The assistant (15 page)

in." He thought of taking off his shoe and showing Morris how carefully he had kept track of the money he had taken, but he didn't want to do that because the amount was so large it might anger the grocer more. "You put it in," Morris cried, "but it belongs to me. I don't want a thief here." He counted fifteen dollars out of the register. "Here's your week's pay-the last. Please leave now the store." His anger was gone. He spoke in sadness and fear of tomorrow. "Give me one last chance," Frank begged, "Morris, please." His face was gaunt, his eyes haunted, his beard like night. Morris, though moved by the man, thought of Helen. "No." Frank stared at the gray and broken Jew and seeing, despite tears in his eyes, that he would not yield, hung up his apron on a hook and left. The night's new beauty struck Helen with the anguish of loss as she hurried into the lamplit park a half-hour after midnight. That morning as she had stepped into the street, wearing a new dress under her old coat, the fragrant day had moved her to tears and she felt then she was truly in love with Frank. Whatever the future held it couldn't deny her the sense of release and fulfillment she had felt then. Hours later, when she was with Nat Pearl, as they stopped off for a drink at a roadside tavern, then at his insistence drove into Long Island, her thoughts were still on Frank and she was impatient to be with him. Nat was Nat. He exerted himself tonight, giving out with charm. He talked with charm and was hurt with charm. Unchanged after all the months she hadn't been with him, as they were parked on the dark shore overlooking the starlit Sound, after a few charming preliminaries he had put his arms around her. "Helen, how can we forget what pleasure we had in the past?" She pushed him away, angered. "It's gone, I've forgotten. If you're so much of a gentleman, Nat, you ought to forget it too. Was a couple of times in bed a mortgage on my future?" "Helen, don't talk like a stranger. For Pete's sake, be human." "I am human, please remember." "We were once good friends. My plea is for friendship again." "Why don't you admit by friendship you mean something different?" "Helen..." "No." He sat back at the wheel. "Christ, you have become a suspicious character." She said, "Things have changed-you must realize." "Who have they changed for," he asked sullenly, "that dago I hear you go with?" Her answer was ice. On the way home he tried to unsay what he had said, but Helen yielded him only a quick good-by. She left him with relief and a poignant sense of all she had wasted of the night. Worried that Frank had had to wait so long, she hurried across the lit plaza and along a gravel path bordered by tall lilac shrubs, toward their meeting place. As she approached their bench, although she was troubled by a foreboding he would not be there, she couldn't believe it, then was painfully disappointed to find that though others were present-it was true, he wasn't. Could he have been and gone already? It didn't seem possible; he had always waited before, no matter how late she was. And since she had told him she had something important to say, nothing less than that she now knew she loved him, surely he would want to hear what. She sat down, fearing he had had an accident. Usually they were alone at this spot, but the almost warmish late-February night had brought out company. On a bench diagonally opposite Helen, in the dark under budding branches, sat two young lovers locked in a long kiss. The bench at her left was empty, but on the one beyond that a man was sleeping under a dim lamp. A cat nosed at his shadow and departed. The man woke with a grunt, squinted at Helen, yawned and went back to sleep. The lovers at last broke apart and left in silence, the boy awkwardly trailing the happy girl. Helen deeply envied her, an awful feeling to end the day with. Glancing at her watch she saw it was already past one. Shivering, she rose, then sat down to wait five last minutes. She felt the stars clustered like a distant weight above her head. Utterly lonely, she regretted the spring-like loveliness of the night; it had gone, in her hands, to waste. She was tired of anticipation, of waiting for nothing. A man was standing unsteadily before her, heavy, dirty, stinking of whiskey. Helen half-rose, struck with fright. He flipped off his hat and said huskily, "Don't be afraid of me, Helen. I'm personally a fine guy-son of a cop. You remember me, don't you-Ward Minogue that went to your school? My old man beat me up once in the girls' yard." Though it was years since she had seen him she recognized Ward, at once recalling the incident of his following a girl into a lavatory. Instinctively Helen raised her arm to protect herself. She kept herself from screaming, or he might grab her. How stupid, she thought, to wait for this. "I remember you, Ward." "Could I sit down?" She hesitated. "All right." Helen edged as far away from him as she could. He looked half-stupefied. If he made a move she would run, screaming. "How did you recognize me in the dark?" she asked, pretending to be casual as she glanced stealthily around to see how best to escape. If she could get past the trees, it was then another twenty feet