Eggplant Alley (9781593731410) (19 page)

Pause.

Splish.

Pause.

Thunk-clunk-splish.

And an enraged, garbled voice howled from below: “Whuh the …! Son of a blumpin' crack! No good! Hey! Son of a …! Bam glibbing cashew bluppers!”

Nicky and Lester clutched each other by the shoulders. Their cheeks puffed out with suppressed laughter. Their heads quivered with smothered giggles. This was funny, and even funnier because they could not laugh.

Then from Groton Avenue: “They came from up the roof. I saw 'em. They came from up the damn roof.”

Nicky said, “We better get out of here.”

Now they were the hunted.

Even better.

Nicky and Lester pounded across the tar to the roof door and piled down the steps to the ninth floor and pressed the elevator button. They were breathless with fear and joy. They listened. Somewhere in the lower floors of the building, feet shuffled angrily. Swear words echoed up the stairwell. Were enraged citizens running up the steps? Coming for them? Nicky and Lester were wild with excitement. Nicky pressed the button madly. They needed to get in the elevator. Once they were on the elevator, they were safe. Just two kids riding the elevator.

Roof? We weren't on the roof.

The elevator arrived, the door trundled open, and they jumped in. They leaned forward, hands on their thighs, to collect themselves. They were laughing and sweating and talking between gulps of air.

“I wonder what that … second one hit?” Nicky said. “It sounded like it … bounced off something hollow. Maybe that guy's head!”

“I have to … admit … this was very interesting,” Lester said.

“Did you see me time it just … right? Am I the best … or what? Roy taught me that. All you have to do … is memorize landmarks. I'll show you. Next time, we'll toss some … eggs. You should hear an egg hit a car … windshield from ten stories. Crunch! Splat!”

“Ha ha ha! Very interesting.”

The elevator shuddered to a stop on five.

“We better settle down,” Nicky said, choking down a last laugh. “My mom will know we were up to no good. She has radar, I swear.”

The boys breathed in short gasps when they entered the apartment.

“You look hot. Go wash up,” Mom said. “Your father should be here any minute.”

Nicky and Lester were in the bathroom when, over the rush of the faucet, they heard the apartment door slam open followed by hollering. They hurried out, hands dripping. Dad stood in the entryway, shaking and swearing. In his trembling hand he balanced a pizza box, bashed, folded into a V-shape, oozing water laced with tomato sauce. A tatter of yellow balloon hung limply in the crease of the box.

“What happened?” Mom said.

“What happened? I was coming in the back way and some colored mutts hit me with a goddamn water balloon, that's what happened!”

“You know you shouldn't take the shortcut at night,” Mom said.

“No-good stinking rotten colored sons of bitches. What's it mean? What's it mean when a man can't even walk home with a pizza pie without getting attacked?”

“Did you see them?”

“No, but I heard them. They were yelling something at me after they hit me. I saw one guy near the building, but it wasn't him. He almost got hit himself.”

“Maybe he was their lookout,” Mom offered.

Mom took the battered pizza box from Dad. She opened the lid. It was like opening a book with a huge wad of chewing gum pressed between the pages. A gooey spiderweb of mozzarella stretched between the cardboard.

“I'll see what I can save from this mess. Boys, did you ever eat pizza with a spoon before?”

The boys played board games after dinner. Mom ironed. Dad watched the Yankees game. Then the boys begged and Mom telephoned Mrs. Allnuts to make the arrangements for Lester to sleep over. Mom did not need to be begged hard. It was clear she enjoyed having two boys underfoot again.

Nicky lay in his bed. Lester was in Roy's bed.

“That was the first game of Monopoly I ever won in my whole life,” Nicky said.

“Very interesting,” Lester said. “I have never won one.”

“You will.”

Lester went on, “Does this ever happen to you? The teacher
always calls on me when I don't know the answer. Never calls on me when I do know the answer. Never.”

“Alla time,” Nicky said.

“Very interesting.”

A damp breeze lifted the curtains and swept across the beds. Neither of the boys said anything for a long while.

“So what do you think is going to happen when your dad comes back?” Nicky said. “Do you think you're going to move away?”

“I really don't know,” Lester said carefully. “I guess a lot depends on what happens around here.”

