Page 7 of Playworld

“I have to go see about an apartment for us uptown,” she said.

Salvatore waited until her elevator arrived. Lily stepped on, and the moment after its door closed, his face darkened.

“Let’s take a look at this place already,” he said to my father.

Salvatore’s bad mood persisted throughout the inspection, which to my father felt perfunctory, infuriatingly quick. He seemed put out by having to breathe the several-day-old smoke’s still-overpowering odor, a frustration he further underscored by pinching the tarred clothes and soot-covered bed linens and then holding up his index finger in disgust, as if his pitch-black pad were evidence of a failed white-glove inspection—a sign of messiness in our life instead of its ruin.

When they were back in the hallway, Salvatore finally spoke. “Just so I’ve got this straight. Your kid sets the closet on fire. Then your wife tries to put it out while you get the building’s extinguisher. But it doesn’t work?”

“That’s right.”

“Did you keep it?”

“What?”

“The fucking defective, probably-never-inspected-in-a-million-years fire extinguisher.”

“No, I…of course not.”

Salvatore shook his head miserably. “I bet you all the money I got,” he continued, “that the superintendent raced up and down these stairs checking every last fire extinguisher thesecondafter your kid torched the place.”

“It was an accident,” my father said.

Salvatore rolled his eyes. “Tell me why you’re not taking these guys to court again? You’re looking at a helluva lawsuit.”

My father shook his head. “We have you,” he managed to say. He’d never considered bringing a negligence claim. For one, he distrusted the process. The lawyers, the courtroom drama. What if it were all for naught? It was like multiple callbacks for an audition that ended with a producer’s rejection: getting one’s hopes up hurt more than the final refusal. This was coupled with his reluctance to cause a stir, consistent with his actor’s disposition, a common flaw in that breed’s character but one my father suffered from acutely, for he saw such relationships as personal, based on more than simply commerce. Sue management successfully, and by recouping his losses, he risked inviting that state of relations most anathema to him: he would bedisliked.

“So what now?” my father asked.

Salvatore shrugged. “We got problems.”

“How’s that?”

Perhaps because they were standing in the hallway Salvatore lowered his voice. “Put yourself in my position,” he said. “I got a client whose kid ignites some combustibles, and now he wantsmeto give him the full amount of his policy. No offense, but that’s like if your dog bit me and I’m the one being asked to pay for his chipped tooth.”

My father couldn’t bring himself to argue.

“You don’t seem like a fine-print kind of guy, Mr. Hurt. But you understand when I say this looksbad.”

My father spoke the words he’d wanted to utter from the moment he’d first smelled smoke: “I’m sorry.”

Salvatore sighed. “Look, I’m gonna pull some strings, get you andyour pretty wife your check.” He glanced at his watch and then brightened. “This afternoon, in fact.” Then he slapped the back of his palm against my father’s chest and pressed it there. “But to dothat,there’s something I need you to do for me first.”

—

It was brutally cold outside, but especially here, where Broadway intersected Columbus Avenue. Even Lincoln Center’s fountains, their jets almost furry in the January brightness, bent slightly, the spume steadily sheared off in the prevailing wind and spraying unwitting passersby. Men held the brims of their hats, staggering as stiffly as zombies against the blast. Women pulled their scarves over their mouths, the trailing fabric snapping behind them as they leaned forward or sometimes even turned to walk backward against the gale. At Columbus Circle, a few blocks down, the flurries seemed even more powerfully channeled by the GW building, swirling before the Coliseum’s facade, whistling like some maritime squall. Shel would catch the downtown train there, to meet Salvatore as planned, but only after he stopped at the bank.

Get started now on your road to riches,my father had said in the commercial,by saving regularly at the Dime. Offices in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Long Island.His tone was gentle, reassuring—solid as the branch’s black marble facade. As the bank’s TV spokesperson, he had been given complimentary checking and savings accounts, and when he’d first started doing his business there, he couldn’t help offhandedly mentioning this to the tellers, just so they knew with whom they were dealing.

“Mr. Hurt,” said Glenda, as he stepped to her window, “what can I do for you today?”

“I need to make a withdrawal. From my savings.”

Glenda passed him the slip and then folded her hands on the counter. “How much, then?”

If he hadn’t been there just the week before, he wouldn’t have known his balance: just over $4,100. As a rule he preferred to ignore it, thereby going longer stretches not tormented by its shabby state, or, more recently, to be pleasantly surprised by the amount, boosted by weekly checks fromThe Fisher King.

“All of it,” my father said.

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