Eggplant Alley (9781593731410) (18 page)

“Hey, wanna hear a joke?” Nicky said.

“Of course.”

“Okay, so this colored guy is walking down the beach,” Nicky said.

“I see.”

“And he comes across this genie's lamp. So he rubs it and the genie comes out and grants him three wishes.”

Lester didn't say anything.

“The black guy says, ‘Make me a white man.' So—poof—the genie turns him white.”

Lester's eyes were on the sidewalk as they walked.

“Then the colored guy goes, ‘I want me a Cadillac.' So—poof—the genie gives him a Cadillac. Are you listening?”

“Yes.”

“Then the colored guy goes, ‘I never want to work another day in my life.' And so—poof—the genie turns him back into a colored guy!”

Lester didn't say anything.

“Get it?” Nicky said. He backhanded Lester's arm as they walked. “Never worked a day in his life. Get it? Pretty funny, huh?”

“Sure,” Lester said. “Say, how far is it to this store?”

“Getting tired?”

“Very,” Lester said

The two boys strolled down Summit in the sunshine. Nicky's steps were fresh and springy, as if he were walking in brand-new sneakers.

“Do you think your father knows Roy?” Nicky said.

“I doubt it. Did you say your brother was a clerk or something?”

“For now. I think he's going to transfer to the infantry soon.”

“My daddy is in the air cavalry. They don't sit around offices much.”

Nicky didn't say anything.

Lester added, “But I have to tell you, I wish my daddy was a clerk. You've got it good. You don't have to worry. I wish my mama and I didn't have to worry about Daddy.”

“I can't believe your father asked for combat duty.”

Lester adjusted his glasses on his nose. He said softly, “A lot of men do. That's the kind of man my daddy is. He is a good man.”

At Popop's, they each bought two packs of baseball cards. Popop was nasty and impatient. A rat slept on the bread display. And the store smelled of damp cardboard. “Perfect,” Nicky thought. He wanted Lester, the new kid, to sample the full ambience of the place.

Nicky and Lester agreed to each open a pack of baseball cards right away and save the second pack for the front steps of Eggplant Alley. This would stretch out the pleasure and excitement of the baseball cards.

“Washington Senators,” Nicky said. “How come I always get six Washington Senators in every pack of baseball cards? I'll bet there's a kid down in Washington who gets nothing but Yankees and is sick about it.”

“We still have the other packs to open,” Lester offered.

With something to look forward to, the walk home was pleasant. Lester remarked that some of the homes on Summit looked pretty nice.

“For now,” Nicky said.

They reached the corner of Summit and Mayflower, where they
could look down the hill at the Only House With Trees. Lester said, “Look, that one down there even has some fine maples and elms.”

“For now,” Nicky said.

Nicky and Lester sat on the front steps of Eggplant Alley and opened the second packs of baseball cards. They chewed the stiff gum and compared their accumulated treasure. A hot breeze scattered the wrappings, and Nicky gathered them before they could blow away.

“I'll toss 'em,” Nicky said.

Nicky went to the gutter to stuff the baseball card wrappers down the sewer. He looked over his shoulder. Lester's eyes bulged behind his glasses and he chewed madly on his gum as he studied the backs of his cards.

“Did you know Zeke Samuelson collects classic automobiles?” Lester said through a gum bubble.

“No fooling,” Nicky said. He reached into his back pocket. He made sure Lester was not looking. This was something he did not want anyone to see. This was something no one could ever know, ever suspect. This was worth a bolt of lightning from the sky, a plague of locusts, seven years of bad luck.

“This is bad,” Nicky thought, as he dropped the baseball card wrappers and Dad's letter to Roy down the sewer.

N
icky's life changed. For the better.

The truth was out, and he was a free boy. He was unleashed from the worry and work of protecting a lie from his best friend (and there was no use denying it, Lester had become his best friend, at least till Roy came home). Nicky no longer had anything to hide.

That photo of Roy, with a shaved head, in his army uniform, the one in the gold frame, extravagantly displayed on the living room table?

“Can't hurt me anymore,” Nicky thought, heart soaring.

Mom and Dad's loose lips, liable to spill the secret of Roy's true whereabouts?

