It was the Saturday night before Easter Sunday. I was restless. At around 10 PM, I left my storefront darkroom in Sunset Park and walked across 39th Street to Vinnie’s candy store for an egg cream. After my drink I wanted a slice of pizza, so I walked up Fifth Avenue to ZaZa’s. At the front of the pizzeria, ZaZa’s owner Sal was tossing pizza dough in the air, catching it, then tossing it up again.
Eventually he let the rounded dough land with a THUD on the marble work counter raising a small cloud of loose flour.
I walked past the counter and the slowly spinning cocoa mobile hanging down from the ceiling to the rear of the store where some people I knew – really friends of my younger brother – were sitting around a few Formica tables.
At one three young women were looking at a copy of the Daily News.
I noticed that Carol had scars on her face, neck and hands and was wearing a light blue shirt with an embroidered bee on it. Before I could say anything, she volunteered that she had been feeling “down” one night and “took some goof balls.” She said “I’m 20, I never did anything like this before.” She now regretted cutting herself and was glad that her wounds were healing. When she saw that I was holding my camera, Carol looked up and nodded OK while placing her hands flat on the table.
At the rear of the store. Steve and Pete studied the choices on the ROCK-OLA jukebox.
Sitting nearby, Tommy and Joey were interested only in the black and white ‘50’s horror movie playing silently on a wall-mounted TV above the jukebox. At another table, Jack’s sister Joan, looking restless and bored, was trying unsuccessfully to get someone to “go to the city” with her, or at least “split a calzone.” When I left a few minutes later, she was still sitting there puffing nervously on a cigarette. I walked home along Fifth Avenue enjoying the night air. The street was empty except for a group of men talking loudly outside of one of the avenue’s many bars.
With screeching brakes and a racing engine, a white Cadillac with brightly painted white tires made a sawed-off U turn in front of the Rainbow Café. A few people waiting for the Fifth Avenue bus turned momentarily to the noise.
Parked outside my storefront was an old sedan with a large FREE CALLEY banner covering its trunk. A smaller sign on a side door read I KILLED IN VIETNAM. KILL ME TOO. God help us I thought as I opened the door to my storefront and went inside.
***
Larry Racioppo’s latest book is HALLOWEEN (The Quarto Group), photographs by Larry Racioppo, introduction by Kevin Baker.