Philadelphia Noir

he knows don’t even cover living expenses. “You don’t want to end up like Dad,” Chris let slip. “Hopeless, I mean.” Not dead, which goes without saying. “A man needs to move forward in life.” Tough love. You should be happy, Chris always tells him, working at any one of Victor Gold’s restaurants-it’s a great company, he says, as if Nicky’s poised for some rags-to-riches story of his own. We’re brothers, Chris says, to remind Nicky that they share the same DNA; that if the one son can make it, so can the other; that he’s not a chip off the old block. People’s lives can change for the better, Chris insists, just as quickly as they can change for the worse.

Nicky doesn’t want to get too high, so he takes one last hit, pinches the tip with moistened fingers, and tucks the half-joint, the last of his dwindled stash, back into Moby Dick, which he swore he was going to finish this summer. He flips up the collar of his black silk shirt and fakes a roundhouse kick at the mirror, his eyes looking badass.

Chris got Nicky in the door with Victor Gold. The rest is up to you, Chris always says. I can’t ask him to make you a bartender. You create your own luck. Chris and Victor were college roommates, and they both have the Midas touch. Chris bought the brownstone for peanuts, now uses the rent he collects from three downstairs units to pay the mortgage on the condo he just picked up on Spring Garden. Victor’s a whole other story. He must have opened Nostradamus on a dare, Nicky jokes, to prove once and for all to the city, or just to his own world-class ego, that he could create another gastronomical goldmine out of the least appetizing concept-this time serving up Gothic fare in a renovated church a block south of Eastern State Penitentiary.

Night after night, unimaginably lovely creatures, local celebrities, sports stars, and wannabe hipsters in their thirties and forties, and maybe even fifties for all Nicky can tell, find this veritable morgue hiding in residential Fairmount; many of them have the requisite wit, donning sexy vampiric getups-tight leather, flared collars, ruffled shirts, spiked jewelry-downing drinks with names like Edgar Allan Poetini and Exorcism on the Beach. Ordinarily Nicky lies low, winding invisibly through the crowd, carrying plates soiled with remnants of blackened this or deviled that, head down, in the standard black-T-shirt-and-jeans busboy uniform, but tonight he’s playing along, monster shades and all, at least until the sun goes down.

“I saw you snake my fucking eyeliner yesterday,” pale-eyed Janet says the second Nicky snags the corner spot at the half-full bar, best view in the house, where Victor usually sidles up late-night. “I thought you were just playing around, but you snaked it.”

“Shit.” Nicky hops off the stool and pats down the pockets of his slim-fitting cargo pants. He pulls out his cell phone and sets it on the bar. When he proceeds to check the lower pockets puffing at his knees, Janet rolls her eyes.

“Maybe it’s in your sock,” she says. “Bullshitter.”

“Come over to my place later and get it,” he says, and straddles the stool, grinning.

“Yeah.”

“We had fun,” he reminds her.

He can see she’s already shaking up his Inquisition Fizz. Drink to excess before Victor gets here, is their strategy, bartenders included. The extra Fizz goes into a shot glass, which Janet clinks, cheers, with Nicky, and throws back in a fluid move, turning toward the cash register, as if she’s going to ring him up.

“You look good with no makeup,” Nicky calls out.

Janet flashes him a smile, then slinks up to him, elbows on the bar. “I’m wearing makeup, sweetie. Lose the shades and see for yourself.” She hooks the frames with a finger and sets them down next to his cell phone. “I just don’t look like a raccoon for once, unlike you.”

He forgot about the shades, and squints now, adjusts his vision. Waning sunlight illuminates the tabletops by the windows. Throughout the shadowy room, dim candles flicker in wrought-iron candelabra.

And then he spots his favorite patron, famously sexy anchorwoman Stacy Fredericks, whose sliver of a profile he recognizes despite the lineup of beer taps and the distance from here to there, not to mention her uncharacteristic Black Widow getup and the familiar swarm of blunderers already stuck in her web. Apparently, like Nicky, Stacy decided to get into the spirit of Nostradamus tonight, to lose the anchorwoman skirt suit and play along, in the fashion, neo-medieval style. By her side, and forever unable to extricate himself, is her network sidekick, Lester Dent, who evidently doesn’t see his own combover in the mirror when he leaves his house, or doesn’t yet appreciate the fact that his thin orangey coif is just one of the reasons that Stacy always maintains a polite distance-his nearly senior-citizen status, baggie pastel suits, and wife and kids rounding out the list of other reasons.

