Underworld

Nick didn't think it was necessary to have one job for life and start a family and live in a house with dinner on the table at six every night and he thought about George, an older guy who'd survived the loss of these things-not the loss but the never-having. Played cards, played pool, got laid, a few dollars in his pocket, not a whole lot of time to think. Fuck you, I'll die alone.That's what George was saying in his heart.

'Pays decent?'

'Better than you're making. Steadier. Safer except you'll get four hernias your first week. And a stroke come summer. Make you a man, Nicky.'

'I appreciate.'

'You don't have to say nothing. Maybe they'll hire you, maybe they won't.'

'I want you to know. I appreciate.'

'They'll take one look at you. This is a guy all he thinks about is getting laid. We better find a polack somewhere.'

Nick liked that. They played cards a while longer and he realized George was giving him an odd look, measuring him somehow.

'You think I keep rubbers in this drawer here?'

'I don't know.'

'You want to see what I keep in here?'

'I don't know, George. Sure, why not?'

'No. I don't think you want to see what I keep in here.'

'Sure, why not?'

'No. Big mistake. You'll talk.'

'I won't talk. Who'm I gonna tell?'

All right. George was having a little fun with him, not that he changed expression. Raw, drawn, tired, with receding hair and long fingers stained with cigarette tar.

'Because I trust you, Nicky.'

He reached into the drawer and came out with a box of kitchen matches and a spoon.

'We used to call these lucifers, these wood matches.'

The utensil was an ordinary spoon clouded on the bottom of the bowl, stained like George's fingers, only darker and marbled.

'I'm watching,' Nick said.

'You interested?'

'I'm interested,' he said.

George reached into the drawer and came out with a length of elastic, medical-looking, a strapping device of some kind. He tossed it next to the matches and looked at Nick.

'I'm still watching.'

'You watching?'

'I'm watching.'

George reached in and came out with a hypodermic needle, a needle and dusty syringe, and he held it in front of Nicky's face.

'You watching? Watch.'

It took Nick a minute to understand all this. This was new to him. Drugs. Who used drugs around here? He felt dumb and confused and very young suddenly

'You use this stuff?'

George lifted a fold-over pouch out of his breast pocket. He wagged it several times and dropped it back in.

'Eroina,' he said.

Nick felt dumb all right. He felt like someone had just sandbagged him in an alley. Wham. He almost put a hand to the back of his neck.

'Let me see it,' he said.

George took out the pouch and handed it to him. Nick lifted the flap and tried to sniff the powder.

'What are you smelling? It don't smell.'

He handed it back.

'How come?'

'How come what?'

'You use this stuff.'

George rolled up the sleeve on his left arm. There were stippled marks and scars and in the crook of the elbow a dark mass, a fester of busted blood vessels and general wreckage.

Then he brandished the needle, enjoying himself.

'You asked me do I fix up my friends? What kind of fix?'

'Hey. Get away.'

'We'll start you slow. Skin-pop. You don't hit a vein.'

'I skeeve needles, George. Get that thing away from me.'

'You hit the plunger, see.'

'This I don't need.'

'Come on. We'll tie you off.'

George brandished the elastic belt and Nick felt he had to get up and stand across the room. The older man enjoyed that.

'How come?' he said.

'How come how come. You want to get laid. How come,' George said.

For years kids played hango seek down the yards and there were nickel-and-dirne dice games and older guys who might tap a keg on a hot day and drink a few brews standing up in the shade and women who hung out the windows to get some air and complain about the cursing.

'You could put that needle in your arm? Man, I skeeve that like death.'

George smiled. He was happy. He swept his works back in the drawer and lit up a cigarette and sat there with his face in the smoke.

They talked about the robbery and after a while the tone went back to normal.

'Gotta go,' Nick said.

'Be good.'

'See you at Mike's.'

'Be good,' George said.

Nick made a turn in the dim passage and went out into a small courtyard where trash cans stood against the wall and he walked up the back stairs and through the heavy metal door into his building.

George had cut him down to size all right. George had taught him a lesson in serious things.

It happened near the end of the day when no one expected it. This was her intention of course. It happened fast and hard and unexpected.

Sister turned from the blackboard where she'd been diagramming a compound sentence, the chalked structure so complex and self-appending it began to resemble the fire-escaped facade of the kind of building most of the boys and girls lived in.

She paused just long enough to let them know that something was coming but not so long that they might guess what it was.

Then she said, 'Duck and cover! Duck and cover! Duck and cover!'

For a long moment they were too shocked to think straight. Slow, shocked, klutzy and dumb. They began to tumble out of their seats, knocking over books and bumping each other, all scuttling to the three designated walls as they'd been trained to do, squat-hopping like people in potato sacks.

The fourth wall was the window wall, which they'd been told to avoid.

Matty saw Francis X. Cavanaugh blunder nuts-first into a desk edge. He felt a sympathetic quiver in his loins.

And Sister's voice keening across the room, drop and duck, duck and cover, and the kids jostling for position