Owning Up, page 17
Nikos’s hands are bloodless, tight on the steering wheel. For a long beat, it’s silent in the car. A few months earlier, at a house party, a kid pulled a steak knife on Nikos in the kitchen, for no other reason than he was cooked on alcohol. The people in the kitchen said nothing, and time slowed down, until an older guy talked the kid down and took the knife. It feels like that now.
“Ray,” says Ed, “reach into your boy’s pocket and take his gun.”
Ray does it. He hands it over the seat to Ed, who releases Brad. It’s a .38 with a brown checkered grip. Nikos recognizes it because his father owns one like it. Ed pockets the gun.
Brad lowers his hands. “You.”
“Shut the fuck up,” says Ed, tiredly. To Nikos he says, “Take this asshole back to his place and drop him off.”
No one speaks on the ride into Hyattsville. In Brad’s parking lot, strewn with trash and grocery carts, everyone gets out as Nikos opens the trunk. Ed tells Brad to unload the crates of records himself. Brad does it grudgingly, and then, the crates set on the asphalt of the lot, says, “Isn’t anyone gonna help me get these inside?”
Ed breaks the cylinder on Brad’s revolver, shakes the live rounds out of the wheel, pockets the bullets, and tosses the empty gun to Brad.
“Let’s go,” says Ed. He and Nikos climb into the Plymouth. Ray doesn’t look at Brad as he gets into the back seat.
No one speaks as Nikos drives over to Langley Park, where Ray lives in a one-bedroom apartment off New Hampshire Avenue. They drop Ray in front of his building.
“I’ll see you guys tomorrow,” says Ray, as if nothing has happened.
Nikos and Ed watch him go into his place, passing Latino kids playing on the front lawn.
“Drop me at my car,” says Ed.
Ed drives a clean, ’74 Grand Prix with opera windows. It’s parked on Peabody Street, not far from the store. As Nikos pulls up behind it, Ed points to the key dangling in the ignition and says, “Kill it.”
It’s late in the afternoon, moving to evening. Shadows have begun to lengthen on the street.
“I hope you learned something today,” says Ed.
Nikos just nods. He’s still processing what happened back in the parking lot of the market.
“You shouldn’t be hanging around with people like Ray Baumann outside of work. Or his low friends. You shouldn’t have been there today at all.”
“I hear you,” says Nikos. He hears him now.
Nikos has figured out that Ed came along today to look after him. It’s strange because Ed in the past has not given him much more than the time of day.
There are many things Nikos would like to ask him. How did he know Brad was about to rob the market? How did he know Brad had a gun? But he doesn’t ask those questions because he realizes that he’s out of his league. Ed is experienced, for real. A guy who lived through Jim Crow D.C. in his childhood. A guy who fought and was injured in an actual war. Nikos is still a kid who’s grown up in the suburbs. He doesn’t know shit from apple butter.
Instead, Nikos asks him what is foremost in his mind. “Are we gonna get in trouble for what we did?”
“I expect not,” says Ed. “This Bob character will probably figure out that it was his ex-girlfriend who set the whole thing up, on account of we used the key that he gave her. But why would he report it? He lost a few records, is all. If he gets the police involved, he’s got to go into court eventually and talk about how he, a grown-ass man with a government job, was in a relationship with a high-school girl. I think he’ll just change the locks on his crib and write off the loss.”
“I hope so,” says Nikos.
“So what did you learn today?” says Ed.
“Not to do stupid stuff?”
“It’s more than that. You think Ray Baumann is cool, with his rap and his hustle, right? You think he’s street, and that’s what you aspire to.”
“Not really…”
“Sure you do. Wasn’t too long ago I was young. I looked up to dudes like him, too, in the pool halls and in the neighborhood. But I was wrong, and so are you. Look, Ray likes you, man, but only because you hero-worship his ass. You about the last one who doesn’t see him for what he is. Take my word for it, he’s gonna do you dirt. Shoot, he almost did mess you over today. You could have been party to an armed robbery.”
“I didn’t know.”
