Telegraph Avenue

“I’m sorry that I lost my temper the way I did,” she said. “With the doctor. I let my… my…”

“Self-righteousness?” Archy suggested helpfully.

Gwen nocked a scowl to her bowstring, aimed it at Archy, then lowered her bow and nodded. “Self- righteousness. My thin skin. Part of the same thing, I guess, that makes it so hard for me to apologize. But I do apologize, and I am sorry. My focus right then ought to have been on Lydia and the baby and nothing else. I failed them, and I failed you, and thank God that baby of yours is healthy and beautiful, because if anything had happened to her…”

She started to lose it, pulled herself together. Carried on. “I understand your anger. I accept it. But I’m hoping that you might find it in your heart to forgive me.”

“Okay,” Garth said.

“Okay, you forgive me?”

“Of course,” he said. “Why not?”

“Does this mean—” Moby said. “I’m sorry, but, informally acting as Gwen’s attorney, I have to ask. Are you dropping the lawsuit against her and Aviva?”

“No problem,” Garth said.

When they got back in the car and drove away, Gwen let herself go. She cried until they got down to the lower gate of the Claremont Hotel, and then she stopped. “I think you ought to try it,” she said.

“I already did,” Archy said. “I got no traction.”

“I wasn’t ready then,” Gwen said. “I didn’t know how good it feels.”

“Okay,” Archy said. “I’m sorry, Gwen. I fucked up long and often, in all kinds of ways, and I’m just nothing but sorry about that. Do you think you could find it in your heart to forgive me?”

“No,” Gwen said.

“What?”

“But almost.”

He glanced over at the boy sitting beside him, staring out at the road, nothing much happening in his expression but a bright shine on the eye.

“Okay, then. Titus, you, too. I’m sorry I wasn’t any kind of a father to you for the first fourteen years of your life. You are a fine young man, and I hope to do right by you from now on. Do you think maybe someday you could find it in your heart to forgive me?”

“Okay,” Gwen said. “That’s it. You’re good.”

Then they stopped for a red light, and the baby woke up again, disconsolate and hungry, and Archy stepped on the gas to get them home. It was weeks before he realized that he had never gotten an answer out of Titus, and by then the matter seemed to have lost its urgency.

Archy and Nat met at the property, an upstairs suite in a handsome commercial block of the 1920s, on the Berkeley-Oakland line. Red roof tiles, oak beams, stucco painted a Lena Horne shade of tan. The ground-floor tenants included a hardcore bike shop, an avant-garde knitting supply, and a dealer in vintage tube amplifiers.

“Already got that crank vibe going strong,” Archy observed. “You’re going to fit right in.”

“Funny,” Nat said. He was pacing off the larger of the suite’s two rooms, laying out the shelving, stocking it with vinyl. Wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling. Satan architecting Pandemonium. “It doesn’t make you nervous, three thousand pounds of records on the second floor.”

“Building had a total retrofit,” Archy said. “Two thousand one. Previous occupant was a Pilates. You know they have all those heavy-ass machines.”

“I have spent surprisingly little time around Pilates machines.”

“They are heavy,” Archy said with a show of patience. “Mr. Singletary had the floor braced, cost like ten grand.”

“‘Mr. Singletary,’” Nat said.

Archy put his hand to his chin, bunched up his shoulders, shook his head. Sheepish little smile on his face.

“Now the motherfucker’s going to own the building and the stock,” Nat said. “Doesn’t even care for music.”

“He likes Peabo.”

“Peabo is actually quite underrated,” Nat said.

“Not by Mr. Singletary.”

“Huh.”

The baby woke up and began to fuss. Archy took an Avent bottle from the hip pocket of his leather car coat, uncapped it, gave the nipple a sniff. Crouched down beside the car seat to urge the bottle on his son, fitted it to his lips, waited for him to resume his nap.

“Go to all that pain and trouble to have it,” Archy said. “Then spend your life keeping the little fucker sedated.”

“He doing okay?”

“Seems to be.”

“That’s formula?”

“Last of the frozen breast milk.”

“The lactation consultant couldn’t help you guys?”

“Nat, please.”

“Sorry.”

“Catch one baby, now you’re the damn La Leche League.”

“What’s the rent again?”

“Eight hundred.”

“Ouch.”

“Includes water and trash. A third interest in a half-bathroom. I’d say that’s low, for a building of this outstanding caliber.”

“I imagine you would,” Nat said. “That’s just the kind of thing a real estate agent is supposed to say.”

“Oh, I can definitely talk the talk,” Archy said. “Alas, that ain’t what’s on the exam.”

“Are you going to take it?”

“I’m still deciding.”

“The baby is a great gimmick. Who’s not going to want to buy a house from a giant-size cuddly black man with an achingly cute little baby?”

Archy pondered the question. “Almost no one,” he said.

“I think you have to go for it.”

“I think you do, too,” Archy said. “Mr. Singletary—Garnet—you already gave him too much time, as it is, to reflect on his rash offer.”

Nat looked around at the bare tile of the floor, black and glossy as a record, the freshly painted white walls, the three small windows that overlooked the alley behind the building. “Won’t be a counter. Nobody coming here to hang out, shoot the shit,” he said. “I thought that was all Garnet cared about at Brokeland.”

“I guess something put him in a generous mood. Mr. Jones dying. Dogpile Thang going south on Chan Flowers. G Bad’s moving the whole deal over to the city, going to put it in Hunters Point.”

“I heard Visitacion Valley.”

“But I’ll tell you, Nat, I get the feeling his good mood’s about to wear off. Chan Flowers is already back on his feet, brushing the dirt off his shoulder. Shifting the blame, pulling the levers. Got a guy in the economic development office fired because ‘the city government lost Dogpile,’ so on, so forth. The guy who got fired? Was Abreu’s brother- in-law.”

“No more counter,” Nat said, resuming his previous train of thought. “No more bins, writing up the little comments in Sharpie on the dividers. No more watching the world go by through the front window. That magic window. No more customers.”

“You would have customers,” Archy said. “All over the world. Every time zone, some Samoan, Madagascar motherfucker, hitting you up for a five-thousand-dollar original pressing of Blue Note 1568, deep groove, mono.