Billy Lee would often tell me how much he had hated me when we were in high school. There was little harm in this. After the two of us had graduated, we became fast friends. I emulated Billy. He was much cooler – and smarter – than I was. Billy Lee was a gifted artist, and singer, and musician. He had scored the lead in a high school musical I couldn’t even summon the guts to audition for. Billy had been cast as Jesus, whereas I wound up hawking programs at the door.
During June of 1993, Billy Lee and I began working together on Surfside Pier. The two of us were working for Bill Salerno, the perennial right-hand man to Bill Morey, Jr. Bill Morey, Jr. was the eldest child of Bill Morey, Sr. Bill Morey, Sr. and his brother, Will, had been responsible for revolutionizing the Wildwood boardwalk during the early 1970s. As the story goes, Bill and Will were in Fort Lauderdale during 1969 when they came across a super slide that had been set up inside a parking lot. The Moreys thought this was a cool idea, so upon returning to the Wildwoods, Bill and Will secured enough capital to assemble a similar super slide along a wooden pier they had purchased at 25th Street and the boardwalk. Bill and Will named their new attraction the Wipe Out. At the time they were charging the tourists a quarter for every ride.
Bill Morey, Jr. was the owner of Bill’s Concessions, a boardwalk enterprise that included one Dime Pitch, one Ring Toss, one softball-style Milk Can Game, and one traditional, stand-alone caramel corn store (named after Bill Morey, Jr.’s grandmother, Anna). All of these outlets were located either at or near the block-long entrance to Surfside Pier.
Billy Lee and I were associated with the gaming side of that business. The two of us were microphone operators, competing night after night to see who could generate the most revenue in a stand. The idea, at least so far as Billy and I were concerned, was not so much to fleece the public as it was to entertain the masses, accumulating a fair and steady profit along the way. By midsummer Billy and I were working 75 hours a week, and we had grown so fatigued that we’d arrive in the morning wearing the same rumpled clothes that we had clocked out in the night before.
Throughout June, Billy Lee ran Bill, Jr.’s Can Game, while I operated a Ring Toss 20 feet across the way. Several times a shift, the two of us would run competing specials geared toward generating as much revenue as possible in an abbreviated period of time. The goal was to attract and keep a counter full of customers, maintaining an extremely high level of intensity – or “tip” – for as long as one could. This proved challenging at the Ring Toss, a carney favorite so predisposed to luck that the only sure winners were those who had either cheated or enlisted the help of some grifting operator. One popular method of cheating at the Ring Toss involved throwing cracked rings. The rings were more prone to rest flat upon the lip of a bottle. Another common fix depended on throwing one ring on top of the other, thereby allowing the lower ring to ricochet, then stand pat upon a bottle. Any operator with good instincts and a well-trained ear could squash these scams outright. Cracked rings make a distinctly hollow sound whenever they clank off of a sheet of glass in much the same way a pair of stacked rings make a racket whenever they bounce off of a bottle. Most Ring Tosses prohibit the use of cracked or multiple rings, while also disqualifying the frontmost row of bottles (i.e., the row most prone to players leaning over to placing rings).
***
Come the final week in July, Billy Lee got called up to run Bill, Jr.’s Dime Pitch – the Mecca of all boardwalk games, frequented by both locals and tourists. Billy’s promotion meant I would, in turn, take over as the emcee of Bill, Jr.’s Can Game. I saw this as an opportunity, a chance to showcase my talents for Bill Morey, Jr. One night in August, I spotted Bill Salerno and Bill Morey, Jr. having a discussion by the Ring Toss. Assuming this could be my moment, I amped the speakers up to 11, then scrambled spry onto the counter. “Whew!” I hollered into the microphone. “Who’s ready to get their game on?”
I took a running leap, eager to jump from one section of the counter to another. Only I measured the distance incorrectly, and, as a result, I wound up skinning my left leg on the way down. I could feel my knee cap splinter. The microphone thundered with a loud boom. Billy Lee appeared above me. He pulled me up and helped me hobble to a bench. Bill Salerno and Bill Morey, Jr. were gone now. I could see them wandering north toward the office. Neither one of them seemed to care.
