01 The Big Blowdown

  An ad in the Times-Herald pointed him in the direction of 14th Street in the northwest quadrant of the city, where an elderly, straight-backed lady named Mrs. Roberts showed him a room on the third floor of a row house between R and S. The room was comfortably furnished, had steam heat, and a large picture window that faced east on 14th and caught a great block of morning sun. The promise of the sun blowing through the window each morning, along with the reasonable asking rate of five dollars a week, closed the deal for Florek. He assured Mrs. Roberts that he was both a sober and quiet young man. Her eyes betrayed her doubt—Mrs. Roberts suspected all young men, by design, of bad intent—but she took his ten dollars representing two weeks’ rent.

  Florek sought work immediately through the Restaurant Association, whose Northeast offices he walked to on his third day in town. He filled out some paperwork there and spent the rest of the week waiting to hear from them and exploring the city. It was an easy city to get to know. The trolley lines and Capital Transit buses were logically routed, and the streets—numbered north to south, alphabetized east to west—could not have been more plainly laid out for the first-time user. Of the streets themselves, he found a kind of open beauty in their width and clean lines. He did find it difficult deciding on which of these streets to avoid; unlike New York’s Harlem or Chicago’s South Side, there seemed to be no clear boundaries separating white D.C. from its Darktown. Often he would pass through residential neighborhoods housing Negroes, then whites, then Negroes again on alternating blocks without landmarks of any kind. But after a while he grew used to this, too, and at no time during the day, walking on those streets, did he feel unsafe. He did, however, feel the weight of loneliness pushing down on him as the days fell away; in that first week alone, he phoned his mother three times.

  In early December, Mike Florek answered an ad in the Evening Star for counter help at a place called People’s Drug. The Restaurant Association had not contacted him, and his money had begun to run low. He thought he might have a shot at such a position, what with his experience at the California Confectionery back home. The next morning he went to the employment office at 77 P Street in Northeast, filled out an application, and was interviewed on the spot. The interview did not go well to start, as Florek was not one to shine at first meeting, but then the man behind the desk, a Pole named Mr. Grieszefski, caught Florek’s address of origin on the application, and broke into a smile. It seemed Grieszefski had an uncle on his mother’s side by the name of Daniel Florek, who lived in western Pennsylvania near the Shenango Valley. Was he a relative of Mike’s? Mike nodded with bright eyes and said that he was. In the big city it felt somehow natural to tell lies.

  That evening, Florek started his new job as a soda jerk at People’s on 15th and H. The shift went seven till midnight, the pay seventy-five cents an hour for twenty hours’ worth of work per week. The pay was fair, and a meal came with it, and he figured he could sneak more food into his stomach on top of that. As for the job itself, he knew he could do the work in his sleep. A cherry Coke was a cherry Coke, wherever you were raised.

  Florek thought, too, that he might make some friends at this new job. But his shift boss turned out to be a pale, middle-aged Baptist from the southeast part of the city named Mr. Simms, who seemed to frown on anything that smacked of fun, and the two of them clashed from the start. Florek did his job, though, took the constant negative comments and swipes quietly, and continued to report for work promptly at seven each evening. The pay kept him solvent, and even the company of Simms was preferable to the hand-wringing solitude he faced in his room late at night. Florek still phoned his mother three times each week, though he had nothing to report.

  So far, he had made only one weak effort to find Lola. One night, after a month in D.C., Florek had gotten the nerve to pass by Thomas Circle on his walk home from work. Thomas was a safe bet to start, as even tourists and conventioneers knew the Circle as the city’s major open-air market for prostitutes. Typically, Florek chose to approach the meekest-looking of the whores, a tiny girl still in her teens with a blond pageboy haircut who wrapped herself coyly in a fake sealskin coat. He assured her that he only wanted to talk; she replied that the price would be the same, talk or not. In the unheated hallway of a nearby flophouse, he showed her the photograph of Lola. The girl drew on her cigarette as she studied the picture with the passive interest of a woman glancing at her nails.

