Small Apartments Read Free Page A

self-help book entitled
Am I Crazy?
by Dr. Sage Mennox. Tommy Balls had received the book as a gift from his mother, a recovering sippy alcoholic and Born Again Christian. He called his mother a “sippy alcoholic” because that is what she was: a sippy here, a sippy there, all day around the house until the evening news rolled around and she was rip-roaring drunk and looking for conflict. Tommy’s mother was not out the door one minute after giving him the book when he had deposited it in the shitcan. Two years ago his mother had become a loyal and devoted follower of the TV talk show mental health guru, Dr. Mennox. Some people need desperately to follow someone, thought Tommy. His mother had been off the booze since she began devouring every book written by Dr. Mennox, and, in Tommy’s opinion, that was good. However, she was infinitely more annoying as a Christian than she ever was as a drunk. His mother was convinced that Dr. Mennox had saved her life. She had dog-eared dozens of pages in each of his books and could recite chapter and verse. She said Dr. Mennox had taught her how to be, how did she say it?
Mentally fit and physically strong
. He was the gatekeeper who kept her off the Road to Crazy. Tommy had seen the good doctor once on one of the daytime talk shows. He thought he seemed stiff and impersonal for a self-help guru. He did have a nice tan on his bald head, though. And his suit must have cost $3,000. He wore cufflinks, too. Tommy always paid attention to whether someone wore button-down cuffs or cufflinks. For Tommy, cufflinks were the dead giveaway that you had money.
    Tommy’s father wore cufflinks. He was a successful Orchard Park dentist who enjoyed hand-rolled cigars, Cutty Sark, and spending his evenings at the bar in the Knights of Columbus Hall. He spent most of his free time avoiding his family, which he often referred to as “The Great Failed Experiment.” Tommy’s father believed in hard work, discipline and sacrifice. He was a Navy man, enlisting at the end of the Vietnam War. He rose to the rank of Chief and, when his last enlistment ended, went to dental school nights and weekends on the GI Bill. While in school, he supported his wife and son with a factory job at Bethlehem Steel. He had recently concluded that his wife was a loon and his son Tom was the laziest sonofabitch he had ever met.
    While his son was across town searching for the implements to construct a homemade bong, former Navy Chief Tom Ballisteri, Sr. was sitting on a barstool among friends and fellow veterans at the Knights of Columbus Hall on Delaware Avenue. He raised his glass of Budweiser and offered this toast to his wife and son, “Here’s to the Great Failed Experiment.”
    Tommy Balls stood with his hands on his hips in the middle of his kitchenette. He needed a two-litre soda pop bottle but was in no mood to walk down to the 2-4 store, and even if he did, he did not want to pay for it once he got there. Maybe I can ask the fat bastard downstairs, Tommy thought. What was his name? Fred … Frank … Franklin!
    “Frankie!” shouted Tommy Balls alone in his kitchenette. “Hey, Frankie,” he said, offering up his best impression of a New Jersey Wise Guy. He knew Franklin could not hear him. “Hey, Frankie! You got any empty pop bottles you fat bastard!” Tommy started laughing at his own improvisational comedy invention. “Hey fat Frankie, give Uncle Tommy your empty soda pop bottles!”
    He decided he would go downstairs and ask Franklin if he had any soda pop bottles. But first I will watch the rest of this episode of
Magnum, P.I
., thought Tommy. He melted into his secondhand couch and cranked the volume on the television as loud as it could go.
    “Motherfucking
Magnum, P.I
.!
”
screamed Tommy Balls.

CHAPTER
3

    I F FRANKLIN HAD to choose whom to murder it would have been a coin toss between Mr. Allspice and his landlord, Mr. Olivetti. Even though Franklin thought they were both assholes, the quality