Eggplant Alley (9781593731410) (9 page)

“Never do that.”

“Yes. My mama told already told me. At any rate, just as I reached in, I caught sight of a smelly filthy character in the elevator. His clothes were ripped and his face was smeared with dirt. And he threatened me.”

Nicky said, “Threatened?”

“Yes. He sounded just like the gangsters in the movies. He said, ‘I'll let ya have it.' Just like that.”

“Would you know this guy if you saw him again?”

“Oh, certainly.”

Nicky didn't know what to add to this. So he said, “Why donchya fill me in about the country.”

Lester shrugged. “We lived in a house. With a lot of land. Not a lot of people. I had a tree house.”

“You had a tree house?” Nicky said. He thought tree houses only existed in children's books. He had never met anyone who actually owned one.

“Oh yes. I miss it. It was my favorite place to go. It was a perfect place to think.”

“About what?”

“About everything, I guess. About nothing. You know.”

“Yeah,” Nicky said, knowing.

“It's so crowded here. It's no wonder city people are jumpy. You can't hear yourself think. My mama says it's like cramming a bunch a rats into a small cage, the city is.”

“Jumpy? New Yorkers?” Nicky said, his voice in a higher pitch. “You must have us mixed up with somebody else. We're cool as cucumbers. Like rats, huh? Just because we don't live in trees like country people.”

“We don't live in trees.”

“Well, we ain't rats.”

They sat in silence for a moment. A police car roared up Summit, siren screaming, throttle wide open. Its tires whinnied as it careened around the curve, down Mayflower.

“Pardon?” Lester said. “I missed what you said.”

“I said, in fact, we have plenty of peace and quiet around here.”

“I'm sure you do.”

“Yeah. As a matter of fact, I know a place better than any tree house. Peaceful as a baby's crib.”

“That would be something. I'd like to see it.”

“So, let's go,” Nicky said, standing.

Lester blinked at him.

Nicky said, “Come on, whaddya need, an engraved invitation?”

Lester stood and the two boys walked into the courtyard. Lester's shoes clicked on the pavement.

“I gotta know something. What's with the tap shoes?” Nicky said.

“I used to tap-dance,” Lester said.

Nicky made a face.

Lester said, “I stopped.”

Nicky and Lester climbed the stairs to the second floor. Lester needed to drop by his apartment before visiting the roof. He said he was required to tell his mother where he would be, at all times. Lester turned the doorknob to 2-C and the door clunked without opening.

“Locked,” Lester said.

“Well, that's good. You're not upstate anymore.”

A tall, thin woman with green eyes and red hair opened the door. She smelled of bread dough. Lester introduced his mother.

“This is Nicky, my friend,” Lester told her.

Nicky thought, “Friend? Not so fast, bub.”

“How do you do, Nicky,” Mrs. Allnuts said, also in the flat accent.

Lester said, “Why don't you come on in for a visit?”

“Well, we'd better get going if I'm going to show you the roof.”

Mrs. Allnuts said, “The roof?”

“It's safe,” Nicky said. “It's not the kind of roof you fall off. It's not a country roof.”

“Mama, Nicky says it's better than a tree house.”

The boys rode the elevator and got off at nine, the top floor.

“This way,” Nicky said. He felt grown-up and important to be the leader, for once. He would have to show this hick how things were done.

They climbed single-file up a narrow, dark stairway. Nicky pushed open a heavy iron door, which made a scraping sound. They stepped onto the spongy tar of the roof, into the breezy air and fading daylight.

“Whoa,” said Lester. “We're high.”

“Ten stories,” Nicky said proudly, as if he had built each story personally. “Of course, I've been on plenty taller.”

“Ever been to the top of the Empire State Building?”

“Are you kidding? That's for tourists.”

Nicky let the country boy take in the grandeur of the city rooftop. It was a magnificent place. The air was fresh and reviving, like the air at the beach. It was quiet but not silent. There was the faraway hum of city noise, which Nicky thought way more soothing than silence. Silence allows the imagination to stir up unpleasant thoughts.

From somewhere below, a woman hollered and a kid cried. Somewhere else, a radio was going. Mr. Storch pinged his xylophone. Out on Summit, a truck crunched its gears. High in the purple sky, a small propeller plane throbbed. Far away, a police siren howled. The sounds mixed gently.

