Criers & Kibitzers, Kibitzers & Criers

CRIERS AND KIBITZERS, KIBITZERS AND CRIERS

Greenspahn cursed the steering wheel shoved like the hard edge of someone’s hand against his stomach. Goddamn lousy cars, he thought. Forty-five hundred dollars and there’s not room to breathe. He thought sourly of the smiling salesman who had sold it to him, calling him Jake all the time he had been in the showroom: Lousy podler. He slid across the seat, moving carefully as though he carried something fragile, and eased his big body out of the car. Seeing the parking meter, he experienced a dark rage. They don’t let you live, he thought. I’ll put your nickels in the meter for you, Mr. Greenspahn, he mimicked the Irish cop. Two dollars a week for the lousy grubber. Plus the nickels that were supposed to go into the meter. And they talked about the Jews. He saw the cop across the street writing out a ticket. He went around his car, carefully pulling at the handle of each door, and he started toward his store.

“Hey there, Mr. Greenspahn,” the cop called.

He turned to look at him. “Yeah?”

“Good morning.”

“Yeah. Yeah. Good morning.”

The grubber came toward him from across the street. Uniforms, Greenspahn thought, only a fool wears a uniform.

“Fine day, Mr. Greenspahn,” the cop said.

Greenspahn nodded grudgingly.

“I was sorry to hear about your trouble, Mr. Greenspahn. Did you get my card?”

“Yeah, I got it. Thanks.” He remembered something with flowers on it and rays going up to a pink Heaven. A picture of a cross yet.

“I wanted to come out to the chapel but the brother-in-law was up from Cleveland. I couldn’t make it.”

“Yeah,” Greenspahn said. “Maybe next time.”

The cop looked stupidly at him, and Greenspahn reached into his pocket.

“No. No. Don’t worry about that, Mr. Greenspahn. I’ll take care of it for now. Please, Mr. Greenspahn, forget it this time. It’s okay.”

Greenspahn felt like giving him the money anyway. Don’t mourn for me, podler, he thought. Keep your two dollars’ worth of grief.

The cop turned to go. “Well, Mr. Greenspahn, there’s nothing anybody can say at times like this, but you know how I feel. You got to go on living, don’t you know.”

“Sure,” Greenspahn said. “That’s right, Officer.” The cop crossed the street and finished writing the ticket. Greenspahn looked after him angrily, watching the gun swinging in the holster at his hip, the sun flashing brightly on the shiny handcuffs. Podler, he thought, afraid for his lousy nickels. There’ll be an extra parking space sooner than he thinks.

He walked toward his store. He could have parked by his own place but out of habit he left his car in front of a rival grocer’s. It was an old and senseless spite. Tomorrow he would change. What difference did it make, one less parking space? Why should he walk?

He felt bloated, heavy. The bowels, he thought. I got to move them soon or I’ll bust. He looked at the street vacantly, feeling none of the old excitement. What did he come back for, he wondered suddenly, sadly. He missed Harold. Oh my God. Poor Harold, he thought. I’ll never see him again. I’ll never see my son again. He was choking, a big pale man beating his fist against his chest in grief. He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and blew his nose. That was the way it was, he thought. He would go along flat and empty and dull, and all of a sudden he would dissolve in a heavy, choking grief. The street was no place for him. His wife was crazy, he thought, swiftly angry. “Be busy. Be busy,” she said. What was he, a kid, that because he was making up somebody’s lousy order everything would fly out of his mind? The bottom dropped out of his life and he was supposed to go along as though nothing had happened. His wife and the cop, they had the same psychology. Like in the movies after the horse kicks your head in you’re supposed to get up and ride him so he can throw you off and finish the job. If he could get a buyer he would sell, and that was the truth.

Mechanically he looked into the windows he passed. The displays seemed foolish to him now, petty. He resented the wooden wedding cakes, the hollow watches. The manikins were grotesque, giant dolls. Toys, he thought bitterly. Toys. That he used to enjoy the displays himself, had even taken a peculiar pleasure in the complicated tiers of cans, in the amazing pyramids of apples and oranges in his own window, seemed incredible to him. He remembered he had liked to look at the little living rooms in the window of the furniture store, the wax models sitting on the couches offering each other tea. He used to look at the expensive furniture and think, Merchandise. The word had sounded rich to him, and mysterious. He used to think of camels on a desert, their bellies slung with heavy ropes. On their backs they carried merchandise. What did it mean, any of it? Nothing. It meant nothing.

He was conscious of someone watching him.

“Hello, Jake.”

It was Margolis from the television shop.

“Hello, Margolis. How are you?”

“Business is terrible. You picked a hell of a time to come back.”

A man’s son dies and Margolis says business is terrible. Margolis, he thought, jerk, son of a bitch.

“You can’t close up a minute. You don’t know when somebody might come in. I didn’t take coffee since you left,” Margolis said.

“You had it rough, Margolis. You should have said something, I would have sent some over.”

Margolis smiled helplessly, remembering the death of Greenspahn’s son.

“It’s okay, Margolis.” He felt his anger tug at him again. It was something he would have to watch, a new thing with him but already familiar, easily released, like something on springs.

“Jake,” Margolis whined.

“Not now, Margolis,” he said angrily. He had to get away from him. He was like a little kid, Greenspahn thought. His face was puffy, swollen, like a kid about to cry. He looked so meek. He should be holding a hat in his hand. He couldn’t stand to look at him. He was afraid Margolis was going to make a speech. He didn’t want to hear it. What did he need a speech? His son was in the ground. Under all that earth. Under all that dirt. In a metal box. Airtight, the funeral director told him. Oh my God, airtight. Vacuum-sealed. Like a can of coffee. His son was in the ground and on the street the models in the windows had on next season’s dresses. He would hit Margolis in his face if he said one word.

Margolis looked at him and nodded sadly, turning his palms out as if to say, “I know. I know.” Margolis continued to look at him and Greenspahn thought, He’s taking into account, that’s what he’s doing. He’s taking into account the fact that my son has died. He’s figuring it in and making apologies for me, making an allowance, like he was doing an estimate in his head what to charge a customer.

“I got to go, Margolis.”

“Sure, me too,” Margolis said, relieved. “I’ll see you, Jake. The man from R.C.A. is around back with a shipment. What do I need it?”

Greenspahn walked to the end of the block and crossed the street. He looked down the side street and saw the shul where that evening he would say prayers for his son.

He came to his store, seeing it with distaste. He looked at the signs, like the balloons in comic strips where they put the words, stuck inside against the glass, the letters big and red like it was the end of the world, the big whitewash numbers on the glass thickly. A billboard, he thought.

He stepped up to the glass door and looked in. Frank, his produce man, stood by the fruit and vegetable bins taking the tissue paper off the oranges. His butcher, Arnold, was at the register talking to Shirley, the cashier. Arnold saw him through the glass and waved extravagantly. Shirley came to the door and opened it. “Good morning there, Mr. Greenspahn,” she said.

