I’ve been ill once in the past eight years, a stomach virus that lasted two or three days. Last night I was awakened by tingling in my lower back. Since the heat is no longer coming up, I wondered if the apartment was cold and I was on the way to the chills, which used to happen now then in the days when I had the radiator turned off. I put an extra blanket on the bed. The sensation did not go away. I started to worry. Was it the advent of back pain, the first stages of the flu, West Nile, MERS? Or was it simply one of those weird, unexplainable things that occur with age? I thought of George Costanza‘s anguished cry: “Lupus -- is it Lupus?" Lately, I’ve been thinking about pneumonia, the contraction of which is such a mystery, and which a few acquaintances have suffered. I was sure I wouldn’t get back to sleep -- and it was only one-thirty. Although I felt wide awake, I must have dozed off a couple of times. I dreamed of the gold futures trading pit. Joey Flynn, who is in Exchanges and whose actual last name is something different, read aloud from a newspaper: “March 26th, 1910.” “Is that your birthday?” I quipped. “No, yours, you dumb guinea,” he replied. I awoke amused. That’s the sort of thing I miss about working at the Exchange. Later, I was in the pit and someone kept poking me from behind with a pen. It was Joey Fork Tongue, who’s not in the novel because the action takes place before I knew him. He was late for work, having attended the Rangers’ game and making the drive back to his home in Connecticut. “Nice haircut,” I said. His locks were long and flowing, as they were in the picture he'd posted of himself as a teen on Facebook for Throwback Thursday. Mark, also not in the book, was beside him. He’d spent the entire third period of the win, as he had for Game Seven of the teams’ Stanley Cup clincher in 1994, in a bathroom, unable to bear the pressure. “Smilin’ Jack,” I said, one of his pet terms.
I’m happy to say the tingling sensation has disappeared. What the heck was it?
In a recent interview, golf’s wayward son, John Daly, revealed he's lost 55 to 57 million gambling. He called it stupid, but he's not regretful. "People are going to say I should regret it," he said. "But I did it, I've moved on from it and I had a lot of fun doing it." As Ralph Kramden would say: "A mere bag of shells."
I knew it would be a can't miss day for the floating book shop. The Time-Life pictorials were a big hit. I must have sold 25, as well as several other books. My thanks to the kind folks who bought and donated.
Vic's 4th Novel: http://tinyurl.com/bszwlxh
Vic's 3rd Novel: http://tinyurl.com/7e9jty3
Vic's Website: http://members.tripod.com/vic_fortezza/Literature/
Vic's Short Story Collection (Print or Kindle): http://www.tiny.cc/Oycgb
Vic's 2nd Novel: http://tinyurl.com/6b86st6
Vic's 1st Novel: http://tiny.cc/94t5h
Vic's Horror Screenplay on Kindle: http://tinyurl.com/cyckn3
Vic's Rom-Com Screenplay on Kindle: http://tinyurl.com/kny5llp
Vic’s Short Story on Kindle: http://tinyurl.com/k95k3nx
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