“Let me settle up, Nick,” said Florek.
“Nickel.”
Florek laid it down. “I’ll see you later, hear?”
“You workin’ tonight?”
“Uh-uh. My night off.”
“Come on back. Tuesday night, we gonna watch the fights on the television. Ten o’clock.”
“Okay, Nick,” said Florek. “Ten o’clock.”
Mike Florek woke from his nap in near darkness, the only light in the room bleeding in through the picture window from the streetlamp outside. Florek sat up, ran a hand through his hair. He rose and took a shower in the common bathroom located in the hall. Then he changed into a clean shirt, went down to the street, and headed toward Nick’s.
The place was crowded, noisy, blanketed in smoke. Six had moved away from his post at the door and walked slowly through the crowd, eye-balling the men, his arms draped loosely at his side. The stools and booths were all taken, and several fruit crates had been brought out and overturned. These had been taken now as well. The men sat on the stools and on the crates and in the booths, drinking steadily from bottles, all of their eyes focused on the fight going on the television set mounted on the wall. The image was fuzzy, and the picture rolled occasionally on the screen, but no one seemed to mind. Everyone was laughing and carrying on, trying to speak louder than the guy next to him, all of them having a fine time. Nick’s might have been a lunch counter during the day, but it was no different than any other beer garden at night.
A thin white man with slicked-back hair and a black moustache sat on the customer’s side of the counter among the Negroes. He watched the fight without expression or comment, nursing a Ballantine Ale. Florek went by him, squeezed in at the open end of the counter, tried to catch Stefanos’s eye. He and Costa were moving clumsily back there, rudderless, unable to catch a rhythm. They bumped each other and raised their voices when they did, though not in the good-natured way of the afternoon. There was a sloppiness in the way they moved, the place was just too busy for them to handle.
Florek stepped through the opening and behind the counter without thinking. Stefanos, fumbling for a beer in the cooler, looked up. His face was streaked with sweat, his hair damp and fallen about his face.
“What’re you doin’ back here?”
“I can help.”
“Help how?”
Florek shrugged. “I’ll jockey the drinks.”
Stefanos glanced over at Costa, clearing dishes off the counter. Costa looked back at his friend and nodded once.
“Okay, boy,” said Stefanos. “Get an apron.”
“Where?”
“In the back.”
Florek turned, pushed through the swinging doors that led to the kitchen. A tall, lean man with a good head of gray hair stood over a set of large burners, stirring a pot of soup. He looked at Florek as he burst through the doors.
“What the hell,” said the cook.
“I need an apron,” said Florek.
The cook jerked his head behind him toward a stainless steel table used for prep. Beneath the table, Florek could see a stack of folded white aprons. He went for the stack, took an apron off the top, unraveled it, flipped it over so it made a clean rectangle. He tied the apron tightly around his waist.
“Thanks,” said Florek to the cook. He moved back through the doors.
In the front of the house, more men had arrived. A guy raised a finger toward Florek and ordered a Carling Red Cap. Florek went to the cooler, found one, pulled it free. He looked around for something with which to open the bottle.
“On the cooler, re,” said Stefanos from over at the register. “On the side!”
Flora saw the Coca-Cola opener screwed into the side of the cooler. He popped the cap, served the bottle to the man who had ordered it. He heard the register ring down, then a riot of voices as someone threw a knockdown punch on the television screen overhead. Through the shoulders of the men in front of him, Florek caught a glimpse of Six pushing a man out the front door. The man appeared to be taking flight. The chime sounded at the man’s exit.
“A Ballantine Ale for me,” said the white man with the slicked-back hair.
“Yessir,” said Florek.
He bumped into Costa going for the cooler, hesitated trying to get out of Costa’s way.
“All right boy,” said Costa. “Get on your horse! Move it!”
Florek stepped aside. He found the Ballantine, served it to the white man.
“Thanks,” he said, with a quick wink. “You keep doing what your doing, and don’t worry about Costa. You just keep it up.”
The crowd and its demand intensified, but Florek soon found his step. He and Stefanos and Costa found their own places behind the counter, Nick at the register and Costa back and forth from the kitchen and Florek from the cooler to the counter with the drinks. Florek forgot about the sweat on his back, never noticed the dryness of his mouth or the ache in his legs. He never noticed any of it until the fights ended and the noise settled and the crowd began to thin out. It was then that he looked at the Blatz Beer clock centered over the front door and noticed that he had been working close to two hours straight.
“Here ya go, vre,” said Stefanos, handing Florek a cold bottle of National.
Florek took it by the neck, drank deeply. Costa walked by, clapped Florek on the shoulder as he passed.
“The new guy’s pretty good,” said the white man with the slicked-back hair.
“Yeah, he’s okay.” Stefanos pointed at the man. “Florek, meet my friend, Lou DiGeordano.”
They shook hands. “Mr. DiGeordano.”
“Pleased to meet you, son.”
DiGeordano put some money on the counter, took his topcoat off a tree by the booths. He nodded at Nick Stefanos and went out the front door.
Stefanos cracked a Ballantine Ale, poured some into a glass. He raised the glass at Florek, drank from it, then wiped the foam off his upper lip.
“Well, how about it, Florek?”
“How about what?”
Stefanos put his foot up on the cooler. “How much they payin’ you down at People’s?”
“Seventy-five cents an hour, somethin’ like that. Why?”
Costa walked over with an empty glass in his hand. Stefanos poured the rest of the Ballantine into Costa’s glass.
“Business is pickin’ up. I’m gonna need some help around here, four, five nights a week. I’m gonna match what they’re payin’ you down there. Only here, you’re gonna get it under the table, cash.” Stefanos rubbed his thumb and forefinger together. “You understand?”
“I guess so,” said Florek.
“You work out here when we’re busy like tonight, and sometimes you’re gonna help the cook in the back. Unloading, stocking, preppin’ food, things like that. There’s a few things my cook can’t do. Might put a little muscle on you, too, liftin’ things like that. You could use a few pounds.”
“Yessir.”
Stefanos turned to his friend. “That okay by you, Costaki?”
“Me? I don’t give a damn nothing!” He smiled crookedly at Florek, had a sip of beer. Then he went to the television set and pulled its plug from the wall socket. “Little bit of quiet, that’s all I need.”
“Come on,” said Stefanos, pulling on Florek’s arm. “I’m gonna introduce you to the cook.”
Florek walked along through the swinging doors, a little dizzy from the beer and the heat. He wasn’t exactly certain as to what had just happened, and he tried to remember if he had agreed back there to any of Nick’s terms. Not that it mattered — he knew that there really wasn’t any doubt that he would take the job; it felt right, being in a place like this, with these kinds of men.