along the shrub-lined path before she could be out in the open. Once on the plaza there would be people around she could appeal to. God only help me, she thought. "I saw you a couple of times lately," Ward answered, rubbing his hand slowly across his chest. "Where?" "Around. Once I saw you come out of your old man's grocery and I figured it was you. You have still kept your looks," he grinned. "Thanks. Don't you feel so well?" "I got gas pains in my chest and a goddam headache." "In case you want one I have a box of aspirins in my purse." "No, they make me puke." She noticed that he was glancing toward the trees. She grew more anxious, thought of offering him her purse if he only wouldn't touch her. "How's your boy friend, Frank Alpine?" Ward asked, with a wet wink. She said in surprise, "Do you know Frank?" "He's an old friend of mine," he answered. "He was here lookin' for you." "Is-he all right?" "Not so hot," said Ward. "He had to go home." She got up. "I have to leave now." But he was standing. "Good night." Helen walked away from him. "He told me to give you this paper." Ward thrust his hand into his coat pocket. She didn't believe him but paused long enough for him to move forward. He grabbed her with astonishing swiftness, smothering her scream with his smelly hand, as he dragged her toward the trees. "All I want is what you give that wop," Ward grunted. She kicked, clawed, bit his hand, broke loose. He caught her by her coat collar, ripped it off. She screamed again and ran forward but he pounced upon her and got his arm over her mouth. Ward shoved her hard against a tree, knocking the breath out of her. He held her tightly by the throat as with his other hand he ripped open her coat and tore her dress off the shoulder, exposing her brassière. Struggling, kicking wildly, she caught him between the legs with her knee. He cried out and cracked her across the face. She felt the strength go out of her and fought not to faint. She screamed but heard no sound. Helen felt his body shuddering against her. I am disgraced, she thought, yet felt curiously freed of his stinking presence, as if he had dissolved into a can of filth and she had kicked it away. Her legs buckled and she slid to the ground. I've fainted, went through her mind, although she felt she was still fighting him. Dimly she realized that a struggle was going on near her. She heard the noise of a blow, and Ward Minogue cried out in great pain and staggered away. Frank, she thought with tremulous joy. Helen felt herself gently lifted and knew she was in his arms. She sobbed in relief. He kissed her eyes and lips and he kissed her half-naked breast. She held him tightly with both arms, weeping, laughing, murmuring she had come to tell him she loved him. He put her down and they kissed under the dark trees. She tasted whiskey on his tongue and was momentarily afraid. "I love you, Helen," he murmured, attempting clumsily to cover her breast with the torn dress as he drew her deeper into the dark, and from under the trees onto the star-dark field. They sank to their knees on the winter earth, Helen urgently whispering, "Please not now, darling," but he spoke of his starved and passionate love, and all the endless heartbreaking waiting. Even as he spoke he thought of her as beyond his reach, forever in the bathroom as he spied, so he stopped her pleas with kisses.... Afterward, she cried, "Dog-uncircumcised dog!"

7

While Morris was sitting alone in the back the next morning, a boy brought in a pink handbill and left it on the counter. When the grocer picked it up he saw it announced the change of management and reopening on Monday, by Taast and Pederson, of the grocery and fancy delicatessen around the corner. There followed, in large print, a list of specials they were offering during their first week, bargains Morris could never hope to match, because he couldn't afford the loss the Norwegians were planning to take. The grocer felt he was standing in an icy draft blowing from some hidden hole in the store. In the kitchen, though he stood with his legs and buttocks pressed against the gas radiator, it took an age to diminish the chill that had penetrated his bones. All morning he scanned the crumpled handbill, muttering to himself; he sipped cold coffee, thinking of the future, and off and on, of Frank Alpine. The clerk had left last night without taking his fifteen dollars' wages. Morris thought he would come in for it this morning but, as the hours passed, knew he wouldn't, maybe having left it to make up some of the money he had stolen; yet maybe not. For the thousandth time the grocer wondered if he had done right in ordering Frank to go. True, he had stolen from him, but also true, he was paying it back. His story that he had put six dollars into the register and then found he had left himself without a penny in his pocket was probably the truth, because the sum in the register, when Morris counted it, was more than they usually took in during the dead part of the afternoon when he napped. The clerk was an unfortunate man; yet the grocer was alternately glad and sorry the incident had occurred. He was glad he had finally let him go. For Helen's sake it had had to be done, and for Ida's peace of mind, as