Ed King (31 page)

Someone in the locker room was lacing up running shoes, but other than that, the place was empty. Diane went immediately to the private toilet, locked herself in, peed, assessed her face in the mirror, applied the lipstick, and combed her hair. Then she knelt, opened her gym bag, and pried up the vent cover. After a while, there was Club’s hand, giving her a bolstering, confident thumbs-up, followed by comically wiggling fingers. She touched them to let him know she was there, and then she fed in the packets of fake bills. When they were gone, Ron’s good bills appeared in Club’s hand, and she put those inside her emptied gym bag. There was a final, salutatory thumbs-up from Club, which she answered with a concluding squeeze of his thumb tip before stuffing the sheet-metal plug into the duct and pressing the vent cover back into place. Then she gathered up her things, looked in the mirror again, and returned to the table in the lobby. She set the gym bag next to her foot and took a paperback book from her purse.

Club had it worked out to the last detail. He came from the locker room with the coke bag in his hand, put it on the chair seat in front of him, and slipped into his overcoat. Now he looked, quite hilariously, like a flasher, but he also looked angry, strained at the neck. “Fuck it,” he said to Ron. “I’m outa here.”

“I still don’t get it,” Ron said. “What’s your problem?”

“I’m out of here,” said Club. “Keep your counterfeits. In fact, shove them up your arse.”

He shrugged more deeply into his coat, picked up the coke bag, left Ron’s money bag on the table, whirled on his heels, and burst out the door.

Ron looked perplexed. He turned to Jason and said “Huh?,” and then he turned, with a furrowed forehead, toward Diane. “Jesus,” he said. “What just happened?”

“Apparently, he didn’t like your cash,” Diane answered. “I think you might have fucked up.”

“Me?” said Ron. “
I
fucked up?” He hit himself in the chest with an open palm. “Diane,” he said, “thanks for nothing.”

After that, she let him insult Club all he wanted. That was his business. That was his call. Ron’s anxious and worried voice—it was something she’d have to put up with for a few minutes. She apologized to him—“Club’s cranky,” she offered. “He gets paranoid for no reason. Maybe we can set up another try, Ron, after I get him calmed down.”

“Are you kidding?” said Ron. “I wouldn’t do business with him again ever. Not after bullshit like this.”

“Have it your way, then,” said Diane.

She left. She thought it would be best to go straight to her bank and deposit the hundred grand in her box, but, unfortunately, it was Saturday. Never mind that, though, it was time to celebrate, not only the money but also the blow, which she could turn around for another hundred. Club had figured out a way to take her seventy thousand and almost triple it, just like that. Why was he living like such a lowlife?

When she came through the door of 226, there was Club on the couch with his Boddingtons. He’d changed into jeans and battered athletic shoes; the bag of coke was on the coffee table in front of him. “Trouble?” he said.

“None.”

“Then victory is ours.”

“Payback,” Diane answered. “He deserved it.”

She put the cash on the table beside the coke bag. Club poured Diane a Boddingtons eagerly. They clinked their glasses and drank to themselves. Club made a fist, he stamped the floor, he raised his hand in the Black Power salute and then gave God a thumbs-up. “That’s why Britannia rules the waves,” he exclaimed. “That’s why the sun never sets on the British Empire. That’s mad dogs and Englishmen,” he said. “We took that fucking arsehole to the cleaners. We ate him for fucking lunch. We wiped the floor with him. We
rimmed
that poof.” Club raised his ale glass one more time. “What a stupid fuck,” he added.

Diane said, “We’re rich!”

“Made, we’re fucking made, we’re made, we got it made. It’s just like they say—land of opportunity. Person pulls himself up by his bootstraps. With freedom for all—let’s drink to that!”

They kept drinking Boddingtons. And now it was pleasurable to revisit the con, and especially to cover its more precarious moments, when things might have crashed but for their stiff English upper lips. They did this until Diane had to pee, at which point Club said, “Off to the loo, then,” and picked up the TV remote.

“Be right back.”

“Okay, luv. See you in a jif.”

But when she came back to the living room, Club, the coke, and the money were all gone, and by the time she got out to the parking lot, running, his touring bike was gone as well.

