From there on, Dad appeared to play the game, fitting in quite well with the bar routine and keeping our little family from the poor house. For years we lived over the bar. Later on, Eddie bought us the mansion and persuaded Dad to move. I never knew exactly how the accounts were handled, but Eddie engaged a hot-shit accountant from Manhattan and even a tax accountant in case Dad messed that up as well. For a long time Dad was strict as a sergeant major, rising before dawn, polishing his shoes himself, eating a raw egg before breakfast: all stuff Uncle Eddie favored or advised. Even then, I knew there was no way Eddie was shining his own shoes. But I said nothing, knowing The Importance of Shoe Shining in the Family. Back in Monaghan, nobody shined their shoes, if they had any. A school photo of Dad showed most of the kids had no shoes at all — only Dad in the front row had a good pair of black boots, black socks, short pants, and a black turtleneck. I reckoned he was taken out of school shortly after that to work in the fields, until Eddie sent him the ticket for Canada.
On certain sections of the streets there were signs of the usual fracas of the previous night: bottles and cans and overturned garbage. In recent times, crowds of young local men gathered at night to drink and carouse, as if they belonged to a different species, married to the night. Sometimes they didn’t even bother going to a bar. Sometimes bar owners use the tobacco ban to keep them out. Visitors slumming the bars at night made a helluva noise while they were there, then again as they revved up to leave. Residents complained about them as much as they did about the youngsters, who sold and smoked weed and giggled a lot, then kicked the garbage out of the cans and around the street. I had known most of them since they were kids — they were Sean’s age. I wondered if Sean spent time with them, but didn’t dare ask. So far they’d left me and the bar alone, and although there was increasing talk of hate crimes and savage attacks in the night, I couldn’t see them being the perps. For the moment, anyone kicked down subway steps had been openly gay or Muslim — or even black — but I knew that could change.
“So you rich fucks get up for a little while every day?” My friend George was standing in the doorway of his restaurant.
“Gid adda here,” I grinned.
“Whadaya like, I gad it,” said George, waving me in.
“Check the shop and be right back.”
I entered the dark interior of The Two Way Inn. It was quiet but for an Abba song coming at low volume from the jukebox: I don’t wanna talk... about things we been through... The usual lineup of men drinking silently in the late morning never failed to remind me of a scene from an O’Neill play. There was no green, no shamrocks, no Irish beers, no black-and-white pictures of small villages, whiskey mirrors, leprechauns, shillelaghs, no objects made of bog turf, nothing Irish visible. The occasional token of a German past remained undisturbed, for here the Swamp Rat had no influence and didn’t like the atmosphere. No fucking compliance here, feng shui or otherwise. For a long time a German firm continued to provide German songs for the old jukebox until we updated. One of these songs survived: “Oh Mein Papa,” due to popular demand, had been remastered and now kept company with the Carpenters, Abba, Maureen McGovern, Roberta Flack, the O’Jays, John Denver, and — as they say — much, much more. The bar had remained untouched for so long that it was becoming popular with the yuppie crowd out from Manhattan. It was mentioned in one or two hip magazines in search of “awthennic” places to spend their money. The barmen were instructed to charge more in the evenings. I invested in chairs and tables for the sidewalk, and after being fined twice for putting them out, eventually paid for a licence. These days I pay smoking fines, although we try to stop ’em smoking till the cops have gone to bed. Because what interests the yuppies is the interior, and the music. If it’s like a stage set for me, how much more must it be for them?
I waved through the open kitchen door to our Mexican factotum (Dad’s title for him). He navigated between the kitchen here, the corridors of the apartments above, and the garden on 12th Street.
“Buenos dias, Pepe,” I said. “Que pasa?”
“Land of the free and the brave,” replied Pepe.
I nodded to the young man behind the bar, an ex-seminarian from the old country, solid as an Aran Island, robbing only exactly enough so as not to make it obvious and rock the boat for the other bartenders doing the same.
“Gimme a shot from the real bottle you keep under the bar,” said one of the O’Neill characters. “The curate isn’t cooperating.”
I nodded again at the young man. “Go ahead,” I said, “what they have there wouldn’t fill a hole in their tooth.”
The young man ran a round down the bar: He had instructions to give them every third drink free, but to go easy on the non-fiddled bottle.
“Come on, lads, put yer hearts into it.” This was another of Dad’s goads. “Ye’ll never get cirrhosis the way ye’re drinkin’.”
The young man handed me the morning mail, which reminded me of the letter from Canada. I reached into a pocket, fished it out, and sat at a table. No one sat at a table except in the evenings.
The letter was typed. This didn’t look good. It was from a lawyer. My eyes shot to the bottom paragraph: It is with regret that we must inform you of the intention of Mr. Edward Nulty to dispose of his properties in Astoria.
Alerted, no doubt, by press references to a property boom, I thought. More warehouse conversions and hoardings bearing the legend, Jesus hates this building.
Do not hesitate to contact us should you have any questions, the letter finished. It gave the coordinates of some fancy broker in Manhattan who would contact me instanter.
I hated the British tone of it all. I even hated their tight vowels up there. I wondered what had stung Eddie into action. I folded the letter and put it in my pocket. The O’Neill characters who had been studying me turned back to their drinks again.
I got up, nodded to the company, and made my way next door to George, who had lunch ready.
“You donna looka good.”
“No.”
“You dyin’?”
“No.”
“Yo’ family die?”
“No.”
“So then!” George handed me a glass of his special heavy aperitif wine.
“Ya mass,” he said. I said nothing. “You looza all yor money?” George had been imitating his father’s accent for so long and spending three months a year in Greece that it was second nature. He looked anxious. Money was serious.
“Maybe.”
George was all attention. “Money is not love,” he said slowly.
“I got neither.”
“First, you eat.”
It seemed to me there were more of the little white plates than usual. I told George my woes, as I often do. What had once been a place serving hero sandwiches had become a high-class restaurant. Through the kitchen door I could see two Indians hard at work. And I’m not talking about Native Americans. Behind a little desk sat George’s brother Lazarus, once short-order cook and pea soup expert, and his sister Hermione. They were all getting on in years.
The phone in the kitchen rang. One of the Indians answered it. “007!” he said, and giggled. “Bond, James Bond!” He was laughing so hard the other Indian had to take the phone from him.
Above our heads hung photos of George’s parents and grandparents on the whitewashed terrace of a modest house in Cyprus. The men were dressed as popes, the women in black. They’d heard that the house had long since made way for a pink Turkish villa. None of them had ever tried to go back, even when it became possible.