“See?” Albert said loudly. “I have money to buy with.”
Looking at the guard, he noticed that customers had stopped to watch the argument.
The guard slapped Albert’s hand.
“I don’t want to see that,” the man with the drooping mustache said.
“I got a right just like anybody else to be here, to shop here,” Albert said, loud enough that the spectators could hear.
More people were coming into the sweets aisle. Albert glanced around to make sure that Alyce wasn’t one of them. No, no — Frankie.
The guard grabbed Albert’s left biceps, but when Albert flexed his muscle he let go.
“I’m just lookin’ for a candy bar, man. Why you wanna kick me outta here?”
“Chico,” a man in a dark blue suit said.
Albert was looking around for Frankie, yes, Frankie, but she was nowhere to be seen. Had he made her up?
“Yes, Mr. Greenwood?” the security guard said.
“What’s going on here?”
“Um,” Chico the guard said.
“I come in here wanting to buy me a piece a’ fancy candy,” Albert averred, brandishing his five-dollar bill. “First I looked at the meats and vegetables just to see what you got, and then this man here said that I’m not welcome to shop in your store. I got my money right here in my hand.”
Mr. Greenwood was about Albert’s age. He was pale-skinned and had amber eyes behind metal-rimmed glasses. He’d made something of himself, that’s what Albert thought. He was a man who ran a grocery store, while Albert was just a guy who lived in a hole.
“Excuse me, sir,” Greenwood said, forcing a smile. “You are certainly welcome to shop here, just like anybody else.”
There were people all around them, but Alyce — no, Frankie — was nowhere to be seen. Albert was becoming light-headed.
“Would you accept a gift of one of our boxes of chocolates?” Greenwood was asking.
“No,” Albert said. “I don’t want anything from this store if you won’t even let me walk around and look. I mean, that’s what people do in the store, right? They shop and look and buy if they see somethin’ they like. No, I don’t want your candy now.”
When Albert saw Frankie waiting at his shopping cart, he was overjoyed. He thought that maybe he had actually seen her on that corner but imagined their conversation. Maybe his make-believe had brought him to the store, thinking that she was following him, and he was perpetually moving away.
“You were just perfect, Al,” she said, beaming.
She pulled his shoulders and kissed his cheek.
“Let’s go to my house,” she said. “And I’ll make you a Stillman’s steak.”
There was an office building on Broome Street that had changed hands and was under reconstruction.
“The man who owns it is being indicted for fraud or something,” Frankie told Albert. “The trial’ll take years. A guy named Childress gets the keys from the construction boss and makes a few spaces available for apartments. I got the one on the sixth floor, and I only pay three hundred a month.”
The halls were dusty and dark, but the makeshift apartment was bright and airy, with good furniture, electricity, and a camping stove in the office-supply room that she used as a kitchen. There was even a bathroom with running water at the end of the hall.
“You’re not all that dirty,” Frankie said, “but you could still wash up while I make us dinner. There’s some clothes in a box in the hall that might fit you.”
The bathroom had a fiberglass businessman’s shower installed in the corner. Albert felt vulnerable being naked in that illegal space, washing with cold water. But he was excited too. Frankie was almost Alyce in his eyes, and for the first time in decades the mantra of love-lost had stopped nagging at him.
With a smile on his face he plunged under the ice-cold spray and experienced exhilaration that spanned his entire life. His father might have been dead by now. Luellen never became a cop. The moon was rounding the curve of the Earth, soon to be aloft in the New York sky. Albert was standing naked in that hidden space, and there was a woman down the hall who wanted to have a meal with him.
Out of the clothes box he took a pair of gray sweatpants and a green T-shirt that was only a little too small.
“You’re in pretty good shape for a homeless,” Frankie said, as she served him a fried rib-eye steak with white rice and shredded brussels sprouts sautéed in butter with garlic and soy sauce.
“I live in a hole in the ground,” he said, savoring the meal. “But I’m not homeless. No more than you are.”
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to insult you.”
“How come you picked me off the street like that?”
“I needed a partner, and the last guy I worked with punked out on me.”
“You needed a black man to distract security?”
“Uh-huh. You want some red wine?”
“I don’t think so. No, no, I don’t.”
“You need a job, Albert?”
“I’d like to work for you, Frankie.”
“I’m not getting up off of any pussy. My last partner, Joby, didn’t understand that.”
“These his clothes?” Albert asked. He was thinking about his deceased Tibetan master and the ideal of balance, of the moon arcing through the sky and all the many tons of rock he’d piled over the years.
“Yeah,” Frankie said, “but they belonged to a guy named Teddy before that.”
“You know a lotta men.”
“My father had Huntington’s disease,” she said, as if in answer. “He’d go into these wild rages, and my mother had me and my sister padlocked in our rooms at night. She gave me a pistol. I still have it.”
“Did he ever try to hurt you, your father?”
“Only all the time.”
“What’s that got to do with all the men you know?” Albert was wondering about the reasoning behind his own question.
“I’m not afraid of anybody,” she said.
“I won’t steal,” Albert said, as if in answer, “but I don’t mind walkin’ around in a store.”
3
Albert “walked around” while Frankie shoplifted from drugstores mainly, but they also hit hardware stores, art-supply stores, little knickknack places down in SoHo, and some Midtown department stores. Frankie knew the most valuable items to boost (and where to sell them), and all Albert had to do was look at things that interested him.
He was especially interested in portable electronics and colored pens.
He was arrested twice but then released for lack of evidence. He made sure to have twenty dollars in his pocket so that he could always claim to be shopping.
Frankie set up a room for him down the hall from her suite. She padlocked her doors and told him that if he broke in on her, she still had the pistol her mother had given her.
“I’ve shot men before,” she warned.
Early one Thursday morning, Frankie knocked on Albert’s door. He was already awake, lying on the futon she’d had the man Childress deliver. She paid an extra hundred dollars a month for Albert. He stayed on Broome Street, even though he had another illegal home uptown.
He heard the knock but didn’t answer immediately. He was lying there thinking that he hadn’t had a drink since the day he met Frankie.
“Yeah?” he said at the second knock.
“You wanna get breakfast and do some shopping?”
“I have something to do today.”
“What’s that?” She pushed the door open and walked into the small office.
“I’m going up to Central Park to beg.”
“You don’t need that. We make more than enough.”
“I don’t do it for the money,” he said.