well as his own. Still, he felt unhappy to lose his assistant and be by himself when the Norwegians opened up. Ida came down, puffy-eyed from poor sleep. She felt a hopeless rage against the world. What will become of Helen? she asked herself, and cracked her knuckles against her chest. But when Morris looked up to listen to her complaints, she was afraid to say anything. A half-hour later, aware that something had changed in the store, she thought of the clerk. "Where is he?" she asked. "He left," Morris answered. "Where did he leave?" she said in astonishment. "He left for good." She gazed at him. "Morris, what happened, tell me?" "Nothing," he said, embarrassed. "I told him to leave." "Why, all of a sudden?" "Didn't you say you didn't want him here no more?" "From the first day I saw him, but you always said no." "Now I said yes." "A stone falls off my heart." But she was not satisfied. "Did he move out of the house yet?" "I don't know." "I will go and ask the upstairske." "Leave her alone. We will know when he moves." "When did you tell him to leave?" "Last night." "So why didn't you tell me last night?" she said angrily. "Why you told me he went early to the movies?" "I was nervous." "Morris," she asked in fright. "Did something else happen? Did Helen-" "Nothing happened." "Does she know he left?" "I didn't tell her. Why she went so early to work this morning?" "She went early?" "Yes." "I don't know," Ida said uneasily. He produced the handbill. "This is why I feel bad." She glanced at it, not comprehending. "The German," he explained. "They bought him out, two Norwegians." She gasped. "When?" "This week. Schmitz is sick. He lays now in the hospital." "I told you," Ida said. "You told me?" "Vey is mir. I told you after Christmas-when improved more the business. I told you the drivers said the German was losing customers. You said no, Frank improved the business. A goy brings in goyim, you said. How much strength I had to argue with you?" "Did you tell me he kept closed in the morning his store?" "Who said? I didn't know this." "Karp told me." "Karp was here?" "He came on Thursday to tell me the good news." "What good news?" "That Schmitz sold out." "Is this good news?" she asked. "Maybe to him but not to me." "You didn't tell me he came." "I tell you now," he said irritably. "Schmitz sold out. Monday will open two Norwegians. Our business will go to hell again. We will starve here." "Some helper you had," she said with bitterness. "Why didn't you listen to me when I said let him go?" "I listened," he said wearily. She was silent, then asked, "So when Karp told you Schmitz sold his store you told Frank to leave?" "The next day." "Thank God." "See if you say next week 'Thank God.' " "What is this got to do with Frank? Did he help us?" "I don't know." "You don't know," she said shrilly. "You just told me you said he should leave when you found out where came our business." "I don't know," he said miserably, "I don't know where it came." "It didn't come from him." "Where it came I don't worry any more. Where will it come next week I worry." He read aloud the specials the Norwegians were offering. She squeezed her hands white. "Morris, we must sell the store." "So sell." Sighing, Morris removed his apron. "I will take my rest." "It's only half past eleven." "I feel cold." He looked depressed. "Eat something first-your soup." "Who can eat?" "Drink a hot glass tea." "No." "Morris," she said quietly, "don't worry so much. Something will happen. We will always have to eat." He made no reply, folded the handbill into a small square and took it upstairs with him. The rooms were cold. Ida always shut off the radiators when she went down and lit them again in the late afternoon about an hour before Helen returned. Now the house was too cold. Morris turned on the stopcock of the bedroom radiator, then found he had no match in his pocket. He got one in the kitchen. Under the covers he felt shivery. He lay under two blankets and a quilt yet shivered. He wondered if he was sick but soon fell asleep. He was glad when he felt sleep come over him, although it brought night too quickly. But if you slept it was night, that's how things were. Looking, that same night, from the street into his store, he beheld Taast and Pederson-one with a small blond mustache, the other half-bald, a light shining on his head-standing behind his counter, poking into his cash register. The grocer rushed in but they were gabbing in German and paid no attention to his gibbering Yiddish. At that moment Frank came out of the back with Helen. Though the clerk spoke a musical Italian, Morris recognized a dirty word. He struck his assistant across the face and they wrestled furiously on the floor, Helen screaming mutely. Frank dumped him heavily on his back and sat on his poor chest. He thought his lungs would burst. He tried hard to cry out but his voice cracked his throat and no one would help. He considered the possibility of dying and would have liked to. Tessie Fuso dreamed of a tree hit by thunder and knocked over; she dreamed she heard someone groan terribly and awoke in fright, listened, then went back to sleep. Frank Alpine, at the dirty end of a long night, awoke groaning. He awoke with a shout-awake, he