Underworld

Close-set buildings, laundry lines, slant light, patches of weeds, a few would-be gardens and bare ailanthus trees and the fire escapes that fixed fretwork patterns of light and shade on the walls and paved surfaces.

Nick ducked under overhangs and passed through narrow openings. There were padlocked doors and doors ajar. There were basement passages connecting utility rooms and alcoves for trash cans and the old coal bins that housed furnaces now and the storage rooms where merchants on the street kept their inventory-a smell that was part garbage and part dank stone, a mildew creep and a thick chill, a sense that everything that ever happened here was retained in the air, soaked and cross-scented with fungus and wetness and coffee grounds and mops in big sinks.

He'd spent his childhood half in the streets and half down the yards with a little extra squeezed in for the rooftops and fire escapes.

He went past a furnace room and opened a door at the end of the passage. George the Waiter was sitting in a small storage room he used as a home, he said, away from home. He saw Nick in the doorway and nodded him in. George had an arrangement with the super. The room had a cot, a table, a rat trap, a couple of chairs, a couple of dangling lightbulbs and an array of paint cans and plumbing equipment, and Nick was pretty sure the arrangement involved a woman who came here to visit George, a woman he paid for sex, and the super let him use the room in exchange for some of the same, periodically, the woman taking care of the super and getting paid by George.

'I figured you'd be here.'

'I'm here,' George said.

'I have a sixth sense about these things.' see through walls.'

George pushed a deck of cards to the middle of the table and Nick sat down.

'Just a sixth sense. I'm still working on walls.'

'Did it tell you, this sense of yours, what happened in the poolroom in the middle of the night?'

He was a bachelor for life, George, and he had two jobs and lived with his eighty-year-old grandmother and shot pool for whole days sometimes when he wasn't working. And when he wasn't doing any of these things Nick would find him here and they'd play a card game called briscola, pronounced breeshk in dialect, a game the old men played, and they played just to pass the time, which there were worse ways of doing because there was something about George the Waiter that Nick found interesting.

'When, last night?'

'Last night. The place got robbed.'

'The poolroom got robbed?'

'Three men with pistols,' George said and he made a sound like movie music.

'Three men with pistols. You were there?'

'I went to work in the restaurant six o'clock, went back at eleven and shot a game and then went home. Happened much later. They robbed the poker game.'

'They robbed the poker game?'

'You gonna repeat everything I say?'

'I'm amazed by what I'm hearing.'

'And stocking masks.'

'And stocking masks. What's that?'

'A woman's stocking, a nylon stocking.'

'On their face?' Nick said.

'No, on their legs. Madonn', I thought this kid was smart.'

'I'm amazed by what I'm hearing. On their face.'

'On their face. So their features don't show.'

'Stocking masks. Three men. Where was what's-his-name? The guy at the door who's supposed to be armed and dangerous. Where was this Walls?'

'He didn't show.'

'Walls didn't show. That's interesting.'

'They cleaned out the table nice-nice. Then they cleaned out the players one by one, turning out their pockets. Then they cleaned out Mike the Book, who's holding whatever he's holding that's a full day's take. Pool receipts and bets.'

'How much?'

'Total. Over twelve thousand I hear. This is I hear. Who knows how much?'

'Twelve thousand.'

'Three men with pistols. Pistolas.'

And George made twirling moves with his hands at belt level like a Mexican bandit showing off his guns and it was rare for him to be so breezy.

Nick shuffled and dealt.

'I meant to get some beer,' he said.

'Who sells beer to a minor?'

'I told Donato's wife I'm nineteen. She says, What do you think I'm stunat'?'

'But she sells you the beer.'

'She sells me the beer.'

'She does it out of spite.'

'For who?'

'The world,' George said.

'Stocking masks. I'm amazed by this.'

They played cards a while and then George leaned over and opened the drawer at the end of the table and felt around for cigarettes without taking his eyes off his cards.

'You keep your rubbers in there?'

'Never mind what I keep in there.'

'Who is she? Trust me. Who'm I gonna tell? Is she the one I saw you rowing a boat in the park one day?'

'If you saw me with a woman in public, then she's not the woman who comes here. And you didn't see me in no boat, wise guy.'

'George, I'm being serious.'

'What?'

fix up your friends?'

George gave him a level look from out of those deep emptyish eyes.

'This is not a girl. This is a woman. And it's not for you. I'm pushing forty, Nicky. You can get what you need without paying for it.'

Maybe this is what interested Nick. The fact that George was the loneliest man he'd ever known. George was lonely in his walk, his voice, his posture and in the way a whole room, the poolroom with its clash of noises and flung insults and ragged laughs-the way George's corner of the room was different even if he was shooting a game with someone else. George carried the condition everywhere he went and it seemed to be okay with him. That was the interesting thing. Maybe it was his choice to live this way and maybe it wasn't but either way he made it seem all right.

'Talk about buying beer.'

'Yeah, what?' Nick said.

'This shit-ass job of yours, which you should of stayed in school in my opinion.'

'This shit-ass job, what?'

'I been talking to somebody You can make more money on a truck. Not beer but soda. Delivering to stores and supermarkets. 7-Up.'

'It makes me wince when I drink it.'

'You'll wince all right. You unload the crates of full bottles and then you load up on empties. Make you a man.'

'Make me a man how?'

'Brute labor, that's how. In summer you just about die. I did it one summer. I cun't fucking believe it. Lost twenty pounds my first two days.'