The wind and rain were against us as we crossed the street and headed up the east side of the block. Louie and Malone were ahead, trying to keep up with McGinnes as he motored up the slight incline. Lee huddled in as I turned up the collar of my jacket and put my arm around her shoulder.
La Fortresse was an alky bar with a French name and medieval decor that was owned and run by a Turk. It was one of the few bars in town that served a rocks glass full with liquor with a
miniature mixer on the side. There was only one reason to come here, and that was to crawl deep into the bag.
A few old heads turned when Lee and I walked in, then returned to their drinks and the welterweight bout on the tube. We walked along the bar to the back room, which housed a piano, and where McGinnes, Malone, and Louie were already seated. The antique farm implements that hung on the wall resembled torture devices circa the Inquisition.
An easel holding an art card stood at the entranceway to the room, announcing the “Piano Interpretations of the Fabulous Buddy Floyd.” Around Mr. Floyd’s name were glitter drawings of a champagne bottle, bow tie, and several musical notes. We entered and sat with the others at a large corner table with a curved leatherette seat molded into the wall.
Presently a woman with an intoxicatingly crooked smile arrived to take our order. She had beautifully textured dark skin and spoke with a Caribbean accent.
Lee ordered an Absolut and tonic with a twist; I had an Old Grand-Dad, Malone took Courvoisier with a side of coke, and McGinnes asked for rail scotch with water. Louie ordered a draught.
“Make mine a double, honey,” McGinnes said to the waitress as she began to walk away.
“They’re all doubles,” she said patiently.
“I know that, sweetheart. Just joking.”
The drinks came and we toasted the day. The liquor was filled to the top of the heavy tumblers. I took a deep pull off the bourbon, one that ironed the dampness from my shirt.
McGinnes and Malone were building something with matches and straws on the table. Louie sat to my right and we listened to Lee tell us about the courses she was taking at AU and her plans for after college. Her arm was through mine, and she was refreshingly unconcerned about Louie’s awareness of our relationship.
The waitress returned and we all ordered another round.
McGinnes had not used any of his water to cut the scotch. Lee excused herself to go to the ladies’ room.
“She’s all right, you know?” Louie said, leaning in towards me as if we were conspirators.
“Yeah, I know. She’s cool.”
“Don’t mess her up, man. When you have a young lady like that,” he said, his hand cupped as if he were holding her in his palm, “you don’t mess with it.”
“Shit, Louie, give me more credit than that. Anyway, she already told me what was what.”
“I bet she did,” he said, smiling. “Her shit is more together than yours, man. And she’s ten years younger.”
The waitress brought our round. I took a sip and watched Louie down half his mug in one gulp.
“I’m a product of my generation, Louie. I guess it was all those Thoreau posters my junior-high hippie English teachers used to hang on the wall. ‘March to a different drummer,’ and all that. How many guys my age you read about, they’re making a shitload of money, they decide to quit because they’re not ‘happy.’”
“I don’t know whose product it is,” Louie said, “but you’re right. Now the kids coming up, Lee’s age, they
know
what they want.”
“Like Ric Brandon?”
“Brandon’s an asshole,” he said, waving his hand. “You know what I mean. For instance, man, you don’t mind my saying so, I been knowing you a long time. And you did a helluva job today. But, Nick, you fuckin’ up.”
“How so?”
“You sweat your ass off moving stock, you come up through the ranks in sales, you put yourself through college to get to that management position you’re in, now you act like it don’t mean nuthin’.” He got right up in my face. “What’s goin’ on with you, man?”
“I don’t know, Louie. I just can’t convince myself anymore that what I do is important.”
“Important? Come on, man, wake up. Where in the world did you get the idea that the work you do in life has to be important?” He took a swig of beer. “Let me tell you something, man. When I was young—you don’t even remember the D.C. I’m talkin’ about—this town was split black and white for real. I couldn’t sit with you like this in a bar and have a beer. In the early sixties I went to work in the old Kann’s department store downtown, and when the riots went down, they had no choice but to make me department manager.”
Lee came back and sat next to me. We all had some of our drinks, and Louie continued.
“Well, you know they went out of business like everybody else down there. But I got hired as a manager at Moe’s on New York Avenue. A couple of years later Moe died, his kids took over the business, and they went belly-up too. Then Nathan’s put me on as assistant manager over in Arlington. It was rough for a while, but I hung with it and eventually they give me this store.” He finished his draught and put it loudly on the table. “So I come a long way from the Colored Only section of this town to where I’m at. I don’t just work here. I’m the
manager
of a store on Connecticut Avenue, understand what I’m sayin’? I own a house and every three years I buy a new ride. I got me a kid at Maryland, one at UDC.” He paused and stared me down. “You want to know what’s important.”
A small man with a heavily veined nose wearing a tuxedo that fit like an afterthought walked into the room. He sat at the piano and placed his highball glass filled with straight liquor on a coaster.
“Welcome,” he said into the mike, “to La Fortresse.”
“It’s La FurPiece,” McGinnes shouted, and Lee jabbed me in the ribs.
“My name is Buddy Floyd,” the man said, and began indelicately playing the piano intro to “Tie a Yellow Ribbon.” With each chorus he turned his head in our direction and nodded in encouragement for us to sing along.
Mercifully, others began filing into the room, older couples
overdressed for this joint and out for their idea of a night on the town. Most of them were half-lit, and some of the women were elderly enough to be losing their hair, their pink scalps visible through their bouffants. For some reason I felt a tinge of sadness and kissed Lee on the cheek. Buddy Floyd was singing “They Call the Wind Maria.”
“I’m pretty buzzed,” Lee admitted, finishing her second vodka.
“So am I. You want to go?”
“Yes,” she said. “Can we stay together tonight?”
“Sure. But let’s go to my crib, okay?”
