Twelve years later, when Hugh finally announced that he was buying a house in South Carolina, that he couldn’t take winters in New York anymore, not with his aching hip or his neuropathy, Malcolm figured that was it, he’d forget about all the hints he’d dropped over the years and give the Half Moon to one of his dipshit sons. Malcolm would have to find a job for the first time in twenty-four years. But one morning before opening, when Malcolm was going through receipts, Hugh came in, bypassed his usual chair, and sat on a stool like a regular.
“Malcolm,” he said, laying his meaty hand on the bar, his wedding band so deeply embedded into the fat of his finger that Malcolm didn’t know how it wasn’t cutting off his circulation. “Here’s what I’d like to see happen.” His face was swollen and red, a drinker, though Malcolm had never once seen him drunk.
He took a pen from his pocket and wrote two numbers on a napkin. The first was the price for the business alone, and the second was the price for the business with the building included. The building didn’t look like much, and needed a lot of work, but a stone’s throw from the city meant it had real value. Then he coughed into his fist for half a minute, hacked and growled and wheezed. When he stopped, he rested his hand on his enormous belly, and told Malcolm he’d give him time to think about it.
“You okay, Hugh? You good?” Malcolm put a glass of water in front of him.
“Fine, I’m fine.”
Hugh wouldn’t admit it even if he knew that very hour would be his last, but they had their lines to say. Hugh had known Malcolm since he was a kid, had known his father, though he never wanted to talk about Darren Gephardt when Malcolm brought him up. Hugh said if Malcolm didn’t have the money, or if the bank wouldn’t back him, they’d work something out.
Later, as he watched Hugh wedge himself into his Cadillac, the steering wheel toylike in his giant hands, Malcolm wondered what would have happened if his father had not died at forty-three. Would Malcolm have eventually managed Gephardt’s, his father’s bar? Would he have inherited it by now? It was a block from Penn Station, and Malcolm could still feel the energy of the place, the people and personalities that swept through. Cops and criminals drinking side by side, women who sat so primly at the bar but whom his father said to stay away from once he turned sixteen and they started eyeing him.
When it wasn’t too busy, his father used to take meetings at a two-top in the back and once, during a big renovation when the bar was closed for a few weeks, a man Malcolm had never seen before pulled aside the thick plastic dust flaps at the front and approached his father cautiously, as if he needed permission. It was the day after Malcolm’s ninth birthday, and he’d just gotten in trouble for firing a nail gun he found lying on a windowsill. When the adults were distracted, he pressed the trigger three times—three loud cracks—and like magic there were the nailheads, shining like jewels on a wall that had just been taped and mudded. His punishment was to sit in the corner and do nothing for one hour, but a guy called Truck who worked for his dad slipped him a jumbo bag of Lay’s. From his angle on the floor he entertained himself by looking at everyone who walked by outside.
“Look at this kid,” his father said to Truck, and shook his head. “He’s enjoying himself.”
The man who came in approached his father and Truck just like their old Jack Russell, Lucky, did when he wanted his belly rubbed but was afraid to come too close in case he got a kick instead. Malcolm couldn’t hear what they were saying but his father’s voice seemed different, cold. He felt worried enough to put down the bag of chips, rub his greasy fingers on his sweatpants, and glance down the street to see if he might spot his mother returning from her errands. Nothing bad would happen if his mother were there. The man hated his father, it was obvious. And he seemed more nervous than adults usually were. His dress shirt was untucked, his tie askew. His father made no effort to make him feel at home like he usually did when people came into his bar. Malcolm got a scared feeling in his belly. He should shout, he thought. He should do something. But next thing his father nodded toward Malcolm, all three men looked over at the small sawdust-covered boy in the corner, and without discussing it they stepped into his father’s office and closed the door. They still hadn’t come out when Malcolm’s mother returned.
“Darren?” Gail called, when Malcolm told her where they were. She tapped lightly on the office door with her fingernails, tilted her head to listen.
“I’ll see you at home,” Darren said, without opening the door.
“What were they doing?” Malcolm asked his mother on the drive home. “What were they saying?” He tried to explain what he’d seen, what a scary face his Dad made at the guy, scary mostly because Malcolm had never seen it before so it seemed like his own dad was a stranger for a second, but his mom said it was nothing, it was business, his dad was his dad and he loved him.
* * *
Hugh had three sons, and not one of them had ever worked at the Half Moon. Not one of them had ever held a family party there or shown up half in the bag. They didn’t ask their daughters to get up on the bar to dance a reel as Malcolm’s sister, Mary, had been asked to do by their father many times when Gephardt’s was booming, a success story right there in the shadow of the busiest train station in the world, so busy that Malcolm’s mother learned how to drive on highways and parallel park so they could go to the city to see him. Otherwise they never would.
“Where did all that money go?” Malcolm asked over the years, tentatively at first but then more bluntly. He’d seen the photos. He’d heard the stories. Muhammad Ali had eaten a meal at Gephardt’s within a week of returning from Ireland, where he barely beat Al Lewis in eleven rounds. A famous actor had come by and, sick of waiting, drank a warm beer a stranger left behind. Malcolm’s mother had been living so carefully since Malcolm was eighteen that it was obvious there was no surplus, no retirement account, no special accommodation made for a career so precarious that one was always having to borrow from Peter to pay Paul.
“But Muhammad Ali,” Malcolm said to his mother once. “The place must have been pretty popular for him to go there.”
His mother scoffed. “Your father knew his driver! They grew up together. Can’t pay bills with stories.”
“But I thought—”
“And the rent was going sky high. We couldn’t have held on to it if that’s what you’re asking, there was no way. Not without your dad…” Her sentence petered out, as if she couldn’t quite figure out how to phrase something.
“What?”
“Well, he was a bookmaker, of course.”
“Really?”
She looked at him. “You knew that.”
“You always said that bar was a mint.”