TWO NICKELS

     When I crossed the street, I could make out the fuzzy outline of Dinino in the opening to the arcade, backlit by the neon colors of the video games.

     “Pucchiacha.”

     As soon as he realized it was me, Dinino mumbled his usual greeting, a term of endearment that sounded a lot nicer in Sicilian than it did in English. He’d been saying hello this way for as long as I could remember, and for probably most of his seventy-two years. I smiled and followed my frozen breath inside the building.

     A boombox on the concrete floor blasted a song from the Wu Tang Clan. Dinino shifted his form to yell at the only two kids in the place, who were parked in front of the car racing machine.

     “Madonne, give me a break,” Dinino complained hoarsely. “I got company.”

     Without taking his eyes off the screen, the taller kid tapped the machine with the side of his sneaker and the music stopped.

     “I can’t hear myself think around this fucking place anymore.”

     The only “doors” on the arcade was a pair of cranky metal gates, consumed with rust and touched up by graffiti, that faced the boardwalk on one side and the street on the other. Dinino pulled the gates up at ten in the morning and pulled them down at midnight. The two remaining walls were made of cinder blocks, painted black and lined with video games. Although the place was wide open to the elements fourteen hours a day, the air inside the arcade always smelled like overloaded outlets and fried electrical tape. A low tarpapered ceiling hung about six inches over my head, decorated with stick-on glow in the dark stars. The place was a perfect cross between a cave and a 1950s spaceship. Dinino’s squeegee, his one magic wand against the mist, stood in a plastic bucket by his wooden stool.

     I pulled a small white bag out of my coat pocket and handed it over.

     “They might be a little mushade,” I said. “The cab ride took forever.”

     “You never forget me,” he said.

     Dinino grinned and held a slightly compromised cannoli up to the fake starlight like it had just come off the dessert carte at the Last Supper.

     “Where’d you get ‘em?”

     “Dante’s. On MacDougal.”

     “Thank fucking God,” he said. “These bakers on Staten Island, they should be shot for what they do to pastry.” Dinino took a bite, closed his eyes and made the sign of the cross. “There used to be a place around the corner. Years ago. Every morning the owner made a hundred cannolis, sold ‘em and went to the beach for the day. That was it, one hundred perfect cannolis. Fucking artistry. That was back when people gave a shit about how they made their money.”

     I pulled over a milk crate and Dinino squatted down on his wooden stool.

     Dinino was the “pecora nera” of an old Staten Island family (“Real cut-throat ginzos,” according to my grandmother. “Always crying with a loaf of bread under their arms,” according to my grandfather) that had over time bought up most of the area around the beach and became very wealthy doing it. At one time they owned the corner bar, the deli, the gas station, the drug store, and a small amusement park directly across from the boardwalk, of which the arcade was an after- thought.

     The story in the neighborhood was that Dinino had gotten into some bad trouble as a kid, and the family gave him the arcade to get him out of their hair and keep him away from the real money. But in one of those beautiful twists of fate, the baby boom hit the neighborhood. The arcade became an oasis for every kid within a mile of the beach who didn’t feel like going home and who didn’t mind having an older person around that wasn’t asking a million questions.

     When the family members grew old, they sold off their businesses one by one. But Dinino never sold. He kept the arcade open seven days a week three hundred and sixty-five days a year and made a fortune. Even when a builder knocked down what was left of the amusement park to put up condos, Dinino refused to go along with the family and sell off the last piece of the pie. And like a good Sicilian son who got the last laugh, Dinino took care of their hospital bills and eventually paid for their funerals and put several nieces and nephews through some top-notch colleges. A few years ago, he even funded a new roof for the rectory. All Dinino asked in return was for Father Ignatius to bless a string of rosary beads and hang them over the opening facing the ocean.

     “Take one,” he said, offering me one of the four remaining cannolis.

     “I’m good. I can’t stay too long,” I said. “They’re all up at the house.”

     He slid off his stool and moved over to the cash register, where he grabbed a fistful of paper napkins. Short and hunchbacked, Dinino had a center of gravity that tilted him slightly forward at all times. The white apron, which never left his waist, didn’t help either. It was forever loaded with quarters and hung down to the buckles on his rubber snow boots. More than anything, my friend looked like a still from a silent movie--oversized black parka, white sunlight-deprived skin, the apron and a black felt hat that never left his head, even on the most brutal of summer days. His one concession to color were the gray callouses on his finger-tips, which were currently covered with powdered sugar. 