“Okay,” she laughed. “But aren’t you a little big for a crib?”
We settled up by leaving a twenty on the table. Lee kissed Louie good-bye. Malone, who was whispering something to our waitress, looked up long enough to give us a wink.
McGinnes was behind the piano, one arm around an older woman with raven black hair in the shape of a football helmet, his other hand clutching a precariously tilted tumbler of scotch. He and the others grouped around the piano were laughing and singing along loudly to the Fabulous Buddy Floyd’s interpretation of “Hello, Dolly.”
AT THE DISTRICT LINE
I stopped for a bottle of red wine, then headed towards my apartment. We sat in the car in front of my place, talking and listening to some old Van Morrison. When that was over, we went inside.
A half bottle of wine later our clothes were thrown about the living room and Lee and I were writhing all over my couch. We ended it loudly and in a sweat, with Lee inclined in the corner, the tops of her calves locked beneath my ears, the soles of her feet pointing at the ceiling.
Afterwards, I slid a pillow under her ass to catch the wetness, and watched the sweat roll onto her chest and break apart as it reached her large, brown nipples.
My apartment resembled a bombed-out laundromat. The cat had Lee’s underwear on her head and was bumping into furniture. Lee pulled my face down and kissed me on the mouth for a long time.
“I had a good Saturday,” she said sweetly.
“Yeah,” I said. “Me too.” Then I pulled a white blanket up from the back of the couch and spread it over us, and we slept, holding each other until morning.
L
EE ASKED
, “Where are we going?”
After a slow morning of breakfast and the Sunday
Post
at my place, we were heading south on Thirteenth Street, passing large detached homes with expansive porches. Ahead stood three-story rowhouses crowned with incongruously grand turrets.
“We’re going to visit someone,” I said. “A friend of my grandfather’s.”
I turned right on Randolph and parked halfway down the block of boxy brick houses. There was little color in the trimwork or shutters here. Dogs barked angrily from alleys. Even on bright and sunny days, this street seemed to remain dark.
“This is my Uncle Costa’s place,” I said. “He worked for my grandfather when he was a young man. When he wanted to start his own business, my grandfather helped him out.”
“Let’s go in.”
“I just wanted to explain to you first, before you meet him.
Let’s just say that some of these guys didn’t really assimilate themselves too well into the American culture.”
“You’re not ashamed of him, are you?”
“Not at all.”
“Fine,” she said, tugging at my arm. “Let’s just go in.”
As we walked up the steps, I waved to a man coming out of the next house who I knew to be a reverend. Behind us two gangly but tough-looking kids walked down the sidewalk, one wearing a Fila sweatsuit, the other with an Eddie Murphy “Golden Child” leather cap on his head.
A rusted metal rocker with moldy cushions sat on the concrete porch. Black iron bars filled the windows. I knocked on the door and waited, counting three locks being undone. Costa opened the door, looked at me, and smiled.
“Niko,” he said.
“Theo
Costa.” I gripped his hand and kissed him on the cheek.
He was short and solid, with thick wavy black hair that was gray at the temples and slicked back, and a thin black mustache below his bumpy nose. Though it was Sunday, he wore a short-sleeved white shirt with two pens clipped in the breast pocket.
“Come on,” he said, waving us in with both hands. As Lee passed him, he looked back at me and said in Greek, “Your girl? Very nice.”
“A friend,” I answered, but he winked anyway.
I introduced her and they shook hands. A couple of cats ran by us and into the kitchen. The curtains were drawn throughout the house. Costa switched on lights as we followed him through the living room and into the dining room. The air was dry and very still.
We sat at a large table in ornate chairs with yellowed cushions. On one wall was a mirror covered with a blanket; on the other hung a sepia-tinted photograph of a man and woman that had been taken in the early part of the century. The woman, even shorter than the short man and wearing a long black dress,
was unsmiling. The man wore a baggy suit, a very thick mustache, and a watchchain from vest to pocket.
“You want coffee,
gleeka’?”
Costa asked.
“Thanks, Costa. Nescafe for Lee.”
“One minute,” he said in Greek, jabbing a finger in the air and stepping quickly into the kitchen.
“He’s nice,” Lee said. I nodded and she pointed to the wall. “What’s with the mirrors? I noticed the one in the living room is covered too.”
“His wife died last year,” I said. “He covered the mirrors so he won’t see her reflection.” She raised her eyebrows. “I told you.”
“It’s just that it’s so dark in here, and sad. He must be very depressed.”
“I’m sure he’s a little lonely and misses his wife. But this house was always closed up and dark, even when she was alive. They’re old-timers, that’s all.”
Costa returned with a tray of two Turkish coffees, a cup of instant, and a small platter of sweets, which he set in the center of the table. On the platter were
koulourakia, kourabiedes, galactoboureko,
and
baklava.
He pushed the whole thing in front of Lee.
“Don’t be shy,” he said, moving his hands in small circles. “Eat!”
“I like baklava,” she admitted, emphasizing the second syllable as most Americans do, and chose a slice. I took a
kourabiede
for myself.
We sat and talked for the next half hour, mostly about what we had been doing in the time since I’d seen him last. The tiny cup of coffee had given me quite a jolt. Lee eventually drifted away from the table and began to wander around the house. We heard her steps on the wooden staircase that led down to the basement.
She called upstairs excitedly, “Hey, Nicky, there must be twenty cats down here!”
“Twenty cats, Costa?” I said, and smiled.
“Maybe a dozen,” he said sourly. “Lousy
gatas.”
“If you’d quit feeding them…. ”
“Aah,” he said, dismissing me with a wave of his hand.
Now that Lee was gone we spoke in Greek. Though I understood everything he said, I kept my own sentences simple so as not to embarrass myself with my marginal command of the language.