M is for Myg

I went and got Pauly from the Y.

“It’s about fucking time, you sonofabitch,” he said. He was grumpy from sleeping there for the past five weeks while I got the barbershop renovated.

“Nice way to greet me, grandpa.”

“I’m not your grandpa, you shit.”

“You’re everybody’s grandpa. You’re old and you smell bad.” I gave it back to him. “And you’re my mother’s aunt’s brother-in-law. That’s too complicated to explain all the time. Most old people are dead, so you get the honor.” I showed him around the barbershop–the Mainline Barbershop, here in Philly, Topgol–and I think he liked it, though he’ll never admit it. Pauly, whose real name is Paolino Capalini, was trained as a barber in the old country. He stopped cutting hair after he emigrated and became a foreman at an ironing board factory. He worked there for 38 years, checking tension on cover strings and measuring the angles in the Xs. After he retired, he moped around all day and his monthly checks never seemed to make ends meet. He parceled off his land. When he was down to a 50×100 lot and a dilapidated Victorian house, he started renting out rooms to students and traveling salesmen. But his tenants always seemed to skip out on him without leaving a forwarding address or even taking all of their belongings. Eventually he sold his house and rented an apartment from a friend. That ended badly, some altercation over women or money or both.

“What do you think?”

“Of what?”

“The shop, Pauly, the shop.”

“It’s a piece of shit,” he said trying to tighten the stems on the faucets. “You just renovated this place and the spigots drip? Jesus Christ.”

After kicking the chairs, he complained about the bed I gave him to sleep on, the fact that he has to sleep in the back room and can’t have the room upstairs–rental office space, I told him, for tenants who pay–and the general condition of the streets–he’s seen battlefields easier to navigate–I gave him some cash and took him to Tattletales to get lunch.

At Tattletales, he was a different man. Gone was the profanity and the irritable exterior. Witty and urbane, he would have charmed the pants off of them if they’d been wearing any. The girls took an instant shine to him. Especially after he tipped them all the cash I’d given him and then he hit me up for more so he could buy everyone a round. He drank his lunch. After that, it was over to Romana’s. He immediately jumped into the hot tub. I know you’re not supposed to be in there when you’re drunk, but what the hell, we all gotta die sometime. I hauled him out after he ashed his cigar into the water.

He finally passed out on the massage table waiting for service. He didn’t understand that the loft wasn’t connected to The Fitzgerald sex hotel next door, and there weren’t geishas ready to attend his needs. (This seems a fairly common misunderstanding, judging from the traffic in and out of Romana’s.) “Okay, if it makes you happy, I’ll stay,” he said drifting off. I left him there, I wasn’t going to carry him downstairs and across the block to his bed. I could hear him snoring halfway back to Section 8. He and Myg oughta start a combo.

This entry was posted on Friday, April 20th, 2007 at 9:20 pm and is filed under Burgess, Mainline, Pauly, Second Life.