The Turnaround (13 page)

“Okay.”

Alex and Vicki owned a 1,700-square-foot brick structure, formerly a Pepco utility substation, off Piney Branch Road in Takoma Park. It had been zoned for commercial use and for the past five years had been leased by an Iranian who used it as a carpeting and flooring showroom. When the man’s operation had gone the way of the corded phone, he had vacated the premises. Vicki was worried about the cash flow, but Alex was not. She maintained their books, did their taxes, and managed their investments. Alex had a talent for running a business but was uninterested in the mechanics of money.

“I’m gonna find a tenant,” said Alex.

“You’ve been saying that since the Iranian moved out. Six months now.”

“The building’s paid for.”

“We still pay property taxes on it.”

“
Okay.
”

“I’m just pointing it out, Alex.”

“Just don’t go stomping your little foot over there. You hear me, Thumper?”

Vicki smirked, her eyes on the cutting board as she halved a head of iceberg lettuce.

She was on the short side, with a nice figure on her still, a little belly, but that was all right. Her hair, dyed black, was cut in the
Friends
style that the Aniston girl had made famous but was now way out of date. Even Alex knew that. But on his wife it looked good. He still got excited when he watched her walking toward the bed at night. The way she turned her back shyly when she removed her bra.

Vicki had aged several years in the one since Gus had been killed, but the new lines on her face were not an issue with Alex. Grief had moved the clock forward on him, too. He knew that he and Vicki were going to be together until the end. With everything they had been through, having survived it, there wasn’t any question of that.

He met her when she was just out of high school, a trainee in the accounting department in the machinists’ union building, at 1300 Connecticut. The most fun-loving girls in the south Dupont area, and the nicest, worked in the machinist offices. Alex was in his early twenties, a young businessman, the owner of the lunch counter, a good catch. She was a daily morning customer, small coffee, milk and sugar, with a Danish. Her last name was Mimaros. She was Greek American, Orthodox, a
koukla,
and nice to Darlene and the rest of the help. She didn’t seem to mind his eye. He took her out to dinner, and she was respectful of the waitress. Had she not been, it would have been a deal breaker for Alex. He married her within a year.

“What do you think?” said Vicki.

“About?”

“About Johnny,
boo-faw
.”

“Johnny’s got big ideas.”

“He’s excited. He’s just trying to help.”

“I said he could try out a thing or two, didn’t I?”

“In your own way. Yes, you did.”

“He bugs me, that kid.”

Alex waited for Vicki’s quiet reminder that was also an admonishment:
He’s not Gus
. But Vicki went on shredding her lettuce and commented no further.

Alex went back to the phone and lifted it off its base. “I’m gonna call my mom.”

He moved to the living room and had a seat in his favorite chair. He dialed his mother, who now lived out in Leisure World. He tried to phone her every night and visited her twice a week, though she often reminded him that she was not lonely. Calliope Pappas had not been involved with a man since the death of her husband, but she had many friends. Alex’s brother, Matthew, an attorney in northern California, called infrequently and visited occasionally on holidays, so Alex’s mother, now coming up on eighty, was the last connecting thread to his childhood. He often said that he had stayed in the Washington area for her. Secretly he felt that he needed his mother more than she needed him.

“Hi, Mom. It’s Alex.”

“I know it, honey. Don’t you think I recognize your voice by now?”

After they said good-bye, Alex returned to the kitchen, replaced the phone, and went to the refrigerator for another slice of cheese. He looked at the photo on the wall, his old man in his apron at the
magazi,
flipping burgers, a look of true joy on his face. Alex had his good days at the store. He’d had some laughs with the customers and the help. But he’d never felt the way his father looked in that photograph. It occurred to him that in thirty-some years on the job, he had never experienced that kind of unbridled happiness himself.

Ten

H
OW’D THAT dude get that job?” said Raymond Monroe.

“He was a comedian before this,” said Kendall Robertson.

“He’s never made me laugh,” said Monroe. “Not once.”

“Me, neither,” said Marcus Robertson.

They were in Kendall’s row house on Quebec Place, eating carryout, watching that popular nighttime game show with the bald-headed host, had the trumpet-player hipster patch beneath his lower lip.