“The Neutral, as its familiars call it, is a few doors north of Stillman’s gymnasium and is patronized chiefly by fight managers, trainers and boxers who are locked out of Stillman’s between three and five o’clock every afternoon, and by ex-boxers, who favor a place where someone is likely to recognize them. There are two training sessions a day at Stillman’s – from noon to three and from five-thirty to seven. The second one is a concession to the economic difficulties now afflicting the Sweet Science; an increasing number of boxers need to hold daytime jobs to keep going, and can work out only after hours. The boxers in the Neutral, being in training, do not drink. They eat on credit, and occasionally, when their managers endow them with spending money, play Shuffle Alley – a table game in which one slides metal discs in the direction of electrically-controlled tenpins. Because they are temperate and of equable disposition, they seldom raise their voices. The trainers feel constrained to offer an example of sobriety; bottled beer and a cigar are about their speed. The managers are afraid to drink, lest some other manager outwit them, and the ex-boxers are usually too broke to tipple. Any unseemly words that may be heard in the place invariably emanate from some socially insecure sightseer without credentials in any record book.
Otherwise, a Belcherian propriety reigns.”
As Argo hits theaters nationwide today, the cover story – at least from a media perspective – seems to be the unexpected reinvention of Ben Affleck as a compelling, if not wholly Oscar-worthy, actor/director. The only issue being Affleck’s reinvention actually began well over half-a-decade ago – kicking off with 2007’s Gone Baby Gone, before continuing its ascent straight on through The Town, with extremely strong roles in both State of Play and The Company Men along the way.
Argo looks to continue that run by chronicling the real-life exploits of Tony Mendez – a CIA operative who led U.S. diplomats to freedom after their embassy was stormed by Islamic militants back in November of 1979.
The tale is a fascinating one, to be sure; so much so that it may cause audiences to wonder why Chris Terrio’s screenplay feels so horribly contrived. While one might argue that levity is inserted here as a necessary means of keeping the film well-balanced, the reality is the dialogue goes barreling so deep into obscurity it actually winds up detracting from an otherwise engaging film. On top of which, the suspense factor is ratcheted up to an absurd – if not insulting – degree, to the extent it’s almost begging theatergoers to question Argo‘s integrity.
On the upside, Bryan Cranston turns in a worthwhile performance, as do both Alan Arkin and John Goodman. Ben Affleck is OK in the lead role, despite that usual, slack-jawed “I-am-serious-and-don’t-call me-Shirley” thing he does. But in the end, it’s the work Affleck’s doing behind the camera that renders Argo a success – yet another worthwhile moment in Affleck’s recent string of hits; albeit the most marginal of the bunch.
“You know, I force it. And by forcing it, I lose everything that’s interesting about my work. What’s interesting about my work, for me – not for anyone else; God knows I can’t speak for that – what’s interesting in my work is the way that when I’m playing full out, when I am just feeling relaxed and I’m playing, and all my faculties are firing, but only just to play. Not to get a date, not because I want someone to hug me, not because I want
anyone to read it. Just to play.”
“The thing that gets me started, that sends me on the road, is usually something very very basic. It’s almost as simple as possible. I do like working in genres. I like genres. I can make a case that every movie is a genre … But I like the fact that I usually start out with nothing more than – in this case – a bunch of guys in a mission for a World War II film. That’s what gets me to sit down and write it: Wouldn’t that be cool? Then, I start writing and the characters become the characters, and the scenario becomes the scenario, and it goes on its own way. I’m hoping to explode those genres and go way beyond them. While hopefully still delivering the pleasures that they have to offer. But I actually think the simpler the better as far as just the idea. I like Westerns, so just wanting to do a Western is enough … at the very beginning. And then it grows and grows and becomes what it becomes. But also, I try not to deal with the subtext of the movie as I’m writing it. I keep it about the text. I keep it about the scenario, and the moment-to-moment aspects of it. I know that there is a ton of subtext there. But I don’t want to know that. That’s taking care of itself, and I want it to just do its own thing … I don’t get analytical during the writing or during the making of it. [After] is the fun time when I actually get to be analytical about it, and see what I’ve done.”
