Ride the Titanic! Read Online Free

deep breath and say, ‘Ride the Titanic.’
    Joe’s weathered face could fit on Mount Rushmore for all the reaction I get. He blows on his coffee to cool it down before saying, ‘ Paisan , if you want to humor an old man like me, talk about his ‘good old days,’ not your bad ones.’
    ‘Forget the past, I’m talking right now, today. I want to build the ride in Vegas and I need your help.’
    ‘What are you talking?’
    Down SLAMS the coffee cup.
    ‘A man feeds his family with food, not dreams.’
    ‘I refuse to spend the rest of my life designing air conditioning ducts.’
    ‘Bullshit. You did HVAC stuff twelve hours a day on It’s Tough to be a Bug.’
    ‘That ride was two months behind schedule and they needed a hand, besides, it is. . .well, you know what I mean. It was Disney.’
    ‘Yeah, I do.’ Joe’s face softens into a smile as he adds more grappa to his coffee. ‘You got that part right.’
    A peal of laughter from the living room and the squeal of happy babies as Marianna plies her nonna magic. I start my pitch, but Joe silences me with a stubby, cautionary finger. He stands, goes over to the kitchen door leading to the living room and closes it, muting the baby play and gives us some privacy.
    He settles himself, takes a sip and says, ‘I had a good run, paisan . Yours was way too short. But either way, we both got a chance to do something we loved and got paid for it. But that time is over for both of us. Capisce ?’
    He leans forward, his burly arms still strong enough to do fifty pushups every morning. ‘Tell me about this construction company. You like their offer? Think you can advance?’
    ‘Who says it has to end?’
    ‘Disney said it to me. Your ride company said it to you – what was its name again?’
    ‘ Gravity Sucks .’
    He makes a face. ‘What a name. Walt would turn over in his grave if he heard it. I will too, one of these days. Sooner than everybody thinks.’
    Something inside of me comes unglued. I open the kitchen door and shout, ‘Mamma, we’ll be down in my office if you need us.’
    ‘Hope you get that job, Michele !’
    I grab the grappa bottle and clump downstairs to the basement. Joe follows, mumbling about how my indoor-outdoor carpeting needed vacuuming, and how the lighting is so dim.
    ‘Jesus, you’re turning into an old man. Next thing I know you’ll be painting the rocks around my house red, white and green.’
    ‘So what? Italy’s got a beautiful flag, and sta zit with the wise cracks. I know something about a paint brush, remember. Hand me that goddamn bottle.’
    We wind our way around stacks of luggage, racks of cool weather clothing never used in Florida, a table-and-chair set Geena refuses to let me toss out because we had it in our first apartment, and arrive at what looks like a coffin resting on a pair of sawhorses.
    Joe whispers, ‘Jesus, I thought you got rid of that damn thing.’
    ‘Scooter helped me build it. How could I?’
    Instead of lifting the lid, Dracula-style, I undo a series of latches around the base, find the power cord and plug it into the wall.
    ‘Stand over there.’
    Joe does as he’s told. I turn off the overhead lights and allow the silence to build in the darkness before I begin.
    ‘It’s Sunday, April 14, 1912, eleven thirty-nine at night. Two thousand, two hundred twenty-four people are sixty-seconds away from disaster. Only you’d never know it by looking at this.’
    I lift off the cover, flip the power switch and my eight-foot long model of the R.M.S. Titanic comes to life in all its miniature glory. Built with exacting realism to attract potential investors, golden light streams from thirteen-hundred tiny portholes dotting her inky-black hull. Four buff-colored, black-tipped stacks point finger-straight; as proud as the Harland and Wolff shipbuilders were the day their ocean-going masterpiece slid stern-first down the ways into the Belfast waters, free of the land, unaware of their creation’s