From Here to Reality by Steven Schindler

Author:Steven Schindler
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pocket Books
Published: 2005-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

Joan would look fantastic in anything. But seeing her in my old Cardinal O’Brien High School sweatshirt and a pair of cross-country O’Brien sweatpants gives me a special thrill. We heated up our takeout and are sitting on the couch, listening to the sweet lyrical violin of Stephane Grappelli while we eat.

“Wait! I just remembered something,” I say, putting down my paper container of food and heading for the bathroom. I forgot all about the photo I found in Benny’s kitchen. I retrieve it from my pants pocket to show Joan. “Look, I found this behind Benny’s refrigerator. I didn’t get a chance to tell you, but he was acting the strangest ever today before you got here. He was being just quietly weird about his past, then he totally freaked when I mentioned this Father B.”

“Father B.? Is that his father?” Joan says as she takes a sip of green tea.

“No. Father as in priest. It was written on a scorecard from the fifties. And when I mentioned it, he just went ballistic. When I reached for a pizza box behind the refrigerator, I found this photo.”

I hold the photo out for both of us to examine. It’s a black-and-white photo, probably from the fifties. It has that old-fashioned white border with the scalloped edges. The oldest boy looks about sixteen, the one who resembles Benny appears maybe twelve, and the one who just has to be Benny’s younger brother looks to be five or six. Benny and the little boy have big grins on their faces, but the older boy standing next to the blond priest isn’t smiling at all. In fact, he looks like he’s about to receive a vaccination. The priest and the boys are standing in front of a storefront. You can see only half the writing on the window. It looks like ETTO, and underneath is written SH.

“It says something on the back,” I say as I turn the photograph over: Dominic Benedetto, William Benedetto, Ralph Bonifazio, and Father Biselli, Oct. 1953.

“That older boy has to be Benny. But his name is Bennett, isn’t it?” Joan asks while enjoying the last bite of her veggie spring roll.

“Yes, and he told me his brother’s name is Dominic. I should say, his deceased brother’s name is Dominic.”

“He said he had a dead brother named Dominic?” Joan asks.

“Yeah, and a dead friend named Ralphie. And the priest was dead, too,” I say, dipping a shrimp in some hot-and-sour sauce.

“He says everybody’s dead? That’s quite a coincidence.”

“You got that right. Something’s fishy. Hey, wait a minute. The writing on the front of that store. The SH is the end of FISH—”

“And the ETTO is the end of Benedetto. Benny’s real last name,” Joan chimes in, proud of her Benedetto’s Fish revelation.

“Oh, this is too much. Guess whose real last name is Benedetto?”

“Who?”

“Tony freakin’ Bennett. And remember when you asked him how he lost his fingers and he said he lost them in an accident in his parents’ butcher store? Maybe it was a grinder in a fish store.

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