“Look, young man, you got a lot of things in your favor. You don’t know it, but you’re smarter than most. You come from a stable home. You got a mother and father who care about you… That’s a big deal, more than you know. Don’t get caught up in all this bullshit. Think about who you’re hanging with, hear?”
“Yes.”
“And one more thing. That girlfriend of yours?”
“Mindy?”
“You need to treat that young lady with respect. I heard you talking to Ray about her one day, how you got with her in the back seat of your car.”
Nikos blushes and squirms in his seat.
“Yeah, that’s right,” said Ed. “Bragging on what you did. Why you tellin on her to Ray like that?”
“I shouldn’t. You’re right.”
“After you make time with her, you ever send that girl flowers? Give her a card, anything like that?”
“I never have. No.”
“Think about it.” Ed exhales slowly. “Okay, then. I’ve given you enough advice for one day. Let me get on home. My wife is expecting me for supper.”
“Thanks, Ed.”
“Be safe.”
Nikos watches Ed walk to his Pontiac in the gathering dusk.
Nikos has dinner with his parents that evening. He’s quiet and evasive. When they ask him what he’s done all day after school he says he “played basketball down at the courts.”
It’s spaghetti night. Every Thursday his mother serves her sauce, a delicious, slow-cooked concoction whose secret weapon is a whole pork chop that falls apart in the pot after several hours and subtly flavors the mix. His father is wearing his white work shirt with the sleeves rolled to the elbows. He’s drinking a Budweiser from an amber glass. Jim doesn’t like beer particularly, but it’s his doctor’s advice to drink one every night to ward off another bout of kidney stones, which he has suffered from in the past.
The thirteen-inch black-and-white shows an image of a reporter outside the District Building. The siege has not ended but there appears to be some progress. Officials have not acceded to any of Hamaas Khaalis’s demands (they won’t, due to the murder of WHUR reporter Maurice Williams), but the ambassadors of Pakistan, Iran, and Egypt have been persuaded to come to Khaalis and try to convince him to release the hostages. Right now they are in the building, reading Khaalis relevant passages from the Koran.
“Smart,” says Jim Tzirimis. “They brought his own kind in there to talk him down. They’re reading to him from that book they got.”
“It’s their Bible,” says Nikos.
“That’s the book where they say it’s okay to chop someone’s head off?”
“Our Bible’s got plenty of violent stuff in it, too.”
“What are you, a theologian, now?”
“Yeah, Dad. I’m gonna enter the seminary after I graduate.”
“You’d have to stop messing around with girls,” says his father, and then with a gleam in his eye, he says, “and playing with your pecker.”
“Dimitri,” says Elaine. She calls him that only when she’s admonishing him for something, or when she’s being affectionate, which oftentimes is the same thing.
“Just saying,” says Jim. “There’s something in the Bible about spilling your seed. It says that God’s against it.”
“I’m sure that never stopped you,” says Elaine, and then she chuckles nervously. There’s a look between husband and wife that makes Nikos feel like he shouldn’t be there.
After an uncomfortable silence, Nikos says, “I think I’m going to go down to the B’nai B’rith building tonight. I haven’t been able to get hold of Mindy. I just want to, like, be there for her.”
“I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” says Elaine. “You might be out late, and you have school in the morning.”
His mother isn’t a big fan of Mindy. It might be because she’s Jewish, but then she probably wouldn’t like any girl he was with.
“All he does at school is play basketball,” says Jim. “He can go if he wants to.”
That settles it.
“How was the sauce?” says his mother to Nikos.
“Delicious, Ma.”
After Elaine clears the plates, they sit in the kitchen together and watch an episode of Barney Miller and, after that, The Streets of San Francisco.
Nikos is thankful for dodging a bullet earlier in the day. Now he’s here, and he’s safe. Many of his friends can’t wait to get out of high school and leave their homes and their parents behind. Sometimes Nikos will be in a car with others and they’ll pick up another random boy at his house. When the boy gets into the car, he says, viciously, “I hate my mom,” or, “Fuck my dad.” Nikos is always a little astonished at that, because he never even thinks those words in his head. He feels sorry for kids who feel that way. He’s not in any hurry for his life to change, even though he knows it soon will.