“Hey, Jake, how are you?” Frank said.

“How’s it going, Jake?” Arnold said.

“Was Siggie in yet? Did you tell him about the cheese?”

“He ain’t yet been in this morning, Jake,” Frank said.

“How about the meat? Did you place the order?”

“Sure, Jake,” Arnold said. “I called the guy Thursday.”

“Where are the receipts?” he asked Shirley.

“I’ll get them for you, Mr. Greenspahn. You already seen them for the first two weeks you were gone. I’ll get last week’s.”

She handed him a slip of paper. It was four hundred and seventy dollars off the last week’s low figure. They must have had a picnic, Greenspahn thought. No more though. He looked at them, and they watched him with interest. “So,” he said. “So.”

“Nice to have you back, Mr. Greenspahn,” Shirley told him, smiling.

“Yeah,” he said, “yeah.”

“We got a shipment yesterday, Jake, but the schvartze showed up drunk. We couldn’t get it all put up,” Frank said.

Greenspahn nodded. “The figures are low,” he said.

“It’s business. Business has been terrible. I figure it’s the strike,” Frank said.

“In West Virginia the miners are out and you figure that’s why my business is bad in this neighborhood?”

“There are repercussions,” Frank said. “All industries are affected.”

“Yeah,” Greenspahn said, “yeah. The pretzel industry. The canned chicken noodle soup industry.”

“Well, business has been lousy, Jake,” Arnold said testily.

“I guess maybe it’s so bad, now might be a good time to sell. What do you think?” Greenspahn said.

“Are you really thinking of selling, Jake?” Frank asked.

“You want to buy my place, Frank?”

“You know I don’t have that kind of money, Jake,” Frank said uneasily.

“Yeah,” Greenspahn said, “yeah.”

Frank looked at him, and Greenspahn waited for him to say something else, but in a moment he turned and went back to the oranges. Some thief, Greenspahn thought. Big shot. I insulted him.

“I got to change,” he said to Shirley. “Call me if Siggie comes in.”

He went into the toilet off the small room at the rear of the store. He reached for the clothes he kept there on a hook on the back of the door and saw, hanging over his own clothes, a woman’s undergarments. A brassiere hung by one cup over his trousers. What is it here, a locker room? Does she take baths in the sink? he thought. Fastidiously he tried to remove his own clothes without touching the other garments, but he was clumsy, and the underwear, together with his trousers, tumbled in a heap to the floor. They looked, lying there, strangely obscene to him, as though two people, desperately in a hurry, had dropped them quickly and were somewhere near him even now, perhaps behind the very door, making love. He picked up his trousers and changed his clothes. Taking a hanger from a pipe under the sink, he hung the clothes he had worn to work and put the hanger on the hook. He stooped to pick up Shirley’s underwear. Placing it on the hook, his hand rested for a moment on the brassiere. He was immediately ashamed. He was terribly tired. He put his head through the loop of his apron and tied the apron behind the back of the old blue sweater he wore even in summer. He turned the sink’s single tap and rubbed his eyes with water. Bums, he thought. Bums. You put up mirrors to watch the customers so they shouldn’t get away with a stick of gum, and in the meanwhile Frank and Arnold walk off with the whole store. He sat down to try to move his bowels and the apron hung down from his chest like a barber’s sheet. He spread it across his knees. I must look like I’m getting a haircut, he thought irrelevantly. He looked suspiciously at Shirley’s underwear. My movie star. He wondered if it was true what Arnold told him, that she used to be a 26-girl. Something was going on between her and that Arnold. Two bums, he thought. He knew they drank together after work. That was one thing, bad enough, but were they screwing around in the back of the store? Arnold had a family. You couldn’t trust a young butcher. It was too much for him. Why didn’t he just sell and get the hell out? Did he have to look for grief? Was he making a fortune that he had to put up with it? It was crazy. All right, he thought, a man in business, there were things a man in business put up with. But this? It was crazy. Everywhere he was beset by thieves and cheats. They kept pushing him, pushing him. What did it mean? Why did they do it? All right, he thought, when Harold was alive was it any different? No, of course not, he knew plenty then too. But it didn’t make as much difference. Death is an education, he thought. Now there wasn’t any reason to put up with it. What did he need it? On the street, in the store, he saw everything. Everything. It was as if everybody else were made out of glass. Why all of a sudden was he like that?

Why? he thought. Jerk, because they’re hurting you, that’s why.

He stood up and looked absently into the toilet. “Maybe I need a laxative,” he said aloud. Troubled, he left the toilet.

In the back room, his “office,” he stood by the door to the toilet and looked around. Stacked against one wall he saw four or five cases of soups and canned vegetables. Against the meat locker he had pushed a small table, his desk. He went to it to pick up a pencil. Underneath the telephone was a pad of note paper. Something about it caught his eye and he picked up the pad. On the top sheet was writing, his son’s. He used to come down on Saturdays sometimes when they were busy; evidently this was an order he had taken down over the phone. He looked at the familiar writing and thought his heart would break. Harold, Harold, he thought. My God, Harold, you’re dead. He touched the sprawling, hastily written letters, the carelessly spelled words, and thought absently, He must have been busy. I can hardly read it. He looked at it more closely. “He was in a hurry,” he said, starting to sob. “My God, he was in a hurry.” He tore the sheet from the pad, and folding it, put it into his pocket. In a minute he was able to walk back out into the store.

In the front Shirley was talking to Siggie, the cheese man. Seeing him up there leaning casually on the counter, Greenspahn felt a quick anger. He walked up the aisle toward him.

Siggie saw him coming. “Shalom, Jake,” he called.

“I want to talk to you.”

“Is it important, Jake, because I’m in some terrific hurry. I still got deliveries.”

“What did you leave me?”

“The same, Jake. The same. A couple pounds blue. Some Swiss. Delicious,” he said, smacking his lips.

“I been getting complaints, Siggie.”

“From the Americans, right? Your average American don’t know from cheese. It don’t mean nothing.” He turned to go.

“Siggie, where you running?”

“Jake, I’ll be back tomorrow. You can talk to me about it.”

“Now.”

He turned, reluctantly. “What’s the matter?”

“You’re leaving old stuff. Who’s your wholesaler?”

“Jake, Jake,” he said. “We already been over this. I pick up the returns, don’t I?”

“That’s not the point.”

“Have you ever lost a penny on account of me?”

“Siggie, who’s your wholesaler? Where do you get the stuff?”

“I’m cheaper than the dairy, right? Ain’t I cheaper than the dairy? Come on, Jake. What do you want?”

“Siggie, don’t be a jerk. Who are you talking to? Don’t be a jerk. You leave me cheap, crummy cheese, the dairies are ready to throw it away. I get everybody else’s returns. It’s old when I get it. Do you think a customer wants a cheese it goes off like a bomb two days after she gets it home? And what about the customers who don’t return it? They think I’m gypping them and they don’t come back. I don’t want the schlak stuff. Give me fresh or I’ll take from somebody else.”

