Underwater New York

The Last Remnants of Dreamland by Helen Georgas

Tom wanted a Cadillac Eldorado but his cousin George said he’d cut him a deal on the Lincoln and when it came to family that was that.  Where George had gotten the Lincoln, who knows? His cousin was full of mystery.  An entrepreneur, is what George called himself.  He loved to lord his vocabulary over Tom, challenge him, stretch out the syllables.  On-tra-pri-noo-er. Restaurant manager, realtor, car salesman. Why pin yourself down? George said.  A little bit of this, a little bit of that, dabbling his fingers in the air.  Master of none.

It was amazing for a family that had no concept of privacy—Tom would be standing in the middle of his bedroom, door closed, naked as the day he came, and blam, Aunt Bessie would bust in on him—that no one questioned George’s sources of income.  Bootlegger? Bookie? Possibly, but Tom didn’t like to think about it.  Or rather, he liked to think about it all the time, but some questions were best left unasked.   And George seemed to like this enigmatic fire he’d started—especially when it came to talking up the lady customers in the restaurant—and Tom didn’t want to have anything to do with fanning those flames.

Flames.  Tom was standing over the grill.  Beads of sweat grew into marbles and shot down his spine, pooling at the small of his back.  He slid his spatula under each of the patties and watched George through the pick-up window, strolling around the front of house as if he owned the place.  Like any kid of the next generation, George wanted to talk about what he did more than he liked doing the thing itself.  Truth was, he was a peon.  He would be nothing without his father’s restaurant, but in George’s eyes, the restaurant was nothing if he couldn’t stake a claim in its ownership.  Manager was the term George coined for himself.  Tom watched George’s lips flapping away, talking up his cars, his property management, his so-called “side” projects to every customer who’d listen.

If by properties he meant the six-unit apartment building in Bay Ridge where his dad sent him on the first of each month to beat on tenants’ doors and collect the rents, okay, Tom would give him that.  It was embarrassing to watch him.  Publicly, the customers nodded politely when he yammered on about this and that money-making venture. Privately, they thought things. The kinds of things that Tom thought but didn’t ask.  Bootlegger.  Bookie.  Didn’t he know he was propagating the stereotype of the Greek thug?  George’d say he was anything but what he actually was.  A hostess.  A big baby thug, living off his father’s dime, in his parents’ house, working in his father’s restaurant.  Admit it, you fucking baby, you malaka.

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Tags: 1968 Lincoln Continental, Coney Island, Dreamland, Helen Georgas