“I’d like to know where you apply for that job,” said Monroe. “ ’Cause I
know
I could do it better than him.”

“You ever see a black game show host?”

“Didn’t Arsenio host one?”

“He’s not funny, either.”

“I could be the first. Break that game show host color line. I’m sayin, if Mr. Clean can do it, I can, too. Because this man is, like,
talentless
. Is that a word?”

“I think so.”

“You wanna know how he got that job? Luck. Like, four-leaf-clover, bust-the-casino kinda luck. I mean, this dude must have a golden horseshoe lodged up in his —”

“Raymond!”

Marcus laughed. “He’s lucky.”

“That’s what I’m sayin, Peanut.”

Monroe had given the boy the nickname because of his stature and the funny shape of his shaved head. Marcus didn’t mind when he called him that. He liked Mr. Raymond, and when he gave Marcus the name, it was a sign that Mr. Raymond liked him, too.

“What are we watching this for?” said Kendall.

“You’re right,” said Monroe. “I don’t know why they call it a game if there’s no skill to it. It’s all about greed.”

Monroe got up from the kitchen table and turned off the television set.

“That was easy,” said Kendall.

“Ought to do it more often,” said Monroe. “C’mon, little man, let’s have a look at your bike.”

“He needs to do his math,” said Kendall.

“I will, Mom.”

“You promise your mother you’re gonna do your homework later?” said Monroe.

“Yes.”

“Let’s go, then.”

Kendall gave Monroe an approving glance as he crossed the room with the boy. They went out the back door, down wood stairs to a cracked sidewalk bordered by two small patches of dirt, weeds, and a little grass, and entered a small detached garage next to the alley.

Kendall had bought the house for fifty thousand and change ten years back, and now it was worth several hundred thousand dollars. She had endured the drug dealing, break-ins, and violent crime in the neighborhood, and though the problems had not been completely eradicated, her vision of a Park View transformed was beginning to take hold.

Many of the homes on her street had been turned over to new-generation ownership and were being reconditioned. Though she had made no major improvements, Kendall kept her place in clean good shape. Monroe handled the basic maintenance, which was often no more than throwing a fresh coat of paint on a wall, drilling new screw holes for those that had been stripped, caulking the bathtub and shower stall, and replacing broken windows, a skill his father had taught him and James when they were boys.

Monroe had also organized the garage. His parents had not had one in Heathrow, and it was a luxury for him. He had screws, nuts, bolts, washers, and nails in clear film canisters, labeled by Sharpies on tape, aligned on a wooden shelf. Motor oil, transmission fluid, brake fluid, rags, cleaning supplies, windshield washer fluid, and antifreeze were lined up in a row against one cinder-block wall. He had brought his toolbox down here and took it back to his mother’s as needed. He supposed he was slowly moving in.

“I don’t know how the tire got flat,” said Marcus, as Monroe upended his bike, a Dyno 2000 with rear pegs, and set it on its saddle and bars.

“You ran over something, I expect. Go get me those tire levers off the shelf.” When Marcus did not move, Monroe said, “Those blue things, thick plastic, a few inches long. Got hooks on the end.”

Raymond showed the boy how to insert the thick end of the tire lever between the tire and the rim, and how to hook it onto the spoke. He instructed him to use the second lever the same way, hooking it two spokes down. By working it around in this fashion, the tire could be removed from the rim.

“Now run your hand real careful inside that tire. You’re gonna find a bit of glass or a sharp twig, something like that in there. Whatever it was punctured that tube.”

“It was this,” said Marcus, holding a small triangle of forest green glass carefully between his fingers.

Monroe gave the new inner tube a couple of pumps of air and fitted it into the empty tire. He pulled the valve through the hole in the rim and seated one side of the tire into the rim’s edge. He turned the bike around and used his thumbs and muscle to fit the other side. He completed the replacement by inflating the tire to its suggested pressure. All the while he talked to the boy, describing the process with simple language.

Marcus watched him as he worked. He noticed the veins jump on the back of Mr. Raymond’s hands and how they stood out like wire on his forearms. The tight way he wore his knit watch cap cocked a little sideways on his head. His thin, neat mustache. Marcus was going to grow one just like it someday.

