The show cut to a commercial, freeing T.S. to respond. "I heard every single word you said," he lied. "And you're right. You're absolutely right." They were Auntie Lil's favorite words to hear and ought to mollify her.
"Good. Then you'll be here in an hour."
Uh, oh. He'd been tricked. He was suddenly quite sure that Auntie Lil had deliberately called him at this time, knowing he'd be preoccupied, and had planned exactly what had just happened. What in the world had he agreed to do now? Well, he would not give her the satisfaction of knowing how well her little scheme had worked. He'd play along and find out the details in his own subtle way.
"What's the address?" he asked casually.
"I knew you weren't paying attention. It's right off the corner of Eighth Avenue and Forty-Eighth Street. St. Barnabas Church. Large stone building. The soup kitchen is in the basement. You'll see a long line of people waiting to get in. Hurry. And bring rubber gloves."
Rubber gloves? A soup kitchen? He was in hot water now.
"Theodore," Auntie Lil's voice softened to a suspiciously self-satisfied purr. "Thank you so much for helping out. Two volunteers failed to show. I don't know what we would have done without you."
"Done what?" he finally asked, starting to panic. "What am I doing?"
"You're serving the food. What did you think you'd be doing? I wasn't inviting you over for lunch, you know."
"Serving food at a soup kitchen?" he asked. The show was starting again but Tyrone and Camilla were nowhere to be seen. A silly subplot had taken over the screen.
"Yes," Auntie Lil said firmly. "It's only for today, if it's such an imposition." She stopped, letting her reproachful silence berate him with its own eloquence.
"I thought God helped those who help themselves," T.S. said faintly, knowing that it was a feeble rebuttal.
"How very convenient for those of us who are selfish." There was no sarcasm in Auntie Lil's voice. Sarcasm required subtlety, which was not her strong suit.
"What kind of people eat at this soup kitchen?" he asked. He envisioned an army of dusty, homeless muggers lockstepping toward him with arms outstretched.
"What kind of people do you think?" she snapped. "All kinds of people. Hungry people. Old people. Homeless people. Discouraged people. Mentally ill people. The main thing, Theodore, is that they are people. In case you've missed my point."
Miss one of Auntie Lil's points? That was like overlooking a spear sticking in your back. But she had shamed him sufficiently and T.S. knew when he was licked. What was a mere soap opera in the face of starving humanity?
"All right," he agreed grudgingly. "I'll see you in an hour."
"Good. Try to contain your enthusiasm," she ordered, hanging up abruptly.
Maybe she could be sarcastic, after all.
T.S. reluctantly turned off the television and marched back to his meticulously organized closet, swapping his bedroom slippers (thank God she'd not ferreted out that little detail) for a suitably humble pair of shoes from the day-wear rack. Image was important to him. The proper attire said a lot about a man. But in this case, he decided, there was no need to change clothes. He'd be there and back by late afternoon.
He asked his cab driver to detour past the Newsday Building at One Times Square so he could set his watch by the time on their giant electronic clock. T.S. was a precise man and liked to know exactly what time it was. That way he was never, ever late. Except for that one day in 1956 when the subway train he'd been riding on had derailed and made him fifteen minutes late for a dental appointment. The thought still rankled.
They skirted the square traffic and headed across Forty-Second Street toward the West Side. His taxi slowed as it started up Eighth Avenue, passing the brightly lit marquees of fast food outlets and even faster sex shops. There were a few hustlers of every breed and brand of business scattered over the dirty sidewalks, but it was relatively deserted in mid-afternoon.
Soon, the business district surrounding the Port Authority gave way to ethnically diverse residential streets, divided by avenue blocks of smaller restaurants, delicatessens and retail shops. It had been several years since T.S. had ventured into the neighborhood that the rest of Manhattan called Hell's Kitchen. A few residents had tried to replace the century-old nickname with the more upscale "Clinton." But—like most of their efforts at gentrification—the change had not stuck. The area was still Hell's