Giuseppi's Secret

Giuseppi’s Secret
By Josh Simon
He kept her hidden from the outside world. At nighttime, he would drape a large flannel blanket over her sticky body. To the rest of the town, Giuseppi was a nobody. He had no family in the area and was never seen outside of his days at the hardware store. Those of us who grew up around Giuseppi knew him as a quiet and reserved man. No matter what time of day or year, Giuseppi always sported a greasy, jet –black pompadour that girls either loathed or moaned over. But giuseppi wasn’t that type of guy. He never wore fancy clothes or jewelry. His hair was his strength and he took great pride in it.
When I was younger, my father and I would often go to the hardware store down the street from our house. Once inside, Giuseppi would greet us with a stern face that is unbelievably common in most hardware stores. Maybe it’s the synthetic smells of rubber and fertilizer that go to the heads of hardware store “nuts” as my father had once branded them. Giuseppe was different from your typical run of the mill local. He was one of the only non-veterans working at the place so he never hypnotized audiences of youngsters with war stories of the beaches of Normandy and Iwo-Jima. Matter of fact, Giuseppi wasn’t really much of a story teller. He was the type of person whose facial lines and expressions said as much as a novel in less then five seconds. My father often approached him and asked him things.
“Giuseppe, what the hell is going on with ya” he’d say in the least offensive way possible, although we always thought a fight would break out.
Giuseppe’s replies were vacant and slow.
“Misaaa Thomas, I am a very a busy man. It is difficult for me to leave my house for I have a sick brother.”
Somehow when he uttered these simple answers, we all knew he was lying. There just wasn’t something right about the passivity that Giuseppi carried with him like a slimy anchor fresh from sea. Little did I know how well I would soon know Giuseppi.
I started working at the hardware store my sophomore year of high school. As a low paid check out counter boy, I was often teased by older employees and was appointed solely in charge of restocking 50 pound bags of fertilizer. During my initial interview at the hardware store I was told sternly that there was a thick line between cashiers and stockers. I was told never to cross this line or I would be severely disciplined. On cold November afternoons, I would rush to work from school and Giuseppi would be the manager on duty. He would greet me toneless and cold every time I worked with him.
One winter, we had an unrelenting storm. The sky opened up and cried white upon the ground. At work, My Honda civic became prisoner to the harsh downpour and I was stranded at the store. Giuseppi, the only manager on duty that day and the last employee of the store, offered to give me a ride home. I humbly accepted and we stepped into his Bronco. The Bronco was a faded maroon color that in some bizarre alternate universe would resemble a frozen Hagen-Daz popsicle. The dashboard of his car was mottled with religious artwork from the ceiling to the steering wheel. A magazine cut-out of the Virgin Mary was affixed with a lone piece of scotch tape in the middle of his steering wheel and made me stop to think. Was Mary the last vision Giuseppi wanted to see if a fatal and bloody accident were to occur? I thought of what image I would have put on my steering wheel. I could only think of stupid items; Old baseball cards, a small fortune paper from a Chinese restaurant.
As Giuseppi and I approached the major road that lead to my neighborhood, the snow had reached unimaginable heights. His Bronco ached to move forward but simply couldn’t do it. We had no choice but to go to his house and wait in what I would have assumed to be quiet contemplation. If only I knew how wrong I was.
Giuseppi’s house wasn’t anything special. It wasn’t anything horrific either. It just simply was. It was a 40’s style craftsman house that I could’ve sworn I had seen 3,000 miles across the country in Berkeley. The inside was bare except for some cheap furniture and candles I’d seen in Catholic churches. Giuseppi sat down in his kitchen with me and poured me a glass of sweet sherry from Modena. The taste still lingers on my tounge to this day. A faint, bittersweet moment. For the next two hours, we sat in silence with the gentle sound of sipping in between our cold winter breaths. And then he asked me.
“ What is the strangest thing you’ve ever seen?”
I balked first at the comment, and thought carefully.
“ I suppose the first time I saw open brain surgery on T.V. Why do you ask?”
Giuseppi motioned attentively to my answer and raised his arm slowly to point towards a small closet that sat under the main staircase of his house. With a series of hand motions, he instructed me to open the door and reveal the closets contents. As I neared the door, I felt my balls break into a sweat. In times of stress, your palms and face usually become drenched in minutes. But your balls are always the first to sweat. I opened the door slowly expecting to see a corpse or a pasta shelf or something silly. Suddenly a larger than life black Goody comb fell on the floor before me and broke into football sized plastic chunks. I gasped in shock and curiosity. The comb fragments were greasy and felt like they had been drenched in motor oil. I looked over at Giuseppe, who now lay lifeless on the couch. On his face I saw the first smile I had ever seen on him.