Telegraph Avenue

Anyway, there’s folks, I’m not saying who, but there is a general consensus at large, Nat, says you are not really a people person.”

“I like people in theory,” Nat said. “That’s what was good about Brokeland. It was all just a theory we had.”

“Turns out,” Archy agreed.

“So now, you’re saying, it’s time to get real.”

“Follow my helpful example.”

“Selling real estate.”

“That’s only one of my many ways.”

“And for me to get real, I need to start a website that will sell forty-year-old chunks of vinyl on consignment to invisible Samoans.”

“I showed Mr. Singletary the books,” Archy said.

“You what?”

“He went over them. Got way down deep inside.”

Nat shuddered. “A man of courage.”

“He asked me a lot of questions. Who did I know that was trying to make it online, how they handled it, did they go through eBay or have their own online store or what. I guess he even went and talked to some people, talked to the dude at the mailbox store about shipping costs. He thinks you could do it. Sell off all of Mr. Jones’s wax. Make you and the estate some money. And Nat, if Garnet Singletary smells a profit, I think you got to take that shit seriously.”

“Wait, I have to get real and take shit seriously?” Nat said. “At the same time?”

The empty bottle fell out of Clark’s hands, startling him awake.

“Oh, shit,” Archy said. “Okay, little man. All right.” He unstrapped the baby and grabbed him, threaded him through the handle of the car seat. Cupped the baby’s bottom in one palm while the other hand played triplets on his back. Clark was not impressed. Archy fished an enormous key ring out of the other pocket of his John Shaft car coat, barbed with dozens of keys, each one stamped DO NOT COPY, the green plastic fob bearing the legend SINGLETARY PROPERTY MANAGEMENT. He jangled the keys in front of Clark’s face. Clark listened in apparent horror to their clangor. Archy tried to pass the key ring to the boy, let him jingle it for himself, and the keys clanged against the tile floor. At that Clark nearly jumped out of his OshKosh onesie.

“Wow,” Nat said. “Quite a set of lungs.”

“Sometimes you have to do this,” Archy said, taking his son under the arms and subjecting him to a firm oscillation, his hands sweeping and rising, sweeping and rising, back and forth across his body, steady as the works of a clock. As he was synchronized to the rotation of the earth, or maybe just stunned by the sudden increase in velocity, Clark quieted down some. But he remained unwilling to commit fully to silence. So Archy added a complementary leg move to the pendulum swing, a simple harmonic motion, up and down.

Titus Joyner appeared in the doorway of the empty two-room suite. He watched his father’s absurd dance routine with unfeigned, possibly good-natured scorn.

“What?” Archy said.

Titus held up Archy’s cell phone. “You left it in the car,” he said. “She called.”

“What I tell you about that ‘she’ shit?”

“Gwen. She called.”

“Yeah? Clark, man, come on. What’d she say?”

“Said don’t forget she’s working tonight. At the hospital.”

“Shit, I did forget. I have to get dinner.” He looked at Nat. “Gwen started in at Chimes, part-time LDR nurse.”

“I heard. Aviva ran into her on the ward.”

“Just to keep some money coming in.”

“We figured. Medical school’s going to be a stretch?”

“What do you suppose?”

“She can get help. Smart and experienced as she is. What school’s not going to want her?”

“You are replete with rosy predictions today about our future.”

“Just quoting Aviva.”

“Gwen’s worried Aviva’s still mad at her.”

“It was a blow. It was, you know.”

“I know.”

“Kind of like a divorce. You don’t stop—I mean, you’re mad, but. Let me try him?”

“No, man, I got it.”

“You don’t stop loving the person. You miss them.”

“You do.”

“Come on, give me little mister.”

The partial charm of the pendulum treatment had long since worn off. Archy shrugged and handed over the baby, whose cries had taken on a feline rasp.

“Hey, hey, big boy. Okay, now. We’re friends, aren’t we? Oh, yeah, we go way back, Clark and I.”

But Nat, though he broke out his most sonorous and somniferous material to hum, proved no more adept than Archy at quieting the baby.

“Give him,” Titus said.

Archy okayed it with a nod, and Nat passed the baby to his older brother, who carried him out of the suite, along the hall, to the terra-cotta stairs of the old building. By the time he came out onto the sidewalk, Clark appeared to have run out of things to complain about. He lay supine in a crook of Titus’s arm, hot and sweaty and smelling of clabber. The October sunshine was dusty and mild. Halloween a week off, here came Julie Jaffe, rolling up on his skateboard, ready a week ahead of time. All in black, blazer, pants, a black string tie like Val Kilmer’s in Tombstone. Wearing a long, threadbare satin glove, purple and finned, on his right hand. Hair dyed a matte black. Stealth hair, absorbing all ambient light, reflecting nothing. Black hair, red freckles, kind of weird in combination, but somehow he made it work. He left his white earbuds buried in his ears. Stomped on the tail of the deck, flipped it up into his arms. “What’s up?” he said.

“Yo, check it out,” said Titus. “It’s Johnny Cash.”

Julie tugged out each earbud, pop, pop. He crossed his eyes at the baby, kissy-faced him. Reached out one finger, touched the tip of it to a teardrop that clung to Clark’s cheek. “Why was he crying?”

“Boy don’t really need a reason,” Titus said.

“I saw you coming out of Fred’s Deli, uh, yesterday.”

“Yeah.”

“With Kezia. She’s pretty.”

“She’s all right.”

“I knew her at Willard. Actually, I went to kindergarten with her. She was always really nice to me.”

“She remembers you, too.”

“And those guys, Darius and, um, Tariq, I know them, too. They’re okay.”

“Yeah.”

“I mean, they aren’t the worst. It’s good you made friends or whatever.”

“Julie.”

“I’m sorry.”

Titus looked away. Watched the traffic, lips compressed, an air of imposing patience on exasperation. “Everybody crying,” he observed.

Without quite looking at Julie, he handed over the cloth diaper that had come along with his brother, stuck to his pj’s by static electricity. Julie used the diaper to wipe his eyes. It came away bearing the calligraphy, painted in smeary guyliner, of his sadness.

“Sorry,” Julie said. “I’m such a loser.”

“Nah, whatever.”

“I made a couple friends, too.”