Little Casino

Poor banished children of Eve

THE OLD MAN LIGHTS A CIGARETTE AND walks into the elevator and right out its rear wall into the 69th Street ferry waiting room. He’s not the man he thinks he is, though, but Buddy Mazzolini, The Boy Bus Driver, who was, at one time, the drunken cop who shot the dog on the corner outside Flynn’s Bar and Grill. Somebody across the street tells him to go fuck his mother and his face turns bright blue and then black and he disappears. He drives down Ocean Parkway. Others stare at the photographs that the bus driver displays because it is quite clear that they think that these heartbreaking images will substitute for or ameliorate their ignorance. They wish the world to be kind to them, to pardon them their sins, their tattered pasts. Look at the lost people in the pictures! Look! Young, smiling, foolish, and hopeful; young, smiling, foolish, and hopeful; young, smiling, foolish, and hopeful. Sweet Mother of God!

Ghosts.

Hail, Holy Queen, Mother of mercy, our life, our sweetness, and our hope! To thee do we cry, poor banished children of Eve, to thee do we send up our sighs, mourning and weeping in this valley of tears. Turn then, most gracious advocate, thine eyes of mercy towards us; and after this our exile show unto us the blessed fruit of thy womb Jesus. O clement, O loving, O sweet Virgin Mary.