Ed, while at Stanford, saw his grandfather on occasion. Pop didn’t live too far from him, or as he put it the first time Ed called him, “North on 101 and—boom—like that you’re at the campus of Stanford University. Stanford,” Pop added enthusiastically, “is just for the highest, the cream of the crop. Only the best get accepted to Stanford. There was a wonderful Jewish player there, ’77, Dolph Schayes,” at which point Ed chimed in with a correction: “I don’t think Schayes played at Stanford, Pop. I think he played somewhere else.”

“What?” said Pop. “I’m losing my head. That’s right—Stanford was the son,
Danny
Schayes.”

“That’s not right, either, Pop. Danny played college ball at Syracuse.”

“Are you playing ball for Stanford?”

“Me?”

“Basketball.”

“Pop,” said Ed, “I’m not that good. I couldn’t even be their water boy.”

Pop said, “Okay, fine, you win, but here’s what, I’m taking you out for Chinese, Edeleh. That is, if you don’t mind an over-the-hill type. You name the date. Go ahead. Shoot. Me, I’m twiddling these thumbs of mine, but you? You’re busy. Doing what?”

“Math.”

“Since when are you mathematics?”

“Since always. A long time.”

“
Oy
, my head,” answered Pop.

In San Jose, on the Chinese-food evening, it took them a while to find Chan’s. Ed drove the Honda he’d gotten for his eighteenth birthday—Alice had wrapped a red ribbon around it and tied a bow on its roof, and Dan had sprung for an AAA membership, insurance, chains, and a gas credit card—while Pop directed Ed to take lefts and rights, guiding them along the same blocks twice, until, after a lot of confusion, there was Chan’s. They were shown to their seats by a dowager dressed in silk brocade whom Pop knew by name, except that at the moment he couldn’t remember her name; she showed them to a booth and said, to Pop, “You don’t want chopsticks,” and to Ed, “You want chopsticks?”

“Either way. Both.”

“This your grandson?”

“Stanford,” answered Pop.

“And he so
handsome
,” exclaimed their hostess. “Maybe he has big problem with girls!” She cackled, theatrically, then hurried away, while Ed crossed his arms and rolled his eyes.

After dinner, which was greasy and dominated by overcooked ginger, Pop insisted on a Sara Lee cheesecake that was waiting for them in his refrigerator. Besides, there was this miniseries,
The Blue and the Gray
, with Gregory Peck as Abraham Lincoln, that the two of them could watch on CBS while they had their wonderful dessert. Since his house and yard had become a burden, and also because he no longer drove, Pop now lived in a one-bedroom apartment in walking distance of Congregation Sinai, where he could
daven
with friends. “This bunch,” he said, “they’re dropping like flies. Already last month Sol Silver has a stroke, now we can’t make a minyan every week. Park here, Ed, they don’t give tickets.”

The place smelled foul; the toilet wasn’t clean; in the refrigerator Ed found moldy cheese. On Pop’s low sofa, they ate the cheesecake and drank Shasta while watching their special miniseries. Pop nodded off after fifteen minutes, and Ed savored Kathleen Beller as a war nurse. Fifteen more minutes of
The Blue and the Gray
, and then he stuffed the paper dessert plates in the garbage, ate a second slice of cheesecake from
the pan, and wiped the kitchen counter in preparation for his exit. When he came back to the sofa, Pop’s eyes were open. “Simon,” he said. “I’m forty winks.”

“Ed.”

“Huh? Ed?”

“I’m Ed, not Simon.”

“You’re Ed?”

The next day, Ed called his mother about Pop. Alice called back, a half-hour later, to report that she’d talked to a Pincus somebody or a somebody Pincus who knew Pop from Congregation Sinai, and that this Pincus confirmed what Ed was saying. Alice had also called the Jewish Family and Children’s Services in San Francisco, and JFCS was going to send a social worker all the way out to San Jose who could assess Pop’s needs and make recommendations to Pop’s family about the right course of action. All of this, Alice said, “because you, Ed, are a loving and concerned grandson. Thank you, Ed, for your caring.”

“You’re making me cringe.”

“But that’s what mothers do,” Alice cooed. “I don’t care how old you get, you’ll always be my baby.”

Dan, who was on the line, too, said, “It is really good of you to look after Pop. He’s getting kind of out of it, I guess.”

“Signing off immediately,” answered Ed. “Way, way too much extolling.”