“Take a look around,” Nicky said. “Don't worry, there's a wall. I told you, you can't fall off.”

The rooftop itself was an alien landscape. An apartment building
shows its loose ends in the basement and on the roof. And up here there were odd brick walls; chunky, chimney-like outcroppings; pipes out of nowhere; a rat's nest of spindly television antennae; swirling, globe-shaped vents; rows of clotheslines, empty tonight except for a wide girdle dancing in the wind.

Lester walked the edge, riding his hand along the top of the wall. The sunset conspired to impress Nicky's guest, splashing orange and red behind the hulk of the aspirin factory. The streetlamps came on and traced dotted lines along Summit.

On the Summit side of Eggplant Alley were small homes with teeny yards. Nicky and Lester looked down on the black rooftops. They could make out the dark greenery and elaborately angled rooftop of the big Victorian house on Mayflower Avenue, known as the Only House With Trees. A touch of pink and lime green sputtered from Broadway—the neon sign of Rosner's appliance store. Neon was ugly close up, but as exciting as Christmas lights when viewed from far away. Nicky pointed out the wide towers of the new apartment buildings over by the parkway, windows lighted in a checkerboard pattern.

“Look there,” Nicky said. He nodded to a string of bluish white pearls, far off and hazy. “No—there. The George Washington Bridge.”

“Holy smokes,” Lester said. “Wow. I guess I see what you mean about this place. Do you come up here a lot?”

“All the time,” Nicky said, lying.

Nicky had not visited the roof for years. Roy took him to the roof often in the good old days, and it was always a special treat. It was a place without adult supervision, perfect for big-brother mischief.
On the rooftop, Roy would smoke cigarettes; drop marbles into the air vents; toss water balloons at cars on Groton; ignite rotten-egg stink bombs under the drying laundry. Nicky viewed the naughtiness with horror and glee and in total awe of Roy.

On the roof Roy dispensed fabulous tales and forbidden facts, a big-brother specialty. No adults eavesdropped and censored, so Nicky learned about the not-shy stewardess across the courtyard; about Mrs. Binzetti's three previous husbands; about the mind-boggling uses of the X-Ray Specs.

“I really ought to come up here more often,” Nicky said.

Lester checked his watch. Nicky took note that it was a Mickey Mouse watch, a very cool accessory that spring, way too cool for a kid with thick nerd glasses. Nicky thought, “Maybe looks can be deceiving.”

Lester said, “I have to go.”

“Okay.” Nicky was disappointed, dreading the apartment without Checkers but with plenty of memories of Checkers.

Lester said, “Is that the door to the stairs?”

“The gray one.”

Lester walked, shoes scraping the roof tar, and tugged on the door.

“Those shoes,” Nicky said. “No offense, but they've gotta go.”

“Go?”

“Yeah. When they click. That will make it easier for muggers to stalk you.”

“Oh,” Lester said, examining the shoes. “I guess I have a lot to learn about city life.”

Nicky said, “Hey. If you want, I could meet you up here Monday
after school. I could fill you in on the ropes. On the neighborhood and stuff. There's a lot you oughta know.”

“I'll ask my mama. But I'm sure it will be all right. She wants me to make friends.”

“Yeah, I can fill you in at least,” Nicky said, shrugging.

After three tugs, Lester yanked the door open and picked his way down the steps. His clicking shoes slowly faded down the stairwell.

Nicky planned to stay on the roof by himself for another hour or so. He had forgotten how much he loved the roof. But it was no good. He left after five minutes. Nicky discovered he did not want to be up there alone, after all.

N
icky could not stay asleep. It was after midnight, and he wondered if this was the night when he finally stayed awake all the way till dawn.

Roy's bed, empty and smooth, the bedspread chalky white, pulled at Nicky's eyes. Nicky stared until his eyeballs hurt. And Roy appeared in the dim light. On his back, hands behind his head, staring at the ceiling. His old lecturing position, from which he explained about the giant alligators living in the sewer system; why you never loan your baseball mitt to anyone; the secret ingredient in Coney Island hot dogs; and much more inside information about the world and life.

