Even now that her father was home and turning over large amounts of money with his business, she needed the job more than ever. While she would live with him, and sometimes allow her mother to make large purchases for her, she would not take cash directly from her father. This was her settlement with the life about her. All of it was based on this one achievement of her life, her job.
Now, at her desk, Nicki picked up her pocketbook and went to the ladies’ room out in the hallway. As she put the key in the door, she looked about her to be certain no one was trailing her. She then pushed the door in and entered hesitantly. Only when she saw female legs in one of the stalls did she relax. In the past two months, two women had been mugged by filthy Puerto Ricans in the building’s hallways in the late afternoon. Probably someone in Maximo’s family doing it, Nicki said to herself.
She looked in the mirror at her green-gray eyes and carefully put light blue eyeshadow on her eyelids, a little under the eyes, and in the creases she put dark blue for contrast.
“I’m going through a lot of trouble for some Spic. Even if he does look like a movie star,” she said to herself as she inspected her eyes.
Below the eyebrows she put on more light blue, which she covered with white. She then melded the two colors with her index fingers, working her fingers outward, so that the eyeshadow gently faded near the top of her cheekbones. Always, she did this unthinkingly. This time, she could feel the pressure of her fingers on her eyebrows. As she put on mascara, she began to think what she would say to Maximo when she had coffee with him.
“Who says I want to talk to him?” she said to herself.
Back at her desk, she called her mother and said that she was meeting her girlfriend Angela for a drink at five-thirty and would be late for dinner. Then she called her girlfriend Angela, who worked in the garment center. Angela had grown up across the street from Nicki and had been divorced for five years. She found that at thirty a woman in New York was wrapped in a shawl of loneliness even in the most crowded places. Angela, with long dark hair and the near-Oriental eyes of the Sicilians, had exactly three dates in the first two years, the nicest of them turning out to be fighting a losing battle against gayness. When Nicki’s husband went to prison, Angela moved into a garden apartment in Fort Lee so she could be near Nicki.
“I’m meeting you for a drink at five-thirty,” Nicki said to Angela.
“Where?”
“I’m meeting you for a drink at five-thirty, but you’re not coming.”
“What do you mean I’m not coming?”
“Because I’m going out to have a little disgrace tonight. I’m using you.”
“You’re going out?” Angela said. “Good-bye,” Nicki sang. “I can’t believe it,” Angela said. “You?” “Good-bye,” Nicki said again.
There was a crowd of shoppers in the arcade and when she pushed through them and came into the coffee shop, she saw Maximo at a front table, a vision, his head turned from her so that the slope of his neck taunted her. When he turned and saw her and smiled, her breath quickened. Maximo’s nose was slender and his lips thin. Oh, of course they had to be. She knew that she could not have fooled herself the first time she saw him by overlooking big fat lips or wide nostrils. She knew that she could never have made such a mistake, thank God for it too, but at the same time the mere thought of such a thing, just a quickened shred of thought made while turning her head on the pillow the other night, was enough to keep her awake for hours. Oh, could you imagine if his lips were thick! But now as she looked at him, the face aristocratically slender, she was elated.
“Your eyes are lovely,” he said.
“Thank you. Wouldn’t it be better if we went to the back? There’s too many people walking by here.”
“Fine.” He stood up and his face showed no suspicion. This pleased her, because she was moving the table in order to keep people passing by from seeing her with a Puerto Rican.
Nicki led him to a table in the rear corner of the shop, by the swinging wooden doors that led to the kitchen.
“Cappuccino,” Nicki told the waitress.
“Espresso,” Maximo said.
“You want any pastries? They got good pastries,” the waitress said.
“Bad for the figure,” Nicki said.
“Thanks, but I’d prefer not,” Maximo said. He smiled at Nicki. “I don’t like to eat before this course I’m taking,” he told her.
“Say the truth,” Nicki said.
“What?”
“You really go to school?”
“Yes.”
“Come on.”
“What can I tell you?”
“Say the truth.”
“I’ll tell you what. When we leave here, you come with me and see what I do. And if I’m not sitting in a bar review course for three hours—”
“All right, I believe you.” The surprising thing to her was that she did believe him. A cold, factual quality to his voice convinced her. She was of course going to tell him anyway that she believed him, for honesty was the last objective of this meeting. But now she was in more wonder as she looked at him.
“Are you always this suspicious?” Maximo said.
“I don’t want to say anything, but look who you were with when I met you,” she said.
“And look who you were with,” he said.
“I guess we’re both busted valises,” she said.
“No, we’re not,” Maximo said. She loved the confidence in his voice.
“This morning when my mother woke me up, I was going to throw her, the alarm clock and everybody else right out the door,” Nicki said.
“Why?”
“I don’t know. I hated to get up. You ever get like that? You hate to even go out?”
“No.”
“You don’t? Why?”
“Because I can handle anything that happens that day.”
