“I am coming there after my shift and you’d better be ready to explain how when you were at work you were also in Center City talking to some dumb bitch.”
Ted hangs up the phone. A couple enters the store and surveys the produce. He checks on Malcolm, who has been asleep for the past hour, head nestled between his marshmallow paws.
When Delilah arrives, Ted will tell her that they will never again be naked and clasped at the middle, thrusting toward her signed poster of Shane Victorino. He will never again have to use her cheap, cotton candy soap. He will never again have to deal with her accent: the tinned a’s, the sour o’s, the spine-splitting sound of l’s pronounced as w’s. Gina sawl you on South Street.
This decision fills Ted Stempel with a happy, reasonable light.
When the couple reaches the counter, he responds to the woman’s smile with an even bigger one.
“How are we tonight?” He rings the man up for his pears.
“Look at that adorable dog.” The woman cranes her neck over the counter. “What’s his name?”
“Malcolm,” says Ted.
“If I had a dog that cute, I’d take him to work with me, too,” the woman says.
“He’s got bandages on,” says the man. “Is he okay?”
Ted swells with pride. “He’s a champion. On second thought.” He voids the transaction. “The pears are free.”
“Really?” the man says.
“Free pear night,” Ted says. “Everyone gets free pears.” He hands the money back to the man.
“How nice of you,” the woman says. Then, to Malcolm, “See you later, alligator.”
Ted replies for him. “After a while, crocodile.”
“Is there anything as satisfying as a pear?” Ben says, when they are back on the street.
“Yes,” Sarina says, “but you can’t eat it and walk.”
Ben’s eyebrows ascend. He always forgets that she is funny. That underneath her traditional exterior is the girl who wore only black in high school. “Pardon me, Miss Greene?”
Sarina’s cheeks turn the color of ham.
They walk and eat their pears. Night allows the objects of Christian Street to hide except for where the streetlights call them out. There you are, newspaper stand. Hello. A discarded umbrella: Hello. A hydrant. A chained bike. Sarina and Ben walk in and out of these salutations. A sign on a fence promises a community garden, after several false starts, is coming. Featuring basil and daffodils. For real this time.
1:26 A.M
Madeleine waits until Miss Greene and Ben are a block away before emerging from behind a truck. She hears her teacher’s laughter unfurl like a scarf. Outside the store, produce shines. Madeleine feels around her pockets for change. Nothing. Her stomach protests. She could steal an apple. There are hundreds. She will be fast, dangerous!
Madeleine checks inside the shop, then sleeves a Rome Beauty.
“What have you got there, little girl?” a voice behind her says. It is the store’s clerk. “I have had it today,” he says. “With the drama.”
Madeleine shakes the apple out of her sleeve. “I shouldn’t have taken it.”
The clerk returns it to its stack. “It’s stealing.”
“I know,” she says. “I’m sorry. I haven’t eaten since breakfast.”
“You look familiar.” He narrows his eyes. “Who are you?”
“Madeleine Altimari.”
“Come in here.” He disappears into the store. Madeleine considers escape, but she has attended too many years of Catholic school to run. She follows him. The store is unswept. Bruised canisters of tomatoes. Deflated bags of rice. Madeleine expects to see a cockroach scurry up the walls.
Behind the counter, the clerk loads a hoagie roll with meatballs. A dog at his feet whirrs at the smell. “Not for you,” the clerk says. A television hanging in the corner is tuned to a news report about a famous actress. “Do you think it will help the city’s tourism to have famous people visit?” a reporter asks some yackamo in Fox Chase.
“I don’t have a crystal ball.” The yackamo shrugs.
Madeleine shrugs.
The clerk is satisfied with the heft and bulk of the sandwich. “You want cheese? We’ve got American and Swiss.”
“Any Locatelli?” she says.
“That’s for pasta.”
Madeleine’s voice is sad. “The saltiness brings out the flavor of the meat.”
“You’ll have to eat this one without it.” He wraps the sandwich in aluminum foil and holds it out to her. “Take it,” he says. He readjusts his tack when she balks. “I knew your mother.”
Madeleine knows she should not take food from strangers, but also that the city is a network of her mother’s promises. Hunger punches her stomach. She unwraps half of the sandwich and takes a large bite she can barely control. Her eyes move from the man to the door.
“Got somewhere to go?” he says. The phone behind the counter rings. He answers it.
Madeleine’s mouth is full. “Thank you.” Clutching the sandwich, she runs out of the store.
“Hey!” he calls.
On South Street, clusters of people smoke on the sidewalk. In a church that’s not Saint Anthony’s, a bell chimes. Madeleine catches up to Miss Greene and Ben and follows a gasp behind.
1:30 A.M
A church bell chimes. Ben and Sarina finish their pears. They take Second until they reach the dead yards of Fishtown. “You’re a good teacher,” he says. “I can tell by that girl’s face when she looked at you.”
“She’s been through the mill. Her mother died, and her father isn’t the best.” Sarina worries that this heavy thought will tip the ship of the night. “She has people, though,” she adds, “who help.”
“Like you had people.” His tone is suddenly charmless. “Not me, though. I wasn’t there for you.”
“You were a boy, Ben.”
“I was an asshole,” he says.
“Way to make it about you.”
“Just let me say I’m sorry, Miss Greene.”
A smattering of laughter on a rooftop settles on them. The street is filled with warehouses and crack houses, jazz clubs and people having tough conversations. “You’d be surprised by how much it hurts that he didn’t say good-bye.” They have reached the club. Sarina’s expression is a mixture of relief (she is cold) and happiness (they have made it) and pain (she has spoken about her father) when she turns to Ben.
“Do you know,” he says, “I think about you every single day?”
“How could I know that?”
“I’m telling you.”
“We’re here,” she says. “Let’s go in.”
He doesn’t move. “Do you think about me?”
Bundled skinny boys, one whistling off tune, scuffle through the door into the club.
“I’m cold,” Sarina says. “I forget the question.”
“You do not.”
“I think that you’re not free. Even if you are going to be. You’ll lose a year, at least. At the end of it, you’ll be a different person who wants different things. I’ve been through it.”
For the first time, Ben feels the chill anesthetizing his elbows and toes. In one of the warehouses, someone opens a window to clear a stinking room.
“What am I supposed to do,” she says. “Wait?” She wants him to say, Yes, wait. I will be home as soon as I run this one errand. Ben perceives disgust in her tone. Why would anyone wait for him? A boy who didn’t know how to be a prom date, a man who knows what he needs, but too late.
He releases her arm. His voice is professional with sorrow. “You certainly couldn’t do that.” He means because she is precious. Sarina hears that she is snotty and unkind. He means because he is not that lucky; she hears: he is bored.