"Yo."

"Chub."

"Tommy, how you doin'?"

"Chub, lissen. I met this chick." Tommy was whispering. "Chubby, I'm tellin' you, she got a tongue like a anteater."

Chubby snickered, scratched his belly.

"I thought I was gonna die, Chubby. I hadda beg her to stop."

Chubby lit a cigarette. It looked as thin as a kitchen match between his stubby fingers.

"I swear to Christ, baby."

"She a blonde or a brunette?" Smoke slipped and curled over the tip of his slightly protruding tongue.

"Neither, orange."

"Orange! Jesus Christ. Cuffs and collars?"

"Cuffs and collars."

"Tommy, I gotta meet this bitch. You know that, don'cha?"

"How 'bout tonight? I tol' her all about you. She's gonna be waitin' at Banion's."

"Oh my heart." Chubby closed his eyes and let his tongue hang out.

"I tol' her what a steed you was." Tommy laughed.

"Oh shit." Chubby turned pale. "Tommy, I can't do it tonight."

"Whatta you talkin'?"

"I tol' Phyll I'd take her to a movie."

"Bullshit! Take her tomorrow."

"C'mon, Tommy, I promised."

"You pussy."

"Hey, Tommy, c'mon now. It ain't right."

"What time's the movie?"

"Eight-thirty."

"So, come after."

"What am I supposed to say to her?"

"You know you sound like a fuckin' teen-ager, Chubby. I tell everybody what a goddamn stallion my brother is and set 'im up with a million-dollar mouth an' a pair a jugs what belongs in the Museum a Modern Art an' he can't even get away from his wife."

"Hey." Chubby grinned. "You really tell everybody what a stallion I am?" He ran a thumb around the elastic of his boxer shorts.

"Chubby, you know what they call you down at Banion's now?"

"What?"

"The Prick."

"Tommy, pick me up at the gas station." Tommy neighed like a horse. Chubby was about to hang up. "Hey, Tommy! Tommy, what's her name?"

"Sylvia."

***

"Lissen, I tol' Tommy I'd meet him for a drink in a half-hour," Chubby said to his wife as they came out of the movie theater.

She shrugged. "So go."

"You not mad?"

She shrugged. She looked tired, with deep eye sockets and a bony face. There were always deep swaths under her eyes. She looked dehydrated.

"You sure you ain't mad?"

She shrugged again.

" 'Cause if you want I won't go." She didn't answer.

"O.K. I'm goin' now." Chubby took a few steps. "You sure? You don't wamme to watch Johnny arson with you?"

***

Banion's was a bar up in Yonkers where Tommy and Chubby liked to hang out. It was long and dark with yellow lights and wood paneling. Banion was the bartender as well as the owner. He was paralyzed from the waist down and worked in a motorized wheelchair. Behind the bar was a three-foot-high platform with a ramp at the end so Banion could be eye level with all his customers. He knew the De Coco brothers from the time he was a construction electrician with them and they were all working on Freedomland back in 1957. In 1960, a steel beam fell across his back when he was working on the Albert Einstein Medical Center. Disability paid for the bar.