A Very Pressing Matter

There are about 8,000 people living in Mount Kisco, N.Y., and for years and years, customers have been coming into the Figa-Feldman dry cleaners at 345 Lexington, bagging or dragging their laundry. Most of them recognize David Feldman on sight. Most of them still don’t know the new man.

Behind the counter they encounter a short, energetic, Pete Rose kind of guy, usually cheerful, usually busy, yet never too busy to study the chocolate stain on a white cotton blouse or to unknot a bundled tuxedo. He gives advice, takes instructions, hears complaints. Often he’s needed to do the company’s books, or to run over to the Holiday Inn or the Sawmill River health club to make a pickup. But he is patient, because these people are more than his clientele. They are his neighbors.

Some of them wonder: “Who are you, anyway?�

And he will say: “I’m Mr. Dionne. I’m Mr. Feldman’s new partner.�

And they’ll say: “Where’s Mr. Feldman?�

And he’ll say: “Dave’s out making a delivery.�

And they’ll say: “Where’s Mr. Figa?�

And he’ll laugh and say: “Mr. Figa’s been dead for 20 years.�

And every so often, someone in the shop will catch sight of the one photograph of a professional hockey player on the wall, and look at the face, then look at Mr. Dionne, then look back at the face, then turn back to Mr. Dionne with a pointed finger, met by his amused who-me? shrug.

Even the old-timers who knew some of what Marcel Elphege Dionne had done during a 19-season NHL career had no idea what he was doing now. Even the friends of Marcel’s daughter Lisa, 15, who dropped by while she worked at the cleaners on Saturdays, might vaguely know what her father had once done for a living, but perhaps not that he was hockey’s third-leading scorer of all time, behind Wayne Gretzky and Gordie Howe.

Marcel is happy in his new life. Where once he and his family dreaded moving to New York, they now love it there. Where once he never gave a second thought to any occupation beyond hockey, he now thrives as a literally and figuratively small businessman, in control of his own salary and destiny, not vulnerable to the whims of employers who could determine when and where he would work.

Marcel Dionne always has been one of those guys who would give you the shirt off his back. Thursday night in Inglewood, they will take it off his back and hang it from a Forum wall, sweater No. 16 of the Kings, cleaned and permanently pressed and permanently retired.

What an honor it is to honor Dionne. Family and old friends will be there, along with current and former Kings and Detroit Red Wings, the president of the National Hockey League, people who inspired him and people who fired him. Luc Robitaille and Jimmy Carson, to whom he was once teammate and roommate and surrogate father in Los Angeles, will play on opposite sides after taking Marcel’s side beforehand. Butch Goring, Mike Murphy, Gary Simmons, maybe Charlie Simmer . . . it will be old home week.

He is content as can be, Marcel is.

“People watch you on TV all those years, then they run into you and they ask: ‘So, what are you doing now?’ And you say: ‘I’m involved in dry cleaning.’ And they’re in shock. Their jaws drop. It’s like: ‘You mean you have a normal job?’

“Well, yeah. I finally have a normal life with normal hours and time to spend with my normal family. Except some days the hours are longer and the pay is lower, and you’re looking after other people’s things instead of having people looking after you.

“I’m a workingman now. I wanted to find something simple and satisfying. And I did. There are only so many jobs in hockey, and few of them are high-paying and glamorous. So what should I have done? Sales? Public relations? How many cocktails can you have in a day? How steady is it? How much time do you spend away from home? Should I have opened a restaurant? Dionne’s Pizza? What?�

He needed an answer, and he found one. One day, Dave Feldman came by the Bedford Falls house on his regular delivery route. Discussion turned to the business. Feldman had a nice business and not-so-nice store. Dionne asked questions. He checked the place out. He went to the Neighborhood Cleaners Assn. school in Manhattan to learn the trade. He invested some money and time. Fixed the front window. Spruced up the office. Went over the books. Marcel likes going over books.

“Some of those people I worked for in hockey, if those guys could have controlled my checkbook, I’d have been broke in a week.�

He remembered the hard side of hockey. Of having a haircut interrupted in a Marina del Rey barber shop and being tipped that after 12 seasons in Los Angeles, he was being traded to New York. Marcel wept that day. It was business, but it was personal, all at once. Same as when the vice president of the Rangers attempted to reach him a couple of years later, got his daughter instead and said her dad had been released.

Dionne remembers the excitement of the Detroit years. The friendships of the Los Angeles years. The “chaos� of the New York years. He remembers being the kid and later being the mentor to the kids. Priorities change. Even now, Marcel’s attention turns to his brother, Gilbert, who is half his age but a half-head taller, which is why Gilbert, 20, calls Marcel, 39, his “little� brother.

Gilbert has been signed by the Montreal Canadiens. He is a left wing, playing in the American Hockey League. He won’t ever become the NHL’s No. 3 scorer of all time.

“But if he plays one minute with Montreal,� Marcel says, “it will be my greatest thrill.�

Having a night in his honor at the Forum is a thrill of another kind, and nobody appreciates it more than Marcel Dionne, the famous New York dry cleaner. His smile will be as bright as the ice. And if he cries, well, that’s OK, too. It will wash right out.