Welcome to the Arcade Chapter One

                                                                 Johnny,  September 1979

     Whenever we come down to the arcade after school, Octavio can’t keep his eyes off Joey Colucci. I tell him, this is not a neighborhood where you want to stare at anybody, especially one of the local psychos, but Octavio claims he can’t help himself. He says he’s never seen anything like Joey C. in his life. And even though I grew up a few blocks from here and not on a military base like my friend, I tend to agree.

     Joey C.’s body is enormous. It’s shaped like a giant stuffed shell and wrapped in an old army jacket that’s never buttoned, with the sleeves cut to show off his tattoos. Green, blue, gold and red flames flicker from his wrists up his arms to his neck, which is as thick as a snow tire. A pair of baggy dungaree shorts and blue flip-flops complete the picture.

     There are all kinds of rumors about what Joey C. does. The one thing I know for sure is that every Fourth of July, he steals a car, fills it with M80s and gasoline and blows it up in the middle of the South Beach parking lot. Then he takes a bow and everybody watching from the boardwalk goes crazy. It’s the only time I’ve ever seen Joey C. smile. The problem is, on every day that’s not the Fourth of July, he stands on the corner in front of the Club Vino. We have to walk right past him to get to the arcade. And Joey C.’s definitely not smiling now.

     “You think he was really in the army?”

     “Sshhhh,” I say. Octavio always has a million questions, even when we’re not in school. He asks them in one of those squeaky whispers that slice right through the beach air and the voices of The Four Seasons singing, “Who loves you, pretty baby?” that come flying out of the open door of the bar.

     “Why does he look at you like that?”

     “Sshhhh,” I say again, trying to move him along. “Like what?”

     “Like he wants to say something to you.”

     “No way,” I say. “It’s the sunglasses.” 

     Along with all the other things that Octavio finds fascinating about him, Joey C. wears a pair of silver aviators. When the lenses catch the afternoon sun, they blind you like a death ray. Octavio blinks at him for another three seconds, then turns away.

     “Maybe,” he says, but I can tell he’s not convinced. Neither am I, really. Joey C. does look at me funny, even with the mirrored sunglasses. But by this time, we’re close to the opening of the arcade. I check the dial on Octavio’s watch, which is as big as the lid on a coffee can and has six mini clocks that show time from navy bases all over the world. As far as I can tell, it’s not even twelve-thirty. We’ll have the place to ourselves for another hour and a half. 

     The arcade is on Sand Lane. It’s about fifteen feet from the Club Vino and Joey C. and next to what’s left of the small amusement park, which loses a ride every summer. (When they break down, like the Caterpillar did this past July, someone just covers them up with a tarp.) The arcade’s got huge colored letters in front that spell out A-R-C-A-D-E, so the tourists who used to come to the beach but don’t anymore won’t miss it. The building is nothing fancy, just a cement bunker with two walls missing, one facing Sand Lane and one facing the water. The other two walls are painted black and packed with video games. 

     Dinino, the man who owns the place, sits on a stool by the cash register twenty hours a day. He pulls the metal gates down when he closes up at night and pulls them up first thing in the morning.

     Even with the openings and the mist, which comes off the water and sticks to everything in the neighborhood like salt on a pretzel, the arcade is always ten degrees hotter than anywhere else and smells like burning rubber. It’s only a matter of time before something blows. But we have the fire department up the block and the Atlantic Ocean a hundred feet away, so I think we should be good.

     “Pucchiacha,” Dinino says when he sees us coming, and we wave.

     Dinino’s maybe fifty, maybe a hundred and twenty. He’s one of those people that’s impossible to tell how old they are, mostly because of the layers of clothes (black coat, sweater, hat, pants, boots and white apron and socks) that he covers himself with every day of the year, no matter how hot or cold it is. 

     The five feet of Dinino start with his black felt hat and end with the rubber soles on his boots. I’ve never seen him wear anything else, and I’ve been playing games down here for seven years. When I was four, my grandmother Mary the Blonde walked me into the arcade, put me on a milkcrate in front of Whirlybird, and handed me a stack of quarters. Dinino’s been calling me “Pucchiacha” ever since. It’s an inside joke between the two of them. I know it’s Sicilian for something bad, but I’m not sure exactly what. Mary the Blonde says it’s better that way and laughs.

