Bridge of Sighs

at the store, and an unkempt, pear-shaped man got out. He was still going through his pockets as he came inside. I couldn’t take my eyes off his hair. The man had the most amazing cowlick I’d ever seen, and my father, most days, sported a pretty fine one himself.
    “Hey, big fella,” he said to my father. “Lemme take a five-spot to get rid of this asshole driver. I’ll pay you right back, I swear.”
    “How about watching your language,” my father suggested, indicating me.
    “Oh fuck…yeah, sorry,” he said. Then he stood there, waiting, as if this apology had surely removed the last possible obstacle to a stranger loaning him money.
    “What’s wrong with that in your shirt pocket?” my father asked, since the corner of a bill was sticking out of it.
    The man looked vindicated when he pulled it out. “
There
you are, you cock—” He stopped, remembering me.
    And with this he turned on his heel and strode out to the cab, handing the bill in through the passenger-side window. Without further ceremony, the driver pulled away from the curb, deaf to the imprecations of the pear-shaped man, who clearly felt he had change coming.
    I didn’t think I’d ever seen anything more hapless looking than the man now standing on the sidewalk, though at that young age I didn’t fully appreciate how hapless anybody looks when trying to summon a cab that has no intention of stopping. Especially when you’re aware of being watched, your circumstance enjoyed. The man didn’t turn around right away, and when he did he bent backward at the waist and gazed up at the Salvatore flat as if to commit its every unremarkable detail to memory. He seemed to wish there were some alternative, which there wasn’t, you could tell. So he finally poked his head back inside and said, “How the fuck do you get up there?” Then, noting my father’s expression, “How do you get up there?”
    My father told him the entrance was around the side of the store.
    “All right then,” he said, this strange placement apparently agreeable to him, provided he was kept fully apprised of its location in the future. Glancing at our fruit bins, he said, “You sell flowers here?” Fruit and flowers being practically the same thing.
    My father said we didn’t.
    The man nodded, as if used to disappointment, then again looked up at the apartment, considering. “Beer?”
    My father indicated the cooler along the back wall.
    Still the man remained where he was, standing in the doorway.
    “You run tabs?”
    “If you live in the neighborhood,” my father said. “If I know you.”
    The man, cheered by this, came inside and let the door swing shut behind him. “Buddy Nurt,” he said, offering to shake my father’s hand, then bouncing from one foot to the other. What he seemed to be waiting for was confirmation that such a straightforward introduction had rendered him tab worthy. “I’ll be living…” His head bobbed up at the ceiling. “Can’t get much more in the neighborhood than that.”
    “With Nancy?” my father said, clearly displeased.
    Buddy Nurt nodded like a man not unaccustomed to provoking displeasure.
    “I’ll have to get the okay from her first,” my father said, and I could see how conflicted he was. On the one hand, he loathed trusting someone about whom he’d already heard so many unflattering things. On the other, he hated getting off on the wrong foot with a new customer. He glanced across the street at our house, as if my mother’s advice would be radiating from it.
    Buddy was eyeing the beer cooler with genuine longing. “She won’t mind,” he said, trying to sound casual. “Her and me, we…” He glanced at me and let his voice trail off, confident his coded message had been received.
    Had it been me, I wouldn’t have given Buddy so much as a stick of gum. His eyes were small and close together and darted from one object to another, refusing to settle anywhere. It made me tired just watching them. When my father shrugged a reluctant acquiescence, Buddy made for the case at a dead run, and he had two six-packs under one arm and was reaching for a third when my father called over that he was only good for one until things had been cleared with Nancy. So Buddy, clearly disappointed, put all three back and selected another, more expensive brand.
    “Kinda steep,” he remarked when my father rang it up. “Your prices.”
    “The kind you had before was cheaper,” my father acknowledged.
    Buddy