South Street (17 page)

“Only Vassar,” Brown sighed.

Frankie chuckled deep in the back of his throat.

“Don’t laugh,” Brown said seriously. “It was true love.”

“You know, Adlai, that’s what I like about you. You can take any four-letter word and make it sound like ‘fuck.’ Listen, I’m an old man that don’t like eatin’ alone. You wanna call up that gal a yours an’ see does she wanna come down an’ we’ll all have dinner?”

Brown looked unhappy. “I don’t think she’d come. But I’ll stay.”

Frankie regarded Brown with a look of curiosity, then shrugged and motioned to the waitress. “Hey, Maria. We want some dinner.” Maria was a tall Italian girl, plump and pretty, with long black hair teased up and held with too much spray, and deep black eyes surrounded by an alarming smear of silver eye make-up. Her tight uniform barely contained her. She pulled an order pad out of her apron pocket and stood, pencil poised. “Adlai wants a steak,” Frankie said, “’cause he’s been workin’ hard. Only one in the whole place been doin’ anything.”

“Don’t blame me,” Maria said, “I been off since Monday.”

“You’re off everyday,” grumbled Frankie. “If you wasn’t my daughter-in-law I’d a fired you long ago.”

“If I wasn’t your daughter-in-law you’d have to pay me decent. I’m too good a waitress to be workin’ for peanuts in a—”

“Okay, okay,” said Frankie. “You get a raise. Now, Miss Super Smart-Ass Waitress, we want some steak. Rare. Tossed salad, an’ you make sure you tell that Vito ta keep the goddamn chickpeas outa mine. An’ baked potatoes on the side, butter on mine, butter an’ sour cream with chives for Adlai. I don’t know how he stands the stuff, but dinges is strange.”

“Yes, sir,” said Maria, tossing off a mock salute. “And what dressing would you like on your salad? Italian?”

“Shit, no,” said Frankie. “Russian. I don’t want none a that oily wop stuff on
my
salad. Adlai just wants oil. His folks is still tryin’ to imitate the wops, but they ain’t figured out what vinegar is yet.”

Brown snorted. “Thank you, sir,” said Maria, snapping her pad shut and heading for the kitchen.

Frankie grinned wolfishly. “She forgot the drinks. I been tryin’ to catch her makin’ a mistake for months. She’s never gonna hear the end of it.” He eased his bulk back against the wall. “All right, now, Adlai, what the hell’s the matter with you? You been in here a good four hours, an’ you ain’t started no fights. I ain’t heard you say ‘fuck’ moren ten times, an’ you ain’t insulted a single one a my customers. It’s been so quiet I damn near went to sleep.”

“They didn’t insult me,” Brown snapped.

“That ain’t never stopped you before.”

Brown opened his mouth, closed it, and grinned ruefully.

“You ain’t as touchy. You sick?”

“Could be,” Brown said.

“You have a fight with what’s her name?”

“Not exactly,” Brown said. He took a deep breath. “I left.”

“Left? Just like that?”

“Yeah,” Brown said. “I just couldn’t stay there any more. It was … ruinin’ me, you know?”

Frankie nodded. “Yeah. Tell me about it. Women is the funniest damn things in the world. Sometimes you wish you could get rid a every damn one of ’em. You say ‘blue’; some woman’ll give you fifteen perfectly good nonsensical reasons why blue has got to be somethin’ else—turquoise or aqua or some such crap. You know, I was married for thirty-seven goddamn years. To the same woman. She never liked me ownin’ a bar. She’d say, ‘Frankie, you gotta serve some food so respectable folk’ll come in.’ I’d say, ‘I run a bar, not a bingo game.’ I mean, hell, who wants respectable folks in a bar? Next thing you know you’ll have the priest in there. She wouldn’t listen, she had to come down. Not here, I had a place over on Christian Street then. She’d come down an’ start makin’ sandwiches, an’ then she got a hot plate and started makin’ pasta, an’ she had bread, an’ salad, an’ every other goddamn thing, an’ pretty soon everybody was comin’ in to eat an’ wasn’t nobody buyin’ nothin’ from the bar ’cept bottled beer an’ red wine, an’ I damn near went bankrupt. Hell, I didn’t care. We wasn’t starvin’ an’ she was happy an’ I was happy, an’ who gives a damn if the banks is happy? So I said the hell with it an’ turned the place into a restaurant. She useta have a hell of a time, bein’ everybody’s mama an’ givin’ away half my profit. After she died, I couldn’t stay down there. All them folks would come in an’ sit around drinkin’ wine an’ lookin’ sad. It was like a goddamn funeral. Fool woman never understood a thing about business. Everybody loved her an’ she loved everybody an’ we damn near starved to death. Them was the days.”

