“Paddy,” I said. “How you doin?”
“Big store manager,” he said, drawing out the words. His lip was curled with contempt.
I figured that someone at the reunion must have told him that I was managing a Radio Shack. But I was doing better than that. I had been promoted to merchandising director, and I was in charge of four stores. Hell, I was knocking down close to forty-two grand a year.
I didn’t correct him, though. I just went to the sink and washed my hands. I washed them real good before I left the room.
Paddy had been my bud for a long time, so I felt kinda bad for a couple days after, seeing him like that. He had taken a long fall. Or maybe, I don’t know, he’d just kept moving sideways. Anyway, I haven’t seen him since, and that suits me fine.
It’s not like I’m denying who I was. I do think about those nights with Paddy, and I know we had some laughs. But for the life of me I can’t tell you what it was we were laughing about. I mean, I used to love to get my head up. But now I can’t remember what was so great about it. Mostly, when I think about it, it seems like it was all a waste of time.
The Dead Their Eyes Implore Us
Someday I’m gonna write all this down. But I don’t write so good in English yet, see? So I’m just gonna think it out loud.
Last night I had a dream.
In my dream, I was a kid, back in the village. My friends and family from the chorio, they were there, all of us standing around the square. My father, he had strung a lamb up on a pole. It was making a noise, like a scream, and its eyes were wild and afraid. My father handed me my Italian switch knife, the one he gave me before I came over. I cut into the lamb’s throat and opened it up wide. The lamb’s warm blood spilled onto my hands.
My mother told me once: every time you dream something, it’s got to be a reason.
I’m not no kid anymore. I’m twenty-eight years old. It’s early in June, nineteen hundred and thirty-three. The temperature got up to 100 degrees today. I read in the Tribune, some old people died from the heat.
Let me try to paint a picture, so you can see in your head the way it is for me right now. I got this little one-room place I rent from some old lady. A Murphy bed and a table, an icebox and a stove. I got a radio I bought for a dollar and ninety-nine. I wash my clothes in a tub, and afterward I hang the roúcha on a cord I stretched across the room. There’s a bunch of clothes, pantalóni and one of my work shirts and my vrakia and socks, on there now. I’m sitting here at the table in my union suit. I’m smoking a Fatima and drinking a cold bottle of Abner-Drury beer. I’m looking at my hands. I got blood underneath my fingernails. I washed real good, but it was hard to get it all.
It’s five, five thirty in the morning. Let me go back some, to show how I got to where I am tonight.
What’s it been, four years since I came over? The boat ride was a boat ride, so I’ll skip that part. I’ll start in America.
When I got to Ellis Island, I came straight down to Washington to stay with my cousin Toula and her husband, Aris. Aris had a fruit cart down on Pennsylvania Avenue, around 17th. Toula’s father owed my father some lefta from back in the village, so it was all set up. She offered me a room until I could get on my feet. Aris wasn’t happy about it, but I didn’t give a good goddamn what he was happy about. Toula’s father should have paid his debt.
Toula and Aris had a place in Chinatown. It wasn’t just for Chinese. Italians, Irish, Polacks, and Greeks lived there, too. Everyone was poor except the criminals. The Chinamen controlled the gambling, the whores, and the opium. All the business got done in the back of laundries and in the restaurants. The Chinks didn’t bother no one if they didn’t get bothered themselves.
Toula’s apartment was in a house right on H Street. You had to walk up three floors to get to it. I didn’t mind it. The milkman did it every day, and the old Jew who collected the rent managed to do it, too. I figured, so could I.
My room was small, so small you couldn’t shut the door all the way when the bed was down. There was only one toilet in the place, and they had put a curtain by it, the kind you hang on a shower. You had to close it around you when you wanted to shit. Like I say, it wasn’t a nice place or nothing like it, but it was okay. It was free.