“What happens around here?”

“If the atmosphere improves.”

“Oh.”

“You've said it a million times. Nobody wants to live in Eggplant Alley anymore. But who knows? Maybe that will change.”

Nicky said, “Well, don't hold your breath. This place is going downhill. Like my grandmother used to say, one thing leads to another.”

The springs of Roy's bed cheeped. Nicky clenched his eyes at the sound. He was glad Lester could not see him in the dark.

“My grandmother had a saying, too,” Lester said. “She used to say, ‘Dominoes can fall in either direction.'”

“Very interesting,” Nicky said.

“Yes, it is. So you know what I think we should do, first thing tomorrow? No matter what?”

“I dunno? What?”

“Play stickball.”

“Nobody plays …”

Lester said, “You've said that a million times, too.”

Nicky said nothing for a while. Then, “I guess we could give it a try.”

“So we try? No matter what?”

“Okay. Sure. No matter what.”

“So we push the dominoes in the other direction. No matter what.”

“All right, already.” Nicky shrugged in the dark. “No matter what.”

The springs of Roy's bed cheeped as Lester fidgeted into sleeping position.

Cheep-cheep.

The sound was like a lullaby.

T
he next morning, Nicky and Lester stood in the Building B vestibule and watched the rain pour into the courtyard of Eggplant Alley. The drops hit the pavement so hard, they appeared to bounce. Water chuckled in the drainpipes. Spattering pools formed on the courtyard walkways. The boys looked up at the rain. They looked down at the two baseball mitts, the two Spaldeens, the broomstick. They looked up at the rain again. They felt foolish, like two boys carrying surfboards in a snowstorm.

“Maybe it will stop,” Lester offered.

“Yeah, sometime the next century. Dirty rotten rain,” Nicky said.

“I think it's letting up some,” Lester said.

It was not letting up.

The boys made themselves small in the doorway to keep from getting wet. Nicky took a seat in the threshold and folded his legs out of the rain. He took a big, sad sigh. Lester sat next to Nicky and imitated him, exactly, down to the big sigh.

“Guess we're not playing stickball,” Nicky said.

“Maybe it will stop.”

“Even if it stops. Maybe we oughta face it. Nobody plays stickball
around here anymore,” Nicky said, realizing for the first time in his life that ideas hatched with enthusiasm late in the night usually seem silly the next morning.

Lester didn't say anything.

Nicky said, “I wouldn't blame you for moving back to the country.” He was surrendering to the gloomy weather.

Lester made a grim face. “The country wasn't so hot.”

“Whaddya mean? With those baseball games in the meadows. And all those kids?”

Lester shrugged.

“There were a lot of kids. But I didn't really play with them much.” Lester spoke slowly and sadly, in the tone of a confessor. Nicky thought he saw a terrible, private hurt behind the thick glasses.

“I was always kind of the outsider,” Lester said, and he stopped there. Lester had the look of someone locking away wounds, the kind that cruel children inflict through breathtaking viciousness and stone-cold neglect.

“I know how you feel,” Nicky said. “I been in those shoes.”

“I don't think so. You seem like the popular type.”

“Me? Popular? Yeah, sure. You think it's been easy around here?”

Lester shrugged. He was sinking into a deep well of gloom. Nicky didn't like this—Lester was the optimistic one. If he turned grim, all would be lost.

Nicky said. “With all the kids moving out of here? Even my imaginary friend moved away.”

“Very interesting,” Lester said as the rain quickened. And the corners of Lester's mouth turned up. Officially, a smile.

“Mom's great idea was for me to play with kids my own age,”
Nicky said. “Great idea—play with kids my own age. All the kids my age moved out of here. Then I switched schools. And, you know what? All those kids at school already knew one another. It's hard being the odd kid out.”

“I am aware of that,” Lester said.

“Why would I wanna play with kids my own age? No kid my age knew Willie Mays's lifetime batting average or how to pull the wings off a fly without killing it. Roy told me that stuff. No kid my age knew where to buy cherry bombs and how to put pennies on the railroad tracks and how to make crank phone calls and who commanded the Third Army during World War Two and …”

“General George S. Patton,” Lester said.