“Let them sing like canaries,” Nicky thought, head swooning.

He was safe. Nicky enjoyed the truth like a new toy. He was eager to play with it.

“Hey, Mom, can Lester come over for supper tonight?”

“Sure, why not? Let's feed the whole neighborhood while we're at it.” Mom was beading the cheap plastic necklaces in the humid afternoon. The sweat stung her eyes and made the plastic beads slippery as she worked six hours to earn seven dollars.

Mom sighed.

“I don't mean to be crabby,” she said. “It's the lousy heat. Of course your friend can come up. I'm glad you finally made a friend of your own.”

Nicky banged on the door to 2-C, heard footsteps, a bump, a thump, a closet door creak, hangers jangle. “Maybe he sits in the closet all day,” Nicky thought.

The door opened.

“You should call,” Lester said, cheeks pink and sweaty.

“Next time. Wanna come up for supper tonight?”

Lester glanced over his shoulder.

“I'll go ask Mama. You wait …”

“I know, right here.”

“Yes. My mama just shampooed the rugs.”

Lester disappeared into the hot apartment. Nicky heard murmuring. He sniffed the air. He did not smell rug shampoo.

Lester returned. “Yes, thank you. I may come up for dinner.”

Mrs. Allnuts called from inside the apartment, “Lester? Is your friend out in the hallway? Goodness. Why don't you invite that boy in?”

“He's got to go, Mother,” Lester called. His cheeks were heating up, from pink to red.

Nicky nodded and said, “I do gotta go. I'll see you later. Come up at four.”

Lester closed the door. Nicky walked to the staircase, but he stopped on the bottom step. He cocked his head in the direction of 2-C and closed his eyes and listened. He heard muffled talking,
and then Mrs. Allnuts shouted, “Lester, goodness gracious. What's the matter with you? Why do you keep putting this in the closet?”

Lester showed up at four o'clock on the button. Mom had the big fan going in the kitchen window and the little fan going in the living room, but the fans didn't help. It was a stifling humid night. The kind of night when Roy would say, every time, “This feels like the inside of a used gym sock.”

The moist linoleum sucked softly at Lester's sneaker bottoms as he walked into the kitchen.

“Nice to meet you,” Mom said. She shifted in the vinyl kitchen chair, which adhered to her thighs.

“Yes, ma'am,” Lester said. His wiry hair was neatly parted and combed for the visit, but cowlicks were already unspringing and curling in the moist air.

“Well, aren't you a nice clean-cut young man? It's nice to see these days.”

“Yes, ma'am.”

“It's too hot to cook. So Mr. Martini is getting a pizza pie from Lombardo's. That sound okay?”

“Yes, ma'am.”

“So polite!” Mom said. “Nicky, I hope you're this polite when you visit Lester's apartment.”

“Me, too,” Nicky said.

Lester examined the linoleum.

Nicky said, “Hey, Mom, is it okay if me and Lester go up to the roof and catch a breeze until Dad gets back with the pie?”

Mom scowled. “Nicky, why don't you … All right, if you want
to. I wish you wouldn't. I don't care. But if there's anybody else up there, you come right down. Don't talk to anybody. Be careful your friend doesn't fall off in the dark. He doesn't know the roof like you do.”

Nicky said he had to use the bathroom, putting his delicious, evil plan into motion. He carefully closed and silently locked the bathroom door and filled two ancient party balloons at the faucet. He filled them just the way Roy taught him: not too much or they burst in your hand, not too little or they split meekly on impact, producing a thud with no splash. Nicky tucked the balloons under his shirt and cradled them, and the cold water against his belly startled him.

Nicky rushed past the kitchen and called, “Okay, let's go.”

Mom said, “Come down right away if you see lightning.”

In the hallway, Nicky showed Lester the two quivering, plump beauties.

“Ever throw a water balloon at anybody?” Nicky said.

“Of course.”

“Ever throw a water balloon at anybody from ten stories?”

Lester's eyes widened with bad-boy delight. He adjusted his glasses. “No. Really? Very interesting. Won't it hurt somebody? Really? Oh, boy.”