Late that night Nikos peeks into his parents’ bedroom and tells them again that he’s headed out.
“Be careful, honey,” says Elaine. His father, who gets up at 4:30 every day to meet the bread man and the iceman at his diner (which in their home is called the magazi), is already out and snoring.
Nikos drives downtown, parks a few blocks north of 16th and Rhode Island Avenue. The police, newspaper, and television-news presence is heavy, along with spectators. He gets as close as he can to the B’nai B’rith building. After some searching, he sees Mindy and her mother, Evie Goldman, toward the front of the crowd, along with others who are waiting to hear about their loved ones.
Nikos doesn’t try to make his way over to them. It would be inappropriate for him to intrude upon their circle tonight. Plus, Mindy’s mother and father don’t care for him. They’ve pushed her to socialize with guys at the JCC, just as Nikos’s parents have encouraged him to date girls from his church. It’s not that her folks dislike non-Jews, not that he’s aware of, anyway. It’s that they know he’s having sex with their daughter. He’s not going to be their son-in-law. They’re just kids. Mindy has no future with him. It’s as simple as that.
At around two in the morning the crowd begins to stir and some people cheer and hug. After thirty-seven hours, the hostages are being released. As they slowly come out of the building, they are reunited with their loved ones. Nikos sees Mr. Goldman join his wife and daughter in a tight embrace. Evie Goldman is crying. Nikos makes no move to join them. Instead he waits, and finally catches Mindy’s eye. She gives him a smile but stays with her parents.
Nikos walks to his Belvedere. That’s all he wanted to do, to let Mindy know that he was thinking of her. Ed’s voice has been talking to him in his head.
Ed was right about Ray, but Nikos isn’t smart enough yet to take Ed’s immediate advice.
A few weeks after the Hanafi Siege, Ray asks Nikos if he’d like to get Mindy and “double date” with Ray and his latest girlfriend, a woman named Louise. They’re invited out to Louise’s town house in Olney, a far suburb of D.C.
Nikos thinks it’s just going to be a night of getting high and listening to some records, and it is, at first. The four of them are all smoked up, Ask Rufus is playing on the stereo, and that has put them in a mood. Louise, a too-thin woman in her mid-thirties, heavily made up with thick eyeliner, asks Nikos to “give her hand for a minute” in the kitchen, she’s going to put out some cheese and crackers.
He politely follows her to a kitchen that is well off the living room. She doesn’t make a move to get any food, but instead comes close to him and asks him if it’s “warm in here.” He kind of shrugs and then she says, “I’m hot, Nicky. Are you hot?” She raises the nipples of her breasts through her shirt, which she twists with her fingers. Nikos has not been expecting this, to say the least. Maybe he’s been naïve and has not read any of the signs. Though she’s a youngish woman, she’s an old woman to him, eighteen years his senior. It’s as if one of his mother’s friends is coming on to him. He’s not turned on, he’s confused. He backs up and says, lamely, “I’m not hot, I’m fine.”
Louise looks a little disappointed, but not at all ashamed, and she and Nikos go back out to the living room. Ray has moved over to the couch beside Mindy, who gives Nikos a meaningful stare. They stay a little longer, until Nikos says something about “a long day,” and he and Mindy split.
Out in the car, Nikos tells Mindy that Louise came on to him in the kitchen.
Mindy says, “Ray hit on me, too.”
“They planned it,” says Nikos.
“He’s gross,” says Mindy.
The next day, at work, Ray doesn’t even mention what happened the night before. Nikos realizes that in Ray’s mind he has done nothing wrong.
Three months later, Nikos has graduated from high school, left his job at Payless Appliance and Mattresses, and gotten a summer job at an auto-parts store, where he drives a quarter-ton, white Ford Courier and does route delivery to area gas stations. The AM radio in the truck plays “Smoke from a Distant Fire,” “Cold as Ice,” and “Fly Like an Eagle” in heavy rotation. Mindy and Nikos’s best friend, Tony, leave town for out-of-state colleges.
