The Great California Game

Well, hardly a friend. I opened the envelope, found it stocked with money. Hastily I hid it and hoped nobody had seen. Josephus and Jonie were busy, and Delia was in Fredo’s office signing on a new waitress. Maybe this was my pay for my extra unknowable job. The speed of America was bewildering. Should I tell Fredo? Was there a message in with the gelt? I was scared to look, with Manfredi’s starting to fill with breakfast customers. I gave Fredo the envelope to stick in his office safe.

That day, I started taking an interest in the bar’s television. We always kept it on. As the hours slid by in a cacophony of talk I kept watch, throwing in the occasional comment about politicians, bankers, showbiz personalities as they showed on screen. I wasn’t being nosy, you understand. Just human. Fredo had been blunt: I should say nothing about the special job he’d sent me on. I understood that. Us illegal immigrant workers love anonymity. But there’s nothing wrong with learning about a city, is there?

By evening I started activating the customers. I’d got nowhere with the telly.

“Hey, man,” I responded to one enthusiast who’d challenged my supreme ignorance about New York. “I’m from the West Coast. What do I know?”

He was a regular, a cheery early-nighter from Brooklyn. I got him onto local politicians, easy with so many news bulletins on the million TV channels they have.

“See, N’York’s a kinda special case,” he told me, well into his third manhattan. “This city’s the world’s business leader. The Federal Government should help, ’stead of trying to tax us out of existence.”

A lively debate struck up. Everybody seemed to be from somewhere else, but with know-all opinions about running New York.

The elegant lady—she of the Belgian gold handbag —the far corner soon after six, silently reading, but listening.

“Look at the way Washington treats N’York…”

“Mmmh,” I went, polishing glasses, serving. “Sure does.”

Background was my role in life. Get enough money for the fare homeward. Until then, be silent as wallpaper, your friendly barman.

“Hi, Lovejoy. Remember me?”

“Hi, Rose.” It was a careful greeting. She’d cautioned me yesterday about saying “Howdy’. I was narked, but she’d said it’s cowboy. “What can I get you?”

“You have to ask, Lovejoy?”

Tunafish salad, sliced eggs, coffee, glass of white wine. And her usual end stool. I served as Brooklyn’s argument heated up. Lil chipped in. It was all so friendly. Lovely, innocent, and so American.

Still no recognizable faces on the news. Good newscasters, a hundred times better than ours back home. One up for USA.

Maybe it was preying on my mind, but by now I was almost certain I’d seen two of the faces before. I could only have seen them on the news. I’m hopeless with names, but I love faces. The trouble is we disguise ourselves with posh speech, fine clothes. We go about hoping everybody thinks we went to a better school than we actually did. Or that we’re richer. Anything but truth. Faces are often the only way in to the real person beneath. I wish I’d remembered that. It might have saved a life.

Rose spun out her meal for well over two hours. By then Manfredi’s was quiet, the cheerful arguers reduced to sports grumblers. She put it to me as I passed her the chit.

“Lovejoy. Moira wants to know if you’ll call. Maybe come round for coffee after work?” She smiled at my hesitation. “She’ll pay the taxi to your hotel.”

“I’m not good with relatives, love.”

“A paying job, Lovejoy. Antique stuff.”

She was speaking confidentially. Nobody else within earshot.

“Fine.”

She slid off the stool. “You remember the address?”

“It’s the only one I know in New York.” She left a tip, to my embarrassment, but Delia barked at me when I demurred.

“We’re taxed eight per cent of our salary, Lovejoy. Refuse a tip, you’re subsidizing Uncle Sam.”

“Thank you, miss,” I called after Rose. A minute later, the elegant woman in the corner also left. No coincidence, not any more. She was Moira all right. But why the secrecy?

What harm could a third job do? I’d already got two. I joked my way towards closing time. Fredo quietly told me he was pleased I’d done well at Mr Aquilina’s, and to leave an hour earlier that night. He looked rough and tired, so I said I’d stay. He insisted. I obeyed.

NINEISH on a wet New York evening isn’t beautiful. I walked carefully, keeping to the well-lit areas as Rose had told me. I saw some old geezer preaching God is Love and was coming to exterminate us. Two blokes were brawling on the pavement with drunken sluggishness. People in doorways start soliciting an hour after dark, demanding change and offering packets of God-knows-what. Taxis always seem to be heading the opposite way.

Odd, but the dozy old man on the hotel counter gave me a greeting, his first ever. Really unnerved, I climbed up to my grotty pad, and found Jennie there. Now, I always keep the room key whenever I’m in a hotel, so she was a surprise.

She didn’t move, just pointed to the chair opposite. No smile. I exhaled, having had some ludicrous notion of asking what the hell but deciding the better of it. Where Nicko’s catering manageress was, various goons wouldn’t be far behind.

“Zircons, Lovejoy.”