“Can you give me a few minutes? I’ve got to dry my hair.” Debbie stood aside as I made my way into the house. She was wearing an oversized Champion sweatshirt and had a towel wrapped around her head like a turban.

“Yeah, sure.” I gave her a quick kiss and watched as she went up the stairs. Debbie had answered the door barefoot and bare-legged, and the sweatshirt was so big that it gave the impression she wasn’t wearing anything underneath.

I wandered into the kitchen where Mrs. Vincent was standing over a steaming pot. She waved with one hand, while stirring with the other.

“Heya, Mrs. V. What’s on for tonight?”

Debbie’s mother was an Italian mama straight out of central casting: short, wide, and an incredible cook. She also was not to be messed with, as Debbie and I found out one night when we were canoodling in her room and Mrs. Vincent walked in on us. She was holding a wooden spoon and for a moment, I thought she was going to beat us with it, but after a stony silence she said, “I’ll see you two downstairs in five minutes” and left. We were read the riot act, and from then on, whenever Debbie and I wanted to get frisky, we did it at my house, as my parents didn’t care.

“Lasagna.” Mrs. Vincent stepped away from the pot. “Just finishing the meat sauce.” 

“Sweet.” Dinner at the Vincents’ was not to be missed.

“The boys are downstairs.” Translation: “Get out of my kitchen.”

“Cool, I’ll head down there now.”

Mrs. Vincent returned to her sauce, and I descended the stairs to the basement. Debbie’s two brothers, Mike and Vince (I know, “Vince Vincent”), were working on the opening to Rush’s “Subdivisions” from the Signals album which had come out the year before. They’d formed a band, “Pangea,” several years earlier, with two of their friends, Jimmy and Mahesh, and played covers at local venues. 

“Yo! Yo! Yo!” Mike gave me a high five, which landed with a satisfying smack! Then, Vince grabbed me in a bear hug and we squeezed and snuffled around each other, as was our wont. A girlfriend’s older brothers are always a tricky thing, and I had seriously lucked out with Debbie’s. In fact, we were so tight that I’d hang out with them even when she wasn’t around.

“Still messing with the synth tone?” The band had done a gig at Fordham University that week and Mike, who played bass and keyboards, was unhappy with how things sounded. 

“You can really hear it during the opening, when the synths are up front. Sounds like freaking Galaga or something.” Mike fiddled with a few nobs on his Prophet 5 and played a noisy chord. “God, that’s even worse.”

“Maybe we should just stick to Tom Sawyer,” Vince said, strumming his Les Paul. “I don’t think Jimmy’s good enough to play Subdivisions anyway.” Jimmy (Manero) was Pangea’s drummer.

“We’ll find out soon enough.” Mike gave up on the synthesizer and picked up his bass. “He’ll be here in a few minutes.”

“I didn’t know you guys were having band practice tonight.” It was Wednesday and they usually practiced on the weekend.

“No band practice. Jimmy’s coming over for dinner, and I figured we’d use the opportunity to see if he can handle the song. Sean’s coming too.”

Sean O’Brian was Mike’s best friend and an absolute riot. Tall, thin, sandy-haired and covered in freckles, he was a master at making phony phone calls, the crown jewel of which was his “WPIX call” that he’d rolled out a few months earlier. Every Monday evening, a local TV station, WPIX, took a random caller and played a live round of Space Invaders. The little cannon would sweep back and forth automatically, and the caller would say “Pix” into the phone to make it shoot. A high enough score earned you a cash prize. Sean would call kids we knew, pretending to be a WPIX producer, and invite them to play the game, explaining that the station was experiencing technical difficulties with the video, but they should just say “Pix” into the phone and he would tell them when they had landed a hit. Listening to them shout “Pix! PIX!” at nothing was funny enough, but their groans of disappointment when Sean inevitably said, “Oh, I’m so sorry, you didn’t hit anything,” were enough to make anyone nearly piss their pants.

After twenty minutes or so of Mike and Vince tooling around with different songs, ranging from Rush to Led Zeppelin to Grand Funk Railroad, the doorbell rang. We hurried upstairs to find that Debbie, who was now fully clothed and coiffed, had already let Jimmy and Sean in. There were greetings and high fives and hugs for Deb, after which we decamped to the Vincents’ ample den, which had several couches and armchairs, a stereo and cabinet TV, and Mrs. Vincent’s collection of pictures of Elvis Presley, with whom she was obsessed.

Sean sniffed the air, which was filled with the aromas of long-simmering Bolognese and fresh bread. “God, it smells good. I’d eat here every night and spare myself the ongoing Irish Potato Famine, if I could.” Unlike Mrs. Vincent, Sean’s mother was not a great cook.

“When’s dinner?” Jimmy had settled himself into an armchair near the stereo.

“Soon,” Mike said. “Listen, we’re thinking about adding Subdivisions to the set, so let’s run through it a few times after dinner, ok?” I noticed that he didn’t say anything about “seeing if you can handle it.” Jimmy thought he was a much better drummer than he actually was and could be sensitive.

“Yessir.” Jimmy saluted. 

Sean rubbed his hands and gestured at the telephone. “Time for a phony phone call!”

“But we can only do the ‘PIX call on Mondays.” Vince was confused.

