Pepper said, No, please tell me.
Big Mike said, “You don’t like anybody.”
Pepper told him, I like plenty of folks, I just don’t like people. He liked Big Mike. Any resemblance between father and son was dispelled pretty damn quick when the furniture salesman opened his trap, but it was nice to see that glimmer. However briefly. Pepper’d work for the man, if he wasn’t going to take his advice and cut his loser cousin loose. Pepper’s convalescence had confirmed the void in his life. A recliner would fill it handily.
He was on the clock as soon as he hit 125th Street. Pepper rolled up the store’s grate and flipped the keys in his hand after the one for the front door. Behind him, a reedy voice asked, “Why’s he got his store closed all day?”
It was not a customer. The sunglasses and hepcat demeanor fit Carney’s description of Chet the Vet, one of Chink Montague’s thugs. Pepper ignored him and unlocked the front door.
“You igging me? I’m talking to you.”
Pepper faced the man, with the resignation of a man discovering his toilet is still busted after the plumber had left.
“Who are you?” said Chet the Vet.
“I’m the night man.”
“I’m looking for your boss.”
“I’m here.”
Chet the Vet squinted into the gloom of the store. He took stock of Pepper. The man’s attitude bewildered him. “I’ll come back,” he said.
“Store ain’t going nowhere.”
Chet the Vet took off. He glanced back twice, and twice turned away quickly from Pepper’s glare.
Guard duty commenced with an egg salad sandwich and a milkshake from Lionel’s on Broadway. Wednesday night was quiet, allowing him to contemplate the relative merits of the Argent recliner and its advertised smooth hydraulic action. A fine piece of furniture overall, he decided, although he preferred upholstery with a little more texture.
The Argent was a bite of the forbidden apple. The next day he took advantage of watch duty to peruse some of the man’s promotional material. Get a sense of what was out there, recliner-wise. His sentry station was Carney’s office, with the lights out. He had the blinds open a fraction, allowing him to see into the showroom and out to the street, but not the other way around. He held the catalogs up to his face in the dimness. Locking wheels, stainproof, lever action. There was one newfangled model had a built-in TV tray that flipped up over your lap, which he reckoned might come in handy if he ever got a TV set.
Had it been three years since he stopped using this place as an answering service? The furniture looked different—changing with the popular tastes—but Carney had kept the place up and running. He’d done a good job. His father would be proud, even if it was a straight job. Like his father in one way, and not like him in another. Which is why he didn’t hold a grudge for the thing with Duke and the drug peddler and the cops. Big Mike had never been able to resist some payback, and he’d passed that down.
He stretched. There was something in the back pocket of his overalls. One of the activist leaflets they were handing out last week on 125th:
cool it baby
the message has been delivered
We have been screaming for jobs, decent schools, clean houses, etc. for years.
Some folks just wouldn’t listen.
We’ve been telling them that all hell was liable to break loose unless Negroes saw real progress.
Some folks just wouldn’t listen.
Today everybody’s listening—with both ears.
The Message Has Been Delivered
This young brother laid it on him, a sit-in type wearing one of those African shirts they’re selling nowadays. “You have a look,” he told Pepper, like he was some Southern hayseed who had to be educated about the ways of the Big City. Pepper’s heat vision sent him scurrying. Cool it baby. Ain’t nobody listening. Do you listen to what the roach says before you step on him? He almost tossed the leaflet in the trash, but returned it to his back pocket instead.
At 3:32 p.m., two white men strolled up to the front door. Customers turned around on seeing the closed sign, but these two cupped their eyes and pressed their faces to the glass to see inside. They were clean-cut young men, in gas company uniforms that were not theirs. They weren’t meatheads, like a lot of muscle, panting after a few punches. These dudes were fit and clean, like astronauts. That new generation. Half his age. Pepper grabbed the spot in his belly where the knife had gone deep. It already hurt from the fighting he was going to do.
They split up. One astronaut, the redhead, walked to the corner and looked up Morningside, to the side door of the office. The blond astronaut walked the other way, to the wall between the store and the bar next door. They returned to the front door, conferred, and left.