A seemingly reliable flashlight that’s suddenly prone to fits
Total douchebag jocks falling victim to the bad man’s wrath
Stabbing victims who do not drop an ounce of blood
Stabbing/shooting victims who inexplicably leap back to life, seemingly no worse for the wear
A dark house with the blinds drawn
A spooky girl in a white nightgown
An otherwise intelligent female lead who keeps on moving forward whenever she should be turning back
A female lead who trips and falls at the worst possible moment
An evil villain who explains his entire psychosis as he’s hunting down his prey in a dark, abandoned cellar
A spooky neighborhood house where a local couple was once butchered to death
A real-life dungeon hidden beneath a trap door in the basement floor
A ridiculously long hallway that leads toward a suspicious-looking door
A friendly neighborhood police officer
A curious neighbor
A stranger coming to town
Chloroform
A prevailing urban legend
An inheritance
People that walk into complete strangers’ houses without so much as knocking
An unspeakable evil that’s been lying dormant right under the town’s nose for years, before suddenly going on a terrifying, balls-out murder spree over the course of 3-4 consecutive days
A contrived attempt at creating a really heartwarming story to underlie the terror
A not-so-subtle nod of the cap to several other, much better horror movies
Recurring chunks of cheesy dialogue
A cringe-worthy twist that three-quarters of the audience grew hip to shortly after the opening credits
Major plot points that escape any and all rational thought or explanation
A ridiculous ending that hints at an even worse sequel to follow
(House at The End of the Street opens in theaters nationwide today)
I was sitting at the table – belly warm and full of booze – when at first I heard the gentle rapping, a slow and even rap-tap-tapping, like the clash of midnight tides against the moor. That sound came followed by a creaking, a forced and steady creak-eak-eaking, which set the kitchen door slow-grinding on its lures.
I pushed the pen aside now, steered my chair back from the table; crept down low into the bedroom, both eyes ready-trained upon that door … still steady and slow-grinding on its lures.
The door came to a rest now; a burly brute by the name of Junior standing steadfast in its wake.
Junior gave the place a quick once-over, stopped cold dead upon my silhouette, cutting hard against the bedroom window. He shuffled clean across the kitchen tiles, came down heavy on the mattress.
“What’s goin’ on?” the burly brute did say, his voice gone ripe and sour with nicotine and beer.
“Look, man, I was actually kind of sleeping when you came in, so …”
“Oh, nah, nah, nah … that’s cool,” Junior insisted, both palms held out wide in mock surrender. “I just wanted to see if I could grab myself a glass of water. I been drinkin’ at The Pop, y’see. And my mouth, it’s dry as fuck, my man.”
I tossed the bedsheets to the left now, made a beeline for the kitchen, where Junior poured himself a glass of water, took a seat about the table.
“I know what it is you must be thinkin’,” the burly brute, he then did say. “You must be thinkin’, This black motherfucker, he probably come all the way back up here tonight to rape me or rob me or kill me or some shit.”
“Actually, I was thinking now that I’m awake again, I might as well have myself another beer,” I said, as I cracked one pounder open, tossed another off to Junior.
I took a seat across the table, pushed my copybook aside. Then I set about the business of determining just how long the two of us might wait before either man offered something – anything, really – that wasn’t utter bullshit.
***
Junior was a shady fucker … shady and stubborn as a full-grown oak … and built like one as well, cursed with the wide and sloping features of a Texas armadillo.
Junior had rugged pores the size of potholes running deep along his nose, busted capillaries hanging low beneath slack-jaundiced eyes. Junior had ground-in layers of dirt filling the gaps between each fingernail – open sores along both arms boasting evidence of malnutrition.
