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VITO
Like, Gladys who I ain’t seen since I was in high school, walks into the room. It’s a life drawing class, and I’m posing, see, just trying to make a few honest bucks straight out of prison. I got my back to her but of course she recognizes me. I guess you could say I’m hard to forget that way. So I says to her, “I loved you as Gladys way before you ran away from home. Now, forty years later, you are Aurora? What’s your last name? Borealis?” But guess what? There is no last name. And she wanted me to have a one-word name too. She wanted to call me “Rainbow”! I said, “To hell with that, my name is Vito!” Then she says, “Vito is dead to me!”, which is not the first time I’ve ever heard those words, but I have to admit they stung a little, just the same. That was the last straw for her, over a name. I tried to make it up to her. Drove her over here, dropped her off, intimidated your doorman. No “thank you”. Nothing. Why couldn’t I have just gone along? It’s the same as when we were kids. I loved her, but she had places to go, people to meet.
