The Old Neighborhood Read Free

would, I’ll tell you what I would have loved, to go, in the twenties, to be in Hollywood …
    JOEY : Huh.
    BOBBY : Jesus, I know they had a good time there. Here you got, I mean, five smart Jew boys from Russia, this whole industry …
    JOEY : Who?
    BOBBY : Who. Mayer. Warners. Fox.
    JOEY : Fox? Fox is Jewish?
    BOBBY : Sure.
    JOEY : Fox is a Jewish name?
    BOBBY : Sure.
    JOEY : Who knew that?
    BOBBY : Everyone.
    JOEY : Huh.
(Pause)
I always saw their thing, it looked goyish to me.
    BOBBY : What thing?
    JOEY : Their castle, that thing on their movies …
    BOBBY : No.
    JOEY : I thought it was a goyish name.
    BOBBY : “Fox”?
    JOEY : Twentieth Century-Fox.
(Pause)
Century Fox.
(Pause)
Charlie Chaplin was Jewish.
    BOBBY : I know that, Joe.
    JOEY : Yeah? People fool you. Oh, you know, you know who else was Jewish? Mr. White …
    BOBBY : Mr. White …?
    JOEY : Mr. White. On Jeffrey. The shoe store …? Miller-White Shoes.
    BOBBY : … yeah …?
    JOEY : On Jeffrey …?
    BOBBY : He was Jewish?
    JOEY : Yeah.
    BOBBY : Huh.
    JOEY : My mom told me.
    BOBBY : He didn’t look Jewish.
    JOEY : That’s what I’m saying … 
(Pause)
    BOBBY : He was a nice guy.
    JOEY : Yes. He was.
    BOBBY : I remember him. They always gave you what, a lollipop something when you came out.
    JOEY : Why do you think kids hate trying on shoes?
    BOBBY : I don’t know.
(Pause)
You know, actually I don’t like trying them on either.
    JOEY : You don’t?
    BOBBY : No.
(Pause)
    JOEY : I don’t think that I do either.
(Pause)
Jimmy does.
    BOBBY : He does?
    JOEY : Yeah.
(Pause)
So I was reminiscing with my mom …
    BOBBY : … yeah …
    JOEY : You know, about the shoe store, huh? ’Cause I took Jimmy in to get his shoes, I’m talking about when we stopped on Pratt, I say, “The old shoestore the goyish guy, Miller’s partner.” So she goes “Jerry White …” He was the shamus, Temple Zion thirty years.
    BOBBY : Huh.
    JOEY : Huh …?
    BOBBY : How about that.
    JOEY : That’s what I said.
    BOBBY : How about that.
(Pause)
He still alive?
    JOEY : No. He died.
    BOBBY : He died, huh?
    JOEY : Yes. He did.
(Pause)
    BOBBY : The store still there?
    JOEY : Oh, Bobby, it’s all gone. It’s all gone there. You knew that …
    (Pause)
    JOEY : Life is too short.
    BOBBY : Life is very short.
    JOEY : It’s very short. We’re sitting on the stoop, we’re old … 
(Pause)
We’re married … we have kids … 
(Pause)
    BOBBY : How’s Judy?
    JOEY :
(Pause)
I pray, you know, I pray every night, I pray that I can get through life without murdering anybody.
    BOBBY : Who would you murder?
    JOEY : I’m saying I’m uncontrollable.
    BOBBY : Hey, hey, you’re human …
    JOEY : … and I got married wrong.
(Pause)
Well … there,
(Pause)
there you are.
    BOBBY : You didn’t get married wrong, Joe.
    JOEY : Yes, I did. You don’t know. I want to tell you something, Bob, she’s a wonderful woman, but there’s such a thing as lust. I don’t know if it’s lust. Yes. Yes, it is. I, I, I say this is a feeling … I, I’m not alone.
(Pause)
Then I walk out the door …
    BOBBY : We all feel like that sometimes …
    JOEY : You don’t know what I’m going to say, I walk out of the door I say, “If I never saw them again, it would be fine …”
    BOBBY : We all feel like that sometimes …
    JOEY : No, no. Listen to me. There are times, a feeling I think gets so overpowering it becomes a fact, and you don’t even know you did it. Sometimes I think, “Wellif they were killed … if they died …” and sometimes I think I’ll do it myself.
    BOBBY : It’s just a feeling, Joe.
    JOEY : I pray you’ll never know it. Sometimes it goes farther. I have killed them, and I take the plane, I don’t call anyone, because now I don’t care; and fly to Canada and rent a car and go into the forest and begin to walk … I know I have to die … so I walk … and I’m going north. I feel so free. I can’t tell you, Bobby … I have a pistol, I can end