Fughedaboudit Verily

The sun had barely cleared the rooftops on Fordham Road when William Shakes—Billy to the block—stepped out of the deli with two coffees and a scratch ticket he already knew was a loser. He wore a loose linen shirt, the kind nobody on the block would be caught dead in, tucked into trousers that stopped above his knees. He didn’t care. He never cared.

He spotted his neighbor, Dante, sitting on the stoop of 1630, working his way into a hoodie like a man wrestling an alligator.

“Good morrow, fair sir. How fare thee on this splendid day?” Billy called, lifting one of the coffees in salute.

Dante squinted against the light like it owed him money.

“Yo Billy, what’s good? I’m just gettin’ my achin’ bones outta bed.” He rolled his neck. Something popped loud enough to startle the pigeons. “Don’t even ask me what time I got in last night.”

Billy ascended the three steps on the stoop that stood between them and offered the second coffee. Dante accepted it with a nod, which was its own kind of grace.

“I sense the weight of your suffering as if it were my own.” Billy pressed a hand to his chest. “But hark—I have also carried a burden since yesterday’s sun set, one that pricks my conscience like a thorn beneath a velvet cushion.” He paused for effect, because Billy always paused for effect. “Forgive my remissness, for the gracious introductions to your esteemed companions yesterday did escape my gratitude’s mention. I am much beholden to thee for such a courteous gesture.”

Dante lowered the coffee cup and looked at him sideways.

“You talkin’ about Wanda and them? From the candy store?”

“The very same luminaries.”

“Bro, I literally just told you their names. You didn’t have to—” Dante waved it off. “Forget it. You good. They liked you, actually. Wanda said you was mad articulate.”

Billy straightened slightly, as though a medal had been pinned to his linen chest. “She is possessed of excellent judgment.”

A delivery truck rumbled past, hydraulic brakes hissing. Two kids on bikes cut around it without looking. The block was waking up in its own slow, stubborn way.

“What deeds shall fill this day’s ledger?”Billy asked.

Dante scratched the back of his neck and stared down the block like the answer might be parked somewhere on it.

“Fuhgedaboudit, Billy. I’m just gonna chill around the block, prolly get a slice a Sicilian for lunch. Maybe check if Pop needs anything from the C-Town.” He shrugged. “You know, just hang.”

“A humble itinerary,” Billy nodded slowly, “and yet not without its poetry. The Sicilian slice alone is a sonnet—crisp at its edges, yielding at its heart.”

“You gotta stop talkin’ like that about pizza, man. It’s only pizza.”

“All things are poetry to the willing eye.”

“Aight, whatever.” Dante grinned despite himself. “Whatchu gonna do, Billy?”

Billy took a long sip of coffee. “Today’s agenda holds a tapestry of endeavors awaiting my attention,” he began, and Dante immediately made the face—the face he made whenever Billy was winding up. “I shall first visit the park, where the old men play chess and curse each other with a fluency I find most instructive.” He ticked a finger. “Then I must return to my table, where I’ll use my quill, fine sir, to weave tales more intricate than the threads of fate.”

“The quill,” Dante repeated. “You mean the laptop.”

“I mean what I mean.”

“You be in there typin’ on a laptop, Billy. I seen you through the window.”

“The instrument matters not. The vision matters.”

Dante pointed at him with the coffee cup. “You can’t just say stuff like that and act like it’s normal.”

“What is normal to the moth but the flame?” Billy replied, and before Dante could answer that, he pressed on: “I am also considering a new work. A comedy of errors set upon these very streets.” He gestured broadly at the block—the deli, the barbershop with its hand-painted sign, the grandmother dragging a cart up from the corner. “There is material here of infinite richness.”

He paused, watching the grandmother wrestle her cart over a cracked square of sidewalk—the way she leaned into it, resolute as a ship against a tide. A bodega cat stretched itself across a sun-warmed stoop. Somewhere down the block, a radio played something low and brass-heavy. Billy absorbed all of it without appearing to move.

Dante’s eyes went a little wide. “Hold on. You writin’ about us? Like, people from around here?”

“Verily.”

“Like me?”

“Thou art a man of considerable dramatic potential.”

Dante laughed—a real one, the kind that bent him forward slightly. “Dang. That’s dope.” He straightened up, thinking about it, rolling it around. “Mayhaps,” he tried carefully, tasting the word like something foreign but interesting, “mayhaps you’ll include me in one of your proses.”

Billy turned to look at him with something that was not quite surprise and not quite pride but lived in the neighborhood between them.

“Verily,” he said quietly. “Allow me to blend the rhythm of our worlds in a sonnet of jest and mirth. Your cadences alone are worth the price of the whole endeavor.”

Dante pointed at him again but didn’t say anything this time. He just nodded slowly, the way you nod when something lands and you’re searching for where it landed.

“Awright Billy,” he said finally, draining the last of his coffee and crushing the cup. “Catch you later.”

He started down the block, hands in his hoodie pocket, and Billy watched him go—already narrating something in his head, already finding the meter in the way the man walked.

“I thank thee kindly,” Billy called after him, “and may fair fortune attend thee on this day’s journey.”

Dante didn’t turn around. He just raised one hand in the air, one finger up in a Bronx salute.

Billy stood there a moment longer, alone on the stoop with his coffee and his losing scratch ticket and his considerable vision, the whole block humming around him like a play that is ready for Act I to commence.