"At 75, He Goes the Distance"
Published:
January, 1979
Meet slick Chick, a marathon man
There is Mostow the Long-Distance Runner because from the beginning there was
Mostow the Realist.
The story of a certain
entrant in Saturday's Orange Bowl Marathon is that of the meshing of a new part of an identity with an old part of a personality.
Mostow the Long
Distance Runner: a 75-year-old resident of Hallandale and of Skokie, Ill., who began running a year and a half ago...
"Hands
Have a Voice of Their Own"
Published: January 24, 1979
The bar is glassy and black. The napkin is placed. The drink is brought.
The glass is empty. It is removed. Quickly, the hands move to refinll it. The movement of the fingers is expert. The napkin.
The drink. The nails are clean, filed, polished with clear. They gleam -- like the mouth of the glass with the drink.
The glass is empty again. The glass will be filled, yes, with the same. The glass is gone. The bar is cleaned.
The napkin is placed. The drink. The tab.
The hands are near the tab at the edge of the bar. The palms, flat,
carry the weight of the bartender leaning, as if to rest. The diamonds shine, on both pinky fingers. And they are learge enough
not to be in the same leauge with a 25- or 50-cent tip. Not even 75. Skip it.
Pay. That is
what they convey at this moment, these hands.
They belong to Mike Mercurio. From behind the bar at the Sans Souci
on Miami Beach he looks for hands unlike his own. "I'm looking for greasy fingernails. Working-class hands. You usually
get the tips from working-class people. Doctors and lawyers, forget about them." A nearby waiter says, "You'd better
not say that, Mike: they won't come in here no more." "I don't care," Mike says, "Goddam doctors and lawyers."
"Mike is his name," the waiter says, "Looking at fingers is his game."
Such
a pastime is unusual. Most people don't consciously notice others' hands, at least not immediately, if only because the hands
are not usually in one place long enough to be viewed, especially not carefully. On any one person, one hand is not usually
doing exactly the same thing as the other and is often not in the same vicinity as the other. For similar reasons, some people
aren't aware of their own hands unless attention is drawn to them. The independence of these two seemingly equal appendages
makes them for the most part subtle vehicles of communication.