     Because of my “needs to apply himself more” grades at Holy Calvary, I usually don’t get to the arcade during the week, but Wednesdays are a different story. Every Wednesday we get out of school at noon, so the church can funnel the public-school kids in after lunch and make some extra money. The nuns used to call it “Release-time,” only they stopped when parents said it sounded too much like prison. So now they call it CCD. Nobody knows what it stands for, but everybody’s thrilled, except for the poor PS 93 and PS 64 kids who have to sit in those hot classrooms until a quarter to three.

     Our friend Artie’s already playing Skee-Ball when me and Octavio walk in.

     “Another record, my friends,” Artie calls out, a huge grin on his face.

     Artie’s very tall and thin—Mary the Blonde calls him “lanky” -- with long, skinny arms that almost reach the ball-hop. He’s really good at Skee-Ball, and if anybody deserves to be really good at something, it’s Artie Brown. Sometimes kids tell him he should be playing basketball with those long arms. But none of it fazes Artie. He just smiles and sails another wooden ball into the 50-hole. It’s beautiful.

     The green cardboard tickets you get for having a high score are pumping out of the ticket dispenser near the coin slot. They curl up like an old hose on top of Artie’s bookbag, which he’s dropped on the floor in front of the game. The tickets are completely worthless-- you can redeem them for a comb if you have ten thousand of them--but the thought of getting them for doing something you like to do is a nice touch.

    I nod at the tickets and then at Artie’s score and try to keep a serious look on my face. “Not bad for an orphan,” I say, and we both start to laugh.

     Artie and I met in kindergarten and stayed best friends even after I was shuttled over to Catholic school for first grade. He ate lunch at my house for the whole year we were in PS 93 together. And even though I go to Catholic school now, he still eats dinner at our house at least twice a week. 

     He used to live at the Bethlehem Home, which was an orphanage run by Lutherans on a hill by the Verrazzano Bridge, not too far from where we live. Mary the Blonde would take me there on Saturday afternoons to play nok hockey with him, and it didn’t seem like a bad place at all. He went

into foster care when the home burned down a couple years ago. My family is so crazy about Artie that my mother wanted to take him in after the fire, but for some reason it never happened.

     Octavio smiles at the pile of tickets on the bookbag, gives Artie a thumbs-up, then parks himself in front of the racing game. He’s about half the size of Artie, so he stands on his tiptoes and hangs onto the wheel like he’s heading into the last lap at Daytona. Octavio’s obsessed with cars, especially ones with nitro engines that need parachutes to stop.

     The Borbo family is from the Philippines, but his father’s a mechanic in the U.S. Navy. They live in Fort Wadsworth, the base under the Bridge, but they’ve moved like eight times since he was born. He arrived in Holy Calvary two years ago, when we were in fourth grade, and we both know the clock is ticking. But for now, everything is perfect. It’s only when Phillip Becker walks into the arcade that our beautiful September afternoon turns to shit.

     “Look who’s here,” Becker says. His beady eyes move from our grey school uniforms and Artie’s Hawaiian shirt and shorts to our annoyed faces. “Jerkoffs International.”

     The good news about Becker is that we don’t see him a lot, especially now that he’s in high school. But whenever he does stop in the arcade there’s a problem, which comes down to one thing. It’s not that Becker’s the worst human being who ever turned up in South Beach. There are other bullies roaming these streets who are much more likely to knock you into a giant rose bush or twist your arm until you’re on your knees and then push your face into a pile of fresh dog crap. Becker is about as much of a physical threat as someone in a blue and white striped polo shirt can be.

     What keeps us dreading Becker is that he has a big mouth. It’s full of nasty things that most of us know not to say and don’t really want to hear about anyway, especially when we’re in the arcade and all we want to do is play games. He also brags non-stop. He loves to tell us how good he is at everything and that everything he does and has is the best: he has the best arm in softball, he gets the best girlfriends, he has the best sneakers, he wears the best clothes, he has the biggest above-ground swimming pool you can buy. He even brags that he has the best braces. He was the same way when he went to Holy Calvary. He was a loudmouth then, only now that we don’t see him every day, he seems a lot worse.

      Sometimes he pulls up to the arcade driving a yellow Trans-AM, even though he’s fourteen and he’s not even close to a license. Everybody knows it’s his older brother’s car, but he parks it up on the sidewalk for all the world to see. Some of what Becker says is true—he does have nice stuff. But it’s the way he says it. He goes out of his way to make sure everyone around him who doesn’t have all the stuff he has feels bad about it.

