The Guido and the Grandma
A short story
It was in Terminal B outside of Gate 24 at LaGuardia Airport that our protagonist, an off-brand Jersey Shore cast member type named Tommy DeVito, stumbled upon his divine purpose in this life.
It all started when something caught Tommy’s eye as he was walking toward baggage claim. It was his reflection. Damn, he looked good. His jet black hair was perfectly slicked black on top, with one strand carefully strewn askew. The transplanted hair—his pride and joy—had cost him five years of waiting tables and every spare dollar he could scrounge up. But looking at himself now, an absolute spectacle, it was worth it. The rest of his outfit was just as fresh: Heather gray Gucci sweat suit. Diamond stud earrings. Balenciaga slides. Tommy gave his reflection a wink, and it winked right back.
Patricia, an eighty-year old woman sitting nearby, thought the wink was for her. And after a weekend spent dodging an overeager CPA at a singles mixer for widowed accountants, she wasn’t having it.
Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, even if she’s a month out from a hip replacement. The look Patricia gave Tommy was hot enough to mold a prosthetic. She lunged at him with impressive vigor for her age, but in her fury, her store-bought hip lost synchronization with the God-given one. The resulting femoral nerve impingement produced a sort of exaggerated belly dancer-esque thrust, which, it could be said, set off the chain of events that ultimately led to Tommy’s revelation.
The propulsion from Patricia’s spastic thrust launched her some three feet to the left, where a couple was mid-argument. The boyfriend, leaning aggressively toward his girlfriend, caught the brunt of Patricia’s runaway hip.
The unexpected collision sent the boyfriend’s freshly-chewed gum flying. In the wink of an eye, it had lodged itself comfortably among Tommy’s treasured strands.
Each of the participants in this aviatory drama stood dumbfounded for a few moments, in the way that one does when life produces a series of events that can’t be comprehended. Patricia stared at the boyfriend, who alternated between staring at his girlfriend and Tommy, who, when the reality of the situation eventually registered, was the first to react.
He threw down his Saint Laurent shoulder bag in disgust and gingerly brought both hands to his head as if he were trying to hold a bird. Applying gentle pressure to his hair, Tommy gauged how deeply the gum was lodged. He scowled at what he felt. It had embedded itself between the sideward strand and the bed of hairs underneath, creating an industrial-grade adhesion. His hair—the hair that had been carefully implanted by a renowned Turkish surgeon and cost as much as a used car—was ruined.
The boyfriend, not knowing what to do, bent over to pick up the contents that had spilled out of Tommy’s leather bag. He stopped when he saw something strange: a long, curling piece of receipt paper which was covered in chicken scratch.
After staring at the receipt paper for a few moments, the boyfriend realized that the chicken scratch was Tommy’s entire financial life—a barely decipherable Rosetta Stone of transactions, budgets, investments, even a tax breakdown.
“Gimme that,” Tommy snapped, snatching the paper out of the boyfriend’s hands.
“Wait,” Patricia said, speaking for the first time since her hip had gone rogue. She was looking at the receipt paper as if it were the real Rosetta Stone. “Can I see that?”
“No, you can’t see it, lady. You just tried to kill me for no reason, and you ruined my fuckin’ hair.”
Patricia massaged her throbbing hip and glared at Tommy. “No reason? You just winked at me! I’ve had it with disgusting men.”
“Winked at you? Why would I wink at you, lady?” He stuffed the receipt paper and the rest of his things into the bag and turned to leave. The couple had gone back to arguing.
Patricia’s face turned crimson, but her curiosity edged out her embarrassment. “Wait. Please.” Something about the desperation in her voice stopped Tommy.
“I spent most of my life creating documents like that piece of paper. I’ve never seen someone with such a strong grasp on their financial situation. I know this sounds strange, but I’d really like to take a closer look at it.”
Tommy remembered someone saying that you can tell you’re in a dream when you can’t read letters or numbers. He looked over at Gate 24. It was clear as day: Atlanta, departing 8:15 PM. This was really happening.
He stared at Patricia for a few moments before digging the receipt paper out of his bag and handing it to her in a daze.
She held the paper delicately and examined it like an ancient scroll. Tommy examined her like a zoo animal.
Patricia finally looked up. “I used to own an accounting firm. I’ve never seen anything like this.” She shook the paper. “Especially on a piece of…what is this, receipt paper?”
Tommy shrugged and looked down at the ground. “Yeah. I wait tables at my mom’s restaurant. Can’t exactly pull up a spreadsheet in there.”
She gave the paper one last glance while working through something in her mind. After seeming to reach a conclusion, she took a deep breath, massaged her hip, and looked Tommy in the eye.
“Are you interested in a real job?”
He blinked. “A job?”
“Yeah. I’ve been thinking about reopening my old accounting firm. I could use someone who can actually handle numbers to help run things. And judging by that piece of paper, you can do much more than that,” she said.
Tommy glanced around the airport and watched all the people walking by, oblivious to the absurdity occurring outside Gate 24. He thought about cracking a joke about finding her a nursing home. He thought about laughing. He thought about turning to walk away. But something about the bizarre reverence in this woman’s voice caused him to remain where he was.
The strangest part, in Tommy’s mind, wasn’t that his wink had set off a chain reaction involving an old lady hip-checking a random guy and getting gum stuck in his $10,000 hair. Nor was it that that same old lady, who just minutes ago seemed ready to kill him, was now offering him a job based on some numbers he’d written on a piece of receipt paper.
No, the strangest part was that she seemed to think he was worth something. And it wasn’t because of the hair, or the outfit, or the expensive bag. She didn’t care about any of that. It was something else—something Tommy had never really considered. His mind.
That was a new one. For as long as he could remember, he’d measured himself by what was on the outside. But this woman, this old lady with the wild hip, seemed to think he had something to offer that went deeper than his looks. And that, for some reason, was harder to grapple with than the gum stuck in his hair.
He scratched at the gum absently, unsure what to make of it all. “Tell me more,” he heard himself say with a strange softness.
Patricia nodded, satisfied, and with a limp led him to a table at a nearby restaurant. And there they sat—the guido and the grandma—discussing numbers, accounting, and how they might work together, having each found the person they needed in a rather unexpected way.
Huge thank you to Dima El-Charif, , and for your generous feedback on this story.
I'm so curious what snippets of this rollicking fantasy might be auto-biographical. Are you a genius numbers guy? Is your hair your own? Did you ever hip-check an arguing couple in an airport? Do tell.
I loved the beginning. Thought it was gonna be a comedy, but you took a left turn there turning it into a heartfelt drama.