New York_ The Novel - Edward Rutherfurd [420]
A few days later, some men came to fix the drain. But Bonati never did anything else. So Juan made inquiries about getting his mother a better place to live in one of the housing projects, but got nowhere.
“Don’t you know, kid?” the man at the corner store said. “The housing projects favor whites and blacks, but Puerto Ricans, they don’t want to know about. In some areas, they just want to push the Puerto Ricans out.”
He went to some of the white welfare organizations, and found the people there treated him with ill-concealed contempt. He wasn’t surprised, but he nonetheless felt rage, not just for himself and his mother, but that Puerto Ricans in general should be treated like this. And now he began to understand that his mother’s vision was not only that he, her son, should escape from poverty and make a good life for himself in the world, but that he should accomplish something larger than that. When she spoke of Baroso, she didn’t just mean a man of respect, but one who had done something big and important to help his people. And he loved her for this greater, nobler ambition all the more.
After she died, Juan, who had grown into a slim and decidedly good-looking young man, returned to college. He graduated with honors, and wished that his mother could have been there to see it. And from that day, he had set out on the long and arduous path that destiny, it seemed, had chosen for him.
Gorham Master found the tiny restaurant Juan had chosen without difficulty. He arrived there first, and sat down at a little table for four, taking a seat with his back to the wall. A good-looking redhead arrived just moments after him, and was put at the next table. She also sat against the wall, as she waited for her date.
Apart from the fact that Gorham always enjoyed seeing Juan, he was curious to see the new girlfriend his friend was bringing. Five minutes later, they arrived.
Juan was looking well. He’d grown a pencil-thin mustache since they’d last met. It gave his clever, handsome face a somewhat military look. He greeted Gorham with a big grin, and introduced his girlfriend.
Janet Lorayn, Gorham noted with admiration, was drop-dead gorgeous. She looked, and moved, like a younger version of Tina Turner. Giving Gorham a warm smile, she sat down opposite him, with Juan on her left. The tables were so small and close together that Juan was almost looking into the face of the redhead at the next table.
They exchanged a few words of greeting. Gorham complimented Juan on his mustache, and Juan said that Janet thought it made him look like a pirate. “She says she likes pirates,” he added.
The waitress came and they ordered a bottle of white wine. Gorham glanced outside; the sky was darkening as it began to fill with clouds. After they had poured their wine and the waitress had told them the two choices, Janet turned her attention on Gorham.
“So you’re a banker?” she said.
“That’s right. And you?”
“I work in a literary agency at the moment. It’s interesting.”
“She just sold the serial rights of a new novel today,” Juan informed him proudly.
“Congratulations—we’ll drink to that. My father wrote a novel once.”
“I heard,” said Janet. “Verrazano Narrows. That was a big deal.”
Juan had observed the redhead at the next table. She couldn’t fail to hear their conversation, but was politely ignoring them, and glancing toward the door from time to time. At the mention of the famous book, however, she did steal a quick glance toward Gorham, out of curiosity.
“Janet’s wondering whether to try to get into the television business, however,” said Juan. “She has a friend who works in production in NBC.”
It was one of the things Gorham loved about the city that, just as in his father’s young days when the great men of letters sat at the Algonquin Round Table, the big publishing houses were still here, and the mighty New York Times, and leading magazines, from Time to the New