Victor Navarro Jr.: Madman Laureate of Pittsburgh’s Little Italy
I
“Rumors of my imminent death have been greatly exaggerated.”
The prophetic voice growls matter-of-factly from a rough, unshaven face not even five inches from my own. He came out of nowhere. It’s 7 am, too early for my motor skills to be working as I stand in line at the Crazy Mocha coffee-shop in Bloomfield. My eyes are still half-sealed with sleep, but before I have a chance to wake up, Victor is in my face with his rotting teeth and blazing blue eyes, bypassing the normal man’s hello, how are you ritual with this eerily calm and simple declaration. One minute I was staring at my feet and the next, when I looked up to move forward in line, there he was and that’s what he said to me.
His eyes are so blue. The kind of blue you only see in Caribbean travel brochures where the camera’s capturing the pristine beach’s impossible beauty from a martini’s eye view. Paradise blue. Angelic blue, you could say, but I don’t mean hallmark angel blue, I mean archangel blue. I mean Gabriel guarding the gate with his flaming sword blue and the radiant color is accentuated by the juxtaposition of the old, sagging, liver spotted skin that surrounds the two floating orbs of ageless, hypnotic power.
He walks away before I even have a chance to process what happened. I didn’t see him coming or going, but his eyes have burned into me and now I’m completely awake, staring at the dark floorboards between the lines of tables where he must have walked to and disappeared. I’m still thinking about what he said so I don’t notice that I’m next in line. When I
look up, Hilary the daylight barista is behind the counter waiting impatiently. She has her hand on the register, tapping her nails loudly.
“I’ll have a small coffee.” I tell her and while she’s pouring it, I laugh out loud. I can’t help it.
“What’s so funny?” She asks.
“Victor knows we all think he’s dying.”
I’m smiling from ear to ear. Victor loves to speak in legendary quotes. In his mind, he’s a top shelf genius- like Nietzsche and Wagner.
“Oh.” Hilary says. She rings me up and holds her hand out for the cash, “Yeah, I’m not sure who told him, but he found out we were taking bets on how long he would last.”
I laugh and walk over to the milk and sugar table.
“Is he pissed off?” I ask her over my shoulder.
“No. I think he liked it.”
Yesterday the usual kids sat around the smoking tables outside and someone said, “you know what? I have this weird feeling that Victor’s gonna die soon.”
“Me too,” someone else exclaimed through the smoke cloud that surrounded us, “It’s so weird you say that because I swear to God I just thought the same thing last night.”
“Well, I mean, come on,” I said, tapping my cigarette into the ashtray, “he can’t live much longer. He’s turning sixty in a few months and all he does is sit here chain-smoking, drinking coffee after coffee, and popping his pills. He never eats. How long can the man live?”
Everyone sat quietly for a minute, imagining life without Victor Navarro, our crazy
muse, our cult classic, the madman laureate of Pittsburgh’s Little Italy. Then someone broke the
reverent silence with the first wager. Soon, everyone had their bets ready and Hilary wrote
them down in her journal: one month, five years, tomorrow. Hilary’s boyfriend Jason sat coolly
with his chair leaning back against the brick wall of the building. He was wearing those David
Bowie dark shades that creeped everyone out because you couldn’t see his eyes when you talked to him. You could only see your own reflection staring back at you and it was warped in the fisheye effect as if you were really staring at yourself through the peep-hole in your apartment door. It was just wrong, but Jason loved it.
“What’s your guess, Jason?” Hilary asked him.
“The man’s eternal.” He said, smiling, “He won’t die.”
