"Customs," said Bert. "Cultures. I'm sure there's differences. But the basics are the basics. Gotta be. Loyalty. Secrecy. Revenge."
Sam said, "Revenge?"
"Can't hold the thing together wit'out revenge. Pretty basic, that."
Aaron nodded, but then his attention was diverted by his father, who was squinting upward toward the ceiling, pulling lightly on his translucent tufts of Einstein hair. "Shit," he said at last. "My Russian's going too."
"What, Pop?"
"I was trying to remember the Russian word for mafia."
Aaron said, "I think the Russian word for mafia is mafiya."
Bert lifted half an eyebrow, reached out to pet his dog. "See dat?" he said. "Same word and everything. How different could they be?"
Chapter 20
The worst crimes that Pineapple had ever committed were vagrancy, loitering, and, back before he'd sworn off alcohol, the occasional bout of public drunkenness. He never stole. In this he differed from Fred, who was not above slipping a couple of Slim-Jims into his pocket if the prong that held the packages was concealed by the lip of the convenience-store counter, or glomming some cigarettes if, by luck, the wire rack was left briefly unattended. Piney didn't do that. He had a superstitious dread of doing wrong and getting caught; a dread that in more solid citizens was recognized as virtue.
Still, he knew very well what it was to feel like a criminal. He understood the vague shame that descended when a storekeeper, his hard stare righteous and rude, dogged him as he made his way up and down the aisles. He knew the fugitive edginess that resulted from a cop car going by, the passenger-side cop giving him a long smirking glance as he sat there on the curb. The feeling was like confronting a blank demerit sheet that hinted nonetheless at grievous faults; a floating guilt waiting only for some act to be attached to.
He felt those things now, as he leaned his rusted bicycle with its corroded metal basket against the picket fence in front of Suki's house.
It was dusk. The street lamps were just coming on. They buzzed slightly and their salmon-colored light was brittle and metallic against the plush blue of the fading sky. Daytime flowers were closing up, their edges crinkly, like eyelids at the cusp of sleep. A few people were about, doing the things that people who lived in houses did. A woman on skates trailed a pair of cocker spaniels on a leash. Another woman carried a bag of groceries, a bouquet of lettuces poking out the top. Half a block away, a man parked his car and then emerged, his posture saying he had every right to be there.
Feeling like an intruder and a thief, Pineapple unlatched the gate that gave onto the walkway that led to Suki's porch. On either side of the wooden stairs, shrubbery beds were planted with crotons and jasmine; their dense foliage swallowed up the light, and partly masked Piney as he climbed the steps. Still, he felt like eyes were on his back as he made his way along the porch to the apartment on the ground floor left. He could not help looking over his shoulder as he skulked along, and the furtive gesture only made him feel more furtive.
As Suki had described, her door was flanked by rows of flower pots—pansies, basil, blue daze. Bending quickly, ducking his head below the level of the shrubs, Piney lifted the third pot on the right. Beneath it were a few crumbles of soft dirt and a house key. The key gleamed slightly and Pineapple found it terrifying. He hated keys—the guilty summaries of all things owned and guarded. He was here at Suki's request; he was doing her a favor. Still, to seize somebody else's key and open up a door to someone's home—the enormity of it made his mouth go dry.
His hand trembled as he fitted the key to the lock. It seemed to him that the click of the bolt could be heard all over the neighborhood. He opened the door no wider than he had to, and as soon as he had squeezed through he shut it firmly behind him. He was standing in her living room.
Vacant for only a single day, the apartment had the exaggerated stillness of a place long uninhabited. Echoes had settled. Nothing hummed. The pictures on the walls seemed lonesome, like paintings at a closed museum. The place was very dim but Piney didn't want to turn a light on.
He felt his way to Suki's bedroom, found her closet door. A plastic shopping bag caught his eye; randomly he started filling it with clothes and shoes. He moved on to her bureau, filled another sack. Suki needed under-things; Piney plucked at bras and panties. He'd been with a woman a few times in his life, though not in many years. Lacy cups and silky briefs were, for him, too foreign to be titillating; obscure artifacts from some other dimension. He crammed them into the shopping bag and slunk on toward the bathroom, grabbed her toothbrush and some lipsticks, tossed in jars and tubes and vials of things he didn't know the names of.