousand dollars toward the Our Lady of Perpetual Devotion building fund to lay an elaborate mosaic in the church sacristy. A solid brass plaque identifying Uncle Harry as the primary donor would be prominently displayed on the wall once the project was completed. But several parishioners approached Father Tomasi complaining about Uncle Harry’s largesse. A harmless, low-level hoodlum, he had been indicted a half dozen times, spending two short stints at minimum security facilities in Connecticut and New Jersey. Nobody knew where he got his merchandise – the designer jeans and handbags, Rolodex watches, jewelry and, on occasion, electronic equipment – that he hawked on the fly out of the rear of his minivan. Uncle Harry certainly wasn’t registered with the Providence Chamber of Commerce or Better Business Bureau.
Parishioners at Our Lady of Perpetual Devotion objected on moral grounds. No matter how elegant the church mosaic, the money was tainted. Uncle Harry was a conniving hypocrite trying to barter his way into heaven, the five thousand dollars no better than a modern-day papal indulgence.
In the end, expedient self-interest prevailed. Father Tomasi waved all protests aside, depositing the stack of small denomination bills held together by a rubber band in the church’s bank account. Paolo and Guido Ricci, gifted artisans who emigrated from Naples in the late eighties, were commissioned to design and build the floor. When the project was three-quarters done, Becky visited the church. The intricate mosaic, constructed from glazed tiles, was breathtakingly beautiful. On the wall directly above a granite bowl containing holy water was a garish plaque with Uncle Harry’s name prominently displayed.
Every Saturday Curtis took a coffee break in the late afternoon. He usually sat near the window sipping a mocha latte cappuccino while staring with his signature dreamy-eyed expression out the picture window. Becky slid into a chair beside him. “My mother’s car was stolen last month.”
Curtis glanced at her curiously. “The beige Toyota with the moon roof?”
“Yes. It was gone two days, and the thieves returned the car in better shape than when they stole it.”
Baroooom! On the third Monday in February, Mrs. Borelli heard an engine fire up in the middle of the night. The noisy car sped away rather abruptly down the darkened street but she thought nothing of it. The neighbor two doors down drove a delivery truck for UPS and sometimes went off to work at all hours. It was only when Becky’s mother looked out the kitchen window and saw the empty space where she had parked the car the previous night that she realized the Toyota was missing.
Mrs. Borelli called the police. A young officer with a swarthy complexion arrived and took an incident report. “You better notify the insurance company,” he said. “This doesn’t smell like teenage prank.”
Mrs. Borelli felt a tightening in her stomach. “Why do you say that?”
He tucked the small notepad into a breast pocket. “There’s been a rash of similar car thefts in the area. Hard core, professional thieves. Probably a chop shop.” He repositioned his cap pulling down on the visor. “They grab a car, dismantle it down to the tiniest computer modules and then sell all the parts on the black market.”
When the police car finally drove off Mrs. Borelli went back in the house. “Call Uncle Harry,” Becky said.
“Over my dead body!” Mrs. Borelli hissed.
After her mother left the house, Becky dialed her uncle. “Mom’s car was stolen last night.” She told him what happened.
“Where’s your mother now?”
“Took a taxi to work. She didn’t want to call you.”
“Yeah, what else is new?” he shot back in a surly voice. The man coughed - a hacking smoker’s cough - and blew his nose. “Don’t go anywhere.” He hung up.
Ten minutes later, Uncle Harry called back. “Here’s the deal.” His mood was upbeat, positively buoyant, alternately chuckling as though at some p
rivate joke while trying to affect a semi-serious tone. “I located your mother’s car, but it’s gonna take a few hours for the chumps to put everything back together.”
“Put what back together?”
“Tonight around nine o’clock, a guy’s gonna drop the Toyota off at the athletic field around the corner from your house. He’ll leave the vehicle in the parking lot. They hotwired the ignition, so you’ll need a spare set of keys to drive it home. You can pick the car up any time after nine. Capishe?”
“Yeah, I get it.”
“And, for God’s sakes, don’t do anything stupid like calling the police or telling my sister you spoke with me.”
“No, I wouldn’t do that. Thanks Uncle Harry.”
There was an uncomfortable silence. “Just because I share a passing acquaintance with these scum-of-the-earth lowlifes, doesn’t mean I condone what they do for a living.” Without waiting for a reply, he hung up the telephone.
Later that night around eight-thirty Becky clipped the leash on the beagle, who had been sleeping curled up on the living room sofa. “Let’s go for a little stroll, Ralphy.” The sleepy-eyed dog, who had already settled in for the night and had no desire to leave the comfort of the sofa, eyed her warily.
“Where you going with the pooch?” Mrs. Borelli intercepted Becky as she was heading for the front door.
“Ralphy’s got to pee.”
“I took him out after supper.”
“Yeah well I found him scratching at the back door,” Becky lied.
Mrs. Borelli shrugged and gave ground. Becky walked the dog to the athletic field where it was totally dark, the parking lot empty. She led Ralph over to a maple tree; he lifted his hind leg, a ceremonial gesture, and anointed the trunk. At five minutes passed nine, a beige Toyota crept into the lot and eased up to a parking space. Purposefully and in no great hurry whatsoever, a young man wearing a brown leather jacket climbed out of the car. He stretched his limbs. Clearing his throat, he spit on the ground then stuck an unfiltered cigarette between his lips, lit the tobacco and sucked a deep draft of smoke into his lungs. Noticing Becky with the dog over by the swings, the man nodded affably then turned around and leisurely strolled away.