     Like now.

     “Watch out,” Becker says. “Let me show you how it’s done.”

     Today Becker’s the best Skee-Ball player in the world and he’s not too happy when he sees Artie’s score. It doesn’t matter that there are four empty machines next to the game Artie was just playing. Becker has to play that game so he can wipe out what Artie’s just done. That’s what Becker does. My friend takes his hand off the wooden ball and takes a couple of steps back from the game.

     “Come on, Becker,” Octavio says, “We know how great you are. Why don’t you try the arcade in the mall?”

     “Why don’t I try your mother, Borbo?” he says. After Becker makes a few obscene gestures sliding his quarter in and out of the coin slot, he finally puts it into Artie’s machine. “Tell your mom it was good,” he says.

      Dinino sits on his stool by the cash register. He sees everything but acts like he sees nothing. “Alert,” as Mary the Blonde would say. But from the way he leans forward I can tell what he’s thinking: “This f---ing kid again.” He’s not happy that Becker’s here. Dinino knows that Becker should be in school. But Artie should be in school, too, or at least in one of those hot CCD classrooms, so he doesn’t say anything.

     After he shoots the first ball into the twenty hole, Becker’s mad. That’s the way he gets when things don’t go his way immediately. He steps back from the machine. “Take your garbage,” he snaps, and makes a face at Artie’s bookbag like it has leprosy. When my friend doesn’t move, Becker makes a show of checking his watch.

     “Anytime you’re ready.”

     I look at Becker and think about how happy the three of us were five minutes ago. Then, before Becker says something really stupid, I take a step toward Artie’s stuff on the floor.

     “Chill Becker,” I say, “I got it.”

     But when I go to pick it up, Artie grabs my elbow.

     “Don’t,” Artie says. He looks at Becker with an expression on his face that I’ve never seen before. 

     Even though Artie’s always the tallest kid wherever we go, he’s the most peaceful person I’ve ever met in my life. He never gets angry, and he’s never in a bad mood. It’s probably one of the

reasons why my mother wanted to take him in so bad.

     “They’re just tickets, Phillip,” I say. Becker hates when we use his first name. I don’t mention the bookbag, which looks suspiciously light anyway.

     “You’re standing right there.”

      “Shut up, Romano.”

      "Make me."

     “Fellas,” Dinino calls out from the stool, “what’s the problem?”

     “Your customer won’t get his belongings out of my way.”

     The way Becker says “belongings” makes it sound like a dirty word. And he doesn’t even look at Dinino when he says it. He just keeps staring Artie down. I feel my friend’s fingers press deeper into my skin.

     “What’s the big deal?” Dinino says. “Raccoglili e basta.” Dinino looks down at the tickets and grins. “Non lasciare che questa bocca grande it dia fastidio.”

     We’re used to Dinino speaking Italian to us and we can pretty much figure out what he’s saying by the way he says it, especially since it’s always followed by pointing and cursing. Artie looks at Dinino like he understood every word, but he still doesn’t move.

     “I can’t,” he says to Dinino. “I’m sorry.”

     Dinino nods at me and Octavio, who somehow heard what was going on over the roar of the car game and is standing next to us. Then he slides off his stool and grabs his broom and a dustbin, which he uses to pick up anything that falls to the floor, from a quarter to a piece of pizza crust. But Artie steps between Dinino and his stuff.

     “He needs to hand them to me,” Artie says, nodding at Becker.

     My friend’s standing stiff and straight, but his eyes look like two cups

of chocolate ice that have been sitting on the counter a minute too long.

     “Like dick I will,” Becker says.

     Dinino has the patience of one of the saints in the Bible who’s always getting hung upside down and hit with rocks but never loses his cool. But I can see that he’s had it. He puts his broom and dustbin back behind the register and turns his attention to me.

     “Pucchiacha,” he says, “non fare niente do folle.”

     Then an unbelievable thing happens—Dinino leaves the arcade. He turns and walks out of the opening and stands on the sidewalk in front of Becker’s brother’s yellow car.

     “What’s he doing?” Octavio says.

     But then something even crazier happens—he takes off his hat. So the double shock of seeing Dinino hatless and out of the arcade in the sunshine stops us all in our tracks. For about ten seconds the four of us stand shoulder-to-shoulder and stare at Dinino with our mouths open. 

     Becker snaps out of it first. 

     “This is fucking stupid,” he says, and immediately goes back to being an asshole.