On this night, even on the roof, there was no breeze. Lester and Nicky picked their way along the retaining wall and looked out. The streets and buildings seemed closer in the humid night. Rosner's pink neon sign, sputtering down on Broadway; the dark squares of the rooftops on Summit Avenue; the hazy lights of the apartment buildings by the parkway; the purple hulk of the
aspirin factory, dark now because the second shift was laid off last December—all nice and cozy together under the same wet blanket. The sounds were intimate, too. Every window was thrown open. Hundreds of fans whirred; television laugh tracks erupted; ice chuckled in a tumbler; a toilet flushed; a man belched; a telephone rang and the boys could clearly hear a woman say, “Hello. Yeah. What? He ain't home. Who the hell is this?”

Nicky led Lester to the Groton Avenue side of the roof. They peeked over the wall. The residents had spilled out of the steamy tenements and onto the stoops, curbstones, and car hoods. They fanned themselves with folded newspapers. They tugged at their soggy clothes. Two shirtless young men leaned against a streetlamp and smoked cigarettes in the cone of hazy light. An old man, shriveled into a white T-shirt, lounged on a stoop and lifted a beer can to his mouth. Someone had a radio going, tuned to the Yankees game. The Orioles were beating them. Only two small girls found the energy for movement. They played hopscotch in the lamplight on the sidewalk. Nicky and Lester could hear the stone click on the pavement as they played. Nicky and Lester could hear and see it all, and no one could see them. The excitement was almost unbearable.

“No target in range—yet,” Nicky whispered. “We'll wait. One of them will wander close enough.”

Lester adjusted his glasses. He looked at the yellow water balloon shimmying in his hand.

“I have an idea. Why not drop them on somebody walking through the courtyard? There's always someone walking through the courtyard. Then we don't have to wait.”

“What? Do you have to catch a bus? We'll wait.”

“But the courtyard …”

“I don't wanna drop it on somebody in the courtyard. I wanna hit one of them.”

“All right.” Lester shrugged. He pulled his lips together into a pout.

“Don't you want to?”

“I don't care,” Lester shrugged. “I just don't want to start a riot or anything.”

“Oh, there won't be any riot,” Nicky scoffed. “You afraid of them? Give it to me. I'll throw then both if you don't want to. Are you chicken or something?”

“I am not chicken. I want to. I just don't want to start trouble. Why start something with them?”

Nicky slumped down. He sat with his back to the wall. Lester sat against the wall, imitating him.

“Why? Because it feels good,” Nicky said. “You want to know why? You haven't lived around here long. You don't know. I'll tell you why. Because of them, no one wants to live in Eggplant Alley anymore. All my friends moved away because of them. And there's no more stickball around here because of them. And you can't walk down Groton Avenue at night because of them. My mother does beadwork so maybe we can save up enough money to get out of here. Because of them. And the Good Humor man doesn't come here anymore. Because of them.”

Lester didn't say anything.

“Yeah. I'll give them a nice bath.”

Nicky knelt and peeked over the wall. Lester peeked over with him. They watched in silence.

One of the young black men under the streetlight dropped his cigarette. He stepped on the glowing butt and strolled off the sidewalk between two parked cars.

“Here we go,” Nicky whispered.

The young man walked casually in the street, straight toward Eggplant Alley.

“Coming our way,” Nicky said.

The young man put his hands in his pockets and walked toward the apartment building. He looked down at the pavement as he walked. Nicky and Lester crouched lower and lower as the young man moved closer and closer. Then the young man was directly below them, ten stories straight down. The boys ducked.

Nicky felt his heart hammering. He said, “Hold on. Listen.”

There was silence.

Lester said, “What's he …”

“Quiet.”

The iron gate that led into Eggplant Alley creaked.

“He just went through the back gate,” Nicky said. “That's right below—” He jabbed a finger at a section of wall four feet away. “There. It's right below there. Throw. Now!”

Nicky smoothly heaved his water balloon. He tossed it over the section of wall precisely where he had pointed. Lester flung his, too. He threw it wildly, as if the balloon were something he just wanted to be rid off.

Then came the sweet moment of tantalizing suspense, the tingling seconds between when water balloons are thrown and when they hit.