“ Ee-neh ah-paw-soy, ” said Alex, making a head movement toward Johnny. It meant that his son was to the manor born.
“I just don’t want any of that chain crap.”
“You think I do?” said Alex.
“How about El Rancho?” said Vicki.
“El Roacho,” said Johnny.
“I don’t want Mex,” said Alex. “My stomach…”
“Mie Wah?” said Vicki.
“Me Wallet,” said Alex.
“Don’t be so cheap, Dad.”
“It’s not that. I just don’t want Chinese.”
“Cancun Especial?”
“Can’t Cook Especial,” said Alex.
“He said he didn’t want Mexican,” offered Johnny.
“Well, we have to eat something,” said Vicki.
“Let’s just get a Ledo’s pizza,” said Alex, the decision they had been moving toward all along.
“I’ll cut a salad,” said Vicki. “Call it in, Alex, okay?”
“If Johnny picks it up.”
“I’m gone.”
They watched him go, a tall, thin, good-looking young man of twenty-five in tight jeans and a leather jacket that looked a size too small.
“What is that look he’s got?” said Alex. “Like, metrosexual, somethin?”
“Stop it.”
“I’m asking.”
“He’s a hip young guy, is all,” said Vicki, who subscribed to many magazines that could be purchased in the supermarket checkout aisles. “He looks like one of those guys in that band, the Strokes.”
Alex caught her eye. “I got somethin you can stroke.”
“Oh, please, Alex.”
“I’m sayin, it’s been a while.”
“Must you?”
“A guy can dream.”
“Call the pizza in, honey.”
“Yeah, okay.”
He went to the phone and ordered a large pie with anchovies and mushrooms. Vicki, aligning her lettuce, cucumbers, onions, and carrots near the cutting board, spoke to him as he hung up the phone.
“Honey?”
“What.”
“We’ve got to do something about the building.”
“Okay.”
Alex and Vicki owned a 1,700-square-foot brick structure, formerly a Pepco utility substation, off Piney Branch Road in Takoma Park. It had been zoned for commercial use and for the past five years had been leased by an Iranian who used it as a carpeting and flooring showroom. When the man’s operation had gone the way of the corded phone, he had vacated the premises. Vicki was worried about the cash flow, but Alex was not. She maintained their books, did their taxes, and managed their investments. Alex had a talent for running a business but was uninterested in the mechanics of money.
“I’m gonna find a tenant,” said Alex.
“You’ve been saying that since the Iranian moved out. Six months now.”
“The building’s paid for.”
“We still pay property taxes on it.”
“ Okay. ”
“I’m just pointing it out, Alex.”
“Just don’t go stomping your little foot over there. You hear me, Thumper?”
Vicki smirked, her eyes on the cutting board as she halved a head of iceberg lettuce.
She was on the short side, with a nice figure on her still, a little belly, but that was all right. Her hair, dyed black, was cut in the Friends style that the Aniston girl had made famous but was now way out of date. Even Alex knew that. But on his wife it looked good. He still got excited when he watched her walking toward the bed at night. The way she turned her back shyly when she removed her bra.
Vicki had aged several years in the one since Gus had been killed, but the new lines on her face were not an issue with Alex. Grief had moved the clock forward on him, too. He knew that he and Vicki were going to be together until the end. With everything they had been through, having survived it, there wasn’t any question of that.
He met her when she was just out of high school, a trainee in the accounting department in the machinists’ union building, at 1300 Connecticut. The most fun-loving girls in the south Dupont area, and the nicest, worked in the machinist offices. Alex was in his early twenties, a young businessman, the owner of the lunch counter, a good catch. She was a daily morning customer, small coffee, milk and sugar, with a Danish. Her last name was Mimaros. She was Greek American, Orthodox, a koukla, and nice to Darlene and the rest of the help. She didn’t seem to mind his eye. He took her out to dinner, and she was respectful of the waitress. Had she not been, it would have been a deal breaker for Alex. He married her within a year.
“What do you think?” said Vicki.
“About?”
“About Johnny, boo-faw.”
“Johnny’s got big ideas.”
“He’s excited. He’s just trying to help.”
“I said he could try out a thing or two, didn’t I?”
“In your own way. Yes, you did.”
“He bugs me, that kid.”
Alex waited for Vicki’s quiet reminder that was also an admonishment: He’s not Gus. But Vicki went on shredding her lettuce and commented no further.
Alex went back to the phone and lifted it off its base. “I’m gonna call my mom.”
He moved to the living room and had a seat in his favorite chair. He dialed his mother, who now lived out in Leisure World. He tried to phone her every night and visited her twice a week, though she often reminded him that she was not lonely. Calliope Pappas had not been involved with a man since the death of her husband, but she had many friends. Alex’s brother, Matthew, an attorney in northern California, called infrequently and visited occasionally on holidays, so Alex’s mother, now coming up on eighty, was the last connecting thread to his childhood. He often said that he had stayed in the Washington area for her. Secretly he felt that he needed his mother more than she needed him.
“Hi, Mom. It’s Alex.”
“I know it, honey. Don’t you think I recognize your voice by now?”
After they said good-bye, Alex returned to the kitchen, replaced the phone, and went to the refrigerator for another slice of cheese. He looked at the photo on the wall, his old man in his apron at the magazi, flipping burgers, a look of true joy on his face. Alex had his good days at the store. He’d had some laughs with the customers and the help. But he’d never felt the way his father looked in that photograph. It occurred to him that in thirty-some years on the job, he had never experienced that kind of unbridled happiness himself.
Ten
How’d that dude get that job?” said Raymond Monroe.
“He was a comedian before this,” said Kendall Robertson.
“He’s never made me laugh,” said Monroe. “Not once.”
“Me, neither,” said Marcus Robertson.
They were in Kendall’s row house on Quebec Place, eating carryout, watching that popular nighttime game show with the bald-headed host, had the trumpet-player hipster patch beneath his lower lip.
“I’d like to know where you apply for that job,” said Monroe. “ ’Cause I know I could do it better than him.”
“You ever see a black game show host?”
“Didn’t Arsenio host one?”
“He’s not funny, either.”
“I could be the first. Break that game show host color line. I’m sayin, if Mr. Clean can do it, I can, too. Because this man is, like, talentless. Is that a word?”
“I think so.”
“You wanna know how he got that job? Luck. Like, four-leaf-clover, bust-the-casino kinda luck. I mean, this dude must have a golden horseshoe lodged up in his -”
“Raymond!”
Marcus laughed. “He’s lucky.”
“That’s what I’m sayin, Peanut.”
Monroe had given the boy the nickname because of his stature and the funny shape of his shaved head. Marcus didn’t mind when he called him that. He liked Mr. Raymond, and when he gave Marcus the name, it was a sign that Mr. Raymond liked him, too.
“What are we watching this for?” said Kendall.
“You’re right,” said Monroe. “I don’t know why they call it a game if there’s no skill to it. It’s all about greed.”
Monroe got up from the kitchen table and turned off the television set.
“That was easy,” said Kendall.
“Ought to do it more often,” said Monroe. “C’mon, little man, let’s have a look at your bike.”