“I couldn’t give you fresh for the same price, Jake. You know that.”

“The same price.”

“Jake,” he said, amazed.

“The same price. Come on, Siggie, don’t screw around with me.”

“Talk to me tomorrow. We’ll work something out.” He turned to go.

“Siggie,” Greenspahn called after him. “Siggie.” He was already out of the store. Greenspahn clenched his fists. “The bum,” he said.

“He’s always in a hurry, that guy,” Shirley said.

“Yeah, yeah,” Greenspahn said. He started to cross to the cheese locker to see what Siggie had left him.

“Say, Mr. Greenspahn,” Shirley said, “I don’t think I have enough change.”

“Where’s the schvartze? Send him to the bank.”

“He ain’t come in yet. Shall I run over?”

Greenspahn poked his fingers in the cash drawer. “You got till he comes,” he said.

“Well,” she said, “if you think so.”

“What do we do, a big business in change? I don’t see customers stumbling over each other in the aisles.”

“I told you, Jake,” Arnold said, coming up behind him. “It’s business. Business is lousy. People ain’t eating.”

“Here,” Greenspahn said, “give me ten dollars. I’ll go myself.” He turned to Arnold. “I seen some stock in the back. Put it up, Arnold.”

“I should put up the stock?” Arnold said.

“You told me yourself, business is lousy. Are you here to keep off the streets or something? What is it?”

“What do you pay the schvartze for?”

“He ain’t here,” Greenspahn said. “When he comes in I’ll have him cut up some meat, you’ll be even.”

He took the money and went out into the street. It was lousy, he thought. You had to be able to trust them or you could go crazy. Every retailer had the same problem; he winked his eye and figured, All right, so I’ll allow a certain percentage for shrinkage. You made it up on the register. But in his place it was ridiculous. They were professionals. Like the Mafia or something. What did it pay to aggravate himself, his wife would say. Now he was back he could watch them. Watch them. He couldn’t stand even to be in the place. They thought they were getting away with something, the podlers.

He went into the bank. He saw the ferns. The marble tables where the depositors made out their slips. The calendars, carefully changed each day. The guard, a gun on his hip and a white carnation in his uniform. The big safe, thicker than a wall, shiny and open, in the back behind the sturdy iron gate. The tellers behind their cages, small and quiet, as though they went about barefooted. The bank officers, gray-haired and well dressed, comfortable at their big desks, solidly official behind their engraved name-plates. That was something, he thought. A bank. A bank was something. And no shrinkage.

He gave his ten-dollar bill to a teller to be changed.

“Hello there, Mr. Greenspahn. How are you this morning? We haven’t seen you lately,” the teller said.

“I haven’t been in my place for three weeks,” Greenspahn said.

“Say,” the teller said, “that’s quite a vacation.”

“My son passed away.”

“I didn’t know,” the teller said. “I’m very sorry, sir.”

He took the rolls the teller handed him and stuffed them into his pocket. “Thank you,” he said.

The street was quiet. It looks like a Sunday, he thought. There would be no one in the store. He saw his reflection in a window he passed and realized he had forgotten to take his apron off. It occurred to him that the apron somehow gave him the appearance of being very busy. An apron did that, he thought. Not a business suit so much. Unless there was a briefcase. A briefcase and an apron, they made you look busy. A uniform wouldn’t. Soldiers didn’t look busy, policemen didn’t. A fireman did, but he had to have that big hat on. Schmo, he thought, a man your age walking in the street in an apron. He wondered if the vice-presidents at the bank had noticed his apron. He felt the heaviness again.

He was restless, nervous, disappointed in things.

He passed the big plate window of “The Cookery,” the restaurant where he ate his lunch, and the cashier waved at him, gesturing that he should come in. He shook his head. For a moment when he saw her hand go up he thought he might go in. The men would be there, the other business people, drinking cups of coffee, cigarettes smearing the saucers, their sweet rolls cut into small, precise sections. Even without going inside he knew what it would be like. The criers and the kibitzers. The criers, earnest, complaining with a peculiar vigor about their businesses, their gas mileage, their health; their despair articulate, dependably lamenting their lives, vaguely mourning conditions, their sorrow something they could expect no one to understand. The kibitzers, deaf to grief, winking confidentially at the others, their voices high-pitched in kidding or lowered in conspiracy to tell of triumphs, of men they knew downtown, of tickets fixed, or languishing goods moved suddenly and unexpectedly, of the windfall that was life; their fingers sticky, smeared with the sugar from their rolls.

What did he need them, he thought. Big shots. What did they know about anything? Did they lose sons?

He went back to his place and gave Shirley the silver.

“Is the schvartze in yet?” he asked.

“No, Mr. Greenspahn.”

I’ll dock him, he thought. I’ll dock him.

He looked around and saw that there were several people in the store. It wasn’t busy, but there was more activity than he had expected. Young housewives from the university. Good shoppers, he thought. Good customers. They knew what they could spend and that was it. There was no monkey business about prices. He wished his older customers would take lessons from them. The ones who came in wearing their fur coats and who thought because they knew him from his old place that entitled them to special privileges. In a supermarket. Privileges. Did A&P give discounts? The National? What did they want from him?

He walked around straightening the shelves. Well, he thought, at least it wasn’t totally dead. If they came in like this all day he might make a few pennies. A few pennies, he thought. A few dollars. What difference does it make?

A salesman was talking to him when he saw her. The man was trying to tell him something about a new product, some detergent, ten cents off on the box, something, but Greenspahn couldn’t take his eyes off her.

“Can I put you down for a few trial cases, Mr. Greenspahn? In Detroit when the stores put it on the shelves…”

“No,” Greenspahn interrupted him. “Not now. It don’t sell. I don’t want it.”

“But, Mr. Greenspahn, I’m trying to tell you. This is something new. It hasn’t been on the market more than three weeks.”

“Later, later,” Greenspahn said. “Talk to Frank, don’t bother me.”

He left the salesman and followed the woman up the aisle, stopping when she stopped, turning to the shelves, pretending to adjust them. One egg, he thought. She touches one egg, I’ll throw her out.

It was Mrs. Frimkin, the doctor’s wife. An old customer and a chiseler. An expert. For a long time she hadn’t been in because of a fight they’d had over a thirty-five-cent delivery charge. He had to watch her. She had a million tricks. Sometimes she would sneak over to the eggs and push her finger through two or three of them. Then she would smear a little egg on the front of her dress and come over to him complaining that he’d ruined her dress, that she’d picked up the eggs “in good faith,” thinking they were whole. “In good faith,” she’d say. He’d have to give her the whole box and charge her for a half dozen just to shut her up. An expert.

He went up to her. He was somewhat relieved to see that she wore a good dress. She risked the egg trick only in a housecoat.

“Jake,” she said, smiling at him.

He nodded.

