My father’s face turned oddly glassy at that. “It won’t be for much longer,” he said simply.
Recalling that scene now I have an image of my mother being within earshot but out of sight in the kitchen. But I also distinctly remember her raising her eyebrows at her husband’s words. Strange how memory works like that.
* * *
It was a few days later that my father failed to return home, at least not until after I was in bed. I heard him come in and looked at my bedside clock. It was three in the morning. I could hear voices, raised yet restrained, my father trying to calm my mother. It lasted a few minutes then all went silent again, or at least as silent as the city can be at that time of night.
He did not appear the next morning and, when Faivish and I went to open up, there was a notice pasted in the window announcing a new shop on Sullivan Street. Faivish and I looked at each other and for once my uncomprehending expression matched his.
“Zombie,” he muttered at me.
Sullivan Street was about a ten-minute walk away, through streets that would be boho chic in years to come but were then just plain hobo poor. There we found my father standing in a doorway, above which was the name ‘Stern’, devoid of any explanation as to what the shop sold, or even if it was a shop. Inside, bright white walls, quite the opposite from our dim warren of a tailor’s shop, and rails of white t-shirts. They were all screen-printed in my father’s style. In addition to the $4.99 and $14.99 tees, there were $24.99, $34.99, $49.99, $74.99, and $99.99 garments. All identical save for the black block figures on the front.
“What do you think?” my father asked.
I didn’t know what to think, so I asked him how much it all cost instead.
“This isn’t a cost, this is an investment. We have five hundred more t-shirts being delivered tomorrow, different colors, all pre-printed with different prices.”
Faivish leafed through the garments on the rail. He’d stopped asking how much they were, but his face said he still couldn’t compute the logic behind the answer.