Eggplant Alley (9781593731410) (28 page)

Margalo and Nicky walked down Mayflower toward Broadway in the cooling night. Nicky hunkered deep into the field coat, trying to stay warm, hoping to stay unrecognizable. What if Mom or Dad happened to see him, hippie girl at his side, hippie coat on his back? Nicky shuddered. He did not want to imagine that one.

“What flag is this?” Nicky said, examining the coat.

“I believe that is the flag of the National Liberation Front.”

“Whazzat?”

“You know. The Vietcong.”

Nicky didn't say anything. Now he calculated the chances of running into Mom and Dad, the way a swimmer calculates the chance of sharks.

When they hit Broadway, Nicky veered to the right toward Lombardo's. Margalo walked to left.

“Come with me,” she said.

“Where?”

“The May-Po Luncheonette,” she said proudly.

Nicky shrugged and followed her. They passed under a streetlamp, and the bulb burned out as they walked.

“Make a wish,” Margalo said.

Nicky clenched his eyes shut. He concentrated, then relaxed. “There.”

“What was your wish?”

“If I say, then it won't come true.”

“That's only for birthday candle wishes. What did you wish? You can tell me.”

Nicky could do nothing but tell the truth.

“I wished that Roy comes back in the spring and we play stickball
together just like the old days.” It was the first thing that popped into his head, so the words spilled from his mouth. But immediately he worried about Margalo's reaction. He would have preferred to say he wished for something more noble—peace on earth, goodwill toward men, mandatory recycling of bottles and paper.

“I know it's silly,” he said, shrugging.

“No way. That was a sweet wish,” Margalo said.

Nicky and Margalo passed a mailman, in uniform but without a mailbag. The mailman wore a crew cut straight out of the good old days. As he walked by, the mailman sucked on a cigarette and flickered his red eyeballs across Nicky's jacket, then glared at Nicky and Margalo with pure hate.

“Rotten creeps,” the mailman muttered.

“Fascist pig,” Margalo snapped.

Nicky wanted to call after him, “Mister! This is not my coat! I am NOT one of Them!”

They stopped at the curb to cross Radford. Nicky said, “Where is this place, Timbuktu?”

“It's worth the walk. They make the best hoagies,” Margalo said.

They crossed Radford Street and continued to walk south. Nicky felt like he was strolling across the face of the moon. He was only six blocks from Eggplant Alley, but he had never walked this far south on Broadway before. This was his first time on foot past Radford. There was no reason to walk down here. It would be like going all the way to Shea Stadium to see the Mets when the Yanks were right here in your backyard. Why bother? Everything you needed was within four blocks of Eggplant Alley—Popop's, Lombardo's, Mary's Bakery, the A&P, the Paramount Movie
House, Tom Thumb Toys, Izzy's Used Autos. Now Nicky was strolling past an Ernie's Bakery, a Super Shop, an RKO theater, a Sam's Chevy. Strange places, with strange goods and services, with strange people on the sidewalks. And across the street, Nicky saw the periwinkle neon of the strangest place of all—the Blue Castle hamburger stand.

“Home of the killer hamburger,” Nicky mused silently. “So that's where it is.” Nicky shivered to imagine Roy actually walking in there, actually eating those hamburgers.

Nicky and Margalo reached the May-Po Luncheonette. The green awning was rolled up tight, the windows were dark, the neon sign advertising Kent cigarettes was switched off. A placard on the door informed,
SORRY! CLOSED. COME AGAIN
! Margalo tried the door anyhow, the way disappointed people do.

“Bummer,” Margalo said. “They make the best hoagies.”

“Lombardo's makes pretty good hoagies, too.”

Margalo wrinkled her nose. “Yuck, Lombardo's. Grease,” she said.

Nicky shrugged. “Yeah. Yuck.”

They walked back the way they came. Margalo said, “I am starving.” And Nicky could see the next development coming, like a runaway train, like a fly ball to the face, like the papers being passed around for an algebra test for which he did not study.

“Hey,” Margalo said. The winking neon from the Blue Castle reflected in her eyes.

“Oh,” Nicky said. “I dunno. I really don't like Blue Castle hamburgers.”

“Have you ever tried them?”

“Well, sort of. No.”

