“But he was ordained to die on the asphalt,” Jo said.
I wondered if her chicken bones had been so specific but I didn’t ask.
“Wanna go fishin’, Easy?” Dom asked.
“In the mornin’?”
“Now,” he cried. “The grunion’s runnin’.”
I STOPPED AT a phone booth and called Bonnie. She seemed to understand, which surprised me because I was still in the haze of Jo’s potion.
“I dreamed I had a door,” I said into the receiver.
“It was telling you something,” Bonnie said. “Something that you need to know.”
* * *
AFTER THAT RAYMOND AND DOM and I ran up and down the beach with our aluminum pails scooping up the spawning fish and laughing out loud. We were like children in the dark of the ocean. No one knew we were there. No one cared about us and that was just fine by me.
Amber Gate
THERE WAS A SMALL shoe repair shop at 86th Place and Central Avenue back in those days. But Mr. Steinman, the owner and only employee, also made shoes. And if Steinman made you a pair of shoes you’d have to work in a junk-yard in order to wear them down. It took him three months to finish just one pair. He charged two hundred dollars but that was cheap for the craftsmanship and style. And he didn’t make shoes for just anyone. No. He had to know his customer before agreeing to spend a quarter of a year on a pair of shoes for him. He had to work on your footwear and see how you cared for what you bought in the stores. You had to prove that you would maintain the shine and use a frame to keep up the shape. You couldn’t have scuff marks or uneven heel wear from poor posture if you wanted to wear a pair of handcrafted Steinman’s.
He was an odd little white man but I liked him quite a bit. And he must have liked me because he had left a message that he’d just finished my third pair of handmade shoes.
When I opened the front door, a small bell tinkled and there was a rustling behind the wall of hanging shoes that stood between Steinman’s workroom and the front. The front room was less than three feet deep and just about eight feet across. There was no chair for waiting because, as Steinman once told me, “I never hurry at my work, Mr. Rawlins. If they want speed, let them buy cardboard soles from Drixor’s department store.”
We probably didn’t have one drop of blood in common but we were cut from the same cloth still and all.
“Mr. Rawlins,” Steinman said. He stood in the small opening that led to his workshop.
“Good morning, Mr. Steinman.”
We had given each other permission to use first names years before but courtesy kept us proper except at odd, more intimate moments.
“Come on in, in back.”
I followed the little cobbler into his workshop, knowing that I was one of only four or five people who were ever given that privilege.
The back room was composed of endless shelves cluttered with pairs of shoes tied together by their laces and marked with yellow tailor’s chalk. Women’s shoes were held together by string.
“Sit, sit,” Steinman said. “I wanted to talk to you. Can I get you something to drink? I have schnapps.”
This was unusual even for our cordial relations. Often I sat for a half hour or more and talked to Theodore. I had been part of an invading army that subdued his homeland—Germany. But Steinman had come to America as a child in 1910 and had no patriotism for the Third Reich or its war on the rest of the world. We talked about cities and streets that I’d seen.
“My mother always told me that Germany is one of the most beautiful countries in the world,” he often said.
I didn’t really agree with her but I always nodded and said, “It sure is.”
But he’d never offered me a drink before. If he had, he would have known that I’d stopped drinking soon after my first wife left me.
“No thanks, Mr. Steinman. It’s a little early for me.”
“Yes. Yes. It is early.”
“How are you, Theodore?” I asked, sensing that we weren’t conducting simple shoe business.
“Yes,” he said, nodding his large bald head. “For me things are fine. I have a good business. My children are doing very well. I have three grandchildren now.”
“That’s great,” I said. I was in no hurry to get to the point. If I had an office, I thought, I wouldn’t have had a waiting room either.
“But some people are not so lucky.”
“Who for instance?” I asked.
“Mr. Tanous.”
I’d never heard that name before and my expression said so.
“He’s the man who owns this building,” Theodore Steinman said. “The whole block really. He’s a nice man. A good man.”