But nothing’s free, my father always said. Toula’s husband, Aris, made me pay from the first day I moved in. Never had a good word to say to me, never mentioned me to no one for a job. He was a sonofabitch, that one. Dark, with a hook in his nose—looked like he had some Turkish blood in him. I wouldn’t be surprised if the gamoto was a Turk. I didn’t like the way he talked to my cousin, either, ’specially when he drank. And this malaka drank every night. I’d sit in my room and listen to him raise his voice at her, and then later I could hear him fucking her on their bed. I couldn’t stand it, I’m telling you, and me without a woman myself. I didn’t have no job then so I couldn’t even buy a whore. I thought I was gonna go nuts.
Then one day I was talking to this guy, Dimitri Karras, lived in the 606 building on H. He told me about a janitor’s job opened up at St. Mary’s, the church where his son, Panayoti, and most of the neighborhood kids went to Catholic school. I put some Wildroot tonic in my hair, walked over to the church, and talked to the head nun. I don’t know, she musta liked me or something, ’cause I got the job. I had to lie a little about being a handyman. I wasn’t no engineer, but I figured, what the hell, the furnace goes out you light it again, goddamn.
My deal was simple. I got a room in the basement and a coupla meals a day. Pennies other than that, but I didn’t mind, not then. Hell, it was better than living in some Hoover Hotel. And it got me away from that bastard Aris. Toula cried when I left, so I gave her a hug. I didn’t say nothing to Aris.
I worked at St. Mary’s about two years. The work was never hard. I knew the kids and most of their fathers: Karras, Angelos, Nicodemus, Recevo, Damiano, Carchedi. I watched the boys grow. I didn’t look the nuns in the eyes when I talked to them so they wouldn’t get the wrong idea. Once or twice I treated myself to one of the whores over at the Eastern House. Mostly, down in the basement, I played with my poutso. I put it out of my mind that I was jerking off in church.
Meanwhile, I tried to make myself better. I took English classes at St. Sophia, the Greek Orthodox church on 8th and L. I bought a blue serge suit at Harry Kaufman’s on 7th Street, on sale for eleven dollars and seventy-five. The Jew tailor let me pay for it a little bit at a time. Now when I went to St. Sophia for the Sunday service I wouldn’t be ashamed.
I liked to go to church. Not for religion, nothing like that. Sure, I wear a stavro, but everyone wears a cross. That’s just superstition. I don’t love God, but I’m afraid of him. So I went to church just in case, and also to look at the girls. I liked to see ’em all dressed up.
There was this one koritsi, not older than sixteen when I first saw her, who was special. I knew just where she was gonna be, with her mother, on the side of the church where the women sat separate from the men. I made sure I got a good view of her on Sundays. Her name was Irene, I asked around. I could tell she was clean. By that I mean she was a virgin. That’s the kind of girl you’re gonna marry. My plan was to wait till I got some money in my pocket before I talked to her, but not too long so she got snatched up. A girl like that is not gonna stay single forever.
Work and church was for the daytime. At night I went to the coffeehouses down by the Navy Yard in Southeast. One of them was owned by a hardworking guy from the neighborhood, Angelos, lived at the 703 building on 6th. That’s the cafeneion I went to most. You played cards and dice there if that’s what you wanted to do, but mostly you could be yourself. It was all Greeks.
That’s where I met Nick Stefanos one night, at the Angelos place. Meeting him is what put another change in my life. Stefanos was a Spartan with an easy way, had a scar on his cheek. You knew he was tough, but he didn’t have to prove it. I heard he got the scar running protection for a hooch truck in upstate New York. Heard a cheap pis
tola blew up in his face. It was his business, what happened, none of mine.
We got to talking that night. He was the head busman down at some fancy hotel on 15th and Penn, but he was leaving to open his own place. His friend Costa, another Spartiati, worked there and he was gonna leave with him. Stefanos asked me if I wanted to take Costa’s place. He said he could set it up. The pay was only a little more than what I was making, a dollar-fifty a week with extras, but a little more was a lot. Hell, I wanted to make better like anyone else. I thanked Nick Stefanos and asked him when I could start.
