28
28Torch & Basil is squeezed to the beams, and Mr. Trizonis’s face is composed of the spooky dauntlessness that the nightly dinner rush brings. Sandra groans aloud because he’s headed straight for her.
“Sandra, I need you to work through your break. We have an extra-special guest in the private dining room. A big tipper and you don’t have to split it with the waitstaff. I’ll take care of them myself.”
In Trizonis’s world, an “extra-special guest” is typically a snide celebrity with bizarre requests not on the menu, an über-rich and crotchety old pervert, or a powerful boss from New Jersey’s notoriously dirty political machinery.
Before Sandra can make a stink, Trizonis is back on the dining room floor, glad-handing his well-heeled guests as if his life depends on it—probably because it does.
In addition to the penthouse atop 77 Hudson Street (which, Sandra found out from Fredrick, Trizonis financed by rolling it into the restaurant’s mortgage, which, depending on how honest your accountant is, is patently illegal), Trizonis also owns a Mediterranean villa in East Hampton with 0.1 miles of private beach on Long Island Sound.
The refrain that he uses to crack the whip on the restaurant staff is that after Hudson and Suffolk county taxes, two mortgages, and full tuition to Vassar and Mount Holyoke for his twin daughters, he lives “a pauper’s life.”
Yeah, right, Sandra thinks.
She takes her time getting to the private dining room stashed in the back of the restaurant off the kitchen. Trizonis designed it so that the rich and famous could whisk in discreetly to escape the roving eye of paparazzi and diners drunk on stardom’s merry wine.
Sandra composes herself and calls upon her homecoming queen persona. The chasm between her fanciful high school existence and her present makes her past feel like a life lived by someone else.
That’s when the scent hits her. Sharry Baby Hawaiian Orchids—Sandra’s favorite flower, but one that she has never received. Without warning, her eyes get misty. The candied fragrance draws out Sandra’s longing to be sought after by a man who is trustable, secure. And her carefully constructed, feminist shield is powerless against this sensory assault that stirs up fairy-tale-laced romantic desires—desires that she has buried since Andre summarily wounded her trust.
Sandra suppresses a sigh when she hears a Baroque piano solo drift from the room that is as beautiful as she would like her life to be.
Inside the private dining room, all eight tables are covered with Sharry Baby orchids, and in a far corner, illumined by the flicker of a lone lavender candle, is a familiar face. He rises and offers his hand.
“I’m Andre Bolden, and I’d like to get to know you better.”
Sandra raises both hands to her mouth but moves to cover her eyes when her tears sparkle. Andre wraps his arms around her and says, “Sahn, I’m willing to do whatever’s necessary to recapture your heart.”
Sandra is speechless, overwhelmed by the sweetness of the moment. She allows herself to rest amidst Andre’s sturdy arms and looks up at him. “Whatever’s necessary?”
“Yes.”
“Even go with me to New Jersey Truth?”
“I should’ve known you’d go there.”
Sandra smiles. “Doing whatever is your idea, not mine.”
“Okay, we can play by your rules. But just know that I’m pursuing you. And this time I’m going to do it right.”
Applause erupts behind them. Sandra spins to see the entire restaurant staff, led by Trizonis, clapping. Mortified, she buries her face in Andre’s chest.
“So can I call you?” he asks in her ear.
“You already blow up my phone whenever you get ready, Andre.”
“We’re starting over from scratch, remember?”
“Okay. It’s 201—”
“I’m a writer so I’m not good with numbers. Could you jot it down for me?”
One of the waitresses gives Sandra her order pad and pen. Sandra scribbles her number and stuffs it in Andre’s hand.
“Enjoy your favorite flower,” he says. “And I hope to enjoy mine one day again real soon.” He extends his hand to shake.
“Corny but cute, Dre.”
“Are you going to leave me hanging?”
Sandra punches him in the arm and shakes.
Clops stands in front of his cook spot on the corner of Warner and Rutgers. The tumbledown structure has been reduced to ashes.
“My first piece of property and they burn it to the ground,” he says disgustedly. He angrily kicks scorched wood off the sidewalk and back onto his lot.
The beast. I bet the fire department didn’t investigate this suspicious fire.
He sneers.
That’s because they all in the same gang.
Clop feels powerless until what Rock used to preach pops in his head.
“Being a man means never being a punk.”
Young Claymont would always nod, his eyes wide with wonder.
“And if you gotta knock somebody out to let ’em know that, you do it. You understand?”
Rock’s pre-prison maxims fired up blasts of moxie in Claymont’s juvenile genes—Uncle Rock was the definition of manhood, and what he said was how life was defined.
“You do what you gotta do to protect your enterprise,” Rock would say.
In the present, Clops realizes that his hands are freezing. He jams them in the pockets of his North Face and starts up the block.
Do what you gotta do to protect your enterprise.
Selling cars is harder than Andre thought. He’s been thrust into a world of concepts and terminology that may as well be a foreign language. After two weeks he hasn’t sold a single vehicle. Never comfortable with debt, Andre felt a tinge of guilt when he picked up his thousand-dollar paycheck for the first half of the month, despite the blue goose egg that was scrawled beside his name on the white sales board in dry erase marker.
Michael Frostburg, Andre’s sales manager, summons him into his office and drops an ink pen on his desk. “Sell me this pen.”
Andre recalls what Sandra said about him being a natural salesman and starts blathering. “This is what you want because it looks good. And even better, you’ll look good using it. What kind of pen are you using now?”
“A Bic.”
