"Okay, it's way past my bedtime," he
said. "You gonna go to the bookstore today?"
"Absolutely. Thanks for setting them up."
"It was about time I did some of the work, after you got the nut-shop
and the cheese place and the Salvadoran pupusa place."
"Kurt, I'm just doing the work that you set in motion. It's all you,
this project. I'm just your helper. Sleep well."
Andy watched him slouch off toward home, reeling a little from sleep
deprivation and emotional exhaustion. He forked up the rest of his
omelet, looked reflexively up at the blinkenlights on the AP over the
Greek's sign, just above the apostrophe, where he'd nailed it up two
months before. Since then, he'd nailed up five more, each going more
smoothly than the last. At this rate, he'd have every main drag in the
Market covered by summer. Sooner, if he could offload some of the labor
onto one of Kurt's eager kids.
He went back to his porch then, and watched the Market wake up. The
traffic was mostly bicycling bankers stopping for a fresh bagel on their
way down to the business district. The Market was quite restful. It
shuffled like an old man in carpet slippers, setting up streetside
produce tables, twiddling the dials of its many radios looking for
something with a beat. He watched them roll past, the Salvadoran pupusa
ladies, Jamaican Patty Kings, Italian butchers, Vietnamese pho-tenders,
and any number of thrift-store hotties, crusty-punks, strung-out
artistes, trustafarians and pretty-boy skaters.
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