Nicky stared back at the ceiling. So many questions. Was that a long-dead bug on the ceiling or a new, live bug? What about this Lester? Now, past midnight, Nicky was sorry he talked to the kid, gone to the roof with the kid, arranged another meeting with the kid. Nicky knew what would happen, sooner or later. Nicky knew that Lester would disappear, just like Andrea Abbananzo, Bobby What's-his-name, Checkers. And here in the dark, he had to admit this to himself: He was sure Lester would disappear, just
like the only real friend Nicky ever had. He was sure Lester would disappear just like Roy.

In the good old days, Nicky tagged along after Roy all the time, everywhere. When Dad took the boys to Cherry Street for crew cuts, they would push through the door, and Barella the Barber would look up from snipping and say, “Hey, here comes Roy Martini and his shadow.”

Roy was Nicky's pal, his buddy, his chum. Until the Great Blackout of 1965. The night that changed everything, for the worse.

That autumn, Roy steadily built a vendetta against Popop, the nasty old man who ran the dirty, cramped variety store six blocks from Eggplant Alley. Popop was a caricature of the mean candy store owner—every New York neighborhood seemed to have one. Popop was from somewhere in Eastern Europe. He was short and wide, with a head shaped like an Idaho potato. His eyes were cold, blue, and mean. “Like a sniper's eyes,” Roy said.

Popop assumed that every customer was a shoplifter, or at least a thief at heart. This led to an incident that stirred the boiling bad blood between Roy and Popop.

One day Nicky tagged along with Roy to the store. Nicky was on a mission to buy a set of wax lips for Halloween. He thought wax lips were the funniest gag he had ever seen. That day in school, all Nicky could think about was wax lips. So Roy flipped through the comic books, which always enraged Popop, while Nicky picked through the wax lips, searching for the perfect pair. Nicky's right hand was buried in his pocket. To Popop's prison
guard mind, the hand in the pocket was sinister. Popop hustled around the cash register and snared Nicky's right arm. Popop shook Nicky and dug his pudgy fingers into Nicky's pockets.

“You are stealing, I know you are doing,” Popop said.

Roy was not afraid of Popop, or anything else. (Nicky thought so, in those days at least.) Roy pushed himself between Popop and little Nicky. Roy put a finger close to Popop's crooked nose and growled breathlessly, “If you EVER lay a hand on my little brother again, I will KILL you. You got that? You lousy fink. You got that?”

“Pretty smart mouth you are having there,” Popop said, tilting back the potato head.

Nicky howled and clutched Roy by the arm. Nicky tugged his big brother toward the door.

“I'm going because HE wants me to,” Roy shouted, voice straining, pointing down to Nicky's head. “Not because YOU want me to, got it?”

“You better be beating it out of here before I teach you some lesson you are never forgetting.”

“I'll be back,” Roy said. “You can count on it, you old fink. You crumb. I'll be back.”

It took Roy ten whole days to come back. Revenge required careful planning, down to the last detail, from devising the perfect alibi to choosing the right weapon.

On the afternoon before the big night of vengeance, Roy showed Nicky a lumpy handkerchief under his mattress.

“If you don't want Mom to find something, hide it under your mattress,” Roy advised. “She would never think to look there.”

Roy placed the bundle on his bed, and with one eye on the doorway he slowly unfolded the handkerchief. Inside the handkerchief was a slingshot. Not the toyish kind of slingshot favored by Dennis the Menace and other lovable scamps. This was an aluminum killer, featuring industrial strength, yellow rubber tubing, and a leather ammo pouch. If the Marine Corps issued slingshots, this would be the model.

“Isn't it a beauty?” Roy said. “I borrowed it from Mumbles. I'll bet you could stop a Buick with this beauty.”

“We're going to shoot a Buick?”

“Numbskull. We're going to punish Popop.” He reached under the mattress and produced a jangling Band-Aid box. Roy opened the box and let Nicky see the colorful array of marbles.

Just before supper, Roy gave Mom the cover story, the one he had dreamed up during history class.

“Ma, we gotta go to the store.”

“What for at this hour?”

“Glue.”

“We have glue.”

“Special glue.”

Nicky and Roy hurried down Summit in the gathering autumn night. The streetlamps were coming on. House windows glowed warmly orange. They walked briskly, two boys on a righteous mission. Nicky could see Roy's breath in the cooling night air as he spelled out the big plan.