two eighty, and most of it was hard.
“James.”
“Ni,” said Maria Juarez. Her reddish lipstick clashed with the rinse in her shoulder-length hair. She was on the short and curvy side, with the worn, aging-before-her-time look of many working-class immigrant women across the city. When she smiled her lovely smile, the hard life and age lines on her face seemed to fall away.
“Hey, baby.”
“Check this out,” she said, pulling a locket away from her chest and opening it up for Stefanos to see. He went to her, looked at the photograph of her gorgeous five-year-old daughter, Rosita, cut to fit the locket’s oval shape.
“She’s beautiful,” said Stefanos, noticing the patch of discol-oration on Maria’s temple.
“She doing good in school,” said Maria. “The teacher say she smart.”
“How could she not be,” said Stefanos, “with a mother like you?”
“Ah, Ni!” she said, making a wave of her hand, then wiping her hands dry on her apron as she returned, blushing, to her salads.
Darnell removed his leather kufi and wiped sweat from his forehead. The knife scar running across his neck was pink against his deep brown skin. “You got business in here, Nick? ’Cause we’re trying to prepare for lunch.”
“Just, you know, stopped in to brighten everyone’s day.”
“Yeah, well we gotta get this place set up, man.”
“What’re the specials?”
“Chef’s salad,” said Maria.
“Got a nice grilled chicken breast today,” said James, raising his spatula in the air, affecting the manner of a school-taught chef. “Marinated it overnight in teriyaki, some herbs and shit. I’m not lyin’, man, that bird is so tender you could fuck it – excuse me, Maria.”
“Is okay,” said Maria.
“Wouldn’t want to lie about that,” said Stefanos.
“Tell the truth,” said James, “and shame the devil.”
“Thought you were gone,” said Darnell, trying to get around Stefanos.
“I’m goin’,” said Stefanos, shaking Darnell’s hand as he passed, then putting pressure on the fleshy, tender spot between Darnell’s thumb and forefinger.
Darnell smiled, caught a grip on Stefanos’s other hand, pushed down so that it bent unnaturally forward at the wrist. They stood toe-to-toe, grunting, until Stefanos yanked his hand free.
“All right, man,” said Darnell, clapping Stefanos on the shoulder.
Stefanos said, “All right.”
“You guys through playing?” said Saylor.
“Yeah,” said Stefanos.
“So what are you still standing here for?”
“I was wondering, Phil,” said Stefanos. “Could I have a word with you, out in the bar?”
“So how well do you know this guy?” said Saylor.
Stefanos folded a dry bar rag into a neat rectangle, tucked it behind the belt line of his jeans so it rested against his hip. “Old family friend.”
“How old?”
“His old man worked for my grandfather in the forties, when my grandfather had his grill over on Fourteenth and S.”
“Okay, but how well do you know him?”
“I’ve run into him a couple of times in the last twenty years.”
“Uh-huh.” Saylor scratched his chin. “If his father worked for your granddaddy, then he must be pretty old.”
“I’d say he’s cruising up on fifty.”
“He must be a real go-getter. Fifty years old and he wants to work in the kitchen of a joint like this.”
“I don’t even know if he does want to work here. A mutual friend of ours suggested it. You remember the Pizza Parlor Murders a couple of years back?”
“I remember it. So what?”
“Dimitri Karras’s son was the kid who got run down by the getaway car.”
“Christ.”
“Yeah. This guy’s no loser. The bottom fell out on him, is what it is. He’s trying to put it together, and I thought we could help.” Stefanos locked eyes with Saylor. “Look, Phil, the setup we got right now isn’t exactly working out. Darnell hasn’t caught a grip on the expediter position, and Ramon can’t bus tables and wash the load of dishes we got with the business we’re doing. Put Darnell back at the sink and bring Karras in to expedite for two hours a day. He’s not desperate for money, so it’s not a case of how much you pay him. It would do the guy good to just go somewhere every day. Get into the flow of normal life again, you know?”
Saylor pushed his glasses up on his nose. “You think he can do it? I mean, I feel sorry for the guy about his kid and all that, but I don’t want to bring someone with emotional problems in here who’s gonna screw up my business.”
“Karras was some kind of college instructor if I remember right. And he used to run a multistore retail operation. So I gotta think he can handle this.”
“Yeah, but does he have any restaurant experience?”
“He’s a Greek, Phil.”
“Good point. Okay, talk to him. See for yourself if you think he’ll work out. I’m gonna leave it up to you. But I’m only gonna pay ten bucks an hour for two hours a day’s worth of work. A free lunch goes with it, and a beer if he’d like. That’s it, you hear me?”
“Thanks. You’ll talk to Darnell?”
“Yeah, I’ll do that. In the meantime, let me outta here before we open. You know I get too nervous when this place heats up.”
Phil Saylor patted the John Riggins poster hung over the bar, then stopped to look at the framed Declaration of Independence print hanging by the service station. He smirked, reading the signatures of the Spot’s regulars scrawled in childlike, drunken script alongside the signatures of America’s forefathers.
“Hey, here’s yours,” said Saylor. “‘Nicholas J. Stefanos.’ I like that curlicue thing you did after your last name. And Boyle’s name, you can barely read it. Jesus, you guys must have been drunk that night.”
“I don’t remember, to tell you the truth. But at least we had the sense to use the same color pen.”
“Comedians,” said Saylor. He was shaking his head as he headed for the door.
Melvin Jeffers raised his up-glass and said, “Another one of these, Nick. And give that Barry a little volume, will you? ’Cause you know this here is my favorite cut.”
Stefanos kicked the house stereo up a notch. He poured rail gin and a hair of dry vermouth into a shaker filled with ice, and strained the mixture into a clean glass. He walked the drink down to the last stool, where Melvin was in place, seated by the service bar. He set Melvin’s martini on a bev nap.
“Here you go, Mel.”
Melvin was the Spot’s singer; every dive like this had one. He was the musical director during lunch – he arrived daily at noon and left promptly at two P.M. – and in this two-hour period he continuously sang along softly to the tapes, many of which he brought in himself. Melvin Jeffers was a small, neat man with an erect bearing. He wore clean traditional clothing and kept a close-cut Afro. He wrapped his hand around the stem of the up-glass, closed his eyes, and went into his best Barry White.
“‘I don’t want to see no panties,’” chanted Melvin solemnly. “‘And take off that brassiere, my dear.’”
Stefanos hash-marked Melvin’s check.
“Another Manhattan,” said the man everyone called Happy, seated in the middle of the bar, staring straight ahead. A filterless cigarette, its untapped ash hanging like a wrinkled gray dick, burned down close to his yellowed fingers.
Happy’s suit was aqua blue. His shirt and tie were kelp green. Happy wore clothes refused by the Salvation Army.