  “She’s a working girl?” she asked, in a jarring accent of high-elevation origin.

  “I think so, yeah.”

  “Not around here, she ain’t.”

  “You sure about that?”

  “Honey, I know who works these few blocks. You best look for your girlfriend somewhere else.”

  “She’s not my girlfriend,” said Florek, instantly ashamed.

  “Yeah?” The girl dragged on her cigarette, blew a ring at the photograph. The smoke exploded across Lola’s face. “Who is she, then?”

  “Nobody,” said Florek.

  That brief exchange cost him ten bucks, nearly half a week’s pay. He walked back up 14th toward his room, a desperate hollowness inside him like he had never felt.

  Florek made no further direct attempts to locate his sister. He continued to wander the city by day, hoping to run into her, and he continued to work the soda bar at night. Near Christmas, he visited the windows at Woodward and Lothrop on F Street more than once, taking pleasure in the faces of the children who had come with their parents to see the decorations and lights. He spent Christmas Day alone.

  By January his relationship with Simms had deteriorated to the point where they rarely spoke. Florek concentrated on his work, trying to increase the speed of his counter service out of boredom more than anything else. His improved job performance, of course, only increased the resentment coming off of Mr. Simms. But by now Florek had something else on his mind: a redheaded girl named Kay who worked the cosmetic counter of the store. He had never spoken with her, though he had seen her with her friends at Truman’s parade on Inauguration Day, and from across Constitution Avenue had gotten a smile. After that Florek tried to catch her eye now and then at work, and often did, and soon he thought that he might ask her out to see a picture or to have a bite to eat. But finally he lacked the courage even for that. Instead, in his room late at night, sitting on the edge of his bed, he often imagined her naked, her red hair clean and lustrous and fanned out on a pillow; those nights ended with his face contorted, his eyes closed tight as he beat off furiously into a dirty sock. Afterwards, he felt useless and sad.

  Florek had not had many good days in D.C. There seemed to be few places in town for a stranger like him to go and sit and listen to other men talk—a place like any of the places on Broadway or Utah in Farrell, back home. So the cup of coffee at the Greek grill downstairs, earlier in the day, had been special for him. It had made him feel comfortable and good.

  That night, by the picture window in his room, listening to the Gavilan-Williams fight on the cheap Emerson table radio he had recently bought, Florek began to think about that Greek place, and the people there, those behind the counter and the customers as well. He listened carefully to the ringside announcer, made mental notes as to the technical jargon, the jabs and the crosses and the footwork and such. He’d want to know what he was talking about when those guys at the counter started jawing about the fight. He could join in on the fight talk with those guys, join in and maybe be one of them, when he walked into Nick’s the next day.

  * * *

  “What the hell’s wrong with the greens?” said Costa.

  The green-eyed Negro at the counter pointed to his dish. “I’m just tryin’ to explain it to you, man. These here are collard greens, Costa, they got to be cooked a special way. You don’t want to be boilin’ the flavor out of these, like you do with them bitter dandelion weeds you be pullin’ out of some field for one of your Greek dinners. These greens here, they got to be stirred a little bit in a fryin’ pan with some pork fat, ‘long wi
th a little red onion and garlic. And these greens here got taste, understand? You don’t need to be coverin’ up that taste with all this lemon. You people put lemon on everything you cook!”

  Costa studied the greens on the man’s plate. “So, lemme get it right. You fry these up with some onion, a little garlic. And no lemon.”

  “That’s right.”

  The man next to the green-eyed one said, “And you might want to cut a little okra into it, too.”

  “Okra,” said Costa. “I get it. Hokay, vre mavroskila.”

  Costa went away as the two men as the counter grinned and touched hands.

  “A little more coffee?” said Stefanos to Florek, seated away from the others on the same stool as the day before.

  “All right, Nick. Just warm it up for me, will you?”

  “Cafe, Costa. Via to Kirio Florek.”

