“The diner on 79th and Capitol.”
At the door, I put on some lipstick. It gives my mouth some weight.
I’ve taken her car keys and I’m shifting my way through the stairwell to the apartment garage.
THE HIGHWAY IS EMPTY
The signs pass. The white lines. The yellow lines. My headlights cross and merge ahead. The air falls out of my nostrils onto my top lip. Brother. Sister.
79TH AND CAPITOL
I turn into the parking lot. Low lit, gummy. A couple cars parked in the shadow of the lamplight, probably just the staff. I lock Angelina’s dark blue sedan and make my way to the entrance door. Her car is the exact color of the night. When I look back, it almost disappears. Vacant, recessed, no use. This hour plays tricks on the thing that’s behind the mind. I walk forward where forward should be.
THE ENTRANCE
It’s not a twisted banner. There, near the doors. It’s a man.
He unfolds. He’s much bigger now. Unbuttoned Soviet leather jacket, scuffed lapel, cracked leather, dangling threads. It sits on his shoulders like a box. Underneath, it’s just a faded work shirt, stiff white cotton with thin gray stripes. His gray trousers puff and cave. His face is covered by his Milwaukee Brewers baseball cap.
He’s somehow bulky and malnourished, strung up in his posture like a wartime puppet.
He extends his long arm and pulls the door open for me. I walk in and he walks in after me. Behind us the door wheezes closed and the chimes ring.
INSIDE
The place is so bright with its fluorescent light that I have to squint. Red square tables with brown chairs and puckered red booths, all empty. Just at the counter, a thin-haired woman in a powder-pink cardigan is dipping fries into her strawberry milkshake, and sucking on them. The clock shows past 2am.
The waitress comes toward us. She’s got hazelnut-colored skin. Her mouth, though. Her mouth. A perfect cupid’s bow. Carefully framed by her dark hair in a relaxed bob.
“Right this way,” she says in her creamy inflection.
Nicky and I are seated at a booth against the wall and given our menus.
“Can I start you off with anything to drink?” our waitress asks.
Nicky looks up at her and pauses. She smiles at him, stretching out her cupid’s bow.
NICKY ORDERS
His English is goofy. Eager. Hopeless.
“In start we have two coffee with please bring sugar and milk okay,” Nicky says. The waitress writes it down dutifully in her pad.
“Also please give to us the chocolate chip pancake and also please grills cheese okay.”
She adds that to her list.
HIS FACE
In the light, it’s more spirit than flesh. From the sides of his cap, his dark brown hair is muzzled. His skin is gray, uneven stubble on a rickety jaw-line. It’s just the eyes that make sense. Thin and blue and bootlegged in their sparkle.
LISETTE
When she’s gone, Nicky tilts his head in the direction of the waitress and says, “That’s Lisette. You can trust her.”
“I can’t even trust you,” I say. “Where’s Misha?”
“Misha?”
“Moshe. My brother.”
Nicky reaches in his pocket and pulls out a gold chain with a dangling pendant and puts it on the table between us. Shards of light. I run my thumb over each of the six corners of the star.
“Just fucking say it, Nicky, if you’re trying to tell me my brother is dead.”
“Bozhé, Olga, you shouldn’t say things like that! He’s not dead. He took this off. He knew they’d just steal it where he was going.”
WHERE IS HE GOING?
Lisette sets down two pearl-white mugs with deep black coffee.
“Milk and sugar are just there.” She’s pointing to the condiments box.
“Yes, good, we have all please goodbye,” Nicky says to her hurriedly.
I look up at her. A smile begins to slide upon that beautiful mouth.
Nicky is tapping on the wooden table and leaning toward me.
“You care about your brother or not?” he says.
It might be the night. I squint and squint and squint at Nicky.
“I’m listening, aren’t I?” I say.
BROTHERS
“If you’re ever in any trouble, you come here and you ask for Lisette. She’ll always be here when you need her.”
“Okay…” I say, pouring a creamer into my coffee until it’s the color of Angelina’s skin.
“They’ve got her brother too, if it’s any help to hear. His name is Rémy. He’s the one who passed on Moshe’s necklace.”
The woman in the powder-pink cardigan creaks out of her chair and heads toward the bathroom.
Our chocolate chip pancakes and grilled cheese have arrived. Lisette is pacing away, her heels punctual on the wooden floor. Nicky is opening up the butter packet and putting the whole square onto the whipped cream on top of the pancakes, then tipping over the maple syrup till it puddles at the edges of the plate.
“I’m starving,” he mumbles. “Eat, eat.”
IT’S LIKE PRISON
Nicky explains as he’s chewing, “…but inside out. I know. I’ve been to prisons. This is worse.”
Nicky cuts the grilled cheese in half and offers me a piece.
I’m watching the cheese cry down the sides.
“Eat, I said,” Nicky insists. “Don’t draw attention.”
I glance at the empty tables and Lisette refilling the napkin dispenser at the counter. I pick up the buttery charred bread and bite into the thing. Hot American cheese runs over my lip.
“Good,” Nicky says, “keep eating…”
I’m wiping my mouth with a napkin. I’m taking a sip of my creamy coffee. I’m putting my fork into the chocolate chip pancakes.
“Keep eating…”
ONCE, TWICE, THRICE
“But Misha—Moshe wouldn’t hurt a fly,” I whisper back across the table, melted chocolate chips mixing with the cheese.
“Well he stabbed some girl once, twice, and thrice,” Nicky says.
“What girl, that’s not true, it can’t be true!”
“Shhh…” Nicky leans in.
He’s scooping the whipped cream off my side of the chocolate chip pancakes onto his.
“I telling you what I know,” he whispers. “She was eighteen, from Whitefish Bay,