I started the next week, soon as I got my room where I am now. You had to pay management for your bus uniform, black pants and a white shirt and short black vest, so I didn’t make nothing for a while. Some of the waiters tipped the busmen heavy, and some tipped nothing at all. For the ones who tipped nothing, you cleared their tables slower, and last. I caught on quick.
The hotel was pretty fancy, and its dining room, up on the top floor, was fancy, too. The china was real, the crystal sang when you flicked a finger at it, and the silver was heavy. It was hard times, but you’d never know it from the way the tables filled up at night. I figured I’d stay there a coupla years, learn the operation, and go out on my own like Stefanos. That was one smart guy.
The way they had it set up was, Americans had the waiter jobs, and the Greeks and Filipinos bused the tables. The coloreds, they stayed back in the kitchen. Everybody in the restaurant was in the same order that they were out on the street: the whites were up top and the Greeks were in the middle; the mavri were at the bottom. Except if someone was your own kind, you didn’t make much small talk with the other guys unless it had something to do with work. I didn’t have nothing against anyone, not even the coloreds. You didn’t talk to them, that’s all. That’s just the way it was.
The waiters, they thought they were better than the rest of us. But there was this one American, a young guy named John Petersen, who was all right. Petersen had brown eyes and wavy brown hair that he wore kinda long. It was his eyes that you remembered. Smart and serious, but gentle at the same time.
Petersen was different than the other waiters, who wouldn’t lift a finger to help you even when they weren’t busy. John would pitch in and bus my tables for me when I got in a jam. He’d jump in with the dishes, too, back in the kitchen, when the dining room was running low on silver, and like I say, those were coloreds back there. I even saw him talking with those guys sometimes like they were pals. It was like he came from someplace where that was okay. John was just one of those who made friends easy, I guess. I can’t think of no one who didn’t like him. Well, there musta been one person, at least. I’m gonna come to that later on.
Me and John went out for a beer one night after work, to a saloon he knew. I wasn’t comfortable because it was all Americans and I didn’t see no one who looked like me. But John made me feel okay, and after two beers I forgot. He talked to me about the job and the pennies me and the colored guys in the kitchen were making, and how it wasn’t right. He talked about some changes that were coming to make it better for us, but he didn’t say what they were.
“I’m happy,” I said, as I drank off the beer in my mug. “I got a job, what the hell.”
“You want to make more money don’t you?” he said. “You’d like to have a day off once in a while, wouldn’t you?”
“Goddamn right. But I take off a day, I’m not gonna get paid.”
“It doesn’t have to be like that, friend.”
“Yeah, okay.”
“Do you know what ‘strength in numbers’ means?”
I looked around for the bartender ’cause I didn’t know what the hell John was talking about and I didn’t know what to say.
John put his hand around my arm. “I’m putting together a meeting. I’m hoping some of the busmen and the kitchen guys will make it. Do you think you can come?”
“What we gonna meet for, huh?”
“We’re going to talk about those changes I been telling you about. Together, we’re going to make a plan.”
“I don’t want to go to no meeting. I want a day off, I’m just gonna go ask for it, eh?”
“You don’t understand.” John put his face close to mine. “The workers are being exploited.”
“I work and they pay me,” I said with a shrug. “That’s all I know. Other than that? I don’t give a damn nothing.” I pulled my arm away, but I smiled when I did it. I didn’t want to join no group, but I wanted him to know we were still pals. “C’mon, John, let’s drink.”
I needed that job. But I felt bad, turning him down about that meeting. You could see it meant something to him, whatever the hell he was talking about, and I liked him. He was the only American in the restaurant who treated me like we were both the same. You know, man to man.
Well, he wasn’t the only American who made me feel like a man. There was this woman, name of Laura, a hostess who also made change from the bills. She bought her dresses too small and had hair bleached white, like Jean Harlow. She was about two years and ten pounds away from the end of her looks. Laura wasn’t pretty, but her ass could bring tears to your eyes. Also, she had huge tits.