  Costa took a glass pot from a burner and filled Florek’s cup. A show called “Dance Party” was coming from the radio, the dial of which was set at 1590, the city’s Negro station with the call letters WOOK. Florek had been sitting there for over an hour, had listened to spirituals for the first thirty minutes.

  “How about that fight, Nick?” said the green-eyed Negro. “You sure did call it.”

  “The Kid did it, that’s right,” said Stefanos. “Gavilan was bleedin’ all over the ring, but he did it to Williams, all right.”

  “It was them rights of his,” said one of the men.

  “It was the uppercuts,” said Florek, loud enough for all of them to hear. “That buzz-saw attack that Gavilan’s got.”

  The green-eyed Negro looked down the counter at Florek, then at his friend. “You hear what the young man said? It was a buzz saw got Ike Williams.” The two of them laughed.

  “Those whad’ya-call-its,” said Stefanos.

  “Bolos,” said Florek.

  Florek glanced over his shoulder at Six, sitting by the door. The bouncer was looking back at him with amusement.

  Business picked up a little after that. Men came down from the U Street corridor after quitting time and made their way either to Nick’s or to the Sun Dial, Pete Frank’s restaurant at R. Frank had recently turned his place into a Negro house as well.

  Costa pushed on the swinging doors, sped back into the kitchen. Florek heard a door open, then Costa’s voice as he yelled up a flight of stairs to a person named Toula. This had happened several times in the afternoon, and Florek had begun to recognize the pattern in Costa’s voice. Costa used a different tone when yelling at this Toula person than he did when yelling at the cook.

  Stefanos popped the cap on a bottle of National, served it to a newly arrived customer. The customer put some coin on the counter, and Stefanos rang the sale on a register facing out from the wall. Florek saw that no one, not even Costa, rang on that register but Nick.

  Costa came out with a bowl of catfish gumbo, placed it in front of a man in a shirt and tie. He stood there watching in disapproval as the man shook hot sauce vigorously into the gumbo.

  “Taste it first, at least,” said Costa, “before you drown it in that stuff.”

  “It ain’t hot enough for me,” said the man. “I done had it here before, and I know.”

  “Okay, arape. You do what you want.”

  “Sopa, re,” said Stefanos, clearly annoyed.

  Costa pushed off from the counter as Stefanos shot him a look. With the colored customers, Costa always punctuated his exchanges with a few choice words spoken in Greek, followed by a cheerful smile. Florek could see, and the colored men could see—hell, a blind man could see—that Costa was insulting them. Costa, in fact, was the only one in the place who believed he was putting one over on them, and the men let him go on thinking it. Playing with Costa was their sport. Getting the little guy excited was a large part of the entertainment at Nick’s.

  “Let me settle up, Nick,” said Florek.

  “Nickel.”

  Florek laid it down. “I’ll see you later, hear?”

  “You workin’ tonight?”

  “Uh-uh. My night off.”

  “Come on back. Tuesday night, we gonna watch the fights on the television. Ten o’clock.”

  “Okay, Nick,” said Florek. “Ten o’clock.”

  * * *

  Mike Florek woke from his nap in near darkness, the only light in the room bleeding in through the picture window from the streetlamp outside. Florek sat up, ran a hand through his hair. He rose and took a shower in the common bathroom located in the hall. Then he changed into a clean shirt, went down to the street, and headed toward Nick’s.

  The place was crowded, noisy, blanketed in smoke. Six had moved away from his post at the door and walked slowly through the crowd, eye-balling the men, his arms draped loosely at his side. The stools and booths were all taken, and several fruit crates had been brought out and overturned. These had been taken now as well. The men sat on the stools and on the crates and in the booths, drinking steadily from bottles, all of their eyes focused on the fight going on the television set mounted on the wall. The image was fuzzy, and the picture rolled occasionally on the screen, but no one seemed to mind. Everyone was laughing and carrying on, trying to speak louder than the guy next to him, all of them having a fine time. Nick’s might have been a lunch counter during the day, but it was no different than any other beer garden at night.

