Old Neighborhood (16 page)

Chris Anton had offered me a job and I accepted. The appeal of the work to me was in how little it resembled what I had been doing. It seemed a perfect interim job until I could get myself settled—and I would be helping to save my candy store.

I called the office from the pay phone in the store.

“Ray, I’m pulling out of the agency.”

“Taking what with you?”

“Nothing. It’s all yours. We’ll let the lawyers work it out.”

“Steve, what’s going on?”

“I’ve had it, Ray.”

“Are you starting another shop?”

“No. I’m just through with cranking the stuff out.”

“You’re serious?”

“Yes, Ray.”

“It figures. You’ve been really strange.”

“So—there it is.”

“You really want to resign?”

“Absolutely.”

“Clean?”

“Right.”

He thought about that for a moment, then he said:

“I don’t want you stealing any of our accounts. You can’t work for any of our accounts.”

“Relax, Ray.”

“And I’d want the right to keep the name—Robbins and Tolchin. There’s continuity with a name. I own that too.”

“Whatever you say.”

“We’ll get some papers drawn. When is this effective?”

“Immediately.”

“Well, we can handle it.”

“I don’t hear you weeping.”

“I’m not. So what are you doing, Steve? What’s your plan?”

“I’m a soda jerk in a candy store in the Bronx.”

“Very funny.”

“I’m telling you the truth.”

“Are you sober?”

“Totally.”

“You’re in the Bronx?”

“On Kingsbridge Road. If you’re ever in the neighborhood, drop by. I’ll make you a malted, so rich you wouldn’t eat dinner.”

Chris and I changed the front window, he had been using it as a counter for magazines, and we made it possible to serve drinks from the window to people standing on the sidewalk. We placed twine the length of the window and draped it with cardboard signs just as the Fishers had done in the old days,
AUTHENTIC MALT MALTEDS, GENUINE EGG CREAMS, LIME RICKEYS, SODAS MADE TO ORDER, SUNDAES, FRAPPES
—a distinction made for purists. We placed pegboard along the side of the store and covered the board with impulse items, increased the number of racks for magazines and comic books, filled a glass case with treasures—jacks, soap bubbles, rubber balls, magic tricks. We retained the griddle and the food counter, but we placed a new sandwich list on the wall, undercutting the coffee shop on price. And in the front of the counter we set out a display worthy of preservation in the Smithsonian, an assortment of loose candy in cardboard boxes, the good goods.

Chris opened the store early in the morning, I came in later in the morning and stayed until dinnertime. He went home to rest for a while when I was there, and then returned to close the store. Previously he had been exhausting himself trying to do everything on his own. I also came in for a few hours on Saturday, and this schedule still left me with time for athletics and for my card games with Sam—important commitments. I worked the front end of the counter in my white apron, the sodas, sundaes and malteds; Chris concentrated on the food items. I kept up a banter with our customers, I prepared everything with panache, and, frankly, I was having a very good time. I even created a sundae, the “Stevie’s Special,” ice cream topped with wheat germ and syrup.

“For this you went to college?” Sam asked me in the store.

“It’s a lost art, Sam. So much comes packaged today.”

“How much does he pay you?”

“Five dollars an hour.”

“Well, you’re between jobs, but you have a job in the meantime is how I see it,” he said, working this out for himself.

Jack Walsh came in and I could see the look of surprise on his face to find me behind the counter. I was working on a big order for some teenagers at the time, two banana splits and a hot fudge sundae. I did it with flair, laying in each ingredient as though I were a chef. The kids enjoyed me and
I
enjoyed me. I do not know if I suddenly lost status in Jack Walsh’s view by doing this kind of work, but I was taking so much pleasure in what I did that he smiled, and he ordered a Stevie’s Special. So if he had any reservations, I must have overcome them. He became a regular customer, as did several of the other ballplayers. They came in and we talked about sports and movies and events in the news—the kind of talk that went on in a neighborhood candy store. Along with whatever personal following I had, other customers were coming in, responding to the changes we had made, younger people who were now attracted to the place, and old timers who were getting a good candy store back again.

