Чарли Стелла: Johnny Porno

“And you are?”

John had dropped down to retie his sneaker laces. Annoyed at the question, he gave the bald man a hard stare. “Excuse me?”

“Just asking.”

“Okay,” Berg said. “You asked. Now leave the man alone.”

“The other guy took a fifty,” the bald man said. “He was supposed to get me a copy of the movie.”

John looked to Berg. “He serious?”

“Maybe that’s why he disappeared,” Berg said, “he was robbing people.”

“I gave him a fifty,” the bald man repeated.

“Then I guess you’re taking a powder for that fifty,” Berg said. “Tommy DeLuca hasn’t been around for more than a month now. I’d get over it, I was you.”

The bald man motioned at John. “Why I was asking him,” he said. “Maybe he knows the guy.”

“Got nothing to do with me what you did with Tommy DeLuca,” John said. “Sorry for your loss.”

The bald man frowned.

“Okay?” George said. “Go get yourself a beer you want. Tell them I said it’s on me.”

Still upset, the bald man walked away.

“I hope I don’t have a nickname,” John said.

“You kidding?” Berg said. “That nasty prick from the bar in Brooklyn used to ask ‘is Tommy Porno there yet?’ Now it’s Johnny Porno he asks for.”

John felt his jaw tighten.

“Screw’em,” Berg said. “Fuck’s in a name?”

“I don’t like it, for one thing,” John said.

Berg shrugged. “What’s his problem anyway, that guy the bar? Comes off like a real asshole.”

“Nick Santorra,” John said. “You’re right, he is an asshole.”

“I think Tommy DeLuca liked the name, tell you the truth. Got his rocks off being called that, Tommy Porno. This mope just now, the one DeLuca beat for a fifty? He’s probably not the only one. Maybe DeLuca did disappear for stealing.”

“He really call me that, Johnny Porno, the guy onna phone?”

Berg shrugged again.

“I got nothing to do with this crap outside of hauling it back and forth weekends,” John said. “I never even seen the damn movie.”

“You like magic acts you should,” Berg said. “See it, I mean. The star, Linda Lovelace, she has some humble tits and all, a crooked tooth or two, but she can swallow a telephone pole. It’s something every man should get to see at least once before he dies, know what he’s missed.”

“That the line of shit you hawk this thing with?”

“That and a line or two about how a guy should bring his wife some night, the ones still go down on the old bracciole, so’s they see it can be done.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“Might work, ladies night. Or maybe a couples special.”

“You wanna tell this to somebody else?” John said. “I’m not gonna see the movie or bring my wife to see it, I ever get married again.”

“Fair enough,” Berg said. “I did make a point of telling the mamelukes paying to see it, call it ‘Peter Rabbit’, the movie. Like it says on the side of the film case there, even though it’s spelled wrong.”

John was thinking about the pornographic moniker he didn’t want. “What’s that?”

Berg pointed to the film case. “The name on the case there,” he said.

John looked but wasn’t seeing it. “What about it?”

Berg waved it off. “Nothing,” he said. “Look, you gotta tell your people I can’t help it the head counts are down.”

“They’re not my people, George.”

“Sorry, but it’s getting old, this movie. We can use something new. That one with the Ivory Snow girl’d do good. I haven’t seen it yet, but I hear she gets plowed by a Mandingo and then there’s some orgy stuff goes on. Weirdoes came to see this one’ll pro’bly love that one, too.”

“I’m not in the executive loop,” John said. “All I do is aggravate myself in traffic all weekend. In the meantime, the count being so low, they’ll probably send a guy out here next week, somebody to spy. You won’t know who it is, so stay sharp. I can’t tell you which day because they won’t tell me, but it could be both days.”

“As in you-think-I’m-skimming?”

“As in I-like-you-enough-to-warn-you,” John said. “They first had me doing it, the head-counting, I turned in numbers without knowing what you guys were claiming. I remember a few guys were caught skimming had to fork over extra the next week. One of them, next time I saw him after his numbers were off, he was drinking his meals through a straw.”

“More threats,” Berg said. “Great.”

“Hey, I’m not threatening anybody.”

Berg put both hands up. “Sorry,” he said. “It’s just another headache I don’t need right now, spies.”

“Well, don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

“I’m warned, I’m warned,” Berg said. He remembered something and perked up. “Hey, you think about my idea?”

“Which idea is that?”

“One I mentioned last week. We get that broad here to do a signing we’ll all make a killing.” He thumbed over his shoulder at the Knights of Columbus building. “I’ll talk to the guy runs this place, grease him a few and see we can’t use it, too. We’d fill both places you get Linda Lovelace to sign autographs.”

John wrapped a rubber band around the cash he was holding. He folded the wad in half and stuffed it inside his front pants pocket.

“She does something like that, it’ll probably be in the city where they can jam the place at ten, fifteen dollars a head,” John said. “Linda Lovelace is not gonna come out to Massapequa, George. It’s a pipe dream to think so.”

“I’m just saying, couldn’t your people give her a push?”

“I already said they’re not my people.”

Berg wasn’t listening. “Or one of the costars,” he said, “the short one smokes the cigarette while the guy eats her, or the nurse with the big tits. She’d do good, too. Any of the broads in that movie would fill this place. And it’s not like they wouldn’t earn. We charge the guys a five for an autograph or some shit and let the broads keep a deuce of that. Half a these perverts’d drop a five to watch one a them take a piss.”

John stared at Berg a long moment. He sighed at what his life had become. Less than a year ago he was making close to five hundred dollars a week working as a union carpenter. Then he punched out a foreman and he was out of work. He had been working odd jobs to make ends meet ever since. The last six months he’d been driving for a local car service five days a week and was barely able to pay his child support, never mind the rent or anything else. Then a few months ago a fistfight in a bar over a woman he didn’t know was married led to a weekend job counting the number of guys paying five bucks a pop to see bootlegged copies of Deep Throat. When one of the guys doing the collections was caught skimming from the mob and disappeared, John got the promotion, so to speak. Now he was making fifty bucks per day instead of the twenty-five he made counting heads.

Dropping off and picking up the film reels and collecting head count money was a lot more work and responsibility than counting the number of guys paying to see the movie, but until his employment situation changed for the better, John couldn’t turn the work down. Sometimes it became a bit much, though, especially having to humor guys like George Berg.

“Watching them take a piss?” he said. “Where do you get that from?”

“I’m just saying,” Berg said. “Guys are into porn, they’re mostly perverts.”

“Well, don’t hold your breath on those autographs. Like I said, the girls doing those movies, Linda Lovelace, whoever else, they aren’t coming out here to sign their names.”

“Then they should get themselves business managers.”