I had only met the burly brute a few hours prior, when he arrived at our apartment as the uninvited guest of a freckle-faced import named Howie.
Howie hailed from Lancaster. And he’d spent the bulk of his first few weeks in Wildwood trying to convince the island faithful just how rough-and-tumble the Amish Country was – a widely vague and fruitless venture that eventually culminated in Howie being arrested on charges of Public Drunkenness and Class B Vandalism (a misdemeanor).
Howie was a turnip tramp, for lack of any better way of putting it … a stone-cold rube, who revered fast-talking con men for their unbridled willingness to perform black-market miracles … if only so in word, but not so much in deed. Fast-talking con men, on the other hand, revered Lancaster Howie for his unbridled willingness to believe every bullshit word they said. Howie was like the Fox Mulder of wide-eyed marks … green and prickly as a fresh square of turf; rash and irritating as a bad patch of vine … yet unyieldingly compromised by the fact he wanted to believe so badly.
Within minutes of first encountering Junior outside of a boardwalk arcade, Howie decided it’d be a good idea for the two of them to wander off and have a drink together. A half hour later, the awkward duo arrived upon my doorstep – Howie proud and pompous as a peacock, literally touting the street-wise benefits of gallivanting around town with an honest-to-goodness negro.
Junior, meanwhile, had already begun to make the bold transition from one unwitting host onto another. The burly brute was going completely out of his way to reinforce how much he admired the quaint feel of my apartment, the sonic depth of my palette, and the overall cut of my gib. All of which might explain how it was Junior came to be sitting in my kitchen well past 2 am on a Friday … not-so-subtly sizing me up over a pair of Keystone pounders.
***
“Yo, cuz, you just tell me what you need and I’ll go see if I can’t put my hands on it for you.”
This was the first thing Junior said to me, as the two of us settled into drinking at my kitchen table.
“I’m good, thanks,” I replied, all the while angling to get a read on what exactly Junior’s end game might be here.
Silence.
“So tell me: What kind of merchandise do you have access to, specifically?” I asked, more out of sheer curiosity than any real-world manner of buying interest.
“Fuck, man, like I said,” Junior responded, pulling his chair in to the table. “TV, radio, stereo equipment. You like video games? Hell, yeah, you like video games. I know that’s right. I noticed you got yourself one of them Nintendo shits way on back there in the corner.”
Junior motioned toward the bedroom with his finger, referencing a Sega Genesis that was balanced high atop a black-and-white TV set on my bureau. I swiveled my chair slightly, acknowledged the console without smiling.
“You mind if I ask you a question?” I said.
“I’m pretty sure you just did,” Junior shot back, laughing.
“No, seriously,” I said.
Junior crossed his arms, fell back heavy in his chair.
“What?” he said, with a shrug.
“Where do you obtain all of your merchandise?” I said.
“Oh, c’mon, man,” Junior said, dismissing me with a wave of his hand.
“No, seriously,” I insisted, realizing I had struck a nerve. “I’m interested. I wanna know.”
“You interested in buying?” Junior asked, impatiently.
“I’m interested in knowing,” I replied, flatly.
“Aw, c’mon,” Junior said, wood-stained eyes now climbing the walls. “Where do anybody get their merchandise from, y’know what I’m sayin’?”
I did not.
“Depends,” I replied. “A wholesale distributor, a manufacturer, maybe even a retail outlet, assuming the buyer can still maintain a decent profit margin.”
“Yeah, well, let’s just say I got that whole profit margin thing pretty steadily sewn up,” Junior boasted, a seething spit-shine smile broadcast wide across his face.
I was clocking every movement now, eager to spot some kind of tell.
It was because of this I first noticed the overwhelming stench of kerosene and pine. The scent was hanging downwind and pungent – like the steaming interior of a 1973 Maverick – over the entire length of our table.
I mean, it had to be Junior, right?
And yet, the burly brute showed absolutely no outward sign of either agent.