“My father’s that way. He doesn’t let anything faze him. He could be going to meet the King of Italy and he’d be the same way. You know what my father did the day I was getting married? He was shaving. Holding up the whole wedding. We’re late for the photographer to take pictures, for the car to go to the church, for the mass, everything. My father’s shaving. My mother starts screaming at him. You know what my father says. ‘Make coffee for the Duce.’ My mother starts screaming and he says, so quiet, ‘Make coffee for the Duce.’ Just like that. She had to go into the kitchen in her long gown and make coffee for my father. At least she cheated and made instant.”
“When did you get married?” Maximo asked her.
“Forty-two months ago. He’s been gone thirty-six of them.”
“What for?”
“What for?” She lit a cigarette. “What do you think for?”
“Drugs,” Maximo said.
She inhaled slowly, her eyes looking out the window, and said nothing.
“When does he get out?” Maximo said.
“He got four to life. The Rockefeller law. He can get work release next year. Maybe.”
“And you wait?”
“Of course I do.”
“Then maybe I shouldn’t be bothering you,” Maximo said.
“Did I say you shouldn’t?”
“No.”
“Then you just wait until I tell you.”
“Fine with me,” Maximo said.
“How often do you go to this course?”
“Three nights a week.”
“For how long?”
“Until November. That’s when I take the test.”
“Is it a hard test?”
“I’ll pass it.”
“One good thing. You’ll make a lot of money. Big bucks.”
“I don’t imagine I will,” Maximo said.
“Come on. My father always says that the lawyers get all the gravy and leave us macaroni with nothing to go on it.”
“It depends on what kind of lawyer you are,” Maximo said.
She studied Maximo’s face and couldn’t think of what more to s
ay to this Puerto Rican who was going to be a lawyer.
“Were you born here?” she said, finally.
“La Playa de Ponce. Ever been to Puerto Rico?”
“No. I’ve been to Vegas.”
Examining him, she decided that he was not a pure Puerto Rican. He was more like a Spaniard from Spain. That would be all right, to be in love with a Spaniard from Spain.
Maximo had been studying her as they spoke. He knew that each time he smiled, her face flushed.
“What do you do in the bank?”
“I’m in charge of people who collect money.”
“I can’t like that so much.”
“There’s lots about you I probably don’t like. I’m not here to talk about my job, anyway.”
When they had finished coffee, Maximo said, “Are you coming to check on my course?”
“I’m going home.”
“That’s a great waste.”
“Isn’t it?” Nicki said.
“I’ll say.”
“Next time you can take me to your course,” she said.
“When will that be?”
“Soon.”
“How soon?”
“Call me at work. At night you could call my girlfriend Angela at her house. Here, write the number down.” She waited until he took a sheet of paper out of a notebook. “She lives in Jersey. Two oh one. Seven three three, five eight oh two. You call her up and leave a message where you are. She’ll call me and I’ll call you.”
“Why can’t I just call your house?”
“So you could get the both of us killed?”
Maximo took the check.
“Are you sure?” Nicki said. She had her wallet out. This irritated Maximo, who answered with a grunt. He must be a Spaniard from Spain, Nicki said to herself. He gets insulted just like an Italian.
Outside, he smiled at her and her face flushed and she reached out and took his hand.
“You’ll call.”
“Fine.”
He smiled again and she walked down the hall. She was going the wrong way, but she wanted to walk someplace slowly. Maximo went to the subway entrance and on a whim, just because he felt like it, put one hand on the banister and then sent himself far out into the air, so that he landed half way down the first flight of stairs.
When she got home, Nicki put her pocketbook on the dresser and crossed the room to the closet. She opened the folding doors and took an empty shoebox from the shelf above her neatly hung clothes. The shelf had several dozen boxes, stacked perfectly, like the stockroom of a good shoe store. Nicki kept all her shoes in these boxes until the shoes were old, at which point she threw out the box and replaced it immediately. Nicki took off her shoes and put them in one box and took down another. She took out her white canvas Tretorn sneakers that had only been out of the house once, when her sister Phyllis had borrowed them. Nicki had caught her right away, even though Phyllis had washed off the bottoms, because Phyllis had not lined the box up properly when she put the sneakers back.
Nicki put the sneakers down, took off her pants and put them on a hanger. She tugged at the bottoms so they hung right. From a bottom drawer Nicki pulled out a pair of Levi’s and a white T-shirt with the initials USC on it. She never thought what the initials meant; what was important was that this was her cleaning shirt. She took off her silk shirt, put it on a hanger and hung it on the closet doorknob. If she aired the shirt, it could be worn again; after all, she didn’t smell. Then she took a pair of white sweat socks from a top drawer and put them on. From the same drawer she took an elastic band, brushed her hair and pulled it back into a tight ponytail.
In the next drawer, hidden under Nicki’s underwear, was her special soap, toning lotion and moisturizer. Her sister Phyllis couldn’t find it here. Nicki was sure that if she left it in the bathroom, her sister would use the soap in the shower and throw the moisturizer all over her body. On the instructions it said that these items were only for the face. With Phyllis using the soap in the shower, the bar would become all mushy on the bottom.
In the bathroom Nicki followed the three steps as she cleansed her face, just as the instructions read, wiped off the box that held the soap so that no water was on it, and put the three items back beneath her underwear in the drawer. Before she left the room, she tugged at the bedspread. It was a little wrinkled, as if someone had sat on her bed. Even her sister knew better than that. Then she walked out into the kitchen and wondered what Maximo was doing right now.