“Silly. Then how can you know? They're quite tasty. Come on, I'll buy you a bag. My treat.”

“Nah. You know, I'm not hungry.”

“You lie. You said you were starved.”

“All this walking kinda killed my appetite.”

Margalo placed her hands on her hips. She set her mouth. She locked her eyes onto Nicky's.

“What is it with you Martini boys?” she said. “I practically had to drag Roy into trying Blue Castle. You would have thought I was trying to get him to eat live slugs or rat poison or something. And then he LOVED them.”

Nicky watched her lips as she spoke. He thought they resembled soft little red pillows. He smelled green apples on the cool air. He felt powerless. And he followed Margalo across Broadway, into the Blue Castle.

They stood on line. Nicky looked out through the glass at the street. He half expected Dad to burst through the door, yelling “Stop!”

Margalo ordered two sacks of the tiny, bite-sized burgers. One sack for her, one sack for Nicky. She insisted they eat the burgers on the spot, at the counter that rimmed the outer wall of the restaurant. “We don't want them to get cold,” she said.

They sat at the window, where every passerby on Broadway could see. Nicky unwrapped a Blue Castle burger. He held it. He sniffed it. He eyed it.

“Honestly, just eat it,” Margalo said. “You'll love it.”

Nicky took a small nibble, then a bite. He waited for wrenching
gut pains, twitches and spasms, death. He bit again. He chewed and he did not want to love it, he was appalled at the thought of loving it, but he could not fight the sensation. He loved it.

He said to Margalo, “Tasty.”

Nicky and Margalo walked home by way of Radford. They passed Ludlow Park, shadowy and sinister in the night. Nicky was anxious to move along. He imagined dozens of muggers and drug fiends following them with beady eyes. His legs crawled with the urge to put some distance between them and the wretched evils of Ludlow Park. He knew if there were trouble, it would fall to him to defend Margalo, to the death.

But Margalo stopped walking. “Look,” she said. “How sad.”

At the edge of the park, on a battered wooden bench facing the sidewalk, under a cracked lamp light, an old black women huddled inside a frayed cloth coat. She held a purse tightly in her lap and a paper bag at her side. From inside the sack the woman produced a peanut, which she held out for a squirrel. The squirrel tittered on the dirt near her worn sneakers. The squirrel placed one claw on the woman's leg, and carefully plucked the peanut from the woman's hand.

“I didn't know squirrels came out at night,” Nicky said, who was frightened by squirrels and their potential for rabies.

“This one does,” said Margalo. “I see that poor old woman here whenever I pass by this time of night. Every night around six thirty, she's here. That squirrel is probably her only companion.”

“It's sad,” Nicky said.

“It's beautiful,” Margalo said.

“It's beautiful,” Nicky said.

“She has nothing. She has been denied all the dignities of life. Yet she finds the time and compassion to come here and feed that squirrel.”

“It's beautiful,” Nicky said.

“It's sad,” Margalo said. “Look at the scene. The woman has such dignity. But we as a society can't match her dignity. We consume and discard. I was just writing about this today in my polysci paper. And because of our piggishness, we force her to sit in garbage. Look at that.”

Margalo was right. Behind the bench where the woman sat, on the ground all around her, the hard-packed turf was littered by scores of bottles, cans, and newspapers. The debris stretched out far into the darkness. It was like a garbage dump. You could not take a step without tripping over a bottle or can.

“Look at that,” Nicky said. “Somebody should do something about that.”

“Somebody,” Margalo said. “Always somebody.”

Margalo stared straight into Nicky's face. His head itched again under the wool cap.

“Always somebody else,” she said.

Nicky could see Margalo's breath in the cold air, a lovely delicate cloud in the night. He was startled by the blue of her eyes, even in the dim light. A breeze stirred. Nicky caught a whiff of green apples and Blue Castle burgers. His mind clicked and whirred wildly. Beautiful, heartbreaking notions began to form.

“One person can make a difference,” Margalo said.

“So can two people,” Nicky said, his throat dry. “Why not us?”

Margalo gently touched Nicky on the cheek and for an instant he felt dizzy, as if he had snorted cola directly up his nose. They continued to walk, and Nicky surrendered to his thoughts, all of them. He let them wash over his brain and seep in. He was gleeful to be walking along the sidewalk in the autumn night with Margalo at his side.