One day, a black chauffeured limousine slid past the store, and after several passes, the limousine stopped. A uniformed driver came out and opened the door for a man in a business suit, Ray Tolchin. He approached the store warily.

“Steve?”

“Hi, Ray. In the neighborhood?”

“You’re really here!”

“I am.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“Truth in advertising. I wouldn’t lie to you.”

He took a look at the surroundings.

“Do they know who you are?”

“They don’t care.”

A teenage boy came into the store.

“A black-and-white, Steve.”

I made a chocolate soda with vanilla ice cream, capable now of directing the seltzer off the spoon.

“Jesus Christ!” my ex-partner said.

The chauffeur was lingering in the doorway.

“Is he your bodyguard?” I asked.

“I didn’t know where I was going. I thought I could get mugged.”

“I don’t plan to mug you, Ray.”

“Steve, what is this?”

“Just what you see. I quit the advertising business and I’m here.”

“I don’t know what I should do. Are you all right? Should I call a doctor?”

“I’m fine.
You
look a little pale.”

He reached over the counter and patted me on the stomach.

“You lost weight. You’re tan.”

“Clean living. Light lunches with a little seltzer. No creative lunches, Ray.”

“Look at you,” he said, appraising me. “You’re wearing an apron!”

“I don’t think I should work in a suit.”

“He’s in a goddamn candy store!” He noticed the sign. “A
Stevie’s Special?
You’ve got something named after you?”

“First an agency, and now a sundae. How many people in their lives can make such a claim?”

He sat down at the counter and rested his head in his hands.

“
He’s
in a candy store and
I’m
dealing with Boujez.”

“It all seems very remote to me.”

“He wants product out by Christmas.”

“Does he?”

“Actually, I hate that creep.”

“Cheer up. How about a malted? On the house.”

“I don’t want a malted.”

“Give yourself a treat.”

“No! I’m not going to sit here and have you make me a malted.”

“They walk blocks for my malteds.”

“Steve, I don’t want a malted!”

“Just taste it.”

I made a malted and placed it on the counter. “You don’t want to insult me, do you?”

“All right, goddammit. I’ll taste your malted.”

He sipped it.

“Well?”

“It’s good.”

“Good? Only good?”

“Excellent.”

“Excellent?” I came out from behind the counter. “Is that the best malted you ever had?”

“Well, yes.”

He drank a little more, unable to resist. We both began to laugh.

“You make a terrific malted, you maniac.”

“Cold milk. That’s the secret. Don’t let that get out.”

He stood up and went to look at the outside of the store.

“You sure dropped out.” He looked at me closely. “You don’t think I forced you out?”

“No, I don’t.”

“The lawyers are talking.”

“That’s good—”

“Steve, a candy store! Christ! I hope you don’t object, but I’m not going to put this in the press release.”

“I’m sure someone in the agency will find the right phrase to account for me.”

We stood on the sidewalk, he in his suit, I in my apron.

“Are you really all right?” he asked.

“I wasn’t. But I’m getting there.”

I rose each morning in my house in the suburbs and made my way past the carefully tended lawns, one of which was ours. Beverly had made certain before she left for the summer that the gardener would still come by. Such was the attention to detail in a modern trial separation, the lawn was maintained. As I drove from suburbia to the Bronx there were mornings when I worried that I had managed to integrate a depression into a deeper, more serious state. But these fears would pass, usually when I arrived in the store and I saw the look of relief on Chris Anton’s face, and when I watched people coming in, people who were now customers because of my suggestions for the place. My ideas there were working. I felt physically better than I had in years. I read books at night, I had energy. I could not have been crazy. This could not have been wrong for me, I reassured myself.

The summer was ending and the girls wrote to ask if I would meet their bus at the Port Authority Terminal on the Saturday they were due to arrive. I was waiting for them in my Shannon’s Bar shirt, which had become my number one dress shirt. In keeping with their respective styles, Amy and I hugged each other, Sarah and I exchanged discreet kisses.

“What are you
wearing?
” Sarah asked.

