Just Another New York Story

Frankie Checkers & Della Marie

Frankie Checkers and Della Marie were hot stuff, if only for a New York minute, like countless acts before them and to come. Veronica stays up most of the night scouring the internet for anything she can find. There isn't much, but a couple of gems.

Someone who remembered created a basic website in their honor featuring a photograph of the photograph that hangs in the diner.

Fans left comments:

"They played the Pink Swan on 80th and York! I would go with my boyfriend, now husband! We had some very great nights there, so much has changed, I think it's a yoga studio-juice bar now..."

"Oh my gosh Frankie C. and Della Marie! I thought I was the only one who remembered them! I wanted to BE Della Marie! She could dance, she could sing! He was cute!"

"Saw them in Miami at The Seashell, summer of '61—they were on the rise. I expected more from them, thought they'd be big, maybe not like Frank or Bing but big. Don't know what happened, maybe a bad agent. She was a hot little number and had the pipes. Met her backstage—an absolute doll. Oh well what are you gonna do? Miami's changed, the world's changed, I'm old and fat, the kids don't call blah blah blah."

"Are they both still alive? Hope so! Still have their LP!"

"They were great! Miss those days! They had a song I liked, can't remember what it was called, but I'd know it if I heard it, does anyone remember that song they had that was on the radio? Something about Central Park, anybody know?"

Veronica knows. She just played it six times in a row. She found it on a website called "Lovers of all Things Obscure," where people post, among other things, videos of old vinyl records crackling on record players. She's about to listen to it for the seventh time, but covers her ears as a souped-up pickup truck speeds past her window, creating a mini earthquake with its pounding bass, followed closely on the heels by an ambulance and two fire trucks, their sirens on full auditory display. After they pass, she cranks up her laptop volume to the max, affording Frankie Checkers and Della Marie the best opportunity to be heard in her apartment singing "Wonderland in Central Park," recorded in 1962. Their harmonies send Veronica into a reverie, producing in her a longing for a moment she could almost inhabit but can't quite grasp—giddy romance in a Technicolor city... If only she'd been born in an earlier time, then maybe she could grasp it, live it, exist in a state of buoyant, romantic New York bliss...

***
That night, Veronica's dream begins like the last one: fast-walking in white pumps along the path by Riverside Park, feeling confident and attractive in that Hollywood version of a nurse's uniform. This time, however, she makes it to the bench, where Frankie Checkers has been waiting with a big bunch of roses. He's black and white and gray, like a matinee idol moving inside an old magazine page.

"Italiana," he greets her, as if it's her name. She takes the gray roses into her arms. He cups her face with both his hands and moves in for the kiss...

***
Veronica awakens, her excitement quickly turning to frustration.

"Frankie Checkers doesn't exist!" she proclaims to the ceiling.

She gets out of bed, has a yogurt, and starts getting ready, all the while hearing on replay in her mind the cheerful guy-girl harmony of days forever lost: "Wonderland in Central Park, wonders for wonderful you! You're my most wonderful, wonderful dream, how I love wonderful you..."

She stares at her reflection in the mirror, her mind whirling with a strange sense of displacement. The last thing she feels like doing is taking the subway all the way downtown for that student film audition that seemed like a good idea when she signed up for it three weeks ago at an actors' forum. She'll likely be one of at least a hundred actresses waiting in a grimy film school basement for several hours for the chance to read for the same under-five role of the paralegal at the law firm who says "Here's the file."

She rushes over to the table, turns on the laptop, and cancels the audition, then takes a shower and tries on three different dresses, deciding on the vintage red cotton A-line with the big Hawaiian flowers that she got for four dollars last year at her neighborhood block association's annual garage sale and street fair.

She puts on red lipstick and heads to the diner.