“I heard about Harold,” she said sadly. “The doctor told me. I almost had a heart attack when I heard.” She touched his arm. “Listen,” she said. “We don’t know. We just don’t know. Mrs. Baron, my neighbor from when we lived on Drexel, didn’t she fall down dead in the street? Her daughter was getting married in a month. How’s your wife?”

Greenspahn shrugged. “Something I can do for you, Mrs. Frimkin?”

“What am I, a stranger? I don’t need help. Fix, fix your shelves. I can take what I need.”

“Yeah,” he said, “yeah. Take.” She had another trick. She came into a place, his place, the A&P, it didn’t make any difference, and she priced everything. She even took notes. He knew she didn’t buy a thing until she was absolutely convinced she couldn’t get it a penny cheaper some place else.

“I only want a few items. Don’t worry about me,” she said.

“Yeah,” Greenspahn said. He could wring her neck, the lousy podler.

“How’s the fruit?” she asked.

“You mean confidentially?”

“What else?”

“I’ll tell you the truth,” Greenspahn said. “It’s so good I don’t like to see it get out of the store.”

“Maybe I’ll buy a banana.”

“You couldn’t go wrong,” Greenspahn said.

“You got a nice place, Jake. I always said it.”

“So buy something,” he said.

“We’ll see,” she said mysteriously. “Well see.”

They were standing by the canned vegetables and she reached out her hand to lift a can of peas from the shelf. With her palm she made a big thing of wiping the dust from the top of the can and then stared at the price stamped there. “Twenty-seven?” she asked, surprised.

“Yeah,” Greenspahn said. “It’s too much?”

“Well,” she said.

“I’ll be damned,” he said. “I been in the business twenty-two years and I never did know what to charge for a tin of peas.”

She looked at him suspiciously, and with a tight smile gently replaced the peas. Greenspahn glared at her, and then, seeing Frank walk by, caught at his sleeve, pretending he had business with him. He walked up the aisle holding Frank’s elbow, conscious that Mrs. Frimkin was looking after them.

“The lousy podler,” he whispered.

“Take it easy, Jake,” Frank said. “She could be a good customer again. So what if she chisels a little? I was happy to see her come in.”

“Yeah,” Greenspahn said, “happy.” He left Frank and went toward the meat counter. “Any phone orders?” he asked Arnold.

“A few, Jake. I can put them up.”

“Never mind,” Greenspahn said. “Give me.” He took the slips Arnold handed him. “While it’s quiet I’ll do them.”

He read over the orders quickly and in the back of the store selected four cardboard boxes with great care. He picked the stock from the shelves and fit it neatly into the boxes, taking a kind of pleasure in the diminution of the stacks. Each time he put something into a box he had the feeling that there was that much less to sell. At the thick butcher’s block behind the meat counter, bloodstains so deep in the wood they seemed almost a part of its grain, he trimmed fat from a thick roast. Arnold, beside him, leaned heavily against the paper roll. Greenspahn was conscious that Arnold watched him.

“Bernstein’s order?” Arnold asked.

“Yeah,” Greenspahn said.

“She’s giving a party. She told me. Her husband’s birthday.”

“Happy birthday.”

“Yeah,” Arnold said. “Say, Jake, maybe I’ll go eat.”

Greenspahn trimmed the last piece of fat from the roast before he looked up at him. “So go eat,” he said.

“I think so,” Arnold said. “It’s slow today. You know?”

Greenspahn nodded.

“Well, I’ll grab some lunch. Maybe it’ll pick up in the afternoon.”

He took a box and began filling another order. He went to the canned goods in high, narrow, canted towers. That much less to sell, he thought bitterly. It was endless. You could never liquidate. There were no big deals in the grocery business. He thought hopelessly of the hundreds of items in his store, of all the different brands, the different sizes. He was terribly aware of each shopper, conscious of what each put into the shopping cart. It was awful, he thought. He wasn’t selling diamonds. He wasn’t selling pianos. He sold bread, milk, eggs. You had to have volume or you were dead. He was losing money. On his electric, his refrigeration, the signs in his window, his payroll, his specials, his stock. It was the chain stores. They had the parking. They advertised. They gave stamps. Two percent right out of the profits — it made no difference to them. They had the tie-ins. Fantastic. Their own farms, their own dairies, their own bakeries, their own canneries. Everything. The bastards. He was committing suicide to fight them.

In a little while Shirley came up to him. “Is it all right if I get my lunch now, Mr. Greenspahn?”

Why did they ask him? Was he a tyrant? “Yeah, yeah. Go eat. I’ll watch the register.”

She went out, and Greenspahn, looking after her, thought, Something’s going on. First one, then the other. They meet each other. What do they do, hold hands? He fit a carton of eggs carefully into a box. What difference does it make? A slut and a bum.

He stood at the checkout counter, and pressing the orange key, watched the No Sale flag shoot up into the window of the register. He counted the money sadly.

Frank was at the bins trimming lettuce. “Jake, you want to go eat I’ll watch things,” he said.

“Not yet,” Greenspahn said.

An old woman came into the store and Greenspahn recognized her. She had been in twice before that morning and both times had bought two tins of the coffee Greenspahn was running on a special. She hadn’t bought anything else. Already he had lost twelve cents on her. He watched her carefully and saw with a quick rage that she went again to the coffee. She picked up another two tins and came toward the checkout counter. She wore a bright red wig which next to her very white, ancient skin gave her the appearance of a clown. She put the coffee down on the counter and looked up at Greenspahn timidly. He made no effort to ring up the sale. She stood for a moment and then pushed the coffee toward him.

“Sixty-nine cents a pound,” she said. “Two pounds is a dollar thirty-eight. Six cents tax is a dollar forty-four.”

“Lady,” Greenspahn said, “don’t you ever eat? Is that all you do is drink coffee?” He stared at her.

Her lips began to tremble and her body shook. “A dollar forty-four,” she said. “I have it right here.”

“This is your sixth can, lady. I lose money on it. Do you know that?”

The woman continued to tremble. It was as though she were very cold.

“What do you do, lady? Sell this stuff door-to-door? Am I your wholesaler?”

Her body continued to shake, and she looked out at him from behind faded eyes as though she were unaware of the terrible movements of her body, as though they had, ultimately, nothing to do with her, that really she existed, hiding, crouched, somewhere behind the eyes. He had the impression that, frictionless, her old bald head bobbed beneath the wig. “All right,” he said finally, “a dollar forty-four. I hope you have more luck with the item than I had.” He took the money from her and watched her as she accepted her package wordlessly and walked out of the store. He shook his head. It was all a pile of crap, he thought. He had a vision of the woman on back porches, standing silently at back doors open on their chains, sadly extending the coffee.

He wanted to get out. Frank could watch the store. If he stole, he stole.

“Frank,” he said, “it ain’t busy. Watch things. I’ll eat.”

“Go on, Jake. Go ahead. I’m not hungry, I got a cramp. Go ahead.”

“Yeah.”

