You got to understand, to my sister, everything had to be a big thing. Everything. The weather. Her clothes. Ordering dinner. Should she get the soup, with the veal it’s too much food maybe, do you think it’s too much food, what if it’s a heavy minestrone, she could get the fish instead, she’s not in the mood for fish, ba ba ba ba ba, the littlest thing and it’s a night at the opera. So it’s too much food in the end, so what? Get it wrapped up, send it to the starving Armenians if you want to, enough already.

We got along good as kids, but even back then, all the time with the ba ba ba, and she wouldn’t hear from anybody about it either. I tried to tell her a few times, you know, Ede, I think you let yourself get a little bit too upset, maybe, about these little things, and if you just let it go? Oh no no. It’s a serious business, this whatever it is today that she’s all het up about.

And when it came to the big things…her wedding, I don’t know where to start. You ever try to saddle up a cat? Because that’s what I’m talking about. I come home one day in the middle of winter and our grandfather who lived with us is out on the porch in the freezing cold rocking like he’s getting paid for it, so I ask him why he doesn’t go in, it’s colder than Russia out here and Ma said it’s okay to smoke a pipe in your room, and he says no, I stay out here for the fresh air, I like it. Poppy, I said, your lips are blue, but no, he won’t go in the house, so I said all right, get in the car then, we’ll go to DiSarne’s, get a whisky. Once his teeth finally stop chattering on the glass, he tells me that Edie and Ma spent the whole day arguing over Edie’s cake, and Poppy — Poppy was a soft-spoken guy, very gentle, he brought spiders out to the yard instead of squashing them. So Poppy says, “I get scared. I think I throw a dish, hit Edie in a head. So I come out on a porch.” And the best part, I told him he should have gone ahead and thrown a dish at her and he shrugs and says, “But then no cake.”

Poppy’s point was, you know, she’s going to bitch, he throws a dish and she’ll bitch about that, why get into it. But what I took from it was, you got cake, maybe you got coffee to go with it, you figure, hey, something’s going right somewhere. That’s how I try to look at things. You can’t worry too much about what’s going to happen. Look at me. Doing what I did for a living, I knew that situation at the end there, it could come up. I didn’t think it would be that kid, God knows — if he wanted a brick to tide him over he could have just asked me. His brother was good for it. But Little Billy had a few problems, you know — it was what it was. No hard feelings.

Sometimes a thing is what it is and nothing more. Edie liked to tell me to stop acting like my life was a movie, but jeez, what for? Like real life is such a great deal? I didn’t finish school, I didn’t like the looks of the army, I had a friend whose brother needed a guy…you know, you can approve of it or not, and I’m not saying I do, but people make bets, some of those people lose, the losers have to pay, if they don’t pay somebody’s got to make them. It’s like those beauty pageants with the little kids. You can approve of those or not, for my money they’re pretty sick, but there’s always going to be some people who are into that. It’s the way of the world.

The way of the living world, anyway. I didn’t think much about it before — I just figured, one day I’ll find out what that’s about, so why worry about it. But I did have to beat up a few guys in my time, and you can tell yourself it’s the job, and it is the job, but when it’s a guy with a family? Sure, that guy should go home and watch the game on TV, not bet on it, but now he’s going home with a black eye, he’s going to get into it with the wife, everyone’s going to get upset, and you don’t feel good about it. But I had a guy I had to report to, you know how it is.

If I had worried about what would happen to me over here…I picked up the money, I smacked a few people around here and there, but I didn’t bury bodies or get into any of that drug business. Sticks wanted his crew respected, but he wanted us out of sight more than that, so he kept guys at my level out of that heavy stuff. But I knew what went on, and to tell the truth, there was one time that I thought to myself, if there’s a hell and I wind up in it, it’s probably going to be for this.

I had a guy on the Somerset route name of Simon, taught at the private school down there. Funny guy, dressed sharp, knew his cigars, but the man could not pick a horse out of a line-up, and would he give up? No. They never do, those guys. He got in over his head, I had to pay a little visit to his mother…his mother had the whole nut in her mattress, too, and I’d love to hear the story behind that someday, but anyway, Sticks decides enough with this guy, we’re not taking any more of his bets. I don’t disagree, the guy’s a bad investment, but I’ve seen Simon’s type before and he won’t just learn his lesson and take up cribbage. He’s gonna keep betting, and now he’s got to go through Zecchini. Sticks cut guys off if they kept getting behind, but Carmine Zecchini cut off their hands — if the sun was shining on him that day, and you get a lot of rain down the shore there.

So the next time I’m in Somerset, Simon wants to know why he’s not getting through all of a sudden. I tell him Sticks says he’s done. He wants me to talk to Sticks for him, I tell him I can’t do it. He gets upset, says he’ll go to the competition then, if Sticks won’t take his money. I say that’s all right, but look out for yourself, your luck isn’t so good from what I’ve seen, and he says fuck you, Booly, I give you a lot of business and then you have to go and hassle my mother, and I say look, kid, you’ll do what you want to do, but I’m telling you, you go with the other guy, he’s gonna hassle the both of you six feet into the ground, so sincerely — look out for yourself. But he’s mad, he stomps off, and there’s one of Zecchini’s runners playing darts in the back and he’s happy enough to see Simon, so I figured, hey, I tried to tell him. Two months later the cops are over at the Griggstown community pool, cutting what’s left of Simon down off the diving board ladder.

Not a surprise, all things being equal, but I could have done something different there, probably — taken his action behind Sticks’s back, told Zecchini’s guy not to get into it with him. It’s one thing not to worry about what’s going to happen if you don’t know for sure, but if you do know and someone’s maybe going to get killed, that’s a different thing. You got to take steps. The little stuff I did, thumping skulls, upping the rate on guys I didn’t like, driving around after a bunch of drinks — if I’m going to hell for that stuff, so’s everybody else, but the Simon thing, I thought I’d get my ticket punched for that.

But I didn’t. Or maybe I did. This could be hell, I only got here two weeks ago now and it’s not like it’s the most exciting place I ever saw. The way I figure it, though, it’s not hell. Ginger’s here, and she never did anything real bad — smoked a little dope, probably, so what. Purgatory, maybe. I don’t know how it goes. I walk around, have a cigar in the morning, get to know the place — it’s all right. It does the trick, for now.

My name is Pete Buglione. I died of multiple gunshot wounds July 16, 2003.

July 29, 2003

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