Eleni rested a fist against her hip. “So where you goin’?”
“I heard about a couple of businesses downtown that were up for sale.”
“What kind of businesses?”
Karras fumbled with the change in his pocket. “There’s this soda bar concession... and a little lunch counter I got my eye on, too.”
Eleni’s face brightened. “Oh, Pete!”
Karras moved his eyes away from Eleni’s. “I said I was lookin’, that’s all. Just trying to get some kind of idea.”
Dimitri sat cross-legged on the kitchen floor, banging a wooden spoon against a pot. Karras went to him, bent down, kissed him on the top of his head. The boy’s hair was wet with sweat — Christ, the kid was gonna roast in this place.
“See ya, Jimmy.”
“Da,” said Dimitri.
“Pete?”
“Yes, sweetheart.”
“Phillip’s has a GE vacuum cleaner on sale this week, one of those new upright models. Thirty-nine ninety-five. You can pay on it, too, a buck a week.”
“What’s wrong with just sweeping out the place with a broom? We don’t even have any carpets.”
“I was thinkin’ we could look into a couple of throw rugs, too.”
You never learn, do you, sweetheart? You shoulda asked me for those things a half-hour ago, when all the blood had left my brain and gone down to my dick. I would’ve said yes to anything then.
“Let me think it over, Eleni. I mean, we just moved into this two-bedroom, and things are kind of tight.”
“Okay. We’ll talk it over later.”
Karras kissed Eleni on the side of her mouth, got his topcoat from out of the closet, shook it on. He picked up a deck of cigarettes from the table by the door, slipped them and a book of matches into the topcoat’s side pocket.
“See ya later, sweetheart.”
“Oh, Pete, I almost forgot.” Eleni moved in the direction of the icebox.
“Ah, no.”
“Just run this around the corner to your mom.” Now she had pulled a tray from the icebox and was moving toward him. “It’s some of that pastitsio we had last night.”
“What do I look like, some kind of delivery boy? You see some kind of paper hat on my head?”
“Pete, don’t get sore about it.” She put the tray into his hands. “And say ‘hi’ to your mom.”
Karras took the tray and the empty bottles and left the apartment. He dropped the bottles in a hinge-topped container outside the door. On the stairs, he passed the milkman coming up. Karras pretended to trip, acted like he would dump the food on the man in white. The man flinched, then grimaced as Karras pulled back.
“You,” said the milkman.
“Hurry up with that cow juice,” said Karras. “I got a hungry kid waitin’ on it upstairs.”
Out on the street, gulls appeared overhead, dipped down toward the tray of food. Karras smiled, thinking of the milkman, how he got him every time. Then he thought of Eleni, and the smile went away.
Imagine me, ownin’ my own business. That’ll be the day.
His mother was boiling a chicken when he got to the apartment. She was standing in the kitchen in her black housedress, her nylon anklets bunched about her black orthopedic shoes.
“Hello, boy mou,” she said as Karras walked in. She frowned as he limped across the room.
“Hi, Ma.” He kissed her on the cheek, handed her the tray. “From Eleni.”
“Pastitsio, eh? Entaxi.” She took the tray and set it on the counter. “Thelis cafe?”
“Okay, Ma. I’ll have a cup.”
Georgia Karras served her son some coffee and placed a small plate of sweets on the table. Karras dipped a koulouri in his coffee, ate that one and then another, then lighted a Lucky Strike and smoked it while his mother related some gossip about a woman she knew from church. When she had finished the story, she told him how the prostitutes’ murders had made her frightened to walk the streets after dark. He listened to all of this passively, smashed out his cigarette when it had burned down to the brand name printed on the paper. He got up to leave.
“Gotta go. Ma. Got an appointment. Need any lefta?”
“Fiya, boy. I’m okay.”
The old man had taken out a good insurance policy. Well, at least he had done one thing right.
“All right, then. I’ll be on my way.”
His mother patted his cheek. “Pas sto kalo.”
Karras stopped at the door, watched his mother clear the table. He looked around the place: blankets covered the apartment’s mirrors, and all of the window shades were drawn down tight. Karras went out to the hall, closed the door behind him. He gripped the banister, moved carefully as he took the stairs down to the street.
On H, Karras saw Su leaning against his new cab, smoking a cigarette, the butt dangling from his mouth, his hands deep in the flap pockets of his zip-up jacket. Su, a Chinese Alfalfa — that one fork of straight black hair still stood up on the back of his head, as it always had when they were kids.
Su smiled, his eyes disappearing with the action. “Hey, Pete!”
“Su.”
Su ran a hand along the front quarter panel of his cab. “How you like my new sled?”
“Nice. Where’d you get it?”
“Up on Florida Avenue, at Cherner’s. Gotta deal on it, gonna pay on time. It ain’t so new how I’d like it, but you know what they say—”
“‘Next to a New Car, a Chernerized Car is Best.’”
“That’s right! How ’bout a lift, Pete?”
“I’m headin’ down to Southeast. I thought I’d take a bus and walk a little after that. It ain’t so far.”
“C’mon, Pete.” Su opened the rear door of the Dodge, made a courtly handsweep pointing Karras inside. “I’ll only hit you for one zone.”
“All right.”
Karras got into the backseat of the sedan. Su pitched his smoke, ran quickly and nimbly around the front of the car. He slipped into the driver’s seat, put the Dodge in gear, pulled away from the curb.
“What’ya think about the Nats this year, Pete? They got anything?”
“I couldn’t tell you. I haven’t followed baseball much since the war.”
Karras thought of Billy Nicodemus, pictured him running across H as a boy, his mitt hanging loosely on his hand. Billy had taken that mitt everywhere, even when the boys had pooled their change one summer and taken the open streetcar out to Glen Echo. Perry Angelos had brought Helen Leonides along as his guest, which didn’t sit well with the other boys but which they had allowed — as everyone knew, even then, that Perry was sweet on Helen. They had caught the streetcar at the beginning of the line and watched the conductor walk the wheel from back to front, flipping the chair backs as he went along the aisle. Upon arriving at the park, they had swum in the pool until the early afternoon, then went to the funhouse, where they rode the big wheel in the center of the hall, which spun faster and faster until all the kids had been thrown to the side. Helen’s skirt had blown up around her thighs while on the wheel, and Karras could not help noticing the blue print on her soft white underpants, feeling some degree of excitement tinged with shame. Later, as evening fell, Joe Recevo had suggested that they finish things off listening to the popular tunes of the McWilliams Orchestra in the Spanish Ballroom, but none of them save Joe knew how to dance. At the end of the day Angelos had gotten sick on the roller coaster, and Billy Nicodemus vomited from the motion of another ride coupled with too many sweets. On the trolley ride back home, Billy had smiled, remarking on what a fine day it had been, a crusty arc of vomit framing his wide grin. Yeah, Billy — he had always been some kind of happy kid.