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Vito comes to Lowell. He's nineteen years old. He's never had a job. He has no idea how he's going to survive, but he knows he will. He has to. Vito has a destiny, a purpose in life. What that purpose was, was still unknown. He thought to himself that he was never gonna be called a nothing again.

He had never worked a job, so he didn't know what he was going to do that day when he came into Lowell on that bus. He walked around town scoping out the area -- he had never been to Lowell before. The low-lifes of Lowell would hang out on Appleton Street and Gorham Street, where there was a porno shop.

Vito had twenty bucks in his pocket his old man had given him. He stopped at Elliott's and got two Lincolns -- the term used there for a hotdog with relish on the bottom and mustard on top. That night he slept in a Salvation Army box, but there weren't any clothes in it. That was alright, because it was summer. But when he woke up at 11 o'clock the next morning, it was hot as an oven in there. He took off his pants and took off his underwear because he had shit his pants overnight. He left them in the corner of the box, and climbed out. This was the day that he was going to start making something of himself.

Two weeks before his father died, Vito had dropped out of the ninth grade. He was nineteen. He had stayed back once in the eight grade, and two times in the ninth. In that ninth grade, Vito was already thinking of selling drugs to make money. So now he's in Lowell, and he goes off to face his first full day in the city.

Now that same day, it so happened that Danny Dupa was washing the windows at Garnick's Music Store. He had been doing it for a couple of months, and doing a decent job. He never spoke too much, but he was always smoking cigarettes. He used to roll them himself, from canned tobacco, Bugler. He had smoked heavily since he was nine years old. Sometimes he would cough so hard he would vomit. He had never been breast-fed by his mother, and this was an oral substitution -- he didn't know it, but it was.

After washing windows that day and getting his three dollars from Dave Garnick -- who besides doing sales and service, was also the repair specialist -- Dupa bought a root beer from the tonic machine for 25 cents, walked outside to the front of the store, took a long hard swig of the root beer, and looked out into Lowell, contemplating his next move.

Dupa turns and starts to walk aimlessly up Middlesex Street with the tonic in his hand, half empty. He walks up Elliott Street to Elliott's Diner, and sees a guy sitting on the bench eating a hotdog. As Dupa is walking by Vito, Vito asks him for a cigarette. Dupa silently sits next to Vito and rolls a Bugler cigarette from a small Bugler rolling machine that Dave Garnick had bought him for sweeping out the store. As he's rolling the cigarette, Vito is looking at him. Dupa passes him the cigarette, and Vito lights it. Dupa rolls one for himself, and lights up.

Although it's only one or two minutes in actual time, Dupa has a thought of his mother. She took off. He had not seen her since she left that fateful day that he bit a piece of her nose off. Some people said that she moved up north. But years later they found out that she had been murdered by a big fat black man.

Dupa didn't have his mother, but now at least he had a friend, Dave Garnick. Dave Garnick wasn't the type of guy to hang around with, he had other things to do -- marriage, girlfriends, family matters. Dupa needed someone of his own level of economic destitution, and Vito needed someone like that too.

Vito looks over at Dupa and says, "So what's happening in this town?"

Dupa says, "What do you mean?"

Vito says, "I'm new in this town, and I gotta get me someplace to live, and a way to make money."

Dupa says, "Have you ever thought about collecting bottles and cans?"

Vito thinks for an instant of his father's days of doing that very same thing, and replies, "I'm not gonna do that kind of shit. I want to make fast money and hang around with fast people."

Dupa says, "The fastest people I see around here hang around in a couple of areas, and let me tell you what they are." Dupa thinks to himself that someone has finally recognized his minor intelligence. He has acquired a social significance. Suddenly he can be an expert. He's grown up in Lowell and lived there all his life. He tells Vito of the hot spots in Lowell.

"First of all, you got three strip clubs in Lowell -- the Three Copper Men on Fletcher Street, the Celebrity on John Street, and Nicky's on Gorham Street. Across the street from Nicky's is Tower News, the hot spot for decadence and lowered sophistication."

Dupa says he's heard Tower News needs somebody to work inside, cleaning up.

Vito says, "Cleaning up what?"

Dupa says, "Cleaning up stuff that needs to be cleaned."

Vito says, "Are you sure they need somebody?"

Dupa says, "Yup, I'll take you down there if you want."

Vito says, "Okay." Then Vito says, "You ever smoke real cigarettes, kid? You know, like Marlboros." Vito smoked Marlboros when he had the money to buy cigarettes.

Dupa says, "Nope."

Vito says, "Well kid, if I get this job, I'm going to buy a pack of Marlboros, and we're gonna smoke like brothers."

Vito got that job at Tower News. A year later Dupa found out he had throat cancer, and had a laryngectomy, and lost the use of his voice. Thanks to Dupa telling Vito about the job at Tower News, and becoming his confidante, Vito stuck by Dupa before and after the operation. This would be a bond and trust that would last the rest of their lives.

Vito started selling drugs, Dupa was his delivery guy. Later Vito would work at the Celebrity. Later still, he became the kingpin in Lowell of soiled women's panties.