“Forget the ‘PIX call.” Sean waved dismissively. “I’ve got something new; something better; something that will get the whole family involved.”

“We are not inviting my parents to participate in a phony phone call.” Debbie gave Sean a hard look. 

“Not your family. Trust me, you’ll love this.” He slid to the end of the couch, which was next to the phone table, and lifted the receiver. “Now, whom do I call?”

“Philip Yahney,” I said without hesitation. He was the biggest loser in our high school, and I’d nurtured a rich and deep dislike for him over the years. His disastrous Bar Mitzvah was the stuff of legends.

“Yahney it is. Number please?” Sean’s finger hovered over the phone.

“It’s not like I know it. I can’t stand the freaking kid.” I wriggled myself out from under Debbie, who was sitting on my lap, and grabbed the White Pages from the book shelf. Flipped through it. “Ah, here it is. Florence and Sheldon Yahney.” I read the number aloud and Sean dialed, after which he pressed ‘speaker.’

There were several rings before Yahney’s mother answered. “Hello?” She seemed out of breath.

“Is Peelip dere?” If Sean was trying to achieve a specific foreign accent, I had no idea what it was.

“What?”

“Is Peelip dere?”

“Who is this?” Mrs. Yahney was wary.

“I am Upaka Dafi!” Sean announced, pointing triumphantly into the air. Debbie stifled a laugh.

“Kaddafi? Like the dictator?”

“No dictator! U-P-A-K-A D-A-F-I.” Sean stretched out each syllable as if this would make the name more comprehensible.

“Upaka? I don’t think Philip knows anyone named ‘Upaka’.”

“Ees my flend.”

“What?”

“My flend! My flend! Tell im ees Upaka!” Sean flapped his arms up and down by way of emphasis. By now, Debbie was shaking with laughter. The rest of us just looked on in silent amazement.

“Oh for god’s sake…” There were rustling sounds, followed by muffled shouting, as Mrs. Yahney must have covered the phone’s mouthpiece with her hand. “PHILIP!!!!! Somebody named ‘Upaka’!”

Several moments passed before Yahney replied. His voice sounded distant, like he was speaking from the bottom of a well. “What?”

“Phone call!” His mother’s exasperation was palpable.

“Who is it?”

“Upaka!”

“What?”

“UPAKA!!!!!” Mrs. Yahney was reaching the end of her rope.

“What’s an Upaka?” 

“You’re asking me? He says he’s your friend. Strange accent. Is he Polynesian or something?” 

“I don’t have any Polynesian friends.” Since Yahney had no friends, this was true regardless of Upaka’s ethnicity.  

“Well, I’ve had enough of it. Here.” More rustling as she handed over the phone. When Yahney came on, he sounded hesitant.

“Hello?”

“Peelip Poretsky! My good flend!” 

“Peelip Poretsky?” Mike was in disbelief. Sean signaled him to stay quiet.

“Who is this?” 

“Upaka! Upaka Dafi!” Sean was really rolling now. I couldn’t understand how he managed to keep it together.

“Uh, I think you might have the wrong number. Who did you say you wanted?” Yahney still thought he was having a normal conversation.

“Peelip.”

“Yes, I’m Philip.”

“Poretsky.”

“No, that’s not me. I’m Philip Yahney, not Philip Poretsky.” 

“Yahney?” 

“Yes!”

“What is Yahney?” 

“It’s my name. Philip Yahney.”

“Not Poretsky?” 

“No.”

“Not Peelip I meet in knish shop?”

At ‘knish shop’, Jimmy scrambled out of his chair and hastily vacated the den. I could hear him cracking up in the Vincents’ dining room.

“I don’t know any Philip Poretsky.” Yahney was getting annoyed. “And I’ve never been to any knish shop.”

“Oh, so vely solly.” Sean put on his best dismayed voice. “You tell number?” 

“What number?”

“Peelip Poretsky number.” 

“I told you, I don’t know him!” Yahney was yelling now. “Look it up in the damned phone book!”

“Dere ees book for phone?” 

“Yes! Ma Bell? Let your fingers do the walking? Kapish?!”

“Oh, no. So solly. I go now. Bye bye.” Sean hung up.

“Incredible.” Vince looked admiringly at Sean, who had a bit of a glow about him.

Tears were running down Mike’s cheeks. “I almost lost it at ‘Peelip Poretsky’.”

“The model allows for variations.” Sean was very pleased with himself. “I could have changed some of the details, and I could have stretched it out longer. But dinner beckons!” He gazed longingly towards the kitchen.

“You made a model for phony phone calls?” Debbie was incredulous.

“I did indeed. I even wrote a program for it. In Basic.” Sean gave the last point particular emphasis.

“Amazing.” Vince was still agape.

“Polynesian?” For some reason, this detail had struck me. “Where the hell did Yahney’s mother get that from?”

“That’s the wonder of O’Brian’s Traveling Circus of Phony Phone calls.” Sean gave my knee a friendly pat. “You never know what people are going to say.”

“Dinner’s ready.” Mrs. Vincent appeared, as if out of a puff of Bolognese steam. The wooden spoon she held carried the barest hint of menace and suggested that if we let the food get cold, she’d be displeased.