“You should be good now,” said Monroe.

“Can I ride it down to the Avenue and back?”

“It’s too dark. I’m worried about the cars seein you. But you can walk with me to the market if you want. I noticed your mother needed some milk.”

On the way to Georgia, Monroe talked to Marcus about body language. “Chin up, and keep your shoulders square, like you’re balancing a broom handle on there. Make eye contact, but not too long, hear? You don’t want to be challenging anyone for no good reason. On the other hand, you don’t want to look like a potential victim, either.”

“How’s a victim look?” said Marcus.

“Like someone you could rob or steal in the face,” said Monroe. He had said these things to Kenji when he was a little boy. Raymond’s father, Ernest Monroe, had said them to him.

Down on the Avenue, as the foot traffic increased, Marcus reached out and held Monroe’s hand.

CHARLES BAKER sat in the passenger seat of Cody Kruger’s Honda, looking through the windshield at a gray four-square colonial at the corner of 39th and Livingston. Deon Brown was in the backseat, shifting his considerable weight. They were parked down the block, near Legation Street. Two blacks and a white, sitting in a beat-up car in one of the city’s wealthier neighborhoods. Anyone who came up on them would know they were wrong.

“These houses are nice,” said Cody.

“Big trees, too,” said Baker. “This here’s a burglar’s paradise during the day.”

They were in Friendship Heights. Baker had done some break-ins in neighborhoods just like this one. Two men in, one lookout in the car. Go directly to the master bedroom and toss it. People liked to keep their jewelry, furs, and cash close to where they slept. But he and his crew had been retired from that game by the law. He wasn’t about to go back to prison for a fur coat. If he was going to fall, it would be for something worthwhile.

“All this money,” said Cody. “Why they not drivin nicer whips?”

“Look careful,” said Baker. “They’re showing that they got it in a quiet way, but they’re sayin something else, too.”

This was not the new-money, look-what’s-in-my-driveway lifestyle of a Potomac or a McLean. The residents here had it, but they did not care to advertise it. Their cars weren’t flashy, even when they were fast, but they were fairly new and environmentally correct. All-wheel-drive Volvos, Saab sedans, SUV hybrids, Infiniti Gs, and Acuras lined the streets.

“They sayin, ‘Look at me,’ ” said Baker. “ ‘I can afford a Mercedes, but I
choose not
to own one.’ They gonna spend fifty thousand dollars on a Lexus hybrid so they can save a few miles per gallon on gas and boast about it at their next dinner party. But ask one of these motherfuckers to give a thousand dollars to a school on the other side of town, so a poor black kid can have a computer and a chance? You gonna see the door slam right in your face.”

How do
you
know?
thought Deon, tiring of the cynical drawl in Baker’s voice.
When have you ever done anything for
any
kind of kid, poor or otherwise?

“Ain’t that right, Deon?”

Deon adjusted his body. He had big legs and was uncomfortable in the small backseat. “Right, Mr. Charles.”

“I can’t stand these people,” said Baker, and Cody nodded his head.

“Can we go?” said Deon.

“In a minute,” said Baker.

Deon wasn’t comfortable in this part of the city. Even when he dressed right, even when he was straight, he got looks. It wasn’t just his color, though that was a large part of the reaction. The locals could sense he didn’t belong here. Once he bought a shirt from one of those stores over on Wisconsin Avenue, on what they called the Rodeo Drive of Chevy Chase, and when he took it to the register, they asked for his ID, even though he was paying cash. His mother told him he should have asked why, but he had been too humiliated to question the clerk. He never went shopping on that fancy strip of stores again.

The side door to the four-square colonial opened. A tall, thin man in a sport jacket and slacks stepped out of the house. His hair was thick, gray, and on the long side, falling a little over his ears. He held a leash, and on the end of it was a fat dachshund. The man stopped to light a cigar, then walked north.

“Every night,” said Baker.

Cody touched the handle of the door.

“Not yet,” said Baker. “Let him go some.”

“How you know he’s not gonna be right back?”

“He’s off to that nice little rec center and ball field they got, just a block or so away. Takes a little while for him to get there ’cause his poor excuse for a dog got them short little legs.”