George Pelecanos: The Cut

After the service he bought a dozen red roses and drove over to Glenwood, passing under the arched gate. He negotiated the twisting lanes and went along the stretch of mausoleums, where a blanket of scarlet leaves had fallen on black asphalt, and continued on to the section of headstones at the west edge of the cemetery, which gave to a view of the Bryant Place row homes and North Capitol Street.

Standing before his father’s grave, he made the sign of the Holy Trinity with three fingers of his right hand and did his stavro. He stood there, feeling the energy around him, listening to the call of sparrows, watching a gray squirrel scamper up the trunk of a tree, breathing the crisp fall air. He looked at the flowers he held by his side.

Lucas returned to his Jeep. He drove north, crossing over the District line at Georgia Avenue and into the neighborhood where he’d come up. He saw one of the barbers standing outside of Afrikuts, and the man shouted out a greeting as Lucas went by in his vehicle, and Lucas waved. He passed a couple of Guatemalan housepainters standing by an old 4Runner, a ladder lashed to the crossbars of its roof.

Driving down his street, Lucas punched in a number on his cell. When the call was answered he said, “Just wanted to make sure you were home.”

“I’m here, honey.”

His mother was standing outside the front door, waiting for him. He met her there and put the roses in her hands.

In the evening, in the stillness of his apartment, Lucas grew restless. He decided to go up to the bar on Georgia that had the quiet patrons and the eclectic juke. He left his place, went out to his Jeep, and looked up at the hunter’s moon and clear sky. He’d walk.

He took Piney Branch to Colorado, east to 14th Street and its small commercial strip, and followed it to 13th, where he turned left. Down at Quackenbos he cut into the weedy field alongside Fort Stevens, and he traversed it, going up the gravelly road to the parking lot of the Emery Methodist Church, where he’d fought Earl Nance.

He’d killed many men. Some, like Ricardo Holley and Bernard White, had been murderers themselves, and others, like Beano Mobley, had been dirty, in the wrong place, and had simply caught his fire. And then there were the men who were fathers, sons, and brothers, fighting in their homeland. Men he’d ended because they’d tried to kill him.

He stood on the edge of the lot and stared into its shadows. Close to the church’s north wall, where the light from the moon was obstructed, the night was very dark. He walked through it and took the steps down to Georgia Avenue. He crossed the street and headed for his bar.

Lucas was thirsty. He wanted a beer.

Evangelos “Van” Lucas was behind the wheel of a Land Cruiser, his wife, Eleni, beside him. They were driving home from a Sunday barbecue in upper Northwest, hosted by a business associate of Van’s. Most of the guests were people Van and Eleni had not met before. There had been polite conversation, food eaten off paper plates, and a bit of afternoon drinking.

“You know that lady I was speaking with by the food table for a long time?” said Van. “With the sweatshirt falling off her shoulder?”

“The Flashdance woman. She was nice.”

“She was all right. But why’d you have to go and tell her about our kids?”

“She asked to see photographs,” said Eleni. “Once I pull those out, there are questions. It’s easier just to tell people.”

“But see, then I had to continue the conversation with her.”

“You didn’t look like you minded.”

“Please. She wasn’t my type. That lady was all angles and bones. It would be like doing a skeleton.”

“How would you know what that’s like?”

“My point is, I’m into a woman who looks like a woman. A woman with curves. Like you.”

“I think there’s a compliment in there.”

“And you’re smart.”

“Thanks loads.”

“Not, like, mousy smart. Don’t get me wrong; I like a smart woman. But I also like a nice round ass and a beautiful rack. Which, thank you, Jesus, you happen to have. Matter of fact, you’ve got the whole female package.”

“You’re about to make me blush.”

“But that woman, she just bothered me.”

“I noticed.”

“Not like that. She wanted to talk about our kids, how wonderful it must be to have a rainbow family, how I was doing God’s work, all that bullshit. What a good man I am. Like, just because I adopted a bunch of kids, that makes me good.”

“As you were trying to look down her sweatshirt.”

“Exactly.” Van looked over at Eleni. “You saw me?”

“From across the room.”

“She’s too skinny for me.”

“You like a nice round ass and a beautiful rack.”

“Don’t forget smart,” said Van.

“I know,” said Eleni. “The whole female package.”

They were coming out of the city, going up Alaska Avenue near the District line. Soon they would cross into Maryland and arrive at the close-in neighborhood where the Lucas family made their home. Van and Eleni were in their early thirties. They had four children, ages seven, six, two, and one. All but the oldest had been adopted. It seemed to have happened very fast.

Van Lucas was a big man of Greek descent with the kind of open, honest facial expressions that could be read with ease. The Reagan generation baffled him, and he did not feel he was a part of it. His black curly hair was unfashionably long at a time when the hard-chargers kept theirs short and spiked. He wore a heavy black beard when most went clean shaven and some reached for androgynous. He had the beginnings of a gut inching over the belt line of his Levi’s. His appearance suggested casual good nature and a lack of vanity. He was as advertised.

Eleni reached across the buckets and squeezed Van’s right hand, which rested on the console between them.

“You are good,” she said.

“Ah,” said Van, “knock it off, Eleni.”

He felt electricity when she touched him like that. They’d been together many years and it had never subsided. For a moment he thought he might get lucky that night. But it was false optimism. There was little spontaneous lovemaking between them these days, what with all the commotion around their house. What with all those kids.

When he was single, he had never looked forward to a family. He had no daydreams of watching his children play sports, reading to them at night, helping them with their homework, or kissing the tops of their heads before they left the house. Van Lucas didn’t have a great need for fatherhood, and he didn’t think he would be particularly good at it. But when it happened, he took to it. It was chaotic at times, but it was manageable. He liked being a father, and he loved his kids. Later, he would look back on that time of his life and think: It was easy when they were young.

Within a year of their wedding, Eleni gave birth to a girl they named Irene. “It means ‘peace,’ ” said Van, selling the name to Eleni. The baby was born after a very difficult pregnancy during which Eleni was required to lie in bed for most of her third trimester. Even with this precaution, Irene arrived prematurely and her survival was in doubt for the first week of her life. But she did fine and progressed without complications. Eleni’s doctor suggested that a subsequent pregnancy would be just as problematic, if not worse, and that Irene should be looked upon as a single blessing and not the first of many blessings to come. Or something like that. Eleni got the convoluted message: Do not tempt fate and try to have another child.

Van was fine with having only one child, but Eleni was not. When Irene got to walking a year later, Eleni decided that a child was not “whole” without a companion. Van said, “We could get a dog,” and Eleni said, “I was thinking along the lines of something on two legs,” to which Van replied, “A monkey, then.” She didn’t smile, so he knew she was serious. He also knew where this was going. Eleni wanted to adopt.