In the opinion of the social worker from the JFCS, Pop needed occasional help and consistent monitoring. By Ed’s sophomore year, though, things had deteriorated, to the point where it was either a life sentence in an assisted-living situation or regular in-home care. Pop was adamant and refused to budge, so Alice found someone who would show up five days a week to clean, cook, wash, and iron for him, and hired someone else for weekends. The weekend help seemed to change from month to month, but the weekday person was proficient and consistent. She was a Soviet émigrée who’d been shepherded to the Bay Area by the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society—this, at first, was all Ed could discern, in part because she was so profoundly purse-lipped that, no matter what he asked, she hardly answered, and in part because her English was either terrible or nonexistent: Ed couldn’t tell which. He said, “Hello, I’m his grandson, Ed King,” and she answered with something he didn’t comprehend,
two or three words, or maybe one long word, in Russian, English, or something else. He said, “Tell me your name, please—
what is your name
,” and again she said something he couldn’t catch. She stood in the doorway between the living room and kitchen with a set of folded towels on one arm, wearing a head scarf and cloddish pink running shoes, and looked at Ed as if he’d come to deport her. He said, “I’m Ed,” and she tipped her head gravely and went down the hall toward the bathroom.

Pop was amused. “She says zilch,” he told Ed. “She comes, cleans, organizes, maybe ten words, a few peeps, that’s it—you know, hello, time for dinner, goodbye, that’s the conversation we’re having.”

“So no English.”

“She says ‘hi.’ ”

“What’s her name?”

“Zinaida. That much I know—Zinaida, that’s it. You know my head, I don’t know her last name, even though I heard it one time.”

After a few minutes, Zinaida came back, and went into the kitchen. Ed watched, but she was so rapidly evasive—fleeing, it was clear—that he only caught a glimpse from behind. Her pants were nursing scrubs. She was shrouded by a bulky and bleakly gray sweatshirt. It was a housebound outfit, though sometimes you saw something like it in a grocery aisle on a woman loading her cart with the cheapest brands and buying everything with coupons. Zinaida was dour, drab, impoverished, and inaccessible. She was what could be arranged for minimum wage by the Jewish Family and Children’s Services. On the other hand, she made an adequate toasted cheese, knew how to open a can of tomato soup, and was willing to take dinner in the kitchen with Ed and Pop—albeit standing up with her back to them while she cleaned, wiped, scrubbed, and rinsed. Her hands stayed busy, Ed saw, at a deliberate and constant rate, but her efforts were punctuated by furtive bites of a sandwich, eaten, as she worked, with minimal jaw movement. Despite the hideous washerwoman head scarf, the sweatshirt, scrubs, and ersatz running shoes, despite her disoriented foreigner’s disadvantage and tense, stony face, Zinaida moved in a self-possessed way, with neither servility nor disdain. When she was done in the kitchen and had left it as she’d found it—or, rather, as she’d established it in her brief regime: spotless—she donned a knock-off military parka, collected her handbag, which was really a shopping bag, nodded a farewell at Pop, and acknowledged, finally, that
Ed existed by shifting her eyes, however fleetingly, in his direction. Pop said, “Watch, I’m like a Russian guy here.
Do svidanya
, Zinaida!”

“Gud niite,” she answered, and, with no more ado, released herself from Pop’s apartment. “What did I tell you?” Pop asked, when the door shut. “Two words, three if you’re blessed.”

Ed came next to collect Pop for Thanksgiving—he was supposed to drive him to the airport for their flight to Seattle, where Dan and Alice would meet them. Pop, as usual, was nervous about air travel, not about being at thirty thousand feet but about being late for boarding the plane, so at eight he’d called Ed to remind him to come at two; at noon he’d called to be sure two was understood; at one he called to see if Ed had left yet; and at a quarter to two, when Ed arrived, he was pacing the living room with his coat over his arm and his suitcase poised by the door. “Bad luck,” he said. “Zinaida wants a ride, because Zinaida lives close to the airport.”

Zinaida looked less tacky this time, but still wore the scarf and the running shoes. She sat in the back seat with her faux military parka zipped and with its synthetic fur hood pushed back. “Der is Cen-trawl Expressvay,” she said, and, “Der is Tomas Expressvay.” It was complicated after that, a series of soft lefts and soft rights, stop signs and stop lights, in a profusely littered neighborhood where the bulldozed lots and abandoned houses sat behind chain-link fences. They approached the sort of apartment complex that looked, in Pop’s stated estimation, funded by public money for the purpose of consolidating drug dealers in one place—low-income housing, in the style of a bunker, with a taco wagon out front.
“Da,”
said Zinaida, in the middle of Pop’s denigrating. “Apartment.”