Grief Street

was near dusk as we stood at the top of the stoop, saying good night to Sister Roberta and the others at the shelter. Another sun—a scumbled soft blaze of orange and yellow—was dying over the Hudson sky. A tinkling ice cream truck passed us by, turning up Tenth Avenue and out of sight.
    Down on the street, we headed for Tenth Avenue ourselves. But first, Ruby stopped in front of the house next door, the one with the double windows and crumbled stoop. The entrance door—at the top, where the stairs used to end—was boarded over. Most of the windows were as well, except for ones in the front. The glass was crusted with grime, but intact. There appeared to be dark red curtains on the parlor side.
    “Wouldn’t you love to go in?”
    I could forgo the pleasure of rooting around in a squatter’s mess, I said.
    Ruby turned from the house, and looked up and down the tired street. “Tell me what was it like here.”
    “This block wasn’t much like the rest of the neighborhood. It was brownstone houses instead of tenements. Shabby elegant, that’s how my mother described it. There was even some honest money in a few of the houses. But if I remember right...” I pointed to Annie Meath’s place, where the squatter was maybe inside, and looking out at us now. “This one had a doctor in it, right up to the time I was a rookie in the department. I forget the name. He was the kind of doctor girls in trouble had to go to then. Or gangsters in trouble.”
    “And the rest of the block?”
    “I remember old Greek gents sitting around all day in coffeehouses. At night the second-floor anisette parlors would open, and there would be sad music. That’s about all I can tell you, really.”
    “I can see how it was grand years and years ago.”
    “Maybe so.”
    “It could be again.”
    Sunlight faded off, and we moved on. Walking up the avenue to Forty-third Street, I caught Ruby staring at my stomach. Which I admit was pooching out over my belt slightly.
    I was anxious to talk about anything besides what Ruby obviously had on her mind. So I told her how I had to drive upstate to see a hermit priest by the name of Creepy Morrison; how Father Declan had made arrangements, no doubt looking upon the excursion as a means of bringing me back into the fold.
    “Do you realize you’re waddling?” Ruby asked, ignoring everything I said.
    “So I ate a big dinner. So I’m walking heavy.”
    “No, you’re waddling. Tomorrow morning, let’s find you a gym.”
    “Don’t start.”
    “If you drop dead from a heart attack. I’ll never forgive you.”
    “So she starts.”
    “Tomorrow, Hock, I mean it. You’re joining up at a gym.”
    “I told you, I’m going to the mountains tomorrow.”
    “On Monday? Aren’t you forgetting something?”
    “Forgetting what?”
    “The staged reading. It’s supposed to be Monday night. You're not sticking around for that?”
    “Well—”
    “Good, Monday night’s settled. As for the day, you’ve got time for the gym.”
    “And so, Your Honor,” I said, speaking to the imaginary judge I address when Ruby nags me, “I had to kill her.” As usual. Ruby changed the subject.
    “I like Sister Roberta,” she said. By now we were climbing the stairway to our apartment. “She’d make a good neighbor.”
    “Neighbor...?”
    The telephone started ringing on the other side of our door. I put the key in the lock and hurried inside, thinking it might be Neglio. Instead it was a man asking for Ruby.
    “Yes?” she said when I handed her the receiver. Then, the rest of Ruby’s end of the line: “Yes, I see... No, that’s quite convenient... Oh, how interesting!”
    “Well?” I asked.
    “Half-past seven tomorrow night, East Sixty-fourth Street °ff Park. And talk about shabby elegant.”
    “Meaning?”
    “The reading’s at Stuart Godwin’s house.”
    “You know him?”
    “By reputation. He’s a producer with a couple of good credits—some bad ones, too. But that’s not what I mean by shabby.”
    “No?”
    “Godwin owns the town house where Dick Nixon lived after he was run out of Washington.”

Twenty-two

    “ B ut what’s to become of me, and my home?” The old man in the handsome silk robe and waistcoat cups his face with soft gloved hands as he says this. He refills his glass with Black Bush. His voice is slurry from whisky. “Oh, me— oh, me!”
    “Shut up already,” the other man says. “You sound like that pansy Godwin.”
    “I never bargained for all this