King Suckerman

Fifteen

Dimitri Karras drove his Karmann Ghia down 14th Street, crossed Clifton, downshifted descending the big hill that was the drop-off of the Piedmont Plateau. He passed Florida Avenue, W, V, and then U. Fourteenth and U: one of the most legendary intersections in the city, the cross-street suburban whites always referred to when they were talking or joking about blacks. As in, “Hey, I thought I saw your mother last night down at Fourteenth and U,” or “Where’d you get those shoes, man, Fourteenth and U?” Lame talk like that. It had been something once, a hub of black-owned business and music and nightlife for Washington’s old Negro community. By the sixties it had become a hard four-corner home for pushers and junkies, criminals and whores. Then came the riots of ’68. Now, 14th and U didn’t look like much of anything alive at all.

Karras passed long-closed businesses, charred buildings, decaying projects, apartment houses now shells. Bars covered rock-shattered windows; slogans like “Say It Loud!” had been spray painted on plywood boards. Little had been rebuilt or reopened for the last eight years, since the fires and looters had ravaged the strip.

But Karras knew that 14th and 7th and all the other burned-down D.C. avenues had been sacrificed for something else. Things had changed, in the same way that a hard summer rain can clear the streets.

Eleni Karras had said that Stefanos’s grill stood on the corner of S. It was there, marked by a rusted blue oblong sign encircled by mostly broken lightbulbs. The sign, in red lettering, read “Nick’s.” Karras parked his Ghia out front and walked into the restaurant.

Nick’s was a run-down lunch and beer house with eight stools lined up against a counter. Behind the counter were a grill, sandwich board, soda fountain, two huge coffee urns, and a couple of coolers holding sodas, ice cream, and bottles of beer. Apparently there had once been some booths built in against the wall — you could still see the outlines where they had been removed — but they had been replaced by a narrow bracketed Formica counter where customers could stand while they put away their food and drink. Where the counter ended, an unplugged pinball machine was pushed against the wall. Beyond the pinball machine, just before an entrance to a back room, stood a jukebox. A black man holding a sixteen-ounce can of beer leaned against the jukebox, studying the selections. An Ohio Players number came from the juke.

Karras had a seat on a stool cushioned in a red color so faded it had gone to pink. A crisscross of duct tape kept the plastic on the stool from tearing any further.

“Nick,” said a uniformed woman with a deeply creased walnut brown complexion. She was on the other side of the counter, leaning on it, smoking a cigarette and holding an unopened pack of Viceroys in her free hand. She did not approach Karras or even look in his eyes.

Two other black men with graying hair sat at the counter drinking from cans of Schlitz. Both of them had cigarettes going, too.

“Can’t really bring myself to vote for a man from Georgia,” said the man closest to Karras.

“What,” said the other. “You gonna vote for that big block of nothin’, Mr. Gerald Ford? Least that peanut farmer gonna bring somethin’ new to the party.”

“Ain’t none of ’em gonna bring nothin’ new,” said the first man. “Anyway, I can’t trust a man who smiles like that all the time.”

The woman behind the counter stepped into her flat-heeled shoes and walked over to a set of swinging louvered doors that led to the kitchen. “Nick,” she said over the top of the doors. “Got a customer out here.”

“You too busy to serve him, baby?” said the first man, nudging his partner.

“On my break,” said the woman. “If you had a job, you’d know what that was.”

The men laughed. The woman returned to her spot, dragged deeply off her cigarette.

Karras pretended to study a grease-filmed Manne’s Potato Chip sign — “Yeah, Manne!” — on the wall directly in front of him. That sign must have been hung there on the opening day.

A medium-sized man who had once been a big man pushed through the swinging doors. His chest sagged now and his shoulders slumped, and he walked with a slow, rolling gait. But his hands and wrists gave away his former size. There were a couple of Band-Aids on his fingers and smudges of dried blood on his yellowed apron. He saw Karras and smiled.

“Thimitri Karras, eh?”

“Yessir.”

“Yasou, re!”

“Mr. Stefanos?”

“Nick. Tha’s me.”

Nick Stefanos shook Karras’s hand. The hand was leather, and he still had a grip.