Nicky drains his drink, and Janet is there with a fresh shaker of Fizz.

She follows Nicky’s gaze. “Well, that didn’t take you long.”

Lester Dent lets out an awful laugh as he wraps an arm around Stacy.

“They are so fucking,” Janet says.

“No way,” Nicky says.

“Never underestimate a woman’s love for power and money.”

Nicky lets his jaw drop in mock astonishment. “Not Stacy Fredericks.” Janet sneaks her shot, and Nicky follows suit with a good slug, secretly eager to get the scoop, egging her on: “She already has power and money.”

“Especially the ones with power and money, honey,” she says.

“I guess I’m out of luck,” Nicky says.

“Hardly, sweetie. You’re cute. Cute trumps everything.”

She fills his glass, and his heart swells. Still, his eyes return to Stacy Fredericks, who in one splendid motion twists at the waist, finishes her drink, and sets her martini glass on the bar. Before she turns back to the dull network crew, Nicky can swear she locks eyes with him, but his mind is playing tricks, of course. He feels as if he knows her, ever since last year when she spilled her guts at the end of that broadcast, tearing up, still battling a broken heart, she said, grateful for the city’s welcoming embrace. Welcoming embrace, his ass. Still, Nicky fell for the whole bit, hook, line, and sinker. Two divorces. A woman in a man’s business. From the South, no less. He remembered what it was like to be new in the city. He defended her against the cynics who thought the performance a ploy, a false confession, meant to dupe hard-hearted Philadelphians who’d dubbed her Ice Queen.

After that, Nicky started TiVo-ing the news, fast-forwarding through the Lester Dent parts. He studied her expressions. He imagined her at home with her dogs, kept his eyes out for her on Spring Garden, caught a glimpse of her a few times on the sidewalk, heading from the network building to the parking garage, always appearing sad and alone, despite her buoyant gait, that gleaming smile as she clapped her cell phone shut, the white Land Rover sailing out from the shadows in a kind of triumph over her broken heart-it was all a mask.

A month ago, when she went national, gushing with Oprah about her abusive deadbeat exes, commiserating about the dearth of men capable of loving a strong woman, it was as if she were appealing directly to him, confessing her shyness, her hope that some such man would emerge from some unlikely place, as Nicky went on hiding in the shadows, his encounters limited to flybys as he hauled a bus tub to the kitchen. And yet, he has always maintained the belief that she could go for a low-life like him-or a nice guy with a shit job and no prospects. After all, her two husbands had been a hack disc jockey and some strapping clod stuck in the minors- not exactly high-class millionaires. In those brushes in the barroom, he swears he sensed a subtle leaning, a longing to shake these studio geeks and let loose.

“I see you all the time,” she says, the familiar voice electroshock silky in his ear. “I mean, where have I seen you?”

The majestic swoop of hair falls into view, elbow lands, a finger floats, and now she might as well be slipping into Nicky’s Inquisition Fizz.

“Yeah,” he says, dizzy, but not stupid-drunk enough to look up and give away his low-class identity too soon. Milk this moment to the end of heaven, he thinks. There’s a part of him-beyond his own shame-that wants to spare the girl her own embarrassing moment when she realizes he’s the busboy on his night off. Still, Stacy Fredericks walked over here on her own, Nicky reminds himself, just as Lester Dent barks, “We’re outta here, Stace,” hovering nearby. “You comin’?”

Nicky utters, “I see you all the time too,” and in a flash he can hear her glossy grin, smell the metallic glint of her silver-skull earrings, taste the waxy scent of this whole leather masquerade-just as he feels Lester Dent huffing and fleeing into the altered night.

“1-800-INJURED!” she blurts, and now it’s too late-he’s looking right at her, giving her the full view. “You are