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Fandy Kevin Rashid They say a good Lebanese merchant knows how to get in the way knows how to get in the middle to negotiate between his goods and his customers to make them friends Between his law degree and his liquor store Fandy's always dealing—even when he ain't got dealt. I can hear him, crying over his latest hand of gin rummy at Rosenthal's bar on Linwood— "I got nothing" he says, "not a single thing!" Two turns and—BOOM—it's Ginney with the light brown hair and he's laughing like everyone won. One place Fandy does not act so smooth— That is a robbery—a holdup. I figure Fandy takes the point of a gun like an insult to his powers of negotiation. The gun holds his tongue and he doesn't get scared— it makes him crazy So that one day when his brother, Floyd, cracks the liquor-store door open after closing And some kid with a repeater slips in before Fandy can scramble to lock the door behind him And the kid panics and opens up And, Jesus, there's bullets fly'n like wedding rice, And Floyd, that pit bull of a guy, is huddled behind a cooler under five-gallon jars of pickles 149 Work and pork sausage panting like he's in labor, And there is Ballantines and Martel and Nu Grape bleeding all over . . . But Fandy, Holy Christ, the guy goes rabid. He manages to scuttle to a shelf of his cheapest red wine Where he lines up and starts firing bottles at the shooter. AU-of-a-sudden he's a real Koufax, this Fandy, a real Satchel Paige. But this is no baseball ballet. Fandy takes a bullet that time it tears between the stomach and liver and lodges under the hide of his back. No, this is no ballet, But it must have been poetry— that poor freaked-out kid and that hellified Leb (And I can call 'em Lebs, 'cause I've sat at their table, enjoyed their company, ate their food.) It must have been poetry— the two of them exchanging bullets for bad red wine The walls cascading Ripple, Mogan David Red, Bahama Mama, smashed glass and hot lead And there is no lesson to all this, But that in and outside of holdups Fandy deals— He's gonna come to the table and show you what you thought he never had. 150 ...

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