"Maybe he's got something for you. Something worth staying for."
"All of a sudden?" Joey said. He splayed his hands out on the Formica table and examined them. "All of a sudden he's gonna gimme something good? Come on, Sal, you know the kinda bullshit work I get. Errand boy. Gofer. Maybe now and then I get to hold a bagga money and pass it to the next jerk down the line. Let's not kid ourselves. I know where I stand. My old man's gonna be consigliere any day, my half brother Gino struts around like he's God's fucking gift, and I'm a mutt who's never even gonna get a button."
"Cut it out with that mutt stuff," Sal scolded. "No one gives a shit about that but you."
"Why should they?" Joey said. "But Sal, it's facts. I'm not full Italian, I can't get made. Simple as that."
"O.K. But Joey, you know and I know that plenty of guys make damn good livings without a button."
This was the wrong thing to say. Joey leaned forward over his wrists and blanched between the eyebrows. "Right, Sal, and that's exactly my fucking point. Am I one of those guys? Not hardly. Doesn't that tell you something? I got a father who's a big shot, a brother who thinks he's a big shot, and I gotta scrape for nickels and dimes? Who's lookin' out for little Joey, huh?"
Sal sipped espresso and tried a different tack. "It ever dawn on you that maybe the old man's tryin' to protect you?"
The question made Joey swallow. He didn't try to answer it. "Sal, listen," he said. "My mind's made up. It's not like I'm storming off in a huff. I've thought it over. A lot. I stay around here, I can't be anything but like a third-string guy. I go someplace new, O.K., maybe I fall on my face, but at least I take my shot."
A bus went by outside, belching black steam and rattling the front window of Perretti's. Sal narrowed his eyes and tried to picture the far end of the New Jersey Turnpike and the long road that came after it. All he could conjure up was a vague idea of Trenton, followed by an endlessness of dashed lines snaking away to nowhere. Suddenly it felt to him like he was the one going far away from everything he knew. The thought scared him like a shriek in the night. He reached across the table, grabbed Joey by the back of the neck, and pulled his face close.
"Joey, man, you're gonna be like all alone down there."
Joey Goldman had black hair that was curlier than most and wouldn't hold a part very well. The skin of his lean face was stretched taut between high cheekbones and a square chin with just a hint of a cleft. "Sal," he said, "I love ya, so no offense. But did it ever dawn on you that maybe I like that idea?"
— 2 —
Joey's girlfriend Sandra Dugan didn't want to go.
"Jeez, Joey," she said, "you spring this on me now, just when things are going right for me?"
She was getting ready for work, and she held a hairpin in her mouth while gathering up the wisps of short blond hair that had fallen onto the nape of her neck. The mirror was at the foot of the bed, and she looked past her own reflection at Joey. He was under the blue blanket, propped up on pillows, drinking coffee.
"What springing?" he said. "Springing is like when it's a surprise. This is no surprise, Sandra. How long we known each other now? Three years, closer to four? Haven't I been telling you all along that I plan on getting outta here?"
"Yeah, Joey, you've said that. Fair enough." She leaned close to the glass and brushed green shadow above her pale green eyes. "But Joey, everybody says that. Leaving New York—it's like a constant topic. At the bank, everyone's always saying how they're gonna move out on the Island. The girls from school, they all think they're going to L.A. It's like a safety valve, all this talk about leaving. But no one does it."
"And why don't they?" Joey said. He sat up higher in bed and gestured with his coffee mug. "One reason. They don't have the balls."
"Don't curse, Joey. It's common."
"Balls is a curse? Balls is a part of the body."
Sandra had put on her big square glasses. She let them slide forward on her narrow upturning nose and stared him down in the mirror.
"Awright," he resumed. "Nerve. They don't have the nerve. They'll bitch and moan all right, because that's easy. But will they change things?"
"Not everyone can change things." Sandra had had good evidence of this. Her father was a longshoreman and a drunk who would now and then stop drinking and start crying. Her mother was a loud and flamboyant complainer who would quite regularly pack up the kids, run away to the Poconos or Montauk, and come back forty-eight hours and half a carton of Newports later with nothing settled. Sandra could still remember the red wool coat her mother always bundled her into on these strange excursions. It had big square black buttons that Sandra toyed with in the car. "Besides," she continued, "change means change, Joey. It doesn't just mean going somewhere else."