5
“LOOK AT THIS TROMBERNICK,” Weinstein said. He was watching Teenager, who was across the street in front of Eddie Hernandez’ clothing store. Teenager’s car was triple-parked on the street. “Trouble,” Weinstein said again, as he watched Teenager walk into the clothing store.
Weinstein was standing in the window of the linoleum store where he had spent his last twenty-five years. Once, when Puerto Ricans first began to outnumber whites in the neighborhood, Weinstein bought a delicatessen in Far Rockaway and ran it at the same time as the linoleum store; his idea was to build up the grocery and then leave the Bronx before the Puerto Ricans cut him up for stew. But in Far Rockaway, the housewives said to him, “Oh, Mr. Weinstein, this milk says it was delivered on Monday and now it’s Wednesday; if I give this old milk to my child and she gets sick, I’ll have to send you the doctor’s bill.”
Weinstein used to twist like a rope inside. I keep my own milk a week, nobody gets sick, he would say to himself. He would, however, have to smile at the women because they were, like his insulin pills, something without which he could not live. And at the same time in the South Bronx, an old Puerto Rican named Malabe worked until 3:00 P.M. each day for Weinstein, but then never left. He stayed in the store until Weinstein closed and then escorted Weinstein to his car and did not leave until Weinstein was safely gone. One day, Malabe had a doctor’s appointment and left at 3:00 P.M. As Malabe left, his wife and eighteen-year-old son arrived and stood in Weinstein’s window until 5:00 P.M., and then walked to the car. When Weinstein tried to pay Malabe extra for this, Malabe refused to accept the money. And then early one morning, Weinstein went to install linoleum in an apartment in the housing projects and the Puerto Rican woman handed him the house keys and left for the day. Never in my life have I seen people who trust you like this, Weinstein said to himself. He closed the delicatessen in Far Rockaway and stayed in the Bronx.
And now, disturbed, he walked out of the linoleum store and went across the street to Eddie Hernandez’ clothing store.
“Aha!” Teenager called out as Weinstein walked in. Weinstein stood by the door and said nothing.
“This is Eddie’s store now,” Teenager said.
“I know,” Weinstein said.
“He is going to have a very good store, believe me,” Teenager said.
“It’s a good store already,” Eddie said.
“It will be better now that I am here,” Teenager said.
Weinstein wanted to say something, but he knew the first rule of the retail business was to agree with everyone. He stood in silence at the door and thought bad thoughts about this lazy bum, this criminal, daring to say he could help Eddie Hernandez. Weinstein got him a job at this clothing store, which had then belonged to Aaron Samuels. Eddie worked a seven-day week for a long time, and then one morning Weinstein saw Eddie, face drawn, eyes narrowed, opening the store for Samuels. It was 7:30 A.M.
“What’s the matter?” Weinstein said.
“I was up all night, some kind of a virus,” Eddie said.
“Why don’t you go home?” Weinstein said.
“Man, we got Father’s Day coming up,” Eddie said.
Weinstein went into his linoleum store on that day and said to himself, all the people who ran away from here are shit. They took all the money out of here and ran away and left vacant stores. Weinstein will not run, Weinstein will leave a statue here with his name on it—I will leave this Spic kid with a store, he told himself.
Two months later, wh
en Samuels, the clothing store owner, said he was leaving because he was afraid of holdups, Weinstein told Eddie Hernandez that he should buy the store. Eddie’s eyes widened. He never had thought of himself as being like a Jew. Then Weinstein, lecturing in a voice that made his words sound like accusations, said, “If you buy clothes for your store and say that you will have the money by Friday noon, then you have the money by Friday noon. The full amount that you say you will have. Nobody wants money in little pieces. You never write a check if you do not have the money in the bank. If I ever find you writing a check without the money in the bank, I’ll walk away from you and never see you again.”
Weinstein put up seven thousand five hundred dollars of his own money and helped Eddie get a bank loan to start the business. He began repaying Weinstein on a schedule. “Eddie coughed up again,” Weinstein said when he got home one night. He put the check from Eddie on the bureau.
“Wait till the check clears,” his wife said.
“Eddie’s checks are good. Eddie is a responsible businessman,” Weinstein told her proudly.
Now, standing in the shop and listening to Teenager say how much he would help Eddie, Weinstein had to turn and look out the window. Jailhouse boasting, he told himself. And, oh, look at this. Now this bum has to show up. A guy with a shaved head and a pirate’s earring carried two large boxes through the door.
“Want jeans, man?” the guy said to Eddie. “I got Levi-Strauss.”
“No,” Eddie said.
“Great jeans, man.”
“I don’t need them,” Eddie said.
Teenager said, “How much are you going to charge my friend for his jeans?”
“Half.”
“Half?” Teenager said. “Is this the way you treat a customer? You are supposed to bring him these clothes for maybe twenty percent and then bring him more tomorrow.”
“All right, twenty percent,” the man with the shaved head said.
“That’s better,” Teenager said. “You see, Eddie? I am here only a minute and I help you already.”
Forsaking All Others Page 7