     But in that short time between us staring at Dinino with his hat off and Becker opening his mouth, I have one of those revelations that the nuns love to tell us about. I look at Becker and think: cuts from thorns heal. The smell of dog shit in your nostrils goes away. But this loudmouth, standing there in his polo shirt and his expensive braces, is about to do something worse than all the other lunatics in this neighborhood combined.

     “Come on Phillip,” I say, “Just knock it off.”

     “Stay out of this, Romano,” he says.

     Octavio is thinking the same thing. Out of the blue he darts over to the Skee-Ball machine, scoops up the tickets and the bookbag, and puts them down on the floor behind us. But it’s too late. Becker finishes his sentence.

     “That’s your business if you want to hang around with n------s.”

     Once the word explodes out of Phillip’s mouth, Artie looks like he’s been punched in the heart. The melted ice in his brown eyes turns into tears. That’s when I barrel my head into Becker’s stomach.

     It’s funny when you don’t know you’re going to do something until you do it, but here I am, my head buried in the stripes of Becker’s shirt. Unfortunately, even though I’m three months away from being twelve, I weigh eighty pounds with two pockets full of change, and it’s far from a major blow. Becker just kind of swipes me away like a bullfighter and I end up on the cement floor by the register. But it’s not me he wants to make miserable. 

     Anybody can take one look at Artie and know how much he doesn’t want this. When we were in kindergarten, Artie traded me his “Ball of Confusion” 45 for my “Let it Be” 45. That’s how much Artie doesn’t want this. But when Artie sees me sitting on the ground, my best friend rolls his fingers into two fists and steps toward Becker. Then they both stop dead in their tracks.

     Joey C., his palms held out in the air like the world’s largest crossing guard, is suddenly standing between Artie and Becker, shadowed by Dinino, who’s put his hat back on.

     “Basta,” Joey C. says, and everybody freezes.

     He pulls off the mirrored sunglasses and slides them into the top pocket of the army jacket. He doesn’t look at me on the floor, or Octavio, or even back at Artie. Joey C.’s eyes, which are exactly like the yellow fins on the old pinball machine, zero in on Becker, who’s still standing next to the Skee-Ball game.

     “I hear you’re pretty good,” Joey C. says.

     Becker looks at him like he has no idea what he’s talking about. 

     Joey C. pats the top of the Skee-Ball game with his toaster-oven-sized hand. To his credit, Becker manages to get two words out of his mouth, a tremendous improvement from the last terrible word that left his lips.

     “I’m alright,” he says.

     Joey C. stacks a handful of quarters on the game by the ticket dispenser.

     “Play.”

     “I don’t feel like playing anymore,” Becker says.

     “Sure, you do.”

     Becker takes in the expression on Joey’s face. Then he slides in front of the table, puts one of Joey’s quarters into the slot and starts to play. The balls hit the jump and land occasionally in the forty hole, once in the thirty hole, but mostly in the hundred hole. Now Becker’s own tickets are sliding out and landing in a coil at his feet.

     “I take back what I said,” Joey C. says. “You are very good.”

     “Thanks.”

     The sound that comes out of Joey C.’s mouth is not what I expected. His voice is gravelly, but the words come out steady and soft, not dangerous at all.

    “No, I mean it,” Joey C. says. “Very, very good.”

     Becker grins, like it’s the most natural thing in the world to get a compliment from a person who blows up cars.

     “You know,” Joey C. says, nodding his head, “I got an idea.”

      He pulls a wad of money the size of an artichoke out of his shorts and peels off three hundred-dollar bills.

     “They’re yours,” he says, and drops them on the Skee-ramp.

     “No,” Becker says, “I can’t take this money.”

     “Sure you can--put it in your pocket. You deserve it.”

     Becker, the cocky loudmouth that he is, thinks about it for a few seconds. Then he reaches for the bills and folds them neatly into the front pocket of his jeans.

    “Thank you, Joey C.”

     “Now, all you have to do,” Joey C. says, “is put the next ball in the hundred- hole.”

     “What do you mean?”

     “What I said.”

     “You want me to put the next ball in the hundred-hole?”

     “That’s all you gotta do. The ball goes in the hole, you keep the money. Done. You take your brother’s nice yellow car up to Carvel and you buy yourself some ice cream. Easy, right?”

