My mother touched my hand. “Buddy, Mr. Amalfi wants to know if we're happy.”
I shrugged. “Sure. I guess so.”
She laughed and messed my hair, like I'd just done something cute. She pretended to count on her fingers. “I can't believe it, Mike. I've been married for nine years now.”
“That's a long time,” said the Wiener Man.
“I wish you could meet Jim,” she said. “I think you'd like him.”
The Wiener Man nodded. “Jim's a lucky man.”
“What about you?” she asked. “Are you happy?”
He uncrossed his legs and sat up straight on top of his little woodgrain refrigerator. “Happy?” he repeated, as if he hadn't understood the question. “I don't know about that. This is a decent job. I like seeing the country and meeting the kids. But it gets kind of lonely sometimes.”
“Why don't you get married?” my mother said. “You're still young.”
“I don't feel so young,” said the Wiener Man.
There was a long lull in the conversation. They just looked at each other. My mother took the gray purse from her lap and set it on the table. She unclasped it and took out her wallet. I thought she was going to give some money to the Wiener Man, but she looked at me instead.
“Buddy, could you do me a favor? Run into Stop & Shop and pick up a can of tomato sauce, okay? Contadina. The smaller can, not the big huge one. That's in aisle six.” She pressed a crumpled dollar into my hand. “You can get a candy bar with the change.”
I glanced at the Hi-Q board. There was no way I could win. “Right now?” I asked.
She nodded. “Wait for me outside. I'll only be a few more minutes.”
I stepped out from behind the table. The Wiener Man stared glumly at his feet. I wanted to cheer him up.
“Tell her about that kid you pounded today,” I suggested.
* * *
The night had grown cooler. High up, the sky remained a deep daytime blue, but near the ground it was dark. All the lights were on in the parking lot. I went over to the front window of Stop & Shop and stood on tiptoe to peer inside the dazzling store. I couldn't see any customers, just two checkout girls in green smocks talking across three empty counters.
I shoved the dollar into my pocket and hopped a ride on a nearby shopping cart. I glided toward Grand Avenue, gathering speed on the downward slope. I found the can of tomato sauce right where I thought it would be, lying against a concrete parking barrier. It wasn't even dented.
I walked past the Frankmobile and sat down on the curb in front of the launderette. I amused myself by tossing the can into the air with one hand and catching it with the other, enjoying the swift pull of gravity as it smacked into my palm. Across Grand Avenue, a chalky fingernail moon hung at a strange tilt over the jagged line of housetops.
“Hi.”
The voice came from Harold Daggett. Like me, he was still wearing his uniform. He was also carrying a gym bag. “I saw you sitting here,” he explained. He sat down beside me and set the gym bag between his feet. “Thanks for sticking up for me today. I didn't think you liked me.”
“You were right,” I said. “Billy was acting like a jerk.”
Harold looked at the Frankmobile. “Is he nice?”
“Yeah, pretty nice. My mom's in there.”
“I want to go with him,” Harold said.
“You mean like running away?”
Harold nodded. “I hate it here. You think he'll take me with him?”
“I'm not sure,” I told him. “Probably.”
We didn't talk for a while. The parking lot was flat and empty, almost like a lake, except for a few stray shopping carts that here and there gleamed silver in the artificial light.
“By the way,” I said, “it was interesting what you told us today. That stuff about hot dogs and hamburgers.”
“Oh that.” He shrugged. “It was in the encyclopedia.”
Seconds later, the door of the Frankmobile swung open. My mother stepped down onto the pavement.
“Buddy?” she called out.
I walked into the light, leaving Harold behind me, alone and invisible in the shadows.
“We're late,” my mother said. “We have to walk fast.”
My father was the assistant manager at a store called Lamp City. It was located just a few blocks from the mini-mall, on an otherwise deserted part of Grand Avenue. After dark you could see it from far away, a small solitary building surrounded by a smoky yellow halo.
There must have been a thousand lamps in there. They hung from the ceiling, stood on the floor, rested on shelves and tables. My father hated it. The glare hurt his eyes and gave him headaches. He tried wearing sunglasses for a while, but his boss got mad. When he got home at night, he sat in his chair in the living room and ate dinner in the dark. Some nights his eyes were so sore he couldn't bear to watch TV or read the paper.
He waited with his hands and face pressed against the front window. His expression changed when he saw us. He smiled and raised one finger, then disappeared in toward the rear of the store. When he hit the master switch, that whole galaxy of lamps went black. My mother turned to me in the sudden darkness and asked if I had done my homework.
“It's foolproof,” Kevin explained. “If someone comes in and buys fifteen dollars worth of gas, I just ring up five and keep ten for myself.”
“What about the pump?” I asked. “Doesn't that keep track?”
“Not really. It just goes back to zero every time you flip the switch.”
Gas was expensive that summer, in 1974, and for a few weeks we were rich. Kevin bought me albums, food, and sporting goods with the money he stole from Paul's Amoco. He paid his brother's friend Burnsy to drive us to Yankee Stadium and Bowcraft Amusement Park. Every time I returned from one of these excursions I told my mother the same half-lie. I said that Paul had paid for everything.
Paul was Kevin's new stepfather. He had met Mrs. Ross on the supermarket checkout line in February and married her in March. When he moved in, he bought Kevin a fantastic ten-speed bike and tried to be his friend. But Kevin didn't want to be friends. He claimed that Paul was a sex maniac.
“Listen to this,” Kevin said, just a few weeks after the wedding. He slipped a cassette into his tape player and cranked up the volume. All I could hear was loud static with vague murmurs in the background.
“What is it?”
“They're humping.” he said. “Can't you tell?”
He rewound the tape. The murmurs turned into soft moans and deep sighs. I had a hard time connecting these sounds with Kevin's mother, a thin quiet woman who smoked extra-long cigarettes and told him to be careful every time he left the house.
“I swear,” he said. “It's all they ever do.”
Kevin's real father had died a long time ago. He had been an amateur boxer. Kevin had once come to a Halloween party dressed in gym shorts and boxing gloves, with his father's jockstrap and huge protective cup fitted over his head like a mask. Whenever someone asked him what he was, he lifted