Teola—"
"Taylor."
"—Mrs. Taylor.'' Avratin the butcher tapped the trays behind the open glass, then thumbed back another display of cuts. "I got some nice, nice clods, can cut for Swiss steak if—"
"No Swiss steak."
Avratin started to sigh, pinched off his nose with his thick curving forefinger, which was getting cold. "Excuse me. I know what you want. For you, some nice, nice, very nice pot—"
"No pot roast, neither."
His hands began describing in the air. "Some lovely chuck, some darling rump, a little—" He squeezed the air. "—Tender, juicy flank steak, eh?" He saw her turn away, the gray bun at the back of her neck beginning to wag. "Some brisket for boiling!" He heard his wife's heavy heels in the sawdust and at that slapped his forehead with both hands—/ give up— for her to see.
"My, you're looking very well today," Avratin's wife cooed.
Muttering, Avratin slid the last tray back in place, grumbling to himself, sifting the red chunks of beef tenderloin through his fingers, which were now quite cold; the meat plopped back onto the paper liner and he slammed the glass, knocking the parsley loose from the top of the ground round.
"Yeah, you should hope you don't see my sister, Rose."
"Oh, Ro-sie. And how is her operation?"
"Don't ask."
"Well, Mrs. Teo—"
"Taylor. Taylor! My husband puts Teola in the book, nobody calls him." The gray bun wagged in growing impatience. "But now he's Manny Taylor. Manny Taylor! I want you tell me, would you call from the yellow pages a man with the name Manny Taylor?"
"Well," began Avratin's wife, standing closer to her husband, "what's good for your mister's business—"
"We should all live so long, I promise you. My God, my God." She shook her bun and hunched toward the door.
Avratin's wife cleared her throat. "Today special, we have some very nice fish, Mrs. Taylor," she called sweetly and waited for the woman to turn back under the creaking overhead fan.
"You got nothing I want," said the woman finally, only half-turning, shifting her brown carry-all to her other hand.
"Why, Mrs. Taylor," sang Avratin's wife. "You've been our faithful customer for thirteen years. Those years, they mean only that you should come to this? You're taking your business elsewhere now? God forbid that Lou and I should forget our friends so easy."
"You should talk, dearies. You should talk!" This she said directly to Avratin, sizing him up in his white apron as if he were an imposter. "You get Luttfisk back, then maybe we talk meat. That Luttfisk, he knows meat!" And she shuffled out the door.
A moment later, to no one in particular, to the passing cars, to the old man at the curb with the white beard and the stiff black hat, Avratin's wife called, "My Lou, he was owning this shop before that Luttfisk was starting in the business! Don't you forget that!"
But Avratin was shaking his head, reaching around to untie the strings, throwing his apron on the hook.
"Louie?"
He headed across the empty store to the back.
"Ask me why I'm closing an hour early. But ask me! Go ahead! You ask me about business, and I'll tell you. Business . . . is . . . lousy!"
Avratin's wife threw up her hands, imploring the ceiling fan to do something, anything.
In the tiny bedroom, by a single small lamp with the crisp, yellowed cellophane still clinging to the shade, with the sound turned down on the Johnny Carson Show, Avratin and his wife were having an argument.
"... Twenty years in the retail meat business and you knife me in the back. Twenty years putting bread on your plate, only to have you—"
"Listen to this! He's too proud, too proud to admit a mistake. . . ."
"—Twist, twisting the knife!"
Reproach, recrimination, guilt, counter-accusation, self-deprecation. The old pattern.
And only to come to this: that at the end, the finish, before grumbling into bed, during the sermonette, Avratin raised his hurt face to the water-stained ceiling one last time to declare, before the gods and
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