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 Her hair, dyed black, was cut in the Friends style that the Aniston girl had made famous but was now way out of date.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.”
“He needs to do his math,” said Kendall.
“I will, Mom.”
“You promise your mother you’re gonna do your homework later?” said Monroe.
“Yes.”
“Let’s go, then.”
Kendall gave Monroe an approving glance as he crossed the room with the boy. They went out the back door, down wood stairs to a cracked sidewalk bordered by two small patches of dirt, weeds, and a little grass, and entered a small detached garage next to the alley.
Kendall had bought the house for fifty thousand and change ten years back, and now it was worth several hundred thousand dollars. She had endured the drug dealing, break-ins, and violent crime in the neighborhood, and though the problems had not been completely eradicated, her vision of a Park View transformed was beginning to take hold.
Many of the homes on her street had been turned over to new-generation ownership and were being reconditioned. Though she had made no major improvements, Kendall kept her place in clean good shape. Monroe handled the basic maintenance, which was often no more than throwing a fresh coat of paint on a wall, drilling new screw holes for those that had been stripped, caulking the bathtub and shower stall, and replacing broken windows, a skill his father had taught him and James when they were boys.
Monroe had also organized the garage. His parents had not had one in Heathrow, and it was a luxury for him. He had screws, nuts, bolts, washers, and nails in clear film canisters, labeled by Sharpies on tape, aligned on a wooden shelf. Motor oil, transmission fluid, brake fluid, rags, cleaning supplies, windshield washer fluid, and antifreeze were lined up in a row against one cinder-block wall. He had brought his toolbox down here and took it back to his mother’s as needed. He supposed he was slowly moving in.
“I don’t know how the tire got flat,” said Marcus, as Monroe upended his bike, a Dyno 2000 with rear pegs, and set it on its saddle and bars.
“You ran over something, I expect. Go get me those tire levers off the shelf.” When Marcus did not move, Monroe said, “Those blue things, thick plastic, a few inches long. Got hooks on the end.”