“Lemme look at you, boy.” Stefanos stood back, smoothed back an errant gray strand of hair from an otherwise bald dome. His face was as loose and fleshy as an old dog’s, flecked with age spots, with a faded pink scar on the right cheek.

“So how do I look?”

“Like your mother.”

“That’s what they tell me.”

“You’re a handsome boy, though, don’ get me wrong. Just like your old man.”

“Thanks.”

Stefanos turned his head toward the kitchen. “Hey, Costaki!” he yelled. “Ella tho, re!”

A short, low-slung Greek with a wild head of gray hair and a thick, graying mustache burst through the doors. He was holding a carving knife tightly in his fist. His other hand was slick with grease and bits of meat.

“What the hell you want, Niko, I’m cuttin’ up a little lamb!”

“C’mon over here, Costa. Say hello to Thimitri Karras, o yos tou Pete Karras.”

Costa issued a lopsided grin, wiped his hand off on his apron, extended the hand to Karras. “Miazi ti mitera tou,” he said to Stefanos.

“That’s what they tell me,” said Karras.

Costa said, “So what can I get you, Karras? On the house!”

“Nothing, thanks. I just ate.”

“Got a nice meatloaf—”

“I ate, thanks.”

“Where you eat, huh?”

“Had a sub up at Eddie Leonard’s.”

“Eddie Leonard’s,” said Costa with disgust. “Might as well eat dog shit.”

“He said he don’t want nothin’, Costa,” said Stefanos.

“I’ll have something, Costa,” said the man closest to Karras. “Make me up a fish sandwich to go, will ya?”

“Anything on it?”

“Just hot sauce.”

“I got some nice summer tomatoes, Nick jus’ sliced ’em up this morning—”

“Just hot sauce, man. You gettin’ deaf in your old age?”

“Hokay, vre mavroskilo. Comin’ right up.”

“Sopa, re,” said Stefanos.

The men at the counter looked at each other and grinned.

Karras watched the interplay between the two Greeks. Costa had just called the man a black dog, and Nick had told Costa to shut his mouth. They must have been doing the same dance down here for about a hundred years.

“Go make the man’s sandwich,” said Stefanos.

“I’m goin,” said Costa, who looked as if he had just sucked on a lemon.

“What,” said Stefanos. “You got a problem?”

“Me?” said Costa. “I don’t give a damn nothing.” Costa went back toward the kitchen, turned back his head. “You take it easy, young fella.”

“Yeah,” said Karras. “You, too.”

Karras tented his fingers on the counter. An electric fan in a high corner of the room blew dust and smoke around the place but did little to dispel the heat. The restaurant was kind of dark, too; a couple of high lights had gone out and had not been replaced. Well, that made sense. Which one of these old birds was gonna get up on a ladder to change a bulb?

“Thanks for comin’ down.”

“Tipota,” said Karras with a shrug. He wanted to be outside, under a clear sky, breathing clean air.

“It is something,” said Stefanos. “Young man like you, nice day like this, you wanna be doin’ somethin’ else, I know.”

“You helped my family out plenty. So I’m here. Like I said, it’s nothing.”

Stefanos rested his forearm on the counter, leaned forward. “O patera sou, he was some kind of man. I don’t just mean about him bein’ a war hero. No sir, I don’t just mean that. I mean about other things, too. He never even knew the kind of man he was.”

“I don’t remember him,” said Karras.

“Tha’s why I’m tellin’ you, so you know.”

“Okay.”

“Hokay.” There was an awkward silence as Stefanos moved his face around with a thick hand. “It’s tough between a father and a son. Someday you gonna find out yourself.”

“Mom said you wanted to talk,” said Karras. “Something about your grandson.”

“Yeah. That’s what I’m gonna get to now.” Stefanos looked away. “His name is Nick, jus’ like me. I raised him myself. It don’t matter the nuts and bolts of it, either, that’s just the fact. I’m his father, and he’s my kid.”

“All right.”

“But I’m an old man. The world’s changed, and I don’t understand it so good anymore. It’s hard enough trying to talk to a son, but when you’re that far apart...”

“Is he in trouble?”

Stefanos spread his hands. “What the hell I know, huh? He comes home every night, his eyes are all red, he’s actin’ funny... I’m thinkin’, maybe he’s smoking that marijuana like all the kids are smoking it today. Maybe, what the hell I know, he’s on all kinds of drugs.”

