Here’s my John Lennon story, from my newest collection, “A Shoebox Full of Money.” This and other stories like it are available via https://www.martykleinman.com. This one’s for you:

MARK LIPSHUTZ , DOMINANT HANDBALL STAR, DIES

By the time he was on his deathbed, Mark Lipshutz was a real pain in the ass.

“I hate Navy guys,” he wheezed that mild, shirtsleeves December night. I remember it like yesterday, the sixty-four-degree high, freaky for New York in early winter, the year I turned twenty-nine. I came to Mr. L’s room with his dinner. It was late, and I was about to finish my shift. A black BIC lighter was next to a pack of Winstons, right there on his tray. I just shook my head.

“Man, I give up with you,” I said. He smiled, and then coughed until he was red in the face. It sounded loose, phlegmy, like pieces of lung got loose and rattled around his chest. He squinted his eyes in pain, but you couldn’t get him to stop for no money in the world. The smoking, or the bitching. And about the Navy? He knew damn well I was on the McKinley. Right after New Year’s? In sixty-nine? We made way for the Philippines. Now, the McKinley being a flagship meant we carried a rear admiral. But it was slow. Took us eight days to get to Pearl. And a lifetime to get to Da Nang, where right away we saw, off to starboard, the bloated body of one of our guys, a pilot, just floating there. I was just eighteen and this shit was real.

But back to Mr. L. That night, I moved his cigarettes and put his dinner down on the tray, and right away he gave me the stink eye. “Get that shit outta here,” he grumbled.

“Mr. L,” I said, “that’s a perfectly good veggie burrito. You need to keep your strength up if you want to get back onto the courts come this spring.” Word around the hospital? Mr. L had been the greatest handball player in history. Bear in mind, now, that back in high school, up in the Bronx back in the day, me and my friends didn’t play handball. I was all about hoops and baseball, first base. I didn’t know nothing about the handball. What I do know though is that to win in this life, you got to have an edge. Me? I could run and I could jump. Made our third baseman look good, leaping high for his throws. And hoops? I played solid D and just smacked those shots away.

Now, with Mr. L? I am told that back in the day, he was a quick little guy, maybe five-six, hundred and forty or so, and I believe it. Hairy, though. Even at the end. Chest, back, legs, everywhere you looked. Thick, curly hair. His ears looked like those crazy tufts of leaves and whatnot you see popping out of the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem. But he was built. I give him that. Good muscle tone, even for an older guy. Had those old-school, black high-top Keds he’d wear to rehab, along with these baggy grey sweatpants and a blue sweatshirt, turned inside-out, sleeves cut off. However, the main thing? His edge? He was ambidextrous, see, as good with his left hand as his right. And he was sneaky with it, too. He told me once, while we were drinking Hennessy in plastic water cups, how he’d play with his opponent’s head during a match.

First, he made it look like a lucky shot with his left hand, let the guy get some easy points, get on a roll. Then he’d drop the hammer. Killers from the left, killers from the right, cutters, spinners, jumpers, whips. “I let ‘em get a few points,” he said. “Then I just get rid of ‘em.”

■■■

That last month was rough. Mr. L was in a lot of pain. It spread all over. His doctors tried to do right by him, keep him comfortable, but it was everywhere. Finally, they upped the dosage on his pain meds to the point where he was in and out. One time, just before— you know what I’m saying—I came by to check on him. It was late, I remember that much. Right away, I saw that he was out. But as soon as I tiptoed in, his droopy old eyes creaked open. I never saw him look that way. I mean, the dude looked twenty years older. His whole face just sagged and his eyes … it was like the light behind his eyes went from a hundred to forty watts.

“Gimme that lighter,” he said.

“Why don’t you stop?” I asked. Nothing. No response. And then, he looked at me, with a sadness in his face I’d never seen before, but I’ve seen it in a dog, like when they’re done, and they kinda know it? And one day they just skulk off into the woods to die alone, in peace. At the time, I’d been there at Roosevelt Hospital a couple of years, and you hear the doctors talk. The pulmonary guys, the orthopedists, the cardiologists. You get a sense of things, medical-wise, you know? And I would hear the psychiatrists too. And what the shrinks would say is, Look at the patient—not where the patient is pointing. And here was a guy, man, who came up from nothing, I mean nothing, on the Brooklyn streets of Williamsburg during the Depression.