He walked toward the restaurant. On his way he had to pass a National; seeing the crowded parking lot, he felt his stomach tighten. He paused at the window and pressed his face against the glass and looked in at the full aisles. Through the thick glass he saw women moving silently through the store. He stepped. back and read the advertisements on the window. My fruit is cheaper, he thought. My meat’s the same, practically the same.

He moved on. Passing the familiar shops, he crossed the street and went into “The Cookery.” Pushing open the heavy glass door, he heard the babble of the lunchers, the sound rushing to his ears like the noise of a suddenly unmuted trumpet. Criers and kibitzers, he thought. Kibitzers and criers.

The cashier smiled at him. “We haven’t seen you, Mr. G. Somebody told me you were on a diet,” she said.

Her too, he thought. A kibitzer that makes change.

He went toward the back. “Hey, Jake, how are you?” a man in a booth called. “Sit by us.”

He nodded at the men who greeted him, and pulling a chair from another table, placed it in the aisle facing the booth. He sat down and leaned forward, pulling the chair’s rear legs into the air so that the waitress could get by. Sitting there in the aisle, he felt peculiarly like a visitor, like one there only temporarily, as though he had rushed up to the table merely to say hello or to tell a joke. He knew what it was. It was the way kibitzers sat. The others, cramped in the booth but despite this giving the appearance of lounging there, their lunches begun or already half eaten, somehow gave him the impression that they had been there all day.

“You missed it, Jake,” one of the men said. “We almost got Traub here to reach for a check last Friday. Am I lying, Margolis?”

“He almost did, Jake. He really almost did.”

“At the last minute he jumped up and down on his own arm and broke it.”

The men at the table laughed, and Greenspahn looked at Traub sitting little and helpless between two big men. Traub looked down shame-faced into his Coca-Cola.

“It’s okay, Traub,” the first man said. “We know. You got all those daughters getting married and having big weddings at the same time. It’s terrible. Traub’s only got one son. And do you think he’d have the decency to get married so Traub could one time go to a wedding and just enjoy himself? No, he’s not old enough. But he’s old enough to turn around and get himself bar mitzvah’d, right, Traub? The lousy kid.”

Greenspahn looked at the men in the booth and at many-daughtered Traub, who seemed as if he were about to cry. Kibitzers and criers, he thought. Everywhere it was the same. At every table. The two kinds of people like two different sexes that had sought each other out. Sure, Greenspahn thought, would a crier listen to another man’s complaints? Could a kibitzer kid a kidder? But it didn’t mean anything, he thought. Not the jokes, not the grief. It didn’t mean anything. They were like birds making noises in a tree. But try to catch them in a deal. They’d murder you. Every day they came to eat their lunch and make their noises. Like cowboys on television hanging up their gun belts to go to a dance.

But even so, he thought, they were the way they pretended to be. Nothing made any difference to them. Did they lose sons? Not even the money they earned made any difference to them finally.

“So I was telling you,” Margolis said, “the guy from the Chamber of Commerce came around again today.”

“He came to me too,” Paul Gold said.

“Did you give?” Margolis asked.

“No, of course not.”

“Did he hit you yet, Jake? Throw him out. He wants contributions for decorations. Listen, those guys are on the take from the paper-flower people. It’s fantastic what they get for organizing the big stores downtown. My cousin on State Street told me about it. I told him, I said, ‘Who needs the Chamber of Commerce? Who needs Easter baskets and colored eggs hanging from the lamppost?’ ”

“Not when the ring trick still works, right, Margolis?” Joe Fisher said.

Margolis looked at his lapel and shrugged lightly. It was the most modest gesture Greenspahn had ever seen him make. The men laughed. The ring trick was Margolis’ invention. “A business promotion,” he had told Greenspahn. “Better than Green Stamps.” He had seen him work it. Margolis would stand at the front of his store and signal to some guy who stopped for a minnute to look at the TV sets in his window. He would rap on the glass with his ring to catch his attention. He would smile and say something to him, anything. It didn’t make any difference; the guy in the street couldn’t hear him. As Greenspahn watched, Margolis had turned to him and winked slyly as if to say, “Watch this. Watch how I get this guy.” Then he had looked back at the customer outside, and still smiling broadly had said, “Hello, schmuck. Come on in, I’ll sell you something. That’s right, jerk, press your greasy nose against the glass to see who’s talking to you. Shade your eyes. That-a-jerk. Come on in, I’ll sell you something.” Always the guy outside would come into the store to find out what Margolis had been saying to him. “Hello there, sir,” Margolis would say, grinning. “I was trying to tell you that the model you were looking at out there is worthless. Way overpriced. If the boss knew I was talking to you like this I’d be canned, but what the hell? We’re all working people. Come on back here and look at a real set.”

Margolis was right. Who needed the Chamber of Commerce? Not the kibitzers and criers. Not even the Gold boys. Criers. Greenspahn saw the other one at another table. Twins, but they didn’t even look like brothers. Not even they needed the paper flowers hanging from the lamppost. Paul Gold shouting to his brother in the back, “Mr. Gold, please show this gentleman something stylish.” And they’d go into the act, putting on a thick Yiddish accent for some white-haired old man with a lodge button in his lapel, giving him the business. Greenspahn could almost hear the old man telling the others at the Knights of Columbus Hall, “I picked this suit up from a couple of Yids on Fifty-third, real greenhorns. But you’ve got to hand it to them. Those people really know material.”

Business was a kind of game with them, Greenspahn thought. Not even the money made any difference.

“Did I tell you about these two kids who came in to look at rings?” Joe Fisher said. “Sure,” he went on, “two kids. Dressed up. The boy’s a regular mensch. I figure they’ve been downtown at Peacock’s and Field’s. I think I recognized the girl from the neighborhood. I say to her boy friend — a nice kid, a college kid, you know, he looks like he ain’t been bar mitzvah’d yet—‘I got a ring here I won’t show you the price. Will you give me your check for three hundred dollars right now? No appraisal? No bringing it to Papa on approval? No nothing?’

“ ‘I’d have to see the ring,’ he tells me.

“Get this. I put my finger over the tag on a ring I paid eleven hundred for. A big ring. You got to wear smoked glasses just to look at it. Paul, I mean it, this is some ring. I’ll give you a price for your wife’s anniversary. No kidding, this is some ring. Think seriously about it. We could make it up into a beautiful cocktail ring. Anyway, this kid stares like a big dummy, I think he’s turned to stone. He’s scared. He figures something’s wrong a big ring like that for only three hundred bucks. His girl friend is getting edgy, she thinks the kid’s going to make a mistake, and she starts shaking her head. Finally he says to me, listen to this, he says, ‘I wasn’t looking for anything that large. Anyway, it’s not a blue stone.’ Can you imagine? Don’t tell me about shoppers. I get prizes.”

“What would you have done if he said he wanted the ring?” Traub asked.

“What are you, crazy? He was strictly from wholesale. It was like he had a sign on his suit. Don’t you think I can tell a guy who’s trying to get a price idea from a real customer?”