It was Karras’s turn to look away. He tried to think of something smart to say, decided to go ahead and say something, opened his mouth to speak.

“Nick—”

“Mia stigmi,” said Stefanos, holding up one finger. “I’m not finished. Nick’s got this job, see? He’s a stock boy in some store uptown, unloads trucks, stacks televisions, carries air conditioners up and down stairs, like that. Works with a bunch of wise guys, I met ’em once, I figure they’re all on some kind of drugs in that store, too, the way they act. But it’s okay, it’s good to have a job, it teaches you things about life. And it keeps the boy off the streets. Now he tells me he’s leavin’. After July Fourth, gonna go down south and drive around with this friend of his he’s been hangin’ out with since high school. I ask him, ‘When you gonna be back, huh?’ and he’s tellin’ me, ‘I don’t know, Papou, gonna have an adventure and figure that out later on.’ An adventure. Sounds like he’s headed for trouble to me. Got a job, gonna start college in the fall, now he’s gonna give it all up and get in a car and go on and have an adventure. Now, he’s a good boy, and I’m not gonna tell you he’s not. But I don’t know, Thimitri, you gotta tell me the truth: am I trelos, worried about him like this?”

Karras looked at the confusion in the old man’s eyes. “No, Nick, you’re not crazy.”

“I was wonderin’, that’s all. I don’t know anybody I can trust to talk to who’s close to the boy’s age. I thought of you. You’re a little bit older, you gotta have some more sense.”

“It’s okay, Nick. I’m glad you called.”

“You’ll go see the boy? Set him straight?”

Set him straight. Now a guy who deals weed to high school kids is gonna set another kid straight.

Karras said, “Sure.”

Stefanos breathed out slowly. “Bravo, re. Efcharisto.”

“Parakalo.” Karras rubbed his hands together. “Where’s Nick work, anyway?”

“Place called Nutty Nathan’s, on Connecticut up there near Albemarle. Nutty Nathan’s, funny name for a store, eh?”

“I know the place. Used to be the old Sun Radio.”

“That’s right.”

“He on today?”

“Yessir.”

“I’ll go up there this afternoon,” said Karras. “See if I can talk with him then.”

Stefanos clapped Karras on the arm, then went to serve the two men at the counter another round of beers. The men were discussing a basketball player named Craig “Big Sky” Shelton, who had come out of Dunbar in ’75. Except to light another cigarette and move it back and forth to her lips, the woman who worked for Stefanos had not moved an inch.

Stefanos walked back, his feet padding along a rubber mat. Karras watched him wince as he bent forward, leaning his arm back on the counter.

“This work must be gettin’ kinda rough on you,” said Karras.

“Not so rough,” said Stefanos, smiling with his eyes. “Anyway, what the hell else I’m gonna do, eh?”

“I guess.”

“You guess. Well, I know. This is my place here. I been serving these same people here for forty years.” Stefanos lowered his voice. “Listen, you wanna hear somethin’? When they burned down this block, my place was the only one they left alone. Not even a rock through my window, katalavenis? People know me here, and I know them. All I’m tellin’ you is, I belong here.”

“Maybe so. Just be nice for you to relax a little, that’s all I was sayin’.”

“Ahhh,” said Stefanos. “What the hell I’m gonna relax for, huh?”

“I just thought—”

“I work,” said Stefanos. “That’s what a man does.”

Karras got off his stool. He shook Stefanos’s hand.

“Yasou, Thimitri.”

“Yasou, Nick.”

“You talk to my boy, hokay?”

“I will.”

Dimitri Karras walked around the jukebox player, who leaned against the wall counter now and appeared to be sleeping on his feet. Karras turned his head back, saw Nick Stefanos moving slowly, one hip higher than the other, toward the louvered doors.

“What about that psari, Costa?” yelled Stefanos.

“It’s workiiin’!” yelled Costa, his voice echoing off the pressed tin ceiling of the store.

Karras passed beneath a Blatz Beer clock with a smudged glass face centered above the door. The time was off by several hours, and the clock’s second hand had stopped. Karras opened the door and walked out to the street.