And so the next afternoon, on a chilly Sunday, Nicky and Margalo marched down Radford, wearing heavy sweaters against the gray cold. They cleaned up the mess around the old woman's park bench.

Margalo supplied two large leaf bags, and they filled both bags to the brim with bottles and cans and newspapers and lunch bags and candy wrappers. They cleaned spotless the area all around the park bench, all the way back to the paved path. Not a shred of garbage was left. The old woman had a clean place to feed her squirrel, thanks to Margalo and Nicky.

As they lugged the lumpy bags up Radford, Margalo huffed, “I wish I could see that woman's face when she comes here tonight.”

“Me, too,” said Nicky.

M
om made the announcement, while preparing supper, that a big change was coming on December 16. Nicky waited for Mom's next sentence and thought, “Must be a change for the worse.”

Mom said she took a job at the Gimbels department store up in Yonkers. She would be a salesclerk. Full-time. She was hired for the holiday season, with a very good chance for permanent work after New Year's.

“We could use the extra money for Christmas,” Mom said, dicing potatoes. “We could use the money to get out of this place.”

Mom glanced over her shoulder at Nicky.

“I don't want to see a long face,” she said. “Count your blessings. Be thankful I can find work.”

On the first morning of this new arrangement, Mom hustled around the apartment, getting ready for work while Nicky got ready for school. (Dad was already gone, an hour into his Yum-E-Cakes delivery circuit.) Nicky poured his own cereal and milk, remembered his own lunch money, found his own shoes. Mom could not help him. She rushed to catch a bus, which would take
her to another bus, which would carry her to the shopping center in Yonkers.

When Nicky arrived home after school, he was unnerved by the empty apartment. The place was silent and still. The apartment felt cold and deserted and bleak. There were no signs of life. The apartment was exactly the way Nicky had left it. He forgot to return the milk bottle to the refrigerator after breakfast, and the bottle was still there, warm on the table. His clothes remained on the floor near his bed. The toilet paper roll was still empty in the bathroom.

Nicky plopped cross-legged on the living room rug. He thought about the
TV Guide
featuring Ann-Margret, which he had hidden at the bottom of Roy's sock drawer. He hadn't looked at the magazine for weeks. Now with Mom at work, with no chance of her coming through the door unexpectedly, Nicky could stare all he wanted at the dress that might be a nightgown.

“I wonder who Oliver Twist is?” he said, talking to himself.

Nicky's ears picked up a quiet rapping. He went to the door. He heard shoes shuffle on the welcome mat. He heard breathing. Nicky put an eye to the peephole. A thick pair of nerd glasses, in fish-eye focus, looked back at him.

Nicky opened up for Lester. Nicky was glad to see an actual person. He was extra glad the actual person was Lester. He had to admit that to himself, but he did not have to admit it to Lester.

“Yes?” Nicky said frostily.

“Hello,” Lester said. “How are you?”

“Couldn't be better.”

“Are you busy?”

“I got some homework.”

“Yes. I am really loaded down myself. I was wondering something.”

“Yeah?”

“If you'd like to come down and do your homework with me.”

“Where?”

“In my apartment.”

“Did you say, in your apartment? Your apartment? Now? Your apartment?”

Lester nodded eagerly. Nicky pursed his lips, as if mulling the offer, weighing his options, considering other invitations. He said, “Sure. Lemme get my stuff.”

As he toted his book bag and followed Lester downstairs, Nicky felt a welling in his chest. Finally, he was headed for Lester's apartment. Another breakthrough.

Nicky held his breath as he entered the formerly forbidden turf of 2-C. Nicky gawked here, gaped there. He moved along, down the corridor, past the kitchen, into the living room, and his eager eyes beheld … absolutely nothing. There was not a blessed thing remarkable about the place.

Nothing.

There was no evidence of spies, pirates, communists, Nazis, counterfeiters, or gangsters. No shrunken head collection. No skeletal remains of kidnapped neighborhood pets. No sign of Amelia Earhart.

“Well, here we are,” Lester said.

“Where's your ma?”

“Downtown. She won't be back till six.”