Bridge of Sighs

conversation would be put on hold for a bit, and I wouldn’t be obliged to lie while we ate. But after my father had mopped up the last of the gravy with the final greasy french fry, he said, “She ain’t gotta be the cutest one. You know…the one you like?”
    I felt what I’d eaten shift in my stomach. Though I knew it was true, I didn’t want him to say my mother hadn’t been the cutest.
    “The one you’re looking for,” he went on, “is the nicest.”
    I knew I was supposed to comment, so I agreed.
    “The one you want, she’s gotta like you, too.” I couldn’t help noticing that he’d broken out in a sweat from this emotional heavy lifting, and I wondered why he thought it was necessary. “It’s not just about you liking her. You gotta like each other.”
    This sort of conversation required all of our concentration, which was probably why we didn’t see Uncle Dec come in, or notice him until he was right there at our booth, telling me to shove over, Bub. He sported his usual rich three-day stubble, and when he slid in next to me he made the dry, concussive little sound I always associated with him, as if he had a tiny fleck of tobacco on the tip of his tongue that he was determined to expel. Every time he spat, I followed what I imagined to be the trajectory of whatever he was trying to expectorate, but nothing ever landed. “What,” he said, looking at me. “You couldn’t save me one lousy french fry?”
    “You could order a plate of your own,” my father said. “They ain’t that expensive.”
    “I don’t want my own. I eat like you, pretty soon I’ll look like you,” my uncle told him, still regarding me. “Speaking of which,
you
look more like your old man every day. You both got the same pointed head.” He rapped a hard knuckle on the top of mine so I’d know the spot he was talking about.
    “You ready to go, Louie?” my father said.
    “What’s your hurry?” Uncle Dec wanted to know. “Relax. Have a cup of coffee. I’ll spring, if it’ll make you feel any better.”
    My father was half out of the booth, but since his brother hadn’t moved I was trapped on the inside, so he sat back down.
    “Have some ice cream,” my uncle suggested to me. “I’ll spring for that, too.”
    “He just had a milkshake,” my father told him.
    “So what?”
    Our waitress brought two coffees and a dish of vanilla ice cream for me.
    “You hear Manucci’s closing?” my uncle said, still looking at me, though this was clearly directed at my father, who blanched at the news. Manucci’s was an old West End market, three times the size of Ikey Lubin’s. For the last year my uncle had been working there as a butcher, which was what he did when he wasn’t roofing or tending bar.
    “How come?”
    “The asshole son, what do you think? Likes to pretend he’s a high roller. He could lose the old man’s money slow, but he prefers fast. Before he goes to the track he comes in the store and takes what he needs right out of the till. All this while the old man’s dying. Weighed about ninety pounds the last time I saw him. It’s all he can do to raise his right arm, then he has to take a nap afterwards he’s so exhausted.”
    My father shook his head. “West End.”
    “West End, East End…what the hell difference does it make? The kid’s a bum.” Now he was studying me again, as if he suspected I might turn out to be the same kind of son. “Anyhow, you know what that means, don’t you?”
    You’re next
was what he was getting at.
You know what happened to the dinosaurs, right? Death. Decomposition.
    “I guess it means you’re out of a job,” my father said, which I considered a pretty good comeback.
    “Yeah, but what else?” He was grinning at my father now. “I’ll just sit here and count while you think,” he said, sticking out his left hand and beginning with his thumb. “One. Two. Three.”
    “I ain’t gonna—” my father began.
    “Tessa got it right away,” my uncle interrupted, his fingers snapping to attention, four, five. “She explained it to me as soon as I told her Manooch was history.” Right hand now, six, seven, eight, nine, ten.
    “When did you see Tessa?”
    Back over to his left hand, eleven, twelve, thirteen. “Just now. She told me you were probably down here eating french fries and gravy.” Right hand, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen.
    It means he wants you to give him a job.
I tried to send my father this telepathic thought, as my uncle’s