“Say, Jake,” Margolis said, “ain’t that your cashier over there with your butcher?”

Greenspahn looked around. It was Shirley and Arnold. He hadn’t seen them when he came in. They were sitting across the table from each other — evidently they had not seen him either — and Shirley was leaning forward, her chin on her palms. Sitting there, she looked like a young girl. It annoyed him. It was ridiculous. He knew they met each other. What did he care? It wasn’t his business. But to let themselves be seen. He thought of Shirley’s brassiere hanging in his toilet. It was reckless. They were reckless people. All of them, Arnold and Shirley and the men in the restaurant. Reckless people.

“They’re pretty thick with each other, ain’t they?” Margolis said.

“How should I know?” Greenspahn said.

“What do you run over there at that place of yours, a lonely hearts club?”

“It’s not my business. They do their work.”

“Some work,” Paul Gold said.

“I’d like a job like that,” Joe Fisher said.

“Ain’t he married?” Paul Gold said.

“I’m not a policeman,” Greenspahn said.

“Jake’s jealous because he’s not getting any,” Joe Fisher said.

“Loudmouth,” Greenspahn said, “I’m a man in mourning.”

The others at the table were silent. “Joe was kidding,” Traub, the crier, said.

“Sure, Jake,” Joe Fisher said.

“Okay,” Greenspahn said. “Okay.”

For the rest of the lunch he was conscious of Shirley and Arnold. He hoped they would not see him, or if they did that they would make no sign to him. He stopped listening to the stories the men told. He chewed on his hamburger wordlessly. He heard someone mention George Stein, and he looked up for a moment. Stein had a grocery in a neighborhood that was changing. He had said that he wanted to get out. He was looking for a setup like Greenspahn’s. He could speak to him. Sure, he thought. Why not? What did he need the aggravation? What did he need it? He owned the building the store was in. He could live on the rents. Even Joe Fisher was a tenant of his. He could speak to Stein, he thought, feeling he had made up his mind about something. He waited until Arnold and Shirley had finished their lunch and then went back to his store.

In the afternoon Greenspahn thought he might be able to move his bowels. He went into the toilet off the small room at the back of the store. He sat, looking up at the high ceiling. In the smoky darkness above his head he could just make out the small, square tin-ceiling plates. They seemed pitted, soiled, like patches of war-ruined armor. Agh, he thought, the place is a pigpen. The sink bowl was stained dark, the enamel chipped, long fissures radiating like lines on the map of some wasted country. The single faucet dripped steadily. Greenspahn thought sadly of his water bill. On the knob of the faucet he saw again a faded blue S. S, he thought, what the hell does S stand for? H hot, C cold. What the hell kind of faucet is S? Old clothes hung on a hook on the back of the door. A man’s blue wash pants hung inside out, the zipper split like a peeled banana, the crowded concourse of seams at the crotch like carelessly sewn patches.

He heard Arnold in the store, his voice raised exaggeratedly. He strained to listen.

“Forty-five” he heard Arnold say.

“Forty-five, Pop.” He was talking to the old man. Deaf, he came in each afternoon for a piece of liver for his supper. “I can’t give you two ounces. I told you. I can’t break the set.” He heard a woman laugh. Shirley? Was Shirley back there with him? What the hell, he thought. It was one thing for them to screw around with each other at lunch, but they didn’t have to bring it into the store. “Take eight ounces. Invite someone over for dinner. Take eight ounces. You’ll have for four days. You won’t have to come back.” He was a wise guy, that Arnold. What did he want to do, drive the old man crazy? What could you do? The old man liked a small slice of liver. He thought it kept him alive.

He heard footsteps coming toward the back room and voices raised in argument.

“I’m sorry,” a woman said, “I don’t know how it got there. Honest. Look, I’ll pay. I’ll pay you for it.”

“You bet, lady,” Frank’s voice said.

“What do you want me to do?” the woman pleaded.

“I’m calling the cops,” Frank said.

“For a lousy can of salmon?”

“It’s the principle. You’re a crook. You’re a lousy thief, you know that? I’m calling the cops. We’ll see what jail does for you.”

“Please,” the woman said. “Mister, please. This whole thing is crazy. I never did anything like this before. I haven’t got any excuse, but please, can’t you give me a chance?” The woman was crying.

“No chances,” Frank said. “I’m calling the cops. You ought to be ashamed, lady. A woman dressed nice like you are. What are you, sick or something? I’m calling the cops.” He heard Frank lift the receiver.

“Please,” the woman sobbed. “My husband will kill me. I have a little kid, for Christ’s sake.”

Frank replaced the phone.

“Ten bucks,” he said quietly.

“What’s that?”

“Ten bucks and you don’t come in here no more.”

“I haven’t got it,” she said.

“All right, lady. The hell with you. I’m calling the cops.”

“You bastard,” she said.

“Watch your mouth,” he said. “Ten bucks.”

“I’ll write you a check.”

“Cash,” Frank said.

“Okay, okay,” she said. “Here.”

“Now get out of here, lady.” Greenspahn heard the woman’s footsteps going away. Frank would be fumbling now with his apron, trying to get the big wallet out of his front pocket. Greenspahn flushed the toilet and waited.

“Jake?” Frank asked, frightened.

“Who was she?”

“Jake, I never saw her before, honest. Just a tramp. She gave me ten bucks. She was just a tramp, Jake.”

“I told you before. I don’t want trouble,” Greenspahn said angrily. He came out of the toilet. “What is this, a game with you?”

“Look, I caught her with the salmon. Would you want me to call the cops for a can of salmon? She’s got a kid.”

“Yeah, you got a big heart, Frank.”

“I would have let you handle it if I’d seen you. I looked for you, Jake.”

“You shook her down. I told you before about that.”

“Jake, it’s ten bucks for the store. I get so damned mad when somebody like that tries to get away with something.”

“Podler,” Greenspahn shouted. “You’re through here.”

“Jake,” Frank said. “She was a tramp.” He held the can of salmon in his hand and offered it to Greenspahn as though it were evidence.

Greenspahn pushed his hand aside. “Get out of my store. I don’t need you. Get out. I don’t want a crook in here.”

“Who are you calling names, Jake?”

Greenspahn felt his rage, immense, final. It was on him at once, like an animal that had leaped upon him in the dark. His body shook with it. Frightened, he warned himself uselessly that he must be calm. A podler like that, he thought. He wanted to hit him in the face.

“Please, Frank. Get out of here,” Greenspahn said.

“Sure,” Frank screamed. “Sure, sure,” he shouted. Greenspahn, startled, looked at him. He seemed angrier than even himself. Greenspahn thought of the customers. They would hear him. What kind of a place, he thought. What kind of a place? “Sure,” Frank yelled, “fire me, go ahead. A regular holy man. A saint! What are you, God? He smells everybody’s rottenness but his own. Only when your own son — may he rest — when your own son slips five bucks out of the cash drawer, that you don’t see.”