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He turned to handball like I took to hoops because it was the cheapest sport to play. All you needed was a ball. Mr. L, he took his dad’s old winter gloves out of the closet and turned them inside out. Those were his handball gloves, early on. He went to Eastern District High, with guys like Red Auerbach. He practiced hard and eventually won a national championship, went into the service (Marines), survived World War II, barnstormed the country giving handball exhibitions, and really made the sport popular during the fifties. In his world, he was a rock star.

And then, life happened. The bottle, two divorces, run-ins with the law, a gambling dispute with the wrong kind of guy. Eventually, he moved to Brighton Beach where he paid the rent hustling handball by the ocean, on the cracked courts of Asser Levy Park. And now, on that particular night, way back in 1980, there was that look in his eyes.

Like I said, it was late when I came in with his dinner tray, and he started in on the Navy again. “C’mon, Mr. L. The game’s almost over,” I said, fluffing up his pillows. Monday Night Football was his thing. He snorted. “Dolphins, Patriots? They both stink on ice. Take the Patriots with the points.”

Down the hall, the nurses had the oldies station on because I could hear that twangy Beatles song, “All My Loving.” “God, I hate the fuckin Beatles,” he said. He reached for the clicker, turned on the game, and upped the volume. Howard Cosell’s nasal drone drowned the song out. Mr. L was right. The game was a stinker. This was way before, you know, the Patriots got on their roll. He turned to me. “Did I ever tell you I played Russian Roulette?” he asked, eyes on the game. It was late in the fourth quarter. “Uh, no?” I raised my eyebrows. This was a new one. “Well, I did,” he said. “Twice. In the service. I retired, undefeated.”

“Anything else you want to tell me?” I said, as Russ Francis caught a thirty-eight-yard pass from Cavanaugh. Touchdown. The Patriots were up, thirteen to six. The score seemed to pick Mr. L up because, out of nowhere, he started to tell me another story about his life back in the day.

“I tell you about the time I got arrested up in Monticello?” I shook my head. “It was the year I drove a Dugan’s Bakery truck upstate. Same year that song came out.” He scratched his head. “I remember seein’ those mopes play it on Ed Sullivan.” There was a commotion down the hall just then, a lot of screaming, crying. Doctors were being paged to come to the ER. There was a gunshot victim. Strange, I remember, because Monday nights were usually quiet.

“They found me parked behind Davco, the sporting goods store there on Main Street,” Mr. L said. “I was asleep, dead drunk, behind the wheel of the truck.” The Dolphins tied it up. But the Patriots charged right back and got into field goal range, as time wound down in regulation. “But I think what pissed them off most was that I peeled the tops offa all the chocolate cupcakes.”

“What did you do with them?”

He smiled a crooked smile. “I fuckin ate them. Whaddaya think I did with them?” The seconds ticked off the game clock. The Patriots’ John Smith took his practice kicks and trotted onto the field along with the rest of the field goal unit. “Close the fuckin door already,” Mr. L said. “All that shrieking and crying out in the hallway is driving me nuts.” As I closed the door, Cosell’s voice suddenly got very low.

“Remember, this is just a football game,” Cosell said.

“Oh what the fuck?” Mr. L shouted at the television. “Just call the fuckin game, will ya?” But Cosell continued. “An unspeakable tragedy confirmed to us by ABC News in New York City: John Lennon, outside his apartment building on the West Side of New York City … the most famous perhaps of all the Beatles … shot twice in the back, rushed to Roosevelt Hospital. Dead on arrival …” I looked at Mr. L, and he looked back at me, like he wanted me to explain.

“Hard to go back to the game after that newsflash,” Cosell said. Mr. L, one-time handball champion, got uncommonly quiet. “Some fuckin world we live in,” he said, as a single tear rolled down his cheek. “Some fuckin world.” Mr. L’s eyes closed. Smith’s kick was blocked. Then the clock ran out and it was overtime at the Orange Bowl.