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ARTISAN REVIEW
beautiful there, Alicia. Maybe you'll let me take you?"
"And when it's winter?"
"I bet with the bookies in winter. But they got this OTB now.
The old man pauses. "On Seventeenth Street. Next to the Jewish
Synagogue. "
"But then you went yourself? With money he lent you."
"I went myself With his money," he admits. "I even remember the
name of the horse. Like remembering your murderer." The old man
laughs, creased face creasing even more. His laugh is sharp, a cackle. He is
pleased at the idea of the murderer horse. "Kelly's Hawk. That was the
horse's name. Kelly's Hawk. How can I forget? Twenty-five thousand
and my life on the line."
The good-looking woman laughs, too. But her laugh is temperate,
a musical laugh. "It's amazing when you think of it. How different our
worlds were. I was still in Prague, living with my sister. Karla was in her
fourth year at the university. I had a job. At night I painted, and during
the day I worked as a guide. For tourists. Only Russians visited Prague in
1967." She laughs again. "They like our beer, the Russians." She leans
forward, rewards the old man with a smile that explodes in front of him.
The old man turns his face away. He feels agitated, hopeful. He
keeps his eyes away from her face. "You didn't know Frantisek then, did
you?" he asks, eyes again coming to rest on the Greek owner behind the
register.
The woman shakes her head. "You paid him back?"
"Everything," the old man answers.
"Everything?"
"Every last cent. I would give him interest, too. But Frantisek tells
me, 'No, Willie, I don't take no interest from no fellow Czech.' "
Tears well up in the corners of the old man's eyes. "You can't do that
in New York today."
"It's amazing you could pay it all back."
"Whenever I got, I pay. All of it. I pay it
all
back. Business is good,
business is bad. It don't matter. People was still wearing furs in them
days, Alicia. You could make a dollar. That don't matter either. If I got
to rob a bank to pay him back, I do it. Your man was a saint, Alicia. A
saint." The old man dabs at his eyes with his crumpled blue napkin. Then
he blows his nose and the woman thinks his lined cheeks will crack and
break away from his face like pieces of broken crockery. Why should a
woman as good-looking as she be reduced to picking splinters of flesh
off a coffee shop table and then gluing them back together?
The woman smiles invitingly. She remembers that she must try to
make the old man happy. This is what old men have instead of sex. How
