Characters in Survivor Type

Blood under the fingernails. Scabs. Remember that model in med school with the glass belly? I feel like that. Only I don’t want to look. No way no how. I remember Dom used to say that. Waltz up to you on the street corner in his Hiway Outlaws club jacket.

I dreamed about him last night, Father Hailley in his black bathrobe, and his whiskey nose, shaking his finger at me and saying, “Shame on you, Richard Pinzetti . . . a mortal sin . . . damt to hell, boy . . . damt to hell . . .” …

He gave me two names over there. One of them was the big Chink, Henry Li-Tsu. The other was a Vietnamese named Solom Ngo. A chemist. For a fee he would test the Chink’s product. The Chink was known to play “jokes” from time to time.

I never fought them. Playing football was risk enough. But there were ways. The one that got on my case the most was Howie Plotsky, a big dumb bohunk with zits all over his face. I had a paper route, and I was selling the numbers along with the papers.

Then the tax people got to Lowenthal. That sheep. They waved five years in his face and he coughed up half a dozen names. One of them was mine. They watched me for a while, and by the time they landed, I was worth a lot more than five years.

And as wretched as I am, I still want to live. I remember what Mockridge used to say in Basic Anatomy. Old Mockie, we used to call him. Sooner or later, he’d say, the question comes up in every medical student’s career: How much shock-trauma can the patient stand?

It is 190 paces wide at its thickest point, and 267 paces long from tip to tip. So far as I can tell, there is nothing on it to eat. My name is Richard Pine. This is my diary. If I’m found (when), I can destroy this easily enough.

The thing to learn is how to survive, you know what I mean? So I paid the biggest kid in school, Ricky Brazzi, ten bucks to make Howie Plotsky’s mouth disappear. Make it disappear, I said. I will pay you a dollar for every tooth you bring me.

I decided I’d have to take a chance and try to turn it over. Double or triple it. So I went to see Ronnie Hanelli. Ronnie and I played football together in college, and when his kid brother decided on internal med, I helped him get a residency.

He gave me two names over there. One of them was the big Chink, Henry Li-Tsu. The other was a Vietnamese named Solom Ngo. A chemist. For a fee he would test the Chink’s product. The Chink was known to play “jokes” from time to time.

For someone who loved the name so much, she was in one hell of a hurry to change her copy of it to Steinbrunner. Surgery was all I ever wanted. Ever since high school. Even then I was wrapping my hands before every game and soaking them afterward.

I used that. I was drooling but I made myself wait. And then I got thinking of . . . oh, barbecues we used to have. That place Will Hammersmith had on Long Island, with a barbecue pit big enough to roast a whole pig in.