“Correct,” Nicky said. He nodded. “Pretty good. You're a regular Encyclopedia Brown.”

Lester's eyes were looking past Nicky toward Summit Avenue. Nicky turned to see a black boy huddled under the archway to Eggplant Alley. The boy wore a yellow rain slicker and stared out at the gray curtain of rain.

“What's HE want?” Nicky said sharply.

“Probably to get out of the rain,” Lester offered.

“What's he doing over here to begin with?” Nicky knew that each black face on Summit Avenue was a threat, an omen, a terrible warning that slowly, surely the residents of Eggplant Alley were being surrounded.

The door to Building C groaned open and Mr. Misener stepped out, shovel in hand. He stalked across the pathway in the rain toward Building A. The black boy under the archway caught his eye.

“Hey, fella!” Mr. Misener called out. He tugged down his blue cap to keep the rain off his face. “Hey, fella! There's no loitering allowed here.”

The black boy said, “Oh, yeah? Who are you?”

“Never mind who I am. I'm the superintendent of this building, that's who I am. And there's no loitering allowed here.” Mr. Misener's shirt was splotching dark in the heavy rain.

The black boy made a face and stepped out from under the archway and clomped wetly down the steps. He walked out of sight onto Summit.

“Good!” Nicky declared.

Lester said quietly, “Oh, come on. Put yourself in that kid's shoes.”

“Excuse me? Mr. Expert? Put yourself in our shoes,” Nicky said. “You haven't lived here long enough to know. But you'll find out. Besides, you know what? I have been in that kid's shoes.”

“You have not.”

“Have too.”

“What are you talking about? You haven't.”

Nicky grinned. “All right, Encyclopedia Brown. Wanna hear another story? This is a good one.”

“I'm all ears,” Lester said. “Unless the rain stops. Then we play.”

So Nicky told his story.

When Nicky was five years old, he acquired an odd habit. He began to pick a word or phrase and say it over and over again, just to hear the sound. He liked the way certain words struck a chord. Words such as
sausage links; leotard; whirling dervish; chicken
delight; ham
. Nicky would lock on to a word and sing it out, over and over, like a new hit song.

Mom said it was an inherited habit, from her side of the family. There was a Scalopini family story about a great-uncle Paolo who liked to repeat words, just for the sound. He was a riveter who worked on the Empire State Building. On the day he died, in a fall from a seventy-fifth-floor construction beam, he had been saying “Smoot-Hawley” on the job for over a month. His family presumed he was pushed.

Nicky also made a real nuisance of himself. He nearly drove everyone in the family over the edge. Dad would go “shopping” for six hours on Saturday afternoons just to get away from him. Roy threatened to murder him as he slept. Mom would turn up the kitchen radio to drown him out.

One night Nicky woke up frightened, and wanted to wake Roy for the company. Roy was mumbling in his sleep about Marilyn Monroe, so he would have been grouchy if disturbed even for a good reason.

Nicky said, “Hey, Roy. Roy. Pssst. Roy.”

“Whazzat?”

“Smelts. Smelts. Smelts. Smmmmelts.”

Roy bolted upright. He stared at his little brother through bleary eyes.

“Lulla-by … and good smelts …,” Nicky sang cheerfully, giggling.

“Hey, Nicky-boy. You know what?”

“Smelts?”

Roy propped himself on one elbow, making the bedsprings
cheep, and said, “I guess it's time someone told you this. Mom and Dad are not your real parents.”

Nicky giggled. He said, “Aw, stop smelting. Smelts. Smelts.”

And Roy skillfully went to work, his words low and soft and sincere in the dark. He summoned every drop of his considerable big-brother rat fink powers. Roy explained that Big Nick, the black man who worked part-time as janitor at Eggplant Alley, was Nick's real father. “And whoever his wife is, she's your real mother.”

Nicky didn't say anything. The words seeped into his sleepy head. Could it be true? His name was the same as Big Nick's. That was true.

Roy continued. He explained that Big Nick and his wife already had twelve children when Nicky was born. They didn't see how they could feed and clothe a thirteenth child on a janitor's paycheck. So they asked Mom and Dad to look after Nicky for a few years, to take him in as one of their own.