     Becker’s eyes move to the hundred-hole like it’s as big as the ocean and all he has to do is cross the street and drop it in. There’s no doubt in his head that he can make the shot. He picks up a wooden ball, sizes up his shot one last time—and winks at Joey. That’s when Joey C. leans in and puts his flaming tattoos in a V around Becker’s neck like a three-hundred-pound anaconda.

     “But,” he says, “just so you know, if you don’t hit the hundred on the first try, I put you in the hospital. I take you behind the building and break every bone in your body. Especially your mouth.” Joey C. delivers these words in the same soft and steady way he’s just praised Becker’s game. “You deserve that, too.” And he releases his hold.

     It’s obvious from the terror on Becker’s face that the hundred-hole has shrunk from an ocean to the size of one of those paper cups you rinse with in the dentist’s office. He reaches into his jeans, slides the three hundred dollar bills out and hands them back to Joey. But when he turns to leave, Joey C.’s giant body blocks the opening to the arcade.

     “You forgettin’ something?” Joey C. asks.

     By now Becker can’t think straight. He looks from Joey’s face to the bills in Joey’s hand, desperate to figure out what he might be forgetting.

     “Get your tickets off the floor,” he says, then looks at us like he just remembered we’re there. “So these boys could play.”

     Becker spins around, grabs his tickets and darts past Joey. The Trans-Am bottoms out when he pulls it off the curb, but Becker doesn’t stop. Joey C. watches the Trans-Am race up Sand Lane from the opening of the arcade. Then he turns around and looks at me.

     “You’re Jack Romano’s son, right?”

     I’m in the same spot I was when I charged Becker, only now I’m standing.

     “Yes,” I say.

     “What’s your name?

     “Johnny.” Then I add stupidly. “Romano.”

     “Your father’s a great man,” he says.

     I have no idea what he’s talking about. My father owns a vending machine business. At night he refills cigarette machines and swaps records out of jukeboxes. Most of the time when we’re home—“we” meaning my mother and my twin brothers and sister—he’s taking naps. When would he

have time to be a “great man’?

     “The best,” Joey C. adds.

     Is this a test? I hope not, because I suck at tests. But I can see by the way that Joey C. is looking at me that he’s serious. So there’s no way I’m going to argue with him. After what I just saw, if Joey C. tells me my father was one of the apostles, I’d run back to Holy Calvary and let the nuns know my father was at the Last Supper.

     “Thank you,” I manage to say.

     From the way he nods his head, this seems to be the answer he wants.

     “Make sure you tell him I said hello.”

     “Should I tell him what happened?”

     “Nah,” he says. “Just hello.”

     All of a sudden, the tattoos on Joey C.’s arms start to glow like they’re on fire. I’m so nervous I can’t help sounding like an idiot.

     “I should say, ‘Joey C. says hello’?”

     “Something like that.”

     We all watch Joey C. take the remaining quarters off the Skee-Ball game, drop them into his shirt pocket, and put his silver sunglasses back on. Then he lumbers out of the arcade back toward the bar, waving at Dinino without turning around.

     In a second Artie and Octavio are next to me. Artie is still a little wet-eyed, but he looks relieved. Octavio looks like Joey C. just blew up one of his favorite nitro cars.

     “What just happened?” Octavio asks.

     “I don’t know.” I look at Dinino, who’s watching us, his face as expressionless as the grey concrete floor. Then I point at one of the spinning dials on Octavio’s watch. “Come on,” I say, trying to put it out of my mind. “I think we still have an hour.”

     Welcome to South Beach, Staten Island, a seaside neighborhood under the shadow of the Verrazzano Bridge and across the bay from Brooklyn’s Coney Island. It’s the early 1980s, and best friends Johnny Romano, Ralphie Molinaro, and Giulia Stringer are trying to figure out their lives. But that’s not always easy in South Beach, a place where memories are long, questions are discouraged, and the past washes up faster than the ocean’s waves. Welcome to the center of their universe, a run-down cement bunker filled with video games across the street from the boardwalk, where the three friends eat pizza, play pinball and share their secrets and dreams under the watchful eyes of Dinino, the mysterious owner of the arcade. Welcome to the people who change their lives, as Johnny, Ralphie and Giulia make their way from grade school through a decade full of wonder and confusion, love and heartbreak, betrayal and redemption, and, always, the power of friendship. And welcome to the one question in their hearts and minds that can’t be denied: How do we solve the greatest mystery of all—growing up?

Welcome to the Arcade, the prequel to Two Nickels.