thought, forever. His impulse was to leap out of bed and rush down to the store; then he remembered that Morris had thrown him out. It was a gray, dreary winter morning. Nick had gone to work and Tessie, in her bathrobe, was sitting in the kitchen, drinking coffee. She heard Frank cry out again but had just discovered that she was pregnant, so did nothing more than wonder at his nightmare. He lay in bed with the blankets pulled over his head, trying to smother his thoughts but they escaped and stank. The more he smothered them the more they stank. He smelled garbage in the bed and couldn't move out of it. He couldn't because he was it-the stink in his own broken nose. What you did was how bad you smelled. Unable to stand it he flung the covers aside and struggled to dress but couldn't make it. The sight of his bare feet utterly disgusted him. He thirsted for a cigarette but couldn't light one for fear of seeing his hand. He shut his eyes and lit a match. The match burned his nose. He stepped on the lit match with his bare feet and danced in pain. Oh my God, why did I do it? Why did I ever do it? Why did I do it? His thoughts were killing him. He couldn't stand them. He sat on the edge of the twisted bed, his thoughtful head ready to bust in his hands. He wanted to run. Part of him was already in flight, he didn't know where. He just wanted to run. But while he was running, he wanted to be back. He wanted to be back with Helen, to be forgiven. It wasn't asking too much. People forgave people-who else? He could explain if she would listen. Explaining was a way of getting close to somebody you had hurt; as if in hurting them you were giving them a reason to love you. He had come, he would say, to the park to wait for her, to hear what she had to tell him. He felt he knew she would say she loved him; it meant they would soon sleep together. This stayed in his mind and he sat there waiting to hear her say it, at the same time in an agony that she never would, that he would lose her the minute she found out why her father had kicked him out of the grocery. What could he tell her about that? He sat for hours trying to think what to say, at last growing famished. At midnight he left to get a pizza but stopped instead in a bar. Then when he saw his face in the mirror he felt a nose-thumbing revulsion. Where have you ever been, he asked the one in the glass, except on the inside of a circle? What have you ever done but always the wrong thing? When he returned to the park, there was Ward Minogue hurting her. He just about killed Ward. Then when he had Helen in his arms, crying, saying at last that she loved him, he had this hopeless feeling it was the end and now he would never see her again. He thought he must love her before she was lost to him. She said no, not to, but he couldn't believe it the same minute she was saying she loved him. He thought, Once I start she will come along with me. So then he did it. He loved her with his love. She should have known that. She should not have gone wild, beat his face with her fists, called him dirty names, run from him, his apologies, pleadings, sorrow. Oh Jesus, what did I do? He moaned; had got instead of a happy ending, a bad smell. If he could root out what he had done, smash and destroy it; but it was done, beyond him to undo. It was where he could never lay hands on it any more-in his stinking mind. His thoughts would forever suffocate him. He had failed once too often. He should somewhere have stopped and changed the way he was going, his luck, himself, stopped hating the world, got a decent education, a job, a nice girl. He had lived without will, betrayed every good intention. Had he ever confessed the holdup to Morris? Hadn't he stolen from the cash register till the minute he was canned? In a single terrible act in the park hadn't he murdered the last of his good hopes, the love he had so long waited for-his chance at a future? His goddamned life had pushed him wherever it went; he had led it nowhere. He was blown around in any breath that blew, owned nothing, not even experience to show for the years he had lived. If you had experience you knew at least when to start and where to quit; all he knew was how to mangle himself more. The self he had secretly considered valuable was, for all he could make of it, a dead rat. He stank. This time his shout frightened Tessie. Frank got up on the run but he had run everywhere. There was no place left to escape to. The room shrank. The bed was flying up at him. He felt trapped-sick, wanted to cry but couldn't. He planned to kill himself, at the same minute had a terrifying insight: that all the while he was acting like he wasn't, he was really a man of stern morality. Ida had awakened in the night and heard her daughter crying. Nat did something to her, she thought wildly, but was ashamed to go to Helen and beg her to say what. She guessed he had acted like a lout-it was no wonder Helen had stopped seeing him. All night she blamed herself for having urged her to go out with the law student. She fell into an unhappy sleep. It was growing light when Morris left the flat. Helen dragged herself out of bed and sat with reddened eyes in the bathroom, sewing on her coat collar. Once near the office