“It’s very fashionable,” I said, “Jock chic.”

For a moment she was uncertain and I spared her the awkwardness.

“I’m on a team.”

“You?” she said.

I took their bags and we walked to the car.

“How was the summer?” I asked.

“Good,” Amy said, Sarah offered an “Okay.”

“But how was yours, Daddy?” Amy asked. “You look fantastic.”

I had lost fifteen pounds, and was still working on it.

“When Mommy gets back I’ll tell you all about it.”

On the ride home I received their report on counselor life in the Berkshires, but I lost benefit of their company minutes after we arrived at the house, as they disappeared to make phone calls to friends. I had anticipated this and had booked them into dinner at a restaurant so I could keep them with me a while longer. I put on a sports jacket and a different shirt for the occasion.

“I’m glad you changed,” Sarah said as we got into the car.

“Number 16 is one of the great shirts,” I answered.

“You’re not really on a team, are you? It must be some advertising thing.”

They had been told, when they were younger, that I had been a ballplayer in school. Obviously they had forgotten. It was not within their frame of reference. I stopped the car along the way. Two boys were playing basketball at a backboard on a garage.

“I want to show you something,” I said to my daughters.

I walked over to the boys and asked if I could borrow their ball for a minute.

“Daddy, what are you doing?” Amy said.

“Before dinner you get the floor show.”

I escorted the girls out of the car to the side of the driveway, where they stood, impatient with me. I took the basketball and fast-dribbled it close to the ground, shifting left hand to right like a bongo player. I dribbled up to the basket, made a right-handed layup, then a left-handed layup, then a right-hander backhand from the left side, and a left-hander backhand from the right side, took a few one-handers, close in range, and made a couple, dribbled back to the girls, then headed down the center and dropped in a floating layup, underhand. I faked a pass to one of the boys, whipped the ball around my back, rolled it off my arm, flicking it into the air with my fingertips, back into the boy’s hands.

The girls seemed astonished—that I had done all this—that I
could
do it.

“That’s amazing, Daddy,” Amy said. Even Sarah said, “Great.”

“You better believe it.”

As they stared at me, I walked back to the car—very jauntily.

B
EVERLY CALLED THE HOUSE
to say she would be coming back after Labor Day. “How did the summer go?” I asked. “It was inconclusive,” she replied. And then the conversation became cluttered with details, what time of day she would be back, whether the girls would be going out there for Labor Day weekend, when Sarah was leaving for Vassar, when the cleaning woman had last been in, whether the gardener had shown up. “This is so logistical,” I said, “it’s like we’re in the army.” “That’s been one of the problems,” she answered. In two minutes it seemed that we were right back where we were before—and she wasn’t even home yet, and she didn’t even
know
yet.

The girls decided to visit Beverly in Montauk, I had an invitation to a party at Jack Walsh’s apartment for Saturday night. I worked for a few hours that day, then met Sam in Poe Park for our card game. He had been looking better. I think it was good for Sam to be with someone who remembered him from his glory days.

“How’s the Malted King?” he asked, teasing me.

“We were busy today.”

“So when are you going to get a real job?” he asked, as we began to play cards.

“I have a job, Sam.”

“Something in advertising—
that
would be a job. This is a bad time in advertising?”

“It is for me.”

“Stevie, don’t be insulted, but I have a friend, who has a son, who works in advertising. An account executive?”

“Yes, that’s a job.”

“This place, they do the ads for a lot of big stores. I could talk to my friend and he could talk to his son.”

“That’s kind of you, Sam, but I’m not
in
advertising anymore. Thank you.”

We played cards and talked about the coming football season, then Sam became pensive.

“You know, I don’t have too many seasons left, Stevie.”

“Don’t say that. You’ve been getting younger since I’ve been coming around.”

“My daughter wants me and Hinda to go down to Florida for the winter.”

“Well, you could move the card season to a warmer bench.”

“This is my home. Here I got the Knicks. I got the Rangers. I got the Jets. What do they have there? The Miami Dolphins? I don’t root for any team that’s the name of a fish.”