     Dinino was the rarest of human beings—content to be where he was, always himself, no regrets, no yearning, except the lust he openly expressed for my grandmother. For years I had been trying to talk him into a second career as a character actor, but he would only curse me out whenever I brought it up and tell me I had a head full of stars.

     “Che si dice?”

     “Good.”

     “Laura and the kid?”

     “Terrific,” I lied. Why get into it?

     “Il mio buon amico, che minchia fai? While I’m still young.”

     “Soon,” I said, trying to sound like I meant it, but Dinino noticed when I looked down at the concrete floor.

     “Testa di cazzo.”

     Growing up in this neighborhood, I should’ve spoken a lot more Italian than I did. But I could usually figure out what Dinino was saying by the expression on his face. The look in his eyes was something I hadn’t seen before. I changed the subject. 

     “Why don’t you come up for a drink and say hello?” I knew exactly what his response would be.

     “Next time,” he said.

     He tilted his chin at my new leather extravagance.

     “You like the new coat?”

     “Non è male,” Dinino shrugged.

     “I gave myself a birthday present.”

     “What else is new,” Dinino said, with a grunt that passed for a laugh. “You look like Marcello Mastroianni in that movie I like.”

     I spread my arms wide and shook my hands. “La Dolce Vita.”

     “Dolce my ass,” he said, with another grunt.

     I saw Dinino’s eyes drift from the coat to my blue Brioni flat-fronts.

     “How many times I gotta tell you, don’t wear your good pants down here. You’re gonna ruin them.”

     “Nanny gets very upset when we don’t dress up for special occasions.”

     At the mention of my grandmother, Dinino’s face lit up like a pizza oven, a hundred times brighter than when he saw the cannolis.

     "How’s Mary the Blonde?”

     That was never an easy question to answer.

     When my grandmother was twelve, she walked up to capo di tutti capi Vito Genovese, who was standing on Spring Street with a few members of his crew, and told him that he should be ashamed of himself for laughing at two young boys who were beating the shit out of each other on the corner. To make her point she wedged her skinny frame between the boys and broke up the brawl herself. Then she called Genovese an asshole. 

     This brief encounter with one of the most powerful Mafiosi in Manhattan could’ve gone either way, but Genovese loved it. He immediately christened her “Mary the Blonde” and couldn’t do enough for her and her family while she still lived in the neighborhood.

     “Still married,” I said.

     “Vaffanculo,” Dinino muttered, once again demonstrating his disappointment that Nanny hadn’t been widowed yet. “I wanna make her an honest woman.”

     “Good luck,” I said.

     My eyes fell on two empty pizza boxes spread out on the alley of the skee-ball machine.

     “You still buying the neighborhood dinner?”

     Dinino shrugged, then reached into one of the many pockets of his parka.

     “Happy birthday,” he said. “I want you to have it.”

     “What are you doing?” I laughed. “I can’t accept this.”

     “Pucchiacha, why not? All the quarters you put into these machines over the years, this is the grand prize.”

     What Dinino was thrusting at me was an 18K stainless steel and rose gold Bulgari watch, a perfect piece of jewelry that he had bought twelve years before for his sixtieth birthday. When he saw the way I was looking at it, he became defensive. 

     “What? It still works perfect. Hasn’t lost a second.”

     I took a step back. “You bought this watch for yourself. This is a special memento.”

     “Speciale il mio culo,” he replied. “Anybody could live for sixty years.”

    He looked like he was ready to kill me, so I tried a different approach.

     “How are you going to tell time down here?”

     “When I wake up, I come here. When the last kid leaves, I go home. I need a ten thousand-dollar-watch to tell me that?”

     “I can’t take it.”

     “Fermati,” he snapped, “Why are you arguing with me? You gave me a present? I give you a present.”

     I had given him a bag of bent cannolis, but I already knew this was not my argument to win.

     “Take it,” he said, making the natural rasp of his voice softer. “Before I die down here and by the time they find me, some pezzo di merda from the Albanian pizza place up the block is wearing it on deliveries.”

     I reached out and took the watch from his hand.

     “Put it on your wrist before you lose it.”

     He watched me, his dark olive eyes studying every move, as I slipped the watch slowly over my left hand and stared down at it.

     “Fits nice. Was that so fucking hard?” he said.

     I had to admit, it looked terrific, especially in combo with the new coat. “I’ll hold it for you,” I said.

     “Tieni questo,” he said, grunting again, this one accompanied by a grin and a gesture that you could probably figure out. “Let’s play some pinball.”