Nikos has enrolled at the University of Maryland, College Park, because it’s cheap and close to home. He doesn’t really know why he’s going to college but it’s expected of him and he doesn’t want to let his parents down. He’s lonely on campus; he doesn’t know anyone, and he’s not in a fraternity or a dorm. He takes a part-time job at the Luskins-Dalmo in Landover Mall, selling electronics and appliances, which is fun for him, more fun than classes. He tells his father, “Maybe I’ll forget college, just sell TVs and stereos for a living, I can make twenty-five grand a year,” and his father says, “Bullshit, you’re going to get a degree,” and that’s the end of the discussion.
In his second semester he takes a journalism class and things begin to change. Nikos gets on the staff of the highly regarded daily student newspaper, and he finds his tribe. He’s lost touch with Mindy long ago. They stopped writing each other letters when she found a boyfriend in her first semester at the University of Miami. For his part, Nikos plays the field.
One night, he’s been in the bars in Georgetown, drinking downtown for hours with a young woman named Sharon, and they’re driving up 16th Street. They’ve already made out and had their hands on each other and neither of them can wait. Nikos makes a left off 16th and pulls his car to the curb on Tuckerman Street and kills the engine. Vaguely, he’s aware that he’s two short blocks from the Hanafi House on Van Buren, but he’s not spooked by it anymore. He’s ripped on alcohol and cocaine, and he wants what he wants, and so does Sharon. They walk up Tuckerman and cut north into an alley that connects to Underwood Street and then they walk west to Underwood’s dead end and step onto the Rock Creek Park Golf Course. They’re on a green. He doesn’t know what hole it is but it’s manicured and pristine, and at night it’s deserted, and the two of them make it on the damp grass. He’s done this before with other girls, right here. It’s one of his secret spots in D.C.
He hasn’t grown much with regard to women. He’s careless with them, and in his mind he and Sharon are just having a good time. He has something of an awakening when a year later he’s DUI’d with a woman in his car, a woman who is not Sharon but like her, someone he might have killed while driving drunk, someone he has treated thoughtlessly. He cuts down on alcohol, gives up drugs, and straightens his shit out.
After college he takes a job at the Austin American-Statesman (where he meets his future wife, Amelia, a features writer), then the Albuquerque Journal, where deep in his thirties he is an award finalist (not the Pulitzer) for a series of articles he has written on police corruption. The nomination brings him to the attention of editors at the Washington Post, who offer him a job on the crime beat in his hometown. He flourishes at the Post and spends the rest of his career there.
Nikos is sixty-three. He can hardly believe it. His parents have passed. He is a grandfather. He has lived through the experience of distrusting and secretly disliking the boys who dated his daughters (now both married) in high school, knowing their intentions because he was just like them. He and Amelia are in the process of figuring out “what to do” when they retire. That day is coming soon.
But for now he writes. He’s working on a story about a mass shooting in April 1975, when a lone white gunman shot seven Black people, killing two, in Wheaton, Maryland. It has haunted Nikos since he was fifteen years old, when he watched the news of the shooting in real time with his parents, on the small television set in the kitchen of their home. The shooting happened just a mile from his house. But now, when he brings it up in conversation with locals, very few remember it. They seem to think that the racial shootings in places like Charleston are something new.
Nikos thinks it’s important to get the Wheaton shooting down on record. If he doesn’t write it, it will be as if it never happened.
He’s written about the Murder House and the Hanafi Siege as well. It has brought back that time to him and how he felt. It has helped him own up to who he was.
He’s had no contact with Mindy for over forty years. He sees from her Facebook page that she has been in a longtime marriage and that she, too, has grandchildren. He thinks about the times in high school when they were in the back seat of his Plymouth Belvedere, and he knew she didn’t really want to, but she let him have her because it was easier than arguing about it. Or, in that same back seat, when she’d say she had to get home, that her parents had given her a curfew, and he’d say, “C’mon, you can be half an hour late, it’s okay,” and then he’d have sex with her. He knows now that she was saying no. But he was too selfish to listen.