Greenspahn could have killed him. “Who says that?”

Frank caught his breath.

“Who says that?” Greenspahn repeated.

“Nothing, Jake. It was nothing. He was going on a date probably. That’s all. It didn’t mean nothing.”

“Who calls him a thief?”

“Nobody. I’m sorry.”

“My dead son? You call my dead son a thief?”

“Nobody called anybody a thief. I didn’t know what I was saying.”

“In the ground. Twenty-three years old and in the ground. Not even a wife, not even a business. Nothing. He had nothing. He wouldn’t take. Harold wouldn’t take. Don’t call him what you are. He should be alive today. You should be dead. You should be in the ground where he is. Podler. Mumser,” he shouted. “I saw the lousy receipts, liar,” he screamed.

In a minute Arnold was there and was putting his arm around him. “Calm down, Jake. Come on now, take it easy. What happened back here?” he asked Frank.

Frank shrugged.

“Get him away,” Greenspahn pleaded. Arnold signaled Frank to get out and led Greenspahn to the chair near the table he used as a desk.

“You all right now, Jake? You okay now?”

Greenspahn was sobbing heavily. In a few moments he looked up. “All right,” he said. “The customers. Arnold, please. The customers.”

“Okay, Jake. Just stay back here and wait till you feel better.”

Greenspahn nodded. When Arnold left him he sat for a few minutes and then went back into the toilet to wash his face. He turned the tap and watched the dirty basin fill with water. It’s not even cold, he thought sadly. He plunged his hands into the sink and scooped up warm water, which he rubbed into his eyes. He took a handkerchief from his back pocket and unfolded it and patted his face carefully. He was conscious of laughter outside the door. It seemed old, brittle. For a moment he thought of the woman with the coffee. Then he remembered. The porter, he thought. He called his name. He heard footsteps coming up to the door.

“That’s right, Mr. Greenspahn,” the voice said, still laughing.

Greenspahn opened the door. His porter stood before him in torn clothes. His eyes, red, wet, looked as though they were bleeding. “You sure told that Frank,” he said.

“You’re late,” Greenspahn said. “What do you mean coming in so late?”

“I been to Harold’s grave,” he said.

“What’s that?”

“I been to Mr. Harold’s grave,” he repeated. “I didn’t get to the funeral. I been to his grave cause of my dream.”

“Put the stock away,” Greenspahn said. “Some more came in this afternoon.”

“I will,” he said. “I surely will.” He was an old man. He had no teeth and his gums lay smooth and very pink in his mouth. He was thin. His clothes hung on him, the sleeves of the jacket rounded, puffed from absent flesh. Through the rents in shirt and trousers Greenspahn could see the grayish skin, hairless, creased, the texture like the pit of a peach. Yet he had a strength Greenspahn could only wonder at, and could still lift more stock than Arnold or Frank or even Greenspahn himself.

“You’d better start now,” Greenspahn said uncomfortably.

“I tell you about my dream, Mr. Greenspahn?”

“No dreams. Don’t tell me your dreams.”

“It was about Mr. Harold. Yes, sir, about him. Your boy that’s dead, Mr. Greenspahn.”

“I don’t want to hear. See if Arnold needs anything up front.”

“I dreamed it twice. That means it’s true. You don’t count on a dream less you dream it twice.”

“Get away with your crazy stories. I don’t pay you to dream.”

“That time on Halsted I dreamed the fire. I dreamed that twice.”

“Yeah,” Greenspahn said, “the fire. Yeah.”

“I dreamed that dream twice. Them police wanted to question me. Same names, Mr. Greenspahn, me and your boy we got the same names.”

“Yeah. I named him after you.”

“I tell you that dream, Mr. Greenspahn? It was a mistake. Prank was supposed to die. Just like you said. Just like I heard you say it just now. And he will. Mr. Harold told me in the dream. Frank he’s going to sicken and die his own self.” The porter looked at Greenspahn, the red eyes filling with blood. “If you want it,” he said. “That’s what I dreamed, and I dreamed, about the fire on Halsted the same way. Twice.”

“You’re crazy. Get away from me.”

“That’s a true dream. It happened just that very way.”

“Get away. Get away,” Greenspahn shouted.

“My name’s Harold, too.”

“You’re crazy. Crazy.”

The porter went off. He was laughing. What kind of a madhouse? Were they all doing it on purpose? Everything to aggravate him? For a moment he had the impression that this was what it was. A big joke, and everybody was in on it but himself. He was being kibitzed to death. Everything. The cop. The receipts. His cheese man. Arnold and Shirley. The men in the restaurant. Frank and the woman. The schvartze. Everything. He wouldn’t let it happen. What was he, crazy or something? He reached into his pocket for his handkerchief, but pulled out a piece of paper. It was the order Harold had taken down over the phone and left on the pad. Absently he unfolded it and read it again. Something occurred to him. As soon as he had the idea he knew it was true. The order had never been delivered. His son had forgotten about it. It couldn’t be anything else. Otherwise would it still have been on the message pad? Sure, he thought, what else could it be? Even his son. What did he care? What the hell did he care about the business? Greenspahn was ashamed. It was a terrible thought to have about a dead boy. Oh God, he thought. Let him rest. He was a boy, he thought. Twenty-three years old and he was only a boy. No wife. No business. Nothing. Was the five dollars so important? In helpless disgust he could see Harold’s sly wink to Frank as he slipped the money out of the register. Five dollars, Harold, five dollars, he thought, as though he were admonishing him. “Why didn’t you come to me, Harold?” he sobbed. “Why didn’t you come to your father?”

He blew his nose. It’s crazy, he thought. Nothing pleases me. Frank called him God. Some God, he thought. I sit weeping in the back of my store. The hell with it. The hell with everything. Clear the shelves, that’s what he had to do. Sell the groceries. Get rid of the meats. Watch the money pile up. Sell, sell, he thought. That would be something. Sell everything. He thought of the items listed on the order his son had taken down. Were they delivered? He felt restless. He hoped they were delivered. If they weren’t they would have to be sold again. He was very weary. He went to the front of the store.

It was almost closing time. Another half hour. He couldn’t stay to close up. He had to be in shul before sundown. He had to get to the minion. They would have to close up for him. For a year. If he couldn’t sell the store, for a year he wouldn’t be in his own store at sundown. He would have to trust them to close up for him. Trust who? he thought. My Romeo, Arnold? Shirley? The crazy schvartze? Only Frank could do it. How could he have fired him? He looked for him in the store. He was talking to Shirley at the register. He would go up and talk to him. What difference did it make? He would have had to fire all of them. Eventually he would have to fire everybody who ever came to work for him. He would have to throw out his tenants, even the old ones, and finally whoever rented the store from him. He would have to keep on firing and throwing out as long as anybody was left. What difference would one more make?

“Frank,” he said. “I want you to forget what we talked about before.”

Frank looked at him suspiciously. “It’s all right,” Greenspahn reassured him. He led him by the elbow away from Shirley. “Listen,” he said, “we were both excited before. I didn’t mean it what I said.”

