boy. I watched you and your friend in that aisle. You hesitated, because you know the difference between right and wrong. Then you made the wrong decision. But listen, it’s not the end of the world, if you
Derek nodded, looking into the man’s eyes. They had softened somewhat since their first encounter.
“Derek, right?”
“Yes.”
“You know what you wanna be when you grow up?”
“A police,” said Derek, without even turning it over in his mind.
“Well, there you go. You need to start thinking on how you’re going to live your life, even now. Everything you do as a young man can affect what you become or don’t become later on.”
Derek nodded. It was unclear to him where the man was going with this. But it sounded like good sense.
“You can go,” said Fein.
“Go home. I’m not going to call your parents or the police. Think about what I’ve told you today.” Fein tapped his temple with a thick finger.
“Thank you, sir,” said Derek, rising up out of his chair as if shocked.
Harold Fein moved his eyeglasses down from the top his head and fitted them on the bridge of his nose. He returned his attention to the work waiting on his desk.
Billy was sitting on the curb outside the store. He stood as Derek came to meet him.
“You in trouble?” said Billy.
“Nah,” said Derek, “I’m all right. Where the Martini boys at?”
“They left.”
“Figured they would.”
“We better be gettin’ back to the diner, Derek, it’s late.”
Derek put a hand on Billy’s shoulder. “Thanks, man.”
“For what?”
“For waitin’ on me,” said Derek. Billy ducked his head and grinned.
They walked southeast on Missouri Avenue, toward Kennedy Street. The shadows of late afternoon had begun to lengthen, and they quickened their steps. Down in Manor Park a car went by, its radio playing “You’re So Fine” by that group the Falcons, had that singer Derek’s father liked. The sound of it, and the sight of the colored men in the car, made Derek smile. He felt clean, like he’d just walked out of church. The way you do when you confess.
BY MOST FOLKS’ estimation, Frank Vaughn had it pretty good. He had survived a tour of Okinawa, married a girl with a nice set of legs, fathered a son, bought a house in a white neighborhood, and was making a fair living with a pension waiting for him down the road. Men gave him wide berth, and women still looked him over when he walked down the street. Coming up on forty, he was where most men claimed they wanted to be.
Vaughn had a sip of coffee, dragged on his cigarette, and fitted it in a crenellated plastic ashtray his son, Ricky, had bought for him at Kresge’s for Father’s Day. Imagine a kid buying his old man an ashtray. Might as well have given him a card to go with it, said, “Here you go, Dad, hope you croak.” But the kid wasn’t clever enough for that. The ashtray must have been Olga’s idea, her idea of a joke. Like she’d last a week if he wasn’t around. What would she do for a living? No one pays you to shop, watch television, or talk on the phone with your girlfriends. Least not that he was aware.
Vaughn snatched the sports page from the newspaper sections piled at his feet. Redskins president George Marshall, in the process of renegotiating a lease with Calvin Griffith, was threatening to build a new stadium down at the Armory grounds if he didn’t get his terms. Former welterweight champ Johnny Saxton had tried to hang himself in a jail cell after he was caught robbing a five-and-dime. Saxton, who had beaten Kid Gavilan, Carmen Basilio, and Tony DeMarco before he hit the skids, had previously been arrested for trying to steal a fur cape and a pack of smokes. Former Washington Senator Jim Piersall, another candidate for the laughing house, said he was “unhappy” about being traded from Boston to Cleveland. When, exactly, thought Vaughn, had Piersall ever been happy? Audacious and Negro Minstrel were the long-shot daily double picks at Laurel. And the Nats had taken the Orioles two to one when Killebrew doubled in the eighth.
Vaughn dropped the newspaper on the floor and yawned. There was nothing about the straight life that excited him. These days, he could only get jazzed when he walked out that front door, to his other life on the street.
He sat back in his chair and took in Olga, who was building sandwiches on the counter beside the sink. She was wearing black pedal pushers she had picked up at Kann’s, a top from Lansburgh’s over in Langley Park, and a new pair of shoes on her feet. All of it courtesy of his Central Charge card. It kept her happy and it kept her out of his hair, so what the hell.
Olga walked toward him, carrying his sandwich. She had a plain face that had hardened over the years. The heavy eye shadow she wore, the hair-sprayed helmet of hair, the pancake makeup, and the red-red lipstick did not enliven her, but rather reminded Vaughn of a corpse. She had kept her figure, at least, though it had flattened out somewhat in the back. She still had nice legs.
“Here you go, honey,” she said, putting the plate down in front of him.
“Thanks, baby doll,” he said.
Olga picked up one foot and wiggled it around. “Capezios. You like ’em? I got ’em over at Hahn’s.”
“They’re all right,” he said with a scowl. He wasn’t angry that she’d bought them. He couldn’t have cared less. But he was expected to react this way. And now she’d justify the purchase.
“I needed a new pair,” she said. “And I’ve been saving every place else. Honey, I’ve got a full book of S amp;H Green Stamps…”
He blocked out the rest of it. Her voice reminded him of flies buzzing around his head. Annoying but harmless. He grunted almost inaudibly, thinking of how he must have looked. Sitting there, acting like he was listening but not really listening at all, giving her his canine grin, his eyes heavy lidded and amused, slowly nodding his head.
Finally, when she was done running her mouth, he said, “C’mon, Olga, let’s eat.”
He finished his cigarette while she went to the stairs by the foyer and called up for their son. He heard her add, “And go down and get Alethea, tell her to come up, too.”
As Olga placed the other setups and drinks around the table, Ricky came in, twelve years old and flouncy-bouncy in that way of his that made Vaughn fear his son was gonna be a swish, and took a chair. He had been up in his bedroom, standing in front of the mirror, most likely, doing the twist or some other crazy dance he had learned from watching that guy, Dick Clark. It hadn’t been long since Ricky was nuts over Pick Temple, that TV cowboy, and now his interests had gone to girls in sweaters. Vaughn hoped. He loved his kid but had never understood him. He should have tried to get closer to him, especially when he was younger, but he didn’t know how. No one gave out road maps on how to be a father. Vaughn tapped ash, thinking, All you can do is the best you can.
Alethea entered the kitchen wearing one of those old uniforms of hers, a shapeless white dress that could not hide her shape. Vaughn watched her walk to the table, hoping to get a look at her legs as the sunlight from the kitchen window went through her dress. She held her head erect and her shoulders square as she crossed the room and took a seat. She wore no makeup, and her hair was hidden under some kind of patterned scarf she always donned when working at their house.
Vaughn put her at about forty. She wasn’t young, but she was allwoman. He wondered what she did to her husband when the lights went out. He thought about it often. Sometimes he thought about it when he made love to his wife.
You couldn’t call Alethea beautiful or anything close to it. Her skin was dark and she had
