Slipping Into Darkness by Peter Blauner

but invisible. Discreet but dependable. Whistling for cabs. Keeping sand fresh in the lobby ashtrays. Lestoiling the marble halls. Sweeping the sidewalks. Unplugging toilets upstairs. Checking out the contractors’ insurance. Making sure the service elevator was running. Yes, ma’am. No, ma’am. I’ll send the dry cleaning up. I’ll have the maid brought down. I’ll run this prescription around the corner to the pharmacy. I’ll have the car brought round.
     
Twenty-two years of keeping his eyes open and his mouth shut, of keeping his ambition back in the package room with the UPS parcels and Sherry-Lehmann wine store deliveries. And when his only son got locked up, they treated him like some smelly wetback just off the boat, virtually forcing him to quit. Of course, by that time Papi was so consumed by the case that he’d stopped turning over the sand in the ashtrays and making Valium runs for the stressed-out matrons.
     
The brass canopy stanchions gleamed in the sun. A rat-faced little doorman in a forest green uniform with gold braid on the shoulders clocked him suspiciously as he cruised past. So the Irish had finally gotten control of the place again.
     
Hoolian noticed, with some quiet satisfaction, that the black rubber mat the doorman was standing on was slightly worn, and part of the white-stamped 1347 on it had been rubbed away by hard soles and high heels. Papi would’ve replaced it by now.
     
He walked to the end of the block and then turned around to walk past the building again, his heart beginning to pound. Come on now. Don’t be a little pussy. You know what you came up here to do. Why should anybody else help you if you can’t help yourself? The doorman watched him with eyes like slits in a gun turret. Yeah, you know I’m up to no good, don’t you? What else could someone who looks like me be doing in this neighborhood?
     
Or worse yet, maybe he knew. Maybe he’d heard that the old super’s son had just been let out and was likely to return to the scene of the crime. One of those old cop myths that was actually true, sometimes. Hoolian must have talked to a dozen guys upstate who got caught because they kept circling around their own shit like flies.
     
“Osvaldo?”
     
He froze, hearing his father’s name spoken aloud for the first time in years. He kept walking, thinking the voice must have come from inside his own head.
     
“Osvaldo, is that you?”
     
An old woman sat sunning herself on the fire hydrant just to the side of the entrance. Somehow he’d missed her the first time he walked past, in her red bolero jacket, matching skirt, and shiny patent-leather high heels. Her hair was dyed a bluish shade of black, and when she blinked, her lashes splayed over her lids like a drummer’s brushes over a well-beaten snare’s skin.
     
“My God,” she said. “How long has it been?”
     
He stared at her until the name and apartment number came back to him. Miss Powell, 14A. With the Degas print in the foyer, the Steinway grand in the living room, and the crystal chandelier in the dining room. The original brass fixtures in the bathroom sink were always leaking.
     
“Come let me look at you.” She raised her thin trembling arms, beckoning. “Where on earth have you been?”
     
He lumbered over slowly, unsure what to say. Old age had come down on her like acid rain, staining her teeth and speckling her hands with liver spots. But she still had the eyes of a girl waiting to be asked to dance.
     
She turned her cheek, expecting to be kissed. The dead-flower smell under her perfume made him gag slightly. But some instinct made him hold his breath. She could help me, maybe. She probably still had money, at the very least. For sure, she had jewelry to go with that Degas and Steinway. He put his lips to her cheek and found it was like kissing the Magna Carta.
     
She touched him lightly on both shoulders, pushing him back to take in the full sight of him.
     
“You look wonderful,” she said. “Not a day older.