'Spotless,' Arkadian said, talking fast, running his sentences together
in his quiet anger. 'No streaks on the mirrors, no stains in the
sinks, we check them after every customer uses them, disinfect them
every day, you could eat off those floors and it would be as safe as
eating off the plates from your own mother's kitchen.'
Looking at Jack over Arkadian's head, Luther smiled and said, 'I think
I'll have a steak and baked potato. What about you?'
'Just a salad,' Jack said. 'I'm trying to lose a few pounds.'
Even if he had been listening to them, Mr. Arkadian couldn't have been
joked out of his bleak mood. He jangled a ring of keys.
'I keep them locked, give the keys only to customers. City inspector
stops around, he tells me a new rule says these are public facilities,
so you've got to let them open for the public, whether they buy
anything at your place or not.'
He jangled the keys again, harder, more angrily, then harder still.
Neither Jack nor Luther tried to comment above the strident ring and
raffle.
'Let them fine me. I'll pay the fine. When these are unlocked, the
drunks and junkie bums who live in alleys and parks, they use my
bathrooms, urinate on the floor, vomit in the sinks. You wouldn't
believe the mess they make, disgusting, things I'd be embarrassed to
talk about.'
Arkadian was actually blushing at the thought of what he could have
told them.
He waved the jangling keys in the air in front of each open door, and
he reminded Jack of nothing so much as a voodoo priest casting a
spell--in this case, to ward off the riffraff who would despoil his
rest rooms. His face was as mottled and turbulent as the stormy sky.
'Let me tell you something. Hassam Arkadian works sixty and seventy
hours a week, Hassam Arkadian employs eight people full time, and
Hassam Arkadian pays half of what he earns in taxes, but Hassam
Arkadian is not going to spend his life cleaning up vomit because a
bunch of stupid bureaucrats have more compassion for some
lazy-drunken-psychojunkie bums than they have for people who are trying
their damnedest to lead decent lives.'
He finished his speech in a rush, breathless. Stopped jangling the
keys.
Sighed. He closed the doors and locked them.
Jack felt useless. He could see that Luther was uncomfortable too.
Sometimes a cop couldn't do much more for a victim than nod in sympathy
and shake his head in sorry amazement at the depths into which the city
was sinking. That was one of the worst things about the job.
Mr. Arkadian went around the corner to the front of the station
again.
He wasn't walking as fast as before.
His shoulders were slumped, and for the first time he looked more
dejected than angry, as if he had decided, perhaps on a subconscious
level, to give up the fight.
Jack hoped that wasn't the case. In his daily life, Hassam was
struggling to realize a dream of a better future, a better world. He