Brown had watched, silent and motionless, while the stream of emotions had flowed across Frankie’s battered features. His right hand, almost invisible against the stained wood of the table, moved out toward Frankie, drew back, and moved out again, stopping short of Frankie’s arm, suddenly becoming starkly visible as the palm turned upward before the hand balled into a fist and drew slowly back again.

“Now,” said Maria. Brown and Frankie looked up quickly, almost guiltily. “I got the steaks on first. Figured if I did it that way you wouldn’t get through moren three rounds a drinks.”

“Moren three!” Frankie said indignantly. “Him, maybe. Not me.
He’s
the lush.”

“Right,” said Maria. “You’re the drunk.”

“Listen to her, willya, Adlai! My own daughter-in-law, my own flesh an’ olive oil, callin’ me a drunk.”

“You know what the doctor said,” warned Maria.

“Yeah. He said the way I smoke an’ drink I shoulda been dead five years ago. Goddamn good thing I didn’t listen to him. Now bring us some booze. I want—”

“You want a Rusty Nail an’ Adlai wants a scotch-rocks.”

“Right,” said Frankie.

“Wrong,” said Brown. “I’ll just have a beer.”

Maria stopped dead in her tracks and her mouth fell open. “What?”

Frankie sighed. “It sounded like he said beer, but I’m gettin’ old an’ my hearin’ ain’t so good no more an’ I can’t believe that.”

“Adlai, you been comin’ in here for years an’ you ain’t never had anything but scotch-rocks.”

“I’m on the cart,” Brown said.

“Oh yeah,” Maria said. “The cart. What in hell’s the cart?”

“Halfway to the wagon,” Brown told her.

Maria gave Brown a concerned look. “He ain’t kiddin’, Frankie. He means it. He’s sick. Come to think of it, he didn’t even ask me once to go to bed with him when he ordered. Somethin’s wrong. Adlai, you in love or somethin’?”

“Or somethin’,” Brown said.

“Beer?” said Maria.

“Beer,” said Brown.

Maria shook her head, wrote it down, and headed for the bar.

“That girl musta done a real job on you,” Frankie observed.

“Nothin’ to do with her,” Brown snapped.

“Okay,” said Frankie. “I’m too old to argue. Let’s change the subject. So you moved out. Where you livin’ now?”

“I found this place over on South Street,” Brown said.

“That was fast.”

“There isn’t exactly a waiting list,” Brown said.

Maria returned with Frankie’s Rusty Nail and Brown’s beer. “Look, Adlai,” she said, “I don’t mind if you’re turnin’ over a new leaf or whatever it is you’re doin’, but if guys stop makin’ passes at her a girl starts to worry. Why not pinch me or somethin’, just for old time’s sake?”

“I’m scared to,” Brown said. “That husband a yours would kill me when he got out.”

“He is out, an’ that never stopped you before.”

Brown sighed, reached out and patted her behind. She slapped his hand and scampered off to the kitchen.

“You sure change quick,” Frankie said.

“I haven’t changed. I just moved.”

Maria returned with a full tray. “There you go, there’s the tossed. I’ll be back with the steak and baked. You do still eat steak, don’t you, Adlai? Or did you give up meat?”

“Well,” Brown said, “I like it better on the hoof.”

“Hey, he’s soundin’ better, Frankie. Quick, talk some sense into him before he has a relapse.”

“Jesus,” said Brown, “just let a man decide he wants to cut down on his drinking and not make passes at other people’s wives and you make him sound like he’s a candidate for the psycho ward.”

Maria grinned. “Only if it’s you, sweetheart, only if it’s you.” She turned and wiggled her bottom pleasantly as she walked away. Brown leaned back in his chair and sighed.

Frankie grinned. “Eat your salad.” They ate in silence. In a few minutes Maria delivered the meat and potatoes, tapping Brown playfully on the cheek as she went away. The bar slowly filled with the bodies of business people and professionals stopping off for a drink or two or three. Many of them lived nearby—Frankie’s was on a side street just off Rittenhouse Square. At the bar men in business suits with briefcases at their feet told lies to expensive-looking women with high, hollow cheeks and thin, unadorned arms. Chatter made a dull hum, as if a giant machine idled somewhere nearby. From time to time Frankie rose to greet someone, calling them by name and waving. Brown gradually slumped lower in his seat, so that his hand traveled less and less distance conveying slivers of red meat and lumps of potato to his mouth. From time to time his left hand reached out and pulled his glass of beer toward him, and he took a few big swallows. Maria, bustling past, dropped off a full bottle. Brown nodded and smiled and kept on eating, his mouth working easily. The last bite vanished down his throat. He wiped his lips, swallowed the rest of the beer. Frankie grinned as he mopped up his plate with a piece of Italian bread. “She ain’t killed you appetite, anyways.” Brown smiled tightly and wiped his lips again. “Hey, Maria,” Frankie yelled, “how ’bout some dessert?”

