He lighted a cigarette, took several puffs on it, and then stamped it out under one booted foot. He looked at his watch again, stepped into the center of the street, and then started for the luncheonette on the corner. A huge sign traveled the corner of the building over the luncheonette like the marching electric letters of the Times Building in New York. These letters, however, were painted in red on a white field and they did not announce world-shattering events. They simply stated: luis luncheonette. The luncheonette occupied a space in the corner of the building. When the doors were rolled back, the luncheonette became an extension of the sidewalk, open on both sides, the avenue and the street. The doors were closed now. The corrugated iron presented the impregnable look of a fortress. The boy went to the door on the street side, tried it, found it locked, and kicked it in anger.
"What are you doing there?" a voice said. "Get away from there!"
The man who came up the street had spoken with a slight Spanish accent, a gentle accent which seemed molded exactly to his appearance. He was a stoop-shouldered man wearing a small black mustache, a man who seemed older than his fifty-odd years, who moved with an economy that somehow seemed tortured.
"Don't tell me you're finally gonna open this dump!" Zip said.
Luis Amandez walked to the huge iron door and said, "What are you doing? Trying to break in here, hah? That what you were trying to do?"
He reached into his pocket for the key to the padlock, inserted it, took off the lock, and prepared to roll the door back into its overhead tracks.
"Don't flatter the dump," Zip said. "Come on, come on, get the lead out. Open the goddamn doors."
"This is my place, and I'll open them as slow or as fast as I want to. You snotnoses…"
Zip grinned suddenly. "Come on, man," he said, and there was infectious warmth in his voice now. "You got to move! You want to get any place, you got to
Luis rolled back the first of the doors. "I wish
"Dig the old bird," Zip said. "He's got humor." And he walked into the luncheonette and directly to the wall phone near the jukebox. Luis went around to the avenue side and took the padlock off the door there, rolling the door back, allowing the sunshine to rip through the corner stone like crossfire. Zip had taken the phone from its hook, reached into his pocket for a coin, and discovered that the smallest change he had was a quarter. He slammed the receiver onto the hook and went to meet Luis as he entered the shop.
"Listen, break a quarter for me," he said.
"What for?" Luis asked. "For the jukebox?"
"What's all the time 'What for?' Don't I buy enough in this crumby joint? I ask you for change, don't give me a Dragnet routine."
"It's too early to play the juke," Luis said calmly, going behind the counter and taking a white apron from a hook. "There are still people sleeping."
"In the first place, I don't care who's sleeping. It's time they were hustling. In the second place, I ain't gonna play the juke, I'm gonna make a phone call. And in the third and last place, you don't change this two bits for me, and one day you're liable to come in and find all your coffeepots busted."
"You threaten me?" Luis said. "I am a friend of the police. I tell them…"
"Come on, come on," Zip said, and again the warm grin flashed on his face. "You can sue me later. Right now, give me the change, huh? Come on."
Luis shook his head, picked up the quarter, and reached into his pocket. He made the change, and Zip picked it up and started for the telephone. He began dialing. Luis, since money matters had been brought to mind, walked to the cash register, reached into his pocket, and put in his day's starting money, laying the bills into the register drawer. He was about to break open a roll of dimes when Zip yelled, "Hey! Hey, Cooch! Over here!"
Luis turned. The second boy was also from the neighborhood, also wearing one of the purple silk jackets, but he was younger than Zip. Luis studied him from the distance of age, and wondered if he too had sported such a ridiculously thin and boyish-looking mustache when he was sixteen. He decided that he had not. The boy was short and squat, with thick powerful hands. His complexion was dark. He spotted Zip from the middle of the street and shouted, "Hey, Zipboy!" and then broke into a trot for the luncheonette. Luis sighed and cracked the roll of dimes on the edge of the cash drawer.
"What the hell kept you?" Zip asked. "I was just calling your house."
"Oh, man, don't ask," Cooch said. He spoke, as did Zip, without a trace of an accent. Both were total products of the city and the neighborhood, as far removed from Puerto Rico as was Mongolia. Studying them, Luis felt suddenly old, suddenly foreign. He shrugged, went to his stove, and began putting up his pots of coffee.