I caught her giving me the eye the first night I worked there. By the third night, she said something to me about my broad chest as I was walking by her. I nodded and smiled, but I kept walking ’cause I was carrying a heavy tray. When I looked back she gave me a wink. She was a real whore, that one. I knew right then I was gonna fuck her. At the end of the night I asked her if she would go to the pictures with me sometime. “I’m free tomorrow,” she says. I acted like it was an honor and a big surprise.
I worked every night, so we had to make it a matinee. We took the streetcar down to the Earle, on 13th Street, down below F. I wore my blue serge suit and high-button shoes. I looked like I had a little bit of money, but we still got the fisheye, walking down the street. A blonde and a Greek with dark skin and a heavy black mustache. I couldn’t hide that I wasn’t too long off the boat.
The Earle had a stage show before the picture. A guy named William Demarest and some dancers who Laura said were like the Rockettes. What the hell did I know, I was just looking at their legs. After the coming attractions and the short subject, the picture came on: Gold Diggers of 1933. The man dancers looked like cocksuckers to me. I liked Westerns better, but it was all right. Fifteen cents for each of us. It was cheaper than taking her to a saloon.
Afterward, we went to her place, an apartment in a row house off H in Northeast. I used the bathroom and saw a Barnard’s Shaving Cream and other man things in there, but I didn’t ask her nothing about it when I came back out. I found her in the bedroom. She had poured us a couple of rye whiskies and drawn the curtains so it felt like the night. A radio played something she called “jug band”; it sounded like colored music to me. She asked me, did I want to dance. I shrugged and tossed back all the rye in my glass and pulled her to me rough. We moved slow, even though the music was fast.
“Bill?” she said, looking up at me. She had painted her eyes with something and there was a black mark next to one of them where the paint had come off.
“Uh,” I said.
“What do they call you where you’re from?”
“Vasili.”
I kissed her warm lips. She bit mine and drew a little blood. I pushed myself against her to let her know what I had.
“Why, Va-silly,” she said. “You are like a horse, aren’t you?”
I just kinda nodded and smiled. She stepped back and got out of her dress and her slip, and then undid her brassiere. She did it slow.
“Ella,” I said.
“What does that mean?”
“Hurry it up,” I said, with a little motion of my hand. Laura laughed.
She pulled the bra off and her tits bounced. They were everything I thought they would be. She came to me and unbuckled my belt, pulling at it clumsy, and her breath was hot on my face. By then, God, I was ready.
I sat
her on the edge of the bed, put one of her legs up on my shoulder, and gave it to her. I heard a woman having a baby in the village once, and those were the same kinda sounds that Laura made. There was spit dripping out the side of her mouth as I slammed myself into her over and over again. I’m telling you, her bed took some plaster off the wall that day.
After I blew my load into her, I climbed off. I didn’t say nice things to her or nothing like that. She got what she wanted and so did I. Laura smoked a cigarette and watched me get dressed. The whole room smelled like pussy. She didn’t look so good to me no more. I couldn’t wait to get out of there and breathe fresh air.
We didn’t see each other again outside of work. She only stayed at the restaurant a coupla more weeks, and then she disappeared. I guess the man who owned the shaving cream told her it was time to quit.
For a while there, nothing happened and I just kept working hard. John didn’t mention no meetings again, though he was just as nice as before. I slept late and bused the tables at night. Life wasn’t fun or bad. It was just ordinary. Then that bastard Wesley Schmidt came to work and everything changed.
Schmidt was a tall young guy with a thin moustache, big in the shoulders, big hands. He kept his hair slicked back. His eyes were real blue, like water under ice. He had a row of big, straight teeth. He smiled all the time, but the smile, it didn’t make you feel good.
Schmidt got hired as a waiter, but he wasn’t any good at it. He got tangled up fast when the place got busy. He served food to the wrong tables all the time, and he spilled plenty of drinks. It didn’t seem like he’d ever done that kind of work before.
No one liked him, but he was one of those guys, he didn’t know it, or maybe he knew and didn’t care. He laughed and told jokes and slapped the busmen on the back like we were his friends. He treated the kitchen guys like dogs when he was tangled up, raising his voice at them when the food didn’t come up as fast as he liked it. Then he tried to be nice to them later.
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