Free Nick's Trip by George P. Pelecanos

contained two inches of Grand-Dad, and a mug of coffee for Jackie. We tapped receptacles and sipped our respective poisons.
    “You mad at me?” I asked.
    “Uh-uh. You were a hit tonight. A bunch of my friends asked me about you.”
    “Sorry about the kiss. The weird thing was, when Smiley was coming on to you, I was jealous.”
    “You’re loaded,” she said flatly. “So don’t start analyzing things, not tonight.”
    “Right.” I winked and had another taste. The juke was now playing “A Whiter Shade of Pale.”
    “There must be something missing in your life,” she said, avoiding my eyes. “I mean there must be a reason why you drink like you do.”
    “Christ, Jackie, not now. There’s work time and there’s drinking time.” I raised my glass. “Okay?”
    “Yeah. Sorry. But I want to talk to you about something, something really important.”
    “Sure,” I said, and put a cigarette in my mouth. Jackie lit a match, and I pulled her hand in until the flame touched the tobacco. I blew the match out with my exhale. “Let’s talk.”
    “Not tonight. It’s too important, like I said. I want your head to be clear when we discuss it.”
    “When, then?”
    “You free for dinner Sunday night?”
    “I guess so.”
    “Good,” she said. “I’ll pick you up at eight.”
    I KISSED JACKIE GOOD night and climbed into my icy Dart. It started after a few attempts and I pointed it northwest. There wasn’t much action on the streets except for other drunks and cops too warm in their cars to bother. I parked in front of Lee’sapartment building and listened to “Cemetry Gates” on the radio until it was finished. Then I ran across the hard frozen ground to her stairwell and rang her buzzer.
    After what seemed like a very long while her door opened. She was wearing a brown-and-green flannel shirt and, from what I could tell, little else. She began to shiver as soon as the door was open. I had woken her up and she wasn’t smiling. Her very green eyes had picked up the green off the shirt.
    “Aren’t you going to ask me in?” My tongue was thick and I was leaning on the door frame for support.
    “It’s late, Nick. I’ve got a final tomorrow.”
    “I’m sorry, Lee.” I smiled hopelessly and felt my upper lip stick clumsily to my front teeth. “I thought…”
    “I know what you thought,” she said in a low voice that began to build. “There’s lipstick on your cheek, hard liquor on your breath, it’s three o’clock in the morning, and you’ve got a hard-on. You
thought
you’d slide on in here and relieve yourself, that’s what you thought. Well, think about this. You mean something to me, Nick, in a strange way, but the next time you disrespect me like this, it’s going to be the last time. Understand?”
    Before I could tell her that I certainly did, the door was closing with a thudding finality. I stared at it for a minute and then walked back to my car. I drove around the corner to May’s on Wisconsin where my bookie friend Steve Maroulis let me in the bar entrance. We had a nightcap together under the cruel lights of last call. I asked him a couple of questions about local gambling and wrote down the answers so I wouldn’t have to ask him again. I think I downed another drink while he closed up and did the paperwork. It wasn’t until the next morning, when I awoke fully clothed on a made bed, that I realized I had driven myself home.

FIVE
     
    T HERE WAS A story that used to be told around town concerning my grandfather and Lou DiGeordano that almost attained the status of local folklore, until the men telling it began to die off and it began to die off with them.
    My grandfather, Nicholas (“Big Nick”) Stefanos, came to this country from a village in Sparta just after World War I, leaving behind his wife and young son. Like almost three quarters of Sparta’s male population in those years, he came to America to make a quick fortune and to escape the horrible rural poverty that