He was decked out in a plain-white T with razor creases off the sleeve, worn over a fresh pair of gravedigger jeans and a matching set of work boots, knotted twice across the shank.
“My brother drives a truck,” the burly brute then said, as he packed a box of Newports on his thigh.
“Huh?” I said.
“My brother,” Junior repeated. “He works shipments on a warehouse truck way down there by the Delaware.”
“Uh-huh,” I said, all the while establishing the long, pronounced drag as my own covert tell.
“You asked,” Junior said.
“I don’t understand.”
Long-slow drag.
“My brother,” Junior said, a slight hint of frustration now marking his tone. “He works down on a truck.”
Silence. Waiting.
Cigarette slow-burning down to ash and cotton.
“Sometimes shit falls off the truck, y’know?” Junior insisted, reaching clear across the table for my lighter. “Anyway, I get the bulk of my full shipments from my brother.”
“Thanks a lot for the water and the Keystone,” the burly brute then said. He stood up from the table, eased his chair against the wall. “That shit, it did me right, y’know?”
With that, Junior disappeared out the door and down the steps, presumably en route to the center of town, where the Holly Beach bars were still open and pouring.
It wasn’t until several minutes later I realized that rancid fucker had just made off with my jet-black pocket lighter in-hand.
***
“I’m going to sleep.”
This is what I said to Junior, only moments after finding him crouched low behind my kitchen door at approximately the same time the following night.
He’d been rap-tap-tapping for the better part of two minutes now.
“Oh, nah, nah, nah … that’s cool,” Junior once again assured me, rising up to look me in the eye. “I was just thinkin’ maybe the two of us could have another beer together or somethin’ … y’know, talk a little … kind of like the two of us both did last night. That shit was tight, man.”
“Look, I’m not doing any drinking tonight,” I said. “I just got home from work about an hour ago and I need to be right back there again at 11 o’clock tomorrow morning. So I really need to ask you to be on your way now, if it’s not too much trouble.”
“How bout I just hit you up for a quick beer or two?” Junior insisted, now physically holding the door wide open with his arm. “I’ll take ’em with me for the road, I swear.”
“Fine,” I said, reluctantly. “I’ll give you one beer. But you really need to take that shit and go. No kidding. I’m unbelievably tired, man. Mostly because I was up until 3 am last night hobnobbing with you.”
“That’s cool,” the burly brute then replied, wrenching both hands as if the two of us were fixing to loot the 6:50 to Euston.
By the time I doubled back to dole out Junior’s beer, that rancid fucker had somehow managed to slither unseen into the kitchen, where he now sat occupying the very same chair he had been less than 24 hours prior.
“I know what it is you’re probably thinkin’,” the burly brute then did say. “You’re probably thinkin’, Now, this coked-up nigger, he’s probably gonna shoot my sorry ass stone-dead or some shit like that, right? Right? Only you ain’t even got shit to worry about, son, cause I ain’t even brought no iron back up in this bitch with me tonight, y’dig?”
As if to reassure me, Junior lifted his plain T-shirt, exposing a skin-tight, gray and empty waistband.
“Look, man,” I replied, cutting Junior off before he got started. “It really doesn’t make any difference to me what it is you might or might not be packing. The only thing that does make a difference to me at this particular moment is that you understand why it is you cannot keep wandering over here in the middle of night like this. It simply isn’t right, y’know?”
“Oh, right,” Junior said, somewhat taken aback. “I understand. Cause now you’re thinkin’ if your neighbors were to see some big ole’ black motherfucker sneakin’ his way up the back stairs every night, they’d probably set to wonderin’ what the fuck it was the two of you was up to back here.”
“Actually, no,” I said. “That’s not it at a … “
“You probably feelin’ just like that Bill Mer-ry motherfucker did in that groundhog movie, right?” Junior wondered aloud, laughing. “Me poppin’ all the way back up here every goddamned night like it was déjà vu all over again or some sorry shit like that, right?”
“More like Ebineezer Scrooge,” I said.
“More like who?” Junior said.
“No one,” I said. “Nothing.”