  A thin white man with slicked-back hair and a black moustache sat on the customer’s side of the counter among the Negroes. He watched the fight without expression or comment, nursing a Ballantine Ale. Florek went by him, squeezed in at the open end of the counter, tried to catch Stefanos’s eye. He and Costa were moving clumsily back there, rudderless, unable to catch a rhythm. They bumped each other and raised their voices when they did, though not in the good-natured way of the afternoon. There was a sloppiness in the way they moved, the place was just too busy for them to handle.

  Florek stepped through the opening and behind the counter without thinking. Stefanos, fumbling for a beer in the cooler, looked up. His face was streaked with sweat, his hair damp and fallen about his face.

  “What’re you doin’ back here?”

  “I can help.”

  “Help how?”

  Florek shrugged. “I’ll jockey the drinks.”

  Stefanos glanced over at Costa, clearing dishes off the counter. Costa looked back at his friend and nodded once.

  “Okay, boy,” said Stefanos. “Get an apron.”

  “Where?”

  “In the back.”

  Florek turned, pushed through the swinging doors that led to the kitchen. A tall, lean man with a good head of gray hair stood over a set of large burners, stirring a pot of soup. He looked at Florek as he burst through the doors.

  “What the hell,” said the cook.

  “1 need an apron,” said Florek.

  The cook jerked his head behind him toward a stainless steel table used for prep. Beneath the table, Florek could see a stack of folded white aprons. He went for the stack, took an apron off the top, unraveled it, flipped it over so it made a clean rectangle. He tied the apron tightly around his waist.

  “Thanks,” said Florek to the cook. He moved back through the doors.

  In the front of the house, more men had arrived. A guy raised a finger toward Florek and ordered a Carling Red Cap. Florek went to the cooler, found one, pulled it free. He looked around for something with which to open the bottle.

  “On the cooler, re,” said Stefanos from over at the register. “On the side!”

  Flora saw the Coca-Cola opener screwed into the side of the cooler. He popped the cap, served the bottle to the man who had ordered it. He heard the register ring down, then a riot of voices as someone threw a knockdown punch on the television screen overhead. Through the shoulders of the men in front of him, Florek caught a glimpse of Six pushing a man out the front door. The man appeared to be taking flight. The chime sounded at the man’s exit.

  “A Ballantine Ale for me,” said the white
man with the slicked-back hair.

  “Yessir,” said Florek.

  He bumped into Costa going for the cooler, hesitated trying to get out of Costa’s way.

  “All right boy,” said Costa. “Get on your horse! Move it!”

  Florek stepped aside. He found the Ballantine, served it to the white man.

  “Thanks,” he said, with a quick wink. “You keep doing what your doing, and don’t worry about Costa. You just keep it up.”

  The crowd and its demand intensified, but Florek soon found his step. He and Stefanos and Costa found their own places behind the counter, Nick at the register and Costa back and forth from the kitchen and Florek from the cooler to the counter with the drinks. Florek forgot about the sweat on his back, never noticed the dryness of his mouth or the ache in his legs. He never noticed any of it until the fights ended and the noise settled and the crowd began to thin out. It was then that he looked at the Blatz Beer clock centered over the front door and noticed that he had been working close to two hours straight.

  “Here ya go, vre,” said Stefanos, handing Florek a cold bottle of National.

  Florek took it by the neck, drank deeply. Costa walked by, clapped Florek on the shoulder as he passed.

  “The new guy’s pretty good,” said the white man with the slicked-back hair.

  “Yeah, he’s okay.” Stefanos pointed at the man. “Florek, meet my friend, Lou DiGeordano.”

  They shook hands. “Mr. DiGeordano.”

  “Pleased to meet you, son.”

  DiGeordano put some money on the counter, took his topcoat off a tree by the booths. He nodded at Nick Stefanos and went out the front door.

  Stefanos cracked a Ballantine Ale, poured some into a glass. He raised the glass at Florek, drank from it, then wiped the foam off his upper lip.