Thanks for the vote of confidence.
Here's what I've written:
“Oops.”
There are accidents, there are stupid accidents, and then there’s this. Kneeling before me was the soon-to-be-dead Franco Garnini, part-time gangster and stooge for Mama Pidgin. It wasn’t that I cared much for Franco- he always rolled his ‘R’s too much and quoted Pulp Fiction whenever possible. No, the major reason I had soggy trousers that morning was that Garnini happened to be Mama Pidgin’s favorite nephew. Lord knows how many of those she had, but they all worked like hell to compete for her attention. For some reason, Mama Pidgin designated me as a babysitter for Franco a while back, and it’s probably one of the worst things to have ever happened to me.
No one will believe me, but Franco was asking for it. Literally. Guy walks into my apartment while I’m sorting my laundry, hands me a gun, tells me to shoot him. I just give him this dopey expression, for like five minutes, and he says it again. “Shoot me. I dare you.” Granted, I shoulda been used to this by now. Franco was always a little loopy in the head- he never wanted to be a don or nothing. He just liked doing other people’s dirty work, called himself a “physical manifestation of the world’s inherent chaos”. Betcha five bucks he picked that up from a comic book. I figure he wants to do some shtick he saw in Dirty Harry, so I oblige. I ask him if he has body armor on, and he just smiles at me. I’m still a little suspicious, but like I said, this is nothing he hasn’t done before.
Just last year, we were at a wedding, for Jordan Aleph and Sandra Zapati- cute couple, those two. Anyways, Franco’s been drinking a little bit too much wine, and he stumbles over to me and says he wants to get into a fight. He looks at me, and sputters, “I want you to hit me as hard as you can.” And God knows I woulda done it too, no questions asked, but it was the couple’s dance, and Jordan had asked me to be his best man. I couldn’t just interrupt his day to kick the snot out of this shlub. I woulda walked out right then and there, but who do I see? Mama Pidgin leering from across the room, cappuccino in hand and giving me that judgmental stare that’s the stuff of legend. What Mama’s boy wants, Mama’s boy gets, no matter how expensive, insane, or just plain stupid. Long story short, I give him one weak punch across the face, he flails for a bit and tries to hit me, and the two of us get kicked out. Mama was pleased, and Franco took pride in embellishing the story after his bruises healed, but the Aleph and Zapati families still give me dagger-eyes at the meetings.
So here comes Franco again with some stupid ballsy stunt, and I’m gonna have to go along with it again. Franco’s been doing this shit for as long as he’s been in the family, and the only reason I bother putting up with it is because if I don’t, I’d be upsetting one of the biggest crime lords in all of Chicago. There he was, crumpling my neatly folded socks under his boots, a gun placed at my feet and his arms raised in some Biblical pose. What’s a guy to do? He says it a third time through gritted teeth. “Shoot me, Selick. Shoot me.”
So I did.
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