Olga Dies Dreaming(34)
“Nothing, nothing!” She giggled and sought to deflect. “Hey, you know what I noticed when I was walking up Fifth today?”
Her brother grunted so she continued.
“Bars. Two bars.”
“Okay?” he said, stoking the fire.
“Since when do we have bars on this part of the avenue?”
Brooklyn’s Fifth Avenue began at Atlantic Avenue, the outermost edge of what eventually became Park Slope, running south until it met the water under the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge at Shore Road, Brooklyn’s version of the Gold Coast. In every neighborhood it cut through, the avenue served as a retail hub, full of fruit stands and fish markets, diners, coffee shops, and bodegas. If Park Slope had a “scene,” Fifth Avenue would be it, as it was clustered with restaurants, sports bars, and lounges. Bay Ridge, home to Saturday Night Fever, long provided the alternative to schlepping to Manhattan for some nighttime fun. But for generations, if you drove through the Polish stretch, which began at Eighteenth Street, and Sunset Park itself, you would not see a bar on Fifth Avenue until you hit Feeney’s Pub on Sixty-second Street. Dives peppered Third and Fourth avenues, serving whatever workers remained at Bush Terminal and catering to men hooker-shopping under the BQE, but the Polish and the Puerto Ricans had happily restricted their commerce to the family-friendly variety. In the past decade, however, Olga noticed that, slowly, this too was changing. Hipsters and their ironically named bars had begun to creep further south. First the sailor-themed bar, The Merman, opened on Twenty-first Street, then Gravediggers—right across from the Greenwood Cemetery on Twenty-sixth. Then Twenty-seventh Street, then Thirtieth. Always luring the same patron: skinny, pale kids with NPR tote bags, intricate line tattoos visible under their frilly, ironic sundresses or Bernie Sanders T-shirts with the sleeves cut off. Now, today, on Thirty-seventh Street she’d seen a little wine bar, Sour Grapes, and then on Thirty-eighth a true bar bar, named, of all things, HOLA!, which Olga found particularly ironic since from a quick glance through the window at the heavy-handed Day of the Dead décor she knew that no real Mexicans were likely involved. It was obvious they were not saying hello to the people of Sunset. Not the ones she knew anyway.
“Those are wypipo spots,” Fat Tony, one of her cousins bagging the almonds, chimed in. “I didn’t even know there were so many around here, son. But me and my homeboy passed by the other night, and the ‘Mexican’ joint was bumping. Jam packed. No melanin anywhere.”
“Hmpf,” Olga said. “How come these bars are there, Prieto?”
“Olga,” her brother said, with some exasperation, “I’m in D.C. now. This is a City Council issue. Anyway, there was some rezoning. Makes sense. They cater to those coworking spaces they put up in Bush Terminal. It’s not necessarily a bad thing to have a place to stop and get a drink after work, is it?”
Olga did not agree.
“No, but if there’s a chance to suddenly open bars in a Puerto Rican neighborhood, Prieto, then why didn’t the opportunity go to Puerto Ricans? Or fuck, Mexicans! Hell, why isn’t there a Chinese-owned bar up here?”
“See,” her brother said, “this is why I want you to be more involved in my campaigns, ya! Actually”—seeming grateful for a chance to change the subject—“the weekend after next, you working? Someone’s throwing a fundraiser for me out in the Hamptons. Wanted to see if you could come. You know that’s more your scene than mine.…”
Olga looked at her phone. “On the Saturday? Ugh, I’m already committed to a thing … out east.…” She stopped and thought of the party. Her first public outing with Dick. Since she had accepted his invitation, she felt the stranglehold of her commitment. Whether real or imagined, her freedom to ignore Dick, to say yes or no to his requests, had been hampered. True, she had denied meeting him for dinner and blown him off for an impromptu romp after work at the Four Seasons, but after each refusal he had replied with “No matter, we’ll have a whole weekend together out east.” His words a stake in the ground to which she was tethered. Yes, she could still roam the yard, but at the end of the day, Dick knew she couldn’t go very far. Olga wanted to go to this party very badly, but she also wanted to rob Dick of this feeling of conquest, and she wondered if her brother might not have given her the opening to have both things at once.
“Prieto, let’s figure this out. Maybe if I do you the solid and go to your thing, you can come with me afterwards to mine.”
“Damn, son. That’s how it is?” Tony called out. “You got all these cousins up in here, and nobody takes us to shit! How you know I don’t want to go to one of your fancy parties in the Hamptons?”
“Tony,” Prieto called out, as he threw a steak on the fire, the flame jumping in the air. “Do you want to come out to the Hamptons to my fundraiser?”
“Fuck no, Prieto. You know I get carsick on long rides. It’s just nice to be asked, is all.”
NOVENAS
As was her ritual on every visit home, at a quarter to five Olga snuck into her brother’s room. She held her breath, and with eyes closed, slid open his closet door, dreading what she might not find there. She exhaled relief immediately, goose bumps rising on her forearms. She could feel its presence without needing to see it: her grandmother’s altar. She marveled at its sameness after all these years, an anchor of constancy amid a torrent of change. When Prieto took over the house, and in turn, Abuelita’s room, Olga’s only request was that he leave the altar. It lived atop a small milk crate covered with a white lace doily, Nuestra Se?ora de la Caridad del Cobre presiding over empty velas, the faint remnants of red, pink, yellow, and white wax still evident in the glass cases. Around them, photos of Olga’s mother and grandfather, her father’s mass card, a bottle of Bacardi, a small statue of St. Anthony, and a photo of Abuelita placed there by Olga herself. Around the Virgin hung four rosaries, and Olga reached now for the black one—obsidian, or so she was told, years and years ago. She stuck it in her jeans’ pocket and closed the closet door.