Maria appeared with her pad. “How about it?”

“Just coffee for me,” Brown said.

“I want some ice cream an’ pie,” said Frankie.

“I’ll bring you some sliced pineapple,” Maria told him. “Did you take your pills?”

“The hell with the pills an’ the pineapple. I want some ice cream, goddammit.”

“It’s not on your diet.”

“You ain’t my mother.”

“Your mother’s dead, an’ she’d a lived a lot longer if she’d stayed on her diet an’ taken her pills.”

“All right, all right,” sighed Frankie. “Sliced pineapple. Now don’t just stand there. Jump!” Maria shot him a look of mock terror and moved away. “She’s a nice girl,” said Frankie. “Too bad she married that kid a mine. He ain’t been outa jail but three, four weeks, an’ he already beat her up half-a-dozen times.”

“Why doesn’t she beat him back?” Brown said.

“Ask her. She’ll give you some goddamn crap about how it’s just his way a showin’ how much he loves her. I musta not loved his mother then, ’cause I never raised a hand to that woman. Not that I wasn’t tempted.”

“That explains it,” Brown said seriously. “If a kid doesn’t see love demonstrated in the home it screws him up.”

“Yeah,” Frankie agreed, “that must be it.”

He leaned back and loosened his belt just as Maria arrived with his pineapple and Brown’s coffee. As she turned away Brown reached out absentmindedly and patted her. She smiled at him. “Never mind, doll, your heart ain’t in it.” Brown snorted, heaved himself erect, and shoveled sugar into his cup.

“How’d you end up in Poughkeepsie?” Frankie asked around the ring of pineapple he was stuffing into his mouth.

Brown shrugged and sipped his coffee. “I met A—this girl in New York. We had a good time for a couple a weeks, but she was going back to school. So I went up there with her and found this job at a bar, workin’ behind on busy nights an’ bein’ bouncer on Tuesdays when the regular guy had off.”

“You was a bouncer? That where you got so mean?”

“Only on Tuesdays,” Brown said. “The regular dude had everybody so scared all I had to do was sit in the corner and read. That bouncer was plain crazy. He’d sit up in the corner just praying somebody’d start something, only everybody was too scared of him. So he started hiding so people would think he wasn’t around. You ever see a two-hundred-and-forty-pound bar bouncer tryin’ to hide behind a begonia?”

“Heh,” said Frankie. “Sounds crazy to me.” He pushed the last piece of pineapple into his mouth, chewed, swallowed. “Goddamn,” he said, “I hate pineapple. What happened to the girl?”

Brown took a deep breath. “We came to a parting of the ways. She wanted me to work for her father. I said I preferred the bar.”

“Whad her father do?”

“He ran a vanilla factory, and he worked part time as a personnel consultant for Nabisco.”

“You know, sometimes I don’t know when you’re kiddin’ an’ when you’re not.”

“Neither do I,” Brown said. “Actually, he was the regional director of the NAACP, but it amounts to the same thing.”

Frankie looked at Brown uncomprehendingly. Brown smiled tightly behind his coffee cup. “Well,” Frankie said, “I’ll say this for you: in six years you never brought a woman in here didn’t have real class, you know? Class. Not like that damn Louie an’ his bony Jewish bitch. I hope he runs outa gas in the middle of a goddamn Death Valley, an’ he has ta listen ta her yammerin’ until he dies a thirst. Speakin’ a that, you, ah, wouldn’t maybe be lookin’ for a job, would ya? I mean I know you been to fourteen different colleges an’, aw shit.”

“Yeah,” Brown said. “I’m lookin’ for a job. What do I call you, Massa or Don?”

“Shut up,” said Frankie. “You work good for me an’ I’ll treat you almost like you was Italian. Only difference is you get vacation in the winter ’cause you don’t need no suntan.”

“That’s just as well,” Brown said, “’cause I burn real easy.”

“You know, Adlai, that’s what I like about you: you’re smart. ’Specially your ass. You know, I got a bunch of goddamn fools workin’ for me. You take that Vito out in the kitchen. The other night they brings in a whole truckload a booze. I was busy, so I says to Vito I says, ‘Check them bottles an’ make sure them bastards ain’t cheatin’ me.’ Next mornin’ I looked an’ we was short three bottles a good red. So I calls Vito over to ask him what happened, an’ he says he don’t know, but he checked, just like I said, an’ every bottle was full.” Brown chuckled. Frankie sighed. “You want another beer?”

“No thanks,” Brown said. “I gotta go clean up my apartment. If you want to call it that.”