Suburban Misfits

The bulge in my pocket isn’t because I’m glad to see either one of them. The three of us hardly talk the way we used to in the old days. We’re all closing in on 30 and still haven’t figured out what to do with our lives – except to know we don’t want to spend the rest of eternity driving around like this like we did at 17, searching for girls who’ll pay attention to us. Of the tree of us, Hank alone still thinks of this as fun, aching to get back that feeling of camaraderie he claims we had when we drove. He doesn’t understand the difference between happiness and mutual misery. It is his idea to head to the shore in the dead of winter, as if he believes we can pick up girls there when the competition is less fierce. Pauly doesn’t want to pick up girls, but goes along with the scheme because he’s tired of staying home alone and figures we’re better company than nobody, an opinion he alters the minute we hit the highway and has to listen to Hank’s ranting. Putting the tape recorder in my...

    Tiger Stevens nudges me in the ribs when he finds out I just moved into the rooming house across the street from our favorite bar. Guys I drink with always talk about the girl that lives in the three-storied Victorian house across the street. Now I’m living there. I never get it, always confused by the nod and wink as if I am supposed to know something I don’t know. I guess I’m a bit of a snob. I drink with the boys I attended high school with but always assume I won’t end up like them. Sure I load trucks like they do as some Fairfield warehouse, yet I secretly scribble masterpieces into notebooks after house with the assumption I might some day get discovered. Sure, the girl, I met my first day in the rooming house is intrigued by the notebooks and asks me to read some of the contents to her each time we meet inside the house. I never do. I keep thinking I’m not ready. I tell her maybe next time, and really hope I am ready next time. Tiger hoots more when I tell him about...

  Pauly’s jacket hangs from outside the door when come into the carport, an annoying little detail the distracts me as I unlock the door to my apartment next door. I have chores to do before work; my dog needs walking, my laundry washed, and I need no morning mysteries to distract me. I’m tempted to knock on Pauly’s door, think better of it; he hates being disturbed for no reason, perhaps the rain earlier had caught him unawares, and he’s left the jacket out to dry. There’s an odd yet familiar scent, of mothballs and cedar chips recalling my grandparents’ house and the stored clothing they dragged out of closets for each change of season, a memory that has nothing to do with Pauly, and yet lingers in the air, raising more questions I decide can wait until noon when Pauly usually rises. I do not have to wait, finding him on my way back with the dog, wearing the jacket I saw, ducked into a narrow space in front of his door, struggling to put on a tie, hair slicked back – without the ...

    s C ott, the assistant manager of the Quick Chek on the border of Garfield and Wallington breaks out the cold cuts the minute he sees Pauly coming, or if morning, the buttered hard roll and milk (not cream) for his coffee. Pauly is as predictable as the cycles of the moon, insisting on a buttered roll and coffee each morning, then Turkey and Swiss on rye in the afternoon. Scott is a cross between Clark Kent and Jimmy Olsen, so mild-mannered Pauly can’t help picking him, that mocking type of tease he used to reserve for Alf, but which the rest of us won’t tolerate, and Pauly missed the fun. Paul, who looks as frail as a half-starved bird, isn’t the health nut he claims he is, smoking up a storm even when he ought not to, vowing to quit if he can, if only to keep the rest of us quiet, grubbing cigarettes from Hank, even when he hates the brand Hank always smokes, buying his own only when he can’t grub enough or when Hank’s not around to feed his habit. Scott indulges Pauly...

  Dwayne gives out hotdogs to us as if dispensing communion, this high priest of a highway slop joint we come to for free meals and words of wisdom, Pauly says he takes with a large grain of salt, never completely trusting him, even when commiserating late into the night on philosophical theories about angels and the heads of pins, we all drawn to him as if is on a mission from God, Pauly in particular seeking out something in him he can’t find in himself. I’m always scared when he and Pauly come together, matter and anti-matter teasing us with the threat of calamity we know must eventually bring an end to the known universe, each a snake charmer in his own right, until we are confused as to which one we should follow, Pauly, the master manipulator whose silver tongue sways us one way, Dwayne the deep thinker who stuns us with sudden inspiration. Pauly comes here for more than just the free food, seeking something he can’t divine for himself, while Dwayne aches for something from P...

  “I don’t know why he’s picking on  me,” Pauly says as his hands shake around the cup of Dunkin Donut coffee, he makes me buy him so he can calm down. One of Pauly’s customers at the Fotomat booth warned him, saying that the local Washington Township cop was looking to bust him. “He’s up on top of the hill where the road from Mount Arlington runs down into the highway before the circle I need to take to get to work at the mall,” Pauly said, meaning the booth in the parking lot of the mall, not the mall itself. “It’s as if I have a target on my back the way me and Charlie had when we got busted in Montclair,” Pauly says. “Only I’m not carrying pot the way we did back then, and I’m certainly not driving around in a cherry-red Volkswagen the way Charlie always did.” “Don’t you think driving a moped in his part of the state makes you stand out?” I ask. “I don’t care if I stand out, as long as it gets me to work and back,” he replies. Pauly doesn’t care how stupid he l...