Read The Sunset Gang for Free Online Page A

goyim."
    "You should make friends," Sadie pleaded.
"That will eliminate the Isaac problem."
    Itch had never known real loneliness or boredom before. His
life had always been filled with people. But now, spending so much time alone,
he wondered about the people with whom he had spent his early life. Perhaps, he
thought, that was what getting old meant, looking backward. What did he have to
look forward to? Long days under the hot sun sitting around the pool watching
the yentas or hanging around the shopping center watching the goyim. He was,
for the first time in more than fifty years, just hanging around. That was it.
The idea of it recalled another time, another place, when he had just hung
around, but he was not lonely then. In his memory it was quite wonderful and he
could name the names of everyone who hung around with him in front of Jake's
Candy Store on the corner of Dumont and Saratoga avenues.
    He could see their faces clearly and could smell the smells
that came from the open counter, the chocolate syrup, the pretzels, the
cigarettes that Jake sold--two for a penny--from an open cigar box. Jake had
one finger missing and washing out soda glasses made his scar redden, but his hand
functioned well and he could pick up money swiftly, using his fingers as a
claw.
    Nobody used the name their parents had given them, at least
not in the Anglicized version. There was Solly and Ritzy and Heshy and Moishe
and Chick and Sonny and Beebie and Mischa. They had stood in a cluster, like
peanut brittle, in rain or shine, usually sitting or standing around Jake's
outside soda box.
    "Wanna go to the ball game Sunday?"
    "Naw."
    "Go into the city?"
    "Naw."
    "Wanna play some rummy?"
    "Naw."
    "Anybody got a date?"
    "Naw."
    They had been working for a few years by then--as
messengers, shop helpers, store clerks--and most of what they earned used to go
to their parents, whose one unalterable preoccupation was making ends meet now
that their families had moved out of the Lower East Side to the comparative
country atmosphere of Brownsville. It may have been that they were really short
of funds and couldn't go anywhere, or simply that they had no desire to leave
that spot, to leave each other. He could not remember being bored and the
conversation was always lively, especially about sports and women. It was,
after all, where he had learned the facts of life. God forbid his father should
have told him anything! Not that he had ever told his own children. They'll
learn like I learned, he had told himself. In front of the candy store. It was
not the mechanics of sex he was talking about but the feeling about life, the
extras that he meant. He had never finished high school and his education, his
college, began at Jake's Candy Store.
    "You can always tell how sexy a woman is by the way
her mouth is." That was Solly, and women were his particular expertise.
    "Yeah," someone would say, as if to acknowledge
the fact and urge Solly on.
    "That tells the way they're built down there. Look for
the thick-lipped ones and you know you'll be getting something. Stay away from
the thin-lipped ones with the wide broad smiles."
    "There are always exceptions."
    "Never," Solly would say with great authority.
"Take it from me."
    Solly's face could float into his memory and hang there
like a full moon, the features distinct, the slicked-back black hair in the
style of Valentino, the thin mustache, the high cheekbones and olive skin. He
was handsome and therefore what he said about women gave him a special
authority.
    "I'm going to screw myself to death," he had
said, a kind of confession. "It is the only thing worth dying for."
    Recalling them now, forty-five years later, was like seeing
old movies, he thought as he sat by the pool with his eyes half-closed, fearful
that some sound or odd occurrence would break his concentration. Sometimes he
would summon up Mischa, skinny Mischa, who had worn forelocks and a yarmulke
until he was nineteen years old, and was then a