Long-slow drag.
Moving on.
***
“You a pot guy?” Junior asked, as he watched me flick my ash stone-dead into a seashell. “Yeah, you a pot guy … I can see that shit in your eyes, bro.”
“Pot makes me fall asleep,” I said, left cheek now resting on my fist.
“Oh, right,” Junior said, after considering this for a moment. “How bout coke? You a coke guy? Yeah, you a coke guy … I can see that shit in the way you always bouncin’ off the walls and shit, bro.”
“Coke makes me stay awake,” I said, all the while considering what Junior’s reaction might be if I informed him there was an antique-olive suitcase full of drugs burrowed deep inside a pantry closet less than two feet from his chair.
“I’m just sayin’,” Junior was just sayin’, “cause I can definitely put my hands on some of that shit for you if you want me to, is all.”
“Got it,” I said, before wandering across the table to weight-gauge Junior’s pounder.
Empty.
“Time to go,” I insisted, wandering fast to hold the kitchen door wide open.
“Aw, c’mon, man,” Junior said, still clinging to his chair.
“C’mon, nothing,” I said, pointing off toward the porch. “Go. Seriously. I’m not kidding.
You’re really out of line here, man.”
“Fine,” Junior said, his head hung low in defeat. “Is it cool if I grab myself another pounder for the road?”
“Grab it and go,” I replied, staring hard down at the tiles. “And no more late-night visits,” I quickly added, as Junior raced toward the fridge.
No more late-night visits, you pocketful-of-rainbows motherfucker.
***
The third night damp heavens rained down hard along the promenade, forcing die-hard tourists to either toe the awning line or take dry shelter inside the arcades.
As a result of this, Meghan and I were both let out of work early … a fortunate turn of events which allowed us to join several co-workers at a house party down along East 18th, where we drank beer, played cards, and settled in to watch John Paxson shoot the lights out on the Phoenix Suns.
I wandered home alone along the promenade that night – a new moon shining high above black-diamond tides. These were gorgeous, open-air evenings all along the promenade … ocean gales wreaking havoc on steel flagpoles and stiff joints. It was a pristine state of affairs, really … highly reminiscent of Vonnegut’s assertion that he could always achieve a blank and shining serenity if only he could reach the very edge of a natural body of water.
And so it goes.
***
I do not remember much about what happened once I got back to the apartment that night … only that I made myself a gigantic peanut butter and jelly sandwich, which I saw fit to carry along with me up the dark and winding wooden staircase that led to Bobbi Jean’s bedroom.
The two of us were getting along much better now, having put behind us the slow and even strain that occurred during our first month of cohabitation. I’m fairly certain we engaged in some level of discourse that evening, although I could not tell you for the life of me what that level of discourse might have been.
What I can tell you is that the following morning I awoke to the shrill and urgent sound of Bobbi Jean calling out to me from the kitchen.
“What the fuck, Bob?” Bobbi Jean inquired, as I emerged from my bedroom with a palette full of jelly smeared across my torso. “Did you murder a giant grape last night or something?”
“Umm, no,” I replied, still wiping spare grains of sleep out of my eyes.
Bobbi Jean went on to question me about a non-stop trail of jam, which led backward from my bedroom, through the kitchen, then all the way up the dark and winding wooden staircase, where it came to an abrupt and unfortunate end inside the canvas sole of Bobbi Jean’s plain-white work shoe.
“And how many fucking times do I need to ask you not to leave the apartment door wide open when you’re the last one to go sleep at night?” Bobbi Jean very justifiably asked.
That was when my general malaise gave way to panic, and I took a quick inventory of the apartment, only to discover a dual-cassette player had suddenly gone missing from my bedroom, along with the Sega Genesis console that had previously been stationed high atop the black-and-white TV set on my bureau.
There were no blatant signs of an intruder, nor plain evidence of forced entry – only a non-stop trail of jelly, leading clear across the kitchen tiles, and one jet-black pocket lighter, positioned upright on the table.
