“Hell,” George told him. “You shouldn’t be living in a goddamn dump like this. Tomorrow, I’m coming by in the morning. I’ll pick you up at nine o’clock. Pack your things tonight. You can live at my place.”
“No, no, no,” Ray said. “I couldn’t. George.”
“I have an extra bedroom, and I live by myself, one block from the restaurant, and there’s no reason why you should live in a dump like this when I have so much room.”
Ray continued to protest, and George finally said, “Look, Ray. I know how proud you are. You’re a proud, proud man, and I respect your pride. I’m not trying to give you something for free. You can pay me rent. We’ll talk about it tomorrow.”
“Okay,” Ray finally said. “Tomorrow.”
The two men shook hands on this arrangement as well, and Ray Dwyer agreed to move in the next day.
For a few months it seemed as though business at Kariotis’s couldn’t possibly get any better. The place was busy seven nights a week, usually from eight until midnight, with men who came to watch Rita’s waving silks and sly, fleeting smiles, to see Karima’s young, attentive eyes that nurtured a most impossible wanting.
Most nights after closing, Ray and George would go home and, at the small kitchen table, look over the total sheets that made George whistle and say, “Holy moly!” Then they’d drink wine and smoke and tell stories until the sun was about to come up. George, who always did most of the talking, would often talk about women, especially the dancers.
“Rita, my God!” he’d say. “Sometimes, Ray, I have to leave the floor because I know I can’t have her. I have to go to the kitchen and stand in the freezer to forget about trying to have this woman.”
George had explained why having these dancers was impossible: “No man can ever truly have a woman like that, Ray. How can any man impress a woman who lives on the power of dismissing every other man who looks at her? How?”
“They don’t pay any attention to me,” Ray said. “They ignore me.”
“So you see what I mean. The hell with them!”
Other nights. George and Ray would look at the big map of the world that hung on the kitchen wall, and George would point to all the different cities and countries he’d visited before moving to the States. George had been on many adventures all over the world, and even though he sometimes drank too much wine and repeated stories Ray had already heard, Ray always listened attentively and acted surprised and amazed, as if hearing the tale for the first time.
“Here, right here, this is Albania,” George said. “I sold American cigarettes and chocolate on the black market there, like a pirate.”
“And this is Istanbul,” George said. “I got arrested for trying to smuggle hashish across the border. But the goddamn Turks had sold me dirt wrapped in plastic! Dirt! The police had to let me go because there is no law against smuggling dirt. I was goddamn lucky to get ripped off in Istanbul. Ray!”
“And this is Rome,” George said. “Where my heart was broken.”
No matter what places George pointed to on the map. Morocco. Egypt, France. Russia, or Corsica, he always ended on Rome with the same quiet words, “Where my heart was broken,” without ever elaborating on what exactly had happened there. He’d just end his story, get more wine, change the subject, or simply say good night and go to bed. Of course Ray was curious to hear the details, but knew it was rude to pry. He imagined this incident in Rome was the reason George had never married, even though George had explained why he was single:
“A family is too difficult for men in my business, Ray. Too many hours of work, and not enough time to spend with the wife and babies. They get lonely, see? No, my restaurant is my wife, and the people I employ are my children.”
George did have lovers; Ray was sure of this. Some nights after closing George would shower and change and splash on nice cologne, and then tell Ray, “I’m going out for a while.” Those nights were, for Ray, difficult to get through. He couldn’t stand being by himself in such a quiet house with all that room to roam, and since he and George had been up so late the night before, he could never simply go to sleep. For some reason, it had been much easier for Ray to be by himself in the rooming house, where he’d only had a bed, a dresser, four walls, and a window. But alone at George’s house, Ray found himself moving from room to room, smoking too much, pacing. He’d turn on the kitchen radio, shut it off, then turn it on again; he’d drink a glass of George’s wine, another, and another, trying to wear himself down into drunken slumber, which, alone in that house with all that room, seemed impossible. Television only made things worse, with its pictures and music and awful noise. Ray had never liked looking at television anyhow.
Eventually, usually at dawn, George would come home. “You still up?” he’d ask, and Ray, relieved, would casually yawn and say, “Yeah, George. I was just about to turn in.”
But thankfully George only went out once or twice a week. Most of the time Ray enjoyed living at George’s house. Like on Greek Easter Sunday, which, for whatever reason, was a week later than the regular one. George closed the restaurant and had a party at the house with friends and relatives, all of whom treated Ray like they’d known him for a lifetime. Everyone was happy for George since his business was doing so well, and George, after having lots of wine, kept telling everyone the belly dancers had been Ray’s idea: “He’s the brains in my business!” George announced, and everyone applauded and toasted Ray, who blushed and laughed and shook his head, since he knew in his heart that he was just a dumb bouncer who wouldn’t have come up with an idea like that in a million years.
Summer brought even more business to the restaurant, so much more that George had to order more tables and chairs and glasses and ashtrays. There was a new cook named Alex, too, and two new busboys. George even had a new informal slogan for his place: Kariotis’s is Greek for standing room only. This was true; George had to start turning people away because the dancers were running out of room to perform.
“Holy moly!” George said. “We’re going to have to knock down that wall. And that one, too. We’ll sell tickets, Ray. Then we’ll be outside, like a goddamn carnival!”
The place was jammed on weeknights, on weekends, and the place was jammed the night Ray Dwyer actually had to throw somebody out.
Ray hadn’t noticed the fellow when he first came in because, quite simply, the fellow wasn’t remarkable. He wasn’t big, small, ugly, or anything. He didn’t even order booze, but nursed a few Cokes over the course of an hour. And when Karima came out for her number, this fellow, this sober, unremarkable fellow who’d shown up by himself, started grabbing Karima’s ass. For some reason, Ray decided wagging his finger wouldn’t be enough to calm the man, so he walked right up to the table and said, “You’re going to have to stop that, sir,” and the fellow smiled and said, “Sure, okay. Sorry about that.”
But the fellow obviously wasn’t sorry about that or anything else, because as soon as Ray turned his back, the man started grabbing Karima even more — not only her ass, but her belly and hips. Some of the other patrons laughed, and a couple of them started grabbing Karima as well.
“Throw him out,” George said. “Throw this son of a bitch out, Ray.”
So Ray grabbed the guy’s collar, lifted him from his seat, then dragged him right out the front door. George was right behind them.
“Don’t ever come back here to my place,” George told the man, who stood in the parking lot glaring back at them, staggering a bit as if Ray’s hands had shaken something loose.
“You fuckers are through,” the man said, and since he wasn’t drunk, the words had a strange, serious weight behind them. “You hear me? Through.”