That kid he bombs around the lot in my Caddie and I’ve got my heart in my throat just tossing him the keys but he never misses so what the hell. He’s dressed like he’s waiting for an organ grinder, not me, but the missus think’s he’s some kinda handsome and what’s the harm in that. Young man should be handsome and see some hubba hubba wife now and then so he knows why he’s groping that neighborhood girl in the back of a jalopy for.

Jesus she steps out like a queen. The monkey missing his tin cup holds the door and she puts out one leg with the seam running up the back and he’s transfixed like he’s a gimp at Lourdes and she’s coming down from a cloud. She’s got a halo of perfume and radiation from the silk and glitters a bit on the fingers. We go in and the Caddie gets a workout.

There’s the maitre d and he knows me and there’s no fuss except the fussing over a guy likes. The wife inspects the ceiling and Rocco says his little prayer of a tip and massages me a bit. He inspects the long memorized seating plan like it’s a lost scroll instead of his reason for being. “I might just have something near the floor ’cause I know missus, well, she can dance is what I’m sayin’.”

The coat check girl is the homely one, and even she could start a knifefight on any corner in Naples just by walking past. The girl who takes you to the table could get the Pope to reconsider.

There’s too many onions but they’re sweet. The wood pressed into a little quilt reveals itself as you make your way to the bottom of the bowl. Bread in a basket, O and V in the cruets, two ashtrays. Chianti, Franco; ten bucks and it’s the best Chianti in the world, with the cock right there on the stripe like back home. The stuffy guys, the dentists with Yankee names come in here and order sangiovese for their stringy wives to ooh and aah over and pay twenty ’cause they don’t know no better.

The dentist Yankees drift by on the dance floor and you can see them eying the real woman you got, pushing the limits of her dress every which place — Bam! Boop! Bap! — and he’s got the skinny sorority girl who moves around like a giraffe in a straightjacket and you know right off that she moves like that everywhere. That’s why he can’t stop robbing a peek at the missus when he can; they always sneak out of the house in their mind in here, the white bread. They couldn’t handle a woman like I got anyway. They should stick to the ingenues who reach for the diazepam instead of the kitchen knives when you piss her off.

In other words, please be true. In other words, I love you.

(Reader and commenter Misterarthur sent me that video, for the Hammond. Guys from Detroit know Hammond)