     The two kids were still huddled in front of the racing machine. They were debating in very loud, very stoned voices what to do with their last quarter, play another game or split a bag of cheese doodles. Only when I waved them over could I see the faces of a boy and a girl framed in the ovals of their tightly pulled hoods. They were younger than I thought—eleven, maybe twelve. The girl had a

very pretty face dotted with cold red freckles. The boy looked like the fifth Ramone, with thin cheeks and brown hair plastered down to his sleepy eyelids.

     Both of them had gone heavy with the cherry Chapstick and were wearing racing gloves with the fingertips cut off. They were a ragged couple, but not without some punky charm.

     I handed the girl a twenty-dollar bill, which she immediately asked Dinino to change into eighty quarters. Then they both nodded appreciatively and went back to their game, completely forgetting about the cheese doodles.

     “Thanks,” Dinino said. “Mr. Bigshot. Now they’ll be here ‘til midnight.”

     “Who’re you kidding?” Mr. Bigshot said. “You love it.”

     “Speak for yourself.”

     Dinino crumpled the empty pastry bag and dropped it on the concrete floor, where it was immediately carried into the middle of the still-deserted street. That was another thing about the arcade. Unlike the mist, which almost never went away, the breezes that swept through the open doors had a mind of their own. They came and went, with no connection to the weather and no regard for the ocean. They could kick up when the water was flat and vanish during a nor’easter. But put a five-dollar bill on the counter, and it disappeared faster than you could say, “Fuck, my allowance.”

     I reached into my pocket for four quarters and held them in my palm.

     “You ready?” I asked. “My treat.”

     Dinino looked at the Bulgari and laughed. “You bet your ass.”

     There were a dozen machines in the arcade, from the skee-ball tables to the car racing game to the over-eaters of the Pac-Man family. Most of the games were swapped out every few months. But the one machine that never left the premises was Zenon, the most titillating pinball game ever created. I know that “titillating” is a weird thing to call an arcade game, but the truth was, whoever the genius was who thought that thing up knew exactly what “titillating” meant.

     The gameboard was compelling enough. Drawings of beautiful nymphs in various stages of undress (picture the girl on the cover of “Candy-O,” minus the Ferrari) posed for a crew of smirking devils in red tights. But the real charm of the game was the goddess herself. Once you put the quarter in, music that sounded like Black Sabbath backwards came pumping out of the speakers. Then a husky woman’s voice claiming to be the one and only Zenon would taunt the player into screwing up: “Give it to me.” “That’s the best you got?” “What’s wrong with you?” “Shoot again.” And always: “Loser.” Stinging words, especially to an army of eleven-year-olds, but right up our alley. From the day she arrived, kids lined up to play.

     I checked the First Player score.

     “Not bad for an old man,” I said. I knew that would get him going.

     Dinino took a long sip from a pint of blackberry brandy that had materialized out of his parka. Then he passed the bottle to me.

     “You spend fourteen hours a day with a woman, you get to know her weak spots.”

     “Salute,” I said, the liquor warm and sweet in my mouth. I put two quarters into the machine and waited for the music to kick in. “Wish me happy birthday, baby.” 

     A surge of electricity sent me flying back on my ass. Sprawled on the floor ten feet away from the machine, I watched as lights flashed and then exploded inside Zenon’s head, the glass over the board shattered, and finally sparks like a roman candle sent ribbons of color up to the stars on the ceiling, which smoldered briefly and then burst into flames.

     The last thing I remembered was the girl with the freckles asking her boyfriend, “Is he dead?”

     Thirty-year-old Johnny Romano wants to be taken seriously, but the choices he makes—a one-man production of “Waiting for Godot,” a monumental sneeze in a cold syrup commercial, and a thirty-thousand-dollar gambling debt to Salvatore “Sally Toast” Tosterelli -- have sabotaged his acting career. His bad decisions have, more importantly, put his four-and-a-half-year relationship with a woman he truly loves -- soap opera star Laura Winters -- on the edge of a cliff. 

     Through a botched car theft, Johnny meets Virgil Shepherd, street person and sometime porter for a bar on Hudson Street in Greenwich Village. Scribbling his poems on napkins from Dunkin Donuts, Virgil is convinced that he is the Roman poet who guided Dante through Hell. Johnny is convinced that he is crazy. But as their lives converge, Johnny begins to suspect that the mysterious Virgil may actually have an agenda of his own.

     Set in 1997 ten days before Christmas, TWO NICKELS follows this very unlikely pair through Manhattan (and a few choice spots on Staten Island) as they head toward the answer to a question that Johnny has done his best to avoid: What does it take for us to forgive ourselves and begin to heal?