“Great pen, but you look like—” Andre glances at the pen on Frostburg’s desk. “A Bexley type. Which gives you top-of-the-line quality, but they’re more reasonably priced than the other top-shelf brands. And once you use a Bexley, you won’t want to use anything else because—”
“When are you going to ask me for my business?”
“I was getting to that.”
“You didn’t get to it fast enough. Now I’ve given you a thousand dollars of my money and you haven’t given me any sales. I want my money back, Bolden. So you owe me big. A thousand dollars is a lot of paper.”
Frostburg looks out onto the lot at a young white couple who just climbed out of a dented Ford Taurus. They team-strap a baby into a stroller. “See that couple right there?” he says. “Get out there and sell them a car!”
As Andre approaches the couple, he thinks about Frostburg’s words. I should’ve let him know that the person who signs the checks around here is my almost-father-in-law, so he hasn’t GIVEN me anything.
The couple hears Andre approach. The husband faces him, cringing in horror. “We’re just looking, okay?”
Andre holds his hands up. “It’s okay. I’m here to help. Let me know if you have any questions.”
Frostburg stands in front of the door with arms folded when Andre attempts to reenter the dealership. “What do you think you’re doing?” he asks.
“They said they’re just looking.”
“You’re gonna let them get away with that? They’re ‘just looking’ because you haven’t sold them anything yet! Now get back over there and don’t let ’em leave until you sell ’em a car!”
Andre reverses and tries to remember the lines that he learned in training, like, “The only pressure on this lot is in the tires,” or “The toughest sell is convincing yourself that you actually deserve that new car.”
The husband spins around, red-faced, and says, “You don’t get it, do you? We’re only looking, and we’d like to do it in private. In family peace.”
“I just thought you’d like to know that we’re giving away free cars today.”
“Free cars?”
Andre pulls a Matchbox-sized Toyota from his pocket and places it in the man’s hand.
“Good one,” the husband says and relaxes a touch. “So tell me, and be honest. How much below sticker can I get this?”
Andre circles the shiny white Camry that the husband has his eyes on. “That all depends,” he says and gives the couple’s car a once-over. “Ninety-five, right?”
“Yeah.”
“I could probably get you two hundred for that on trade-in, so you can knock that off the price. How much do you want to put down?”
The husband looks at the wife. The wife looks at him and says, “Two thousand?”
“Up to?” Andre offers, recalling this tactic from one of the training videos.
She shrugs. “Twenty-five hundred, I guess?”
Andre takes out a four square, a piece of paper divided into quadrants, and begins to scribble numbers all over it. This is serious. This is war.
He looks up at the couple and says in a way that makes it seem like an afterthought, “Financing with us?”
“Through our own bank,” the husband replies. “We’re already approved.”
Andre frowns. “What rate did they give you?”
“Four percent.”
Andre was taught to say that he could beat any percentage rate even if he didn’t know if the dealership’s finance department was able to. Frostburg emphasized this by saying, “You have to keep the sale open long enough to close it.”
“I’m sure we can do three and a half here,” Andre says. “That could save you forty, fifty bucks a month on your payment, easy.”
The couple’s eyes brighten.
Andre turns on his heels and says assertively, “Follow me.”
The couple and their stroller dutifully follow Andre into the dealership for his first sale.
A gaggle of ogling coed grills are reflected in the shiny rims of Fredrick’s 650i as he rolls through St. Peter’s campus.
He parks, hustles into Dineen Hall, and pokes his head into a well-appointed office. “What’s happening, Father T?”
“Fredrick, what’s going on, pal of mine?” Father Turchini is squeezed into a black shirt and priest’s collar, but his presentation is more hip than venerable. He’s a large, graying, Bronx Italian who, according to his own personal lore, used to promote hip-hop parties on Arthur Avenue in the late seventies before the genre “ever crossed the Hudson, let alone the continent.”
“I met someone who was a student here seven or eight years ago,” Fredrick says. “He was on athletic scholarship but was dismissed for disciplinary reasons—”
“Andre Bolden?”
“How’d you guess?”
“You can’t forget Bolden. We haven’t had an athlete like him here since. And I gotta tell you, that was one of the most difficult decisions I ever made in my life. I often wonder what happened to him. How is he?”
“He’s actually staying with me for a while until he gets back on his feet.”
Turchini looks concerned. “Is he alright?”
“He was driving a bus for New Jersey Transit, and doing quite well there, until his boss found out he had a felony.”
Turchini sighs. “Still following him.”
“What if he wanted to come back?” Fredrick asks.
“What are you, acting as his personal proxy or something?”
“He doesn’t even know I’m doing this. I’m just trying to help out in any way I can. He has a little baby with a wonderful young lady he’s trying to make things right with.”
“Please don’t tell me you’re talking about Sandra Horton.”
“You know her too?”
Shaking his head, Turchini says, “Of course. Her father is one of our esteemed alumni. Owns a bunch of car dealerships around North Jersey. So Andre and Sandra had a baby?”
“He’s a little over a year old.”
“I guess Mr. Horton saw that coming.” Turchini looks genuinely hurt. “The whole thing is really sad. Two bright students, one an exceptional athlete, the other from a prosperous family, neither of them graduate, and then they have a baby out of wedlock.”
Turchini pauses and stares out the window. “That’s the kind of thing that makes me glad I’m in the priesthood. I don’t envy any parent who was in Mr. Horton’s situation. I mean, do you keep paying tens of thousands of dollars of your hard-earned money on tuition for a child who’s living a lifestyle that you don’t agree with, or do you just pull the rug out from under their future? Tough call either way.”