Frank continued to look at him. “Sure, Jake,” he said finally. “No hard feelings.” He extended his hand.

Greenspahn took it reluctantly. “Yeah,” he said.

“Frank,” he said, “do me a favor and close up the place for me. I got to get to the shul for the minion.”

“I got you, Jake.”

Greenspahn went to the back to change his clothes. He washed his face and hands and combed his hair. Carefully he removed his working clothes and put on the suit jacket, shirt and tie he had worn in the morning. He walked back into the store.

He was about to leave when he saw that Mrs. Frimkin had come into the store again. That’s all right, he told himself, she can be a good customer. He needed some of the old customers now. They could drive you crazy, but when they bought, they bought. He watched as she took a cart from the front and pushed it through the aisles. She put things in the cart as though she were in a hurry. She barely glanced at the prices. That was the way to shop, he thought. It was a pleasure to watch her. She reached into the frozen-food locker and took out about a half-dozen packages. From the towers of canned goods on his shelves she seemed to take down only the largest cans. In minutes her shopping cart was overflowing. That’s some order, Greenspahn thought. Then he watched as she went to the stacks of bread at the bread counter. She picked up a packaged white bread, and first looking around to see if anyone was watching her, bent down quickly over the loaf, cradling it to her chest as though it were a football. As she stood, Greenspahn saw her brush crumbs from her dress, then put the torn package into her cart with the rest of her purchases.

She came up to the counter where Greenspahn stood and unloaded the cart, pushing the groceries toward Shirley to be checked out. The last item she put on the counter was the wounded bread. Shirley punched the keys quickly. As she reached for the bread, Mrs. Frimkin put out her hand to stop her. “Look,” she said, “what are you going to charge me for the bread? It’s damaged. Can I have it for ten cents?”

Shirley turned to look at Greenspahn.

“Out,” he said. “Get out, you podler. I don’t want you coming in here any more. You’re a thief,” he shouted. “A thief.”

Frank came rushing up. “Jake, what is it? What is it?”

“Her. That one. A crook. She tore the bread. I seen her.”

The woman looked at him defiantly. “I don’t have to take that,” she said. “I can make plenty of trouble for you. You’re crazy. I’m not going to be insulted by somebody like you.”

“Get out of here,” Greenspahn shouted, “before I have you locked up.”

The woman backed away from him, and when he stepped forward she turned and fled.

“Jake,” Frank said, putting his hand on Greenspahn’s shoulder. “That was a big order. So she tried to get away with a few pennies. What does it mean? You want me to find her and apologize?”

“Look,” Greenspahn said, “she comes in again I want to know about it. I don’t care what I’m doing. I want to know about it. She’s going to pay me for that bread.”

“Jake,” Frank said.

“No,” he said. “I mean it.”

“Jake, it’s ten cents.”

“My ten cents. No more,” he said. “I’m going to shul.”

He waved Frank away and went into the street. Already the sun was going down. He felt urgency. He had to get there before the sun went down.

That night Greenspahn had the dream for the first time.

He was in the synagogue waiting to say prayers for his son. Around him were the old men, the minion, their faces brittle and pale. He recognized them from his youth. They had been old even then. One man stood by the window and watched the sun. At a signal from him the others would begin. There was always some place in the world where the prayers were being said, he thought, some place where the sun had just come up or just gone down, and he supposed there was always a minion to watch it and to mark its progress, the prayers following God’s bright bird, going up in sunlight or in darkness, always, everywhere. He knew the men never left the shul. It was the way they kept from dying. They didn’t even eat, but there was about the room the foul lemony smell of urine. Sure, Greenspahn thought in the dream, stay in the shul. That’s right. Give the podlers a wide berth. All they have to worry about is God. Some worry, Greenspahn thought. The man at the window gave the signal and they all started to mourn for Greenspahn’s son, their ancient voices betraying the queer melody of the prayers. The rabbi looked at Greenspahn and Greenspahn, imitating the old men, began to rock back and forth on his heels. He tried to sway faster than they did. I’m younger, he thought. When he was swaying so quickly that he thought he would be sick were he to go any faster, the rabbi smiled at him approvingly. The man at the window shouted that the sun was approaching the danger point in the sky and that Greenspahn had better begin as soon as he was ready.

He looked at the strange thick letters in the prayer book. “Go ahead,” the rabbi said, “think of Harold and tell God.”

He tried then to think of his son, but he could recall him only as he was when he was a baby standing in his crib. It was unreal, like a photograph. The others knew what he was thinking and frowned. “Go ahead,” the rabbi said.

Then he saw him as a boy on a bicycle, as once he had seen him at dusk as he looked out from his apartment, riding the gray sidewalks, slapping his buttocks as though he were on a horse. The others were not satisfied.

He tried to imagine him older but nothing came of it. The rabbi said, “Please, Greenspahn, the sun is almost down. You’re wasting time. Faster. Faster.”

All right, Greenspahn thought. All right. Only let me think. The others stopped their chanting.

Desperately he thought of the store. He thought of the woman with the coffee, incredibly old, older than the old men who prayed with him, her wig fatuously red, the head beneath it shaking crazily as though even the weight and painted fire of the thick, bright hair were not enough to warm it.

The rabbi grinned.

He thought of the schvartze, imagining him on an old cot, on a damp and sheetless mattress, twisting in a fearful dream. He saw him bent under the huge side of red, raw meat he carried to Arnold.

The others were still grinning, but the rabbi was beginning to look a little bored. He thought of Arnold, seeming to watch him through the schvartze’s own red, mad eyes, as Arnold chopped at the fresh flesh with his butcher’s axe.

He saw the men in the restaurant. The criers, ignorant of hope, the kibitzers, ignorant of despair. Each with his pitiful piece broken from the whole of life, confidently extending only half of what there was to give.

He saw the cheats with their ten dollars and their stolen nickels and their luncheon lusts and their torn breads.

All right, Greenspahn thought. He saw Shirley naked but for her brassiere. It was evening and the store was closed. She lay with Arnold on the butcher’s block.

“The boy,” the rabbi said impatiently, “the boy.”

He concentrated for a long moment while all of them stood by silently. Gradually, with difficulty, he began to make something out. It was Harold’s face in the coffin, his expression at the very moment of death itself, before the undertakers had had time to tamper with it. He saw it clearly. It was soft, puffy with grief; a sneer curled the lips. It was Harold, twenty-three years old, wifeless, jobless, sacrificing nothing even in the act of death, leaving the world with his life not started.

The rabbi smiled at Greenspahn and turned away as though he now had other business.

“No,” Greenspahn called, “wait. Wait.”

The rabbi turned and with the others looked at him.

He saw it now. They all saw it. The helpless face, the sly wink, the embarrassed, slow smug smile of guilt that must, volitionless as the palpitation of a nerve, have crossed Harold’s face when he had turned, his hand in the register, to see Frank watching him.