“I’m so busy. You know. I got the wife. The kids. The job.”
“My dad was your father’s client all those years, and I believe my dad paid his bills on time.”
“He did.”
“Your dad never missed a show. See, I’m not inclined to take your advice as gospel truth this morning because it’s coming from a place of ignorance. Now, if it was your dad telling me to padlock the building, I might think about it. But your free advice? What’s the saying? Oh yeah, when it’s free, you get what you pay for.”
Calla walked out the door before Joe could see her eyes sting with tears. She was furious, and embarrassed that she hadn’t seen it coming.
Frank was waiting on the sidewalk outside the Calabrese office. He dusted a smudge off the hood of the car with his handkerchief as Calla came down the steps.
“What happened?” Frank asked as he opened the car door for her.
“He said that I should close the doors on the theater.”
“Just like that?”
“He won’t help me with the banks.” Calla leaned her head on her hand. “Said it was impossible to get a loan. I thought there were all sorts of loans for small businesses after the war.”
“How about lunch?”
“I’m not hungry.”
“What can I do to make you smile?”
“Do you know J. P. Morgan?”
*
Frank took Calla’s hand as he walked her up to the porch of a two-family home on Constitution Street. His side of the property was neat, with a simple set of two straight-back chairs anchoring the door. On the other side, a baseball bat, glove, and ball were propped by the door, a homemade cardboard dollhouse was set under the window, and the grass in the small patch of yard was trampled down to the dirt. “My sister lives next door. Four kids and one on the way.”
Calla looked around Frank’s living room, if she could call it that. His coffee table was filled with documents, a stack of papers anchored with a coffee cup with a handwritten note under it that read “BIDS.” Propped in the corner was a survey kit, tripod sticks, a leveler, and a gauge. Tacked up on the wall was a map of Philadelphia, showing the pipeworks under the city, the grid unlike anything she had ever seen before.
As Calla moved around the room, she kept her hand behind her back as though she were in a museum. If she had a weakness, it was for experts. She appreciated anyone who understood a subject deeply and had mastered that subject in a profound way. A person with passion was endlessly fascinating, no matter the arena.
“If a pipe bursts on Wharton, I can name the joint,” Frank said, handing her a glass of red wine.
“Thank you.”
“Your friend Nicky should have his street patched up in no time,” Frank said, pointing to Montrose, represented by a long, thin blue strand that looked like a linguini noodle on the map.
“I’ll tell him.”
“Come here.” Frank led Calla to the alcove off the living room and pointed to a small settee covered in brown corduroy with white piping. “Sit.”
Calla recognized the television set from the windows of Wanamaker’s and the Sunday circulars. Frank’s set was a Philco with a square screen of green milk glass that rested inside a walnut cabinet. On either side of the screen were two panels of gold-and-brown mesh fabric. A long, thin silver stick resembling a conductor’s baton angled out from the back of the set, pointing directly toward the front door.
“That’s the antenna. You have to position it just so to get the best picture.” He pointed. “And these are the speakers for sound.”
“It looks like a piece of furniture.” Calla laced her arms around her legs and leaned forward as Frank sat down on the floor and opened a small panel that had three dials, an on and off button, a contrast button, and a brightness button with an arrow. “These buttons control the picture quality.”
“What are you waiting for? Entertain me,” Calla teased.
Frank turned on the television set. A series of black-and-white lines gave way to wider ones that vibrated, expanding into bold chevron-style zigzags that belonged on an argyle sweater. “Hold on, it’s coming.” In a matter of seconds, a moving picture appeared on the screen, a car riding along an open country road. “This is a commercial. An advertisement for the show. Ford is paying for whatever you’re going to see.”
“Why?”
Frank shrugged. “People will buy the car if they see it enough.”
“People would just do that?”
“Why not? You’d buy it off a billboard or a magazine.”
Calla watched Gertrude Berg appear on the screen. She appeared in a window on a set, and hollered down to the street below as if in a play. The audience’s laughter was captured. They must be there. Calla was mesmerized.
“This is television.” Frank kept his eyes on the screen.
“How do they do it?”
“The image is transmitted from the camera in the studio to a board that can reach every grid that is connected to it.”
“Like electricity?”
“A little. The transmission of an image requires a cathode ray tube—which every one of these sets has inside. The man that sold it to me showed me the guts of this thing. I couldn’t believe it.”
“What will happen to radio?”
Frank shrugged. “Who cares?”
Calla sat back and watched the images. They weren’t sleek like the movies, or colorful, like the lavish Hollywood productions in movie theaters that cost a quarter, but this was in Frank’s home, which made it novel. The black-and-white images reminded her of photographs; the lighting made the actors fall in shadow and emerge in light that made them appear like puppets, more Man Ray than cinematic.
“Hey, what do you think?” Frank turned to her.
“I don’t know what to think. It moves awful fast.”
*
Nicky parked on the street two blocks from the Trinity Episcopal Church in Ambler. The lot closest to the entrance was full, and the street in front by the Matthews Funeral Home had been roped off.
This morning in May was saturated with so much color, Nicky seemed to walk in a Tiepolo painting. The sky overhead was peacock blue. A tangerine sun was fixed on a cushion of coral clouds, as Nicky passed azalea bushes bursting with fuchsia blossoms, and flowerbeds filled with yellow tulips and purple irises. He moved through this palette dressed in ceremonial black like a slash of ink. He tugged at the knot in his tie as he walked in his best black leather dress shoes up the steps of the church and into the vestibule.
A well-dressed lady in a hat and gloves, wearing two-tone spectator pumps, the dress shoe of choice of the Protestant class, handed him a program, on the front of which was printed:
Gary Bigelow Allison
1903–1949