she would give it to a tailor to fix so the tear couldn't be seen. With her new dress she could do nothing. Rolling it into a hopeless ball, she hid it under some things in her bottom bureau drawer. Monday she would buy one exactly like it and hang it in her closet. Undressing for a shower-her third in hours-she burst into tears at the sight of her body. Every man she drew to her dirtied her. How could she have encouraged him? She felt a violent self-hatred for trusting him, when from the very beginning she had sensed he was un-trustable. How could she have allowed herself to fall in love with anybody like him? She was filled with loathing at the fantasy she had created, of making him into what he couldn't beeducable, promising, kind and good, when he was no more than a bum. Where were her wits, her sense of elemental self-preservation? Under the shower she soaped herself heavily, crying as she washed. At seven, before her mother awakened, she dressed and left the house, too sickened to eat. She would gladly have forgotten her life, in sleep, but dared not stay home, dared not be questioned. When she returned from her half-day of work, if he was still there, she would order him to leave or would scream him out of the house. Coming home from the garage, Nick smelled gas in the hall. He inspected the radiators in his flat, saw they were both lit, then knocked on Frank's door. After a minute the door opened a crack. "Do you smell anything?" Nick said, staring at the eye in the crack. "Mind your goddamned business." "Are you nuts? I smell gas in the house, it's dangerous." "Gas?" Frank flung open the door. He was in pajamas, haggard. "What's the matter, you sick?" "Where do you smell the gas?" "Don't tell me you can't smell it." "I got a bad cold," Frank said hoarsely. "Maybe it's comin' from the cellar," said Nick. They ran down a flight and then the odor hit Frank, an acrid stench thick enough to wade through. "It's coming from this floor," Nick said. Frank pounded on the door. "Helen, there's gas here, let me in. Helen," he cried. "Shove it," said Nick. Frank pushed his shoulder against the door. It was unlocked and he fell in. Nick quickly opened the kitchen window while Frank, in his bare feet, roamed through the house. Helen was not there but he found Morris in bed. The clerk, coughing, dragged the grocer out of bed and carrying him to the living room, laid him on the floor. Nick closed the stopcock of the bedroom radiator and threw open every window. Frank got down on his knees, bent over Morris, clamped his hands to his sides and pumped. Tessie ran in in fright, and Nick
shouted to her to call Ida. Ida came stumbling up the stairs, moaning, "Oh, my God, oh, my God." Seeing Morris lying on the floor, his underwear soaked, his face the color of a cooked beet, flecks of foam in the corners of his mouth, she let out a piercing shriek. Helen, coming dully into the hall, heard her mother's cry. She smelled the gas and ran in terror up the stairs, expecting death. When she saw Frank in his pajamas bent over her father's back, her throat thickened in disgust. She screamed in fear and hatred. Frank couldn't look at her, frightened to. "His eyes just moved," Nick said. Morris awoke with a massive ache in his chest. His head felt like corroded metal, his mouth horribly dry, his stomach crawling with pain. He was ashamed to find himself stretched out in his long underwear on the floor. "Morris," cried Ida. Frank got up, embarrassed at his bare feet and pajamas. "Papa, Papa." Helen was on her knees. "Why did you do it for?" Ida yelled in the grocer's ear. "What happened?" he gasped. "Why did you do it for?" she wept. "Are you crazy?" he muttered. "I forgot to light the gas. A mistake." Helen broke into sobbing, her lips twisted. Frank had to turn his head. "The only thing that saved him was he got some air," Nick said. "You're lucky this flat ain't windproof, Morris." Tessie shivered. "It's cold. Cover him, he's sweating." "Put him in bed," Ida said. Frank and Nick lifted the grocer and carried him in to his bed. Ida and Helen covered him with blankets and quilt. "Thanks," Morris said to them. He stared at Frank. Frank looked at the floor. "Shut the windows," Tessie said. "The smell is gone." "Wait a little longer," said Frank. He glanced at Helen but her back was to him. She was still crying. "Why did he do it?" Ida moaned. Morris gazed long at her, then shut his eyes. "Leave him rest," Nick advised. "Don't light any matches for another hour,' Frank told Ida. Tessie closed all but one window and they left. Ida and Helen remained with Morris in the bedroom. Frank lingered in Helen's room but nothing welcomed him there. Later he dressed and went down to the store. Business was brisk. Ida came down, and though he begged her not to, shut the store. That afternoon Morris developed a fever and the doctor said he had to go to the hospital. An ambulance came and took the grocer away, his wife and daughter riding with him. From his window upstairs, Frank watched them go. Sunday morning the store was still shut tight. Though he feared to, Frank considered knocking on Ida's door and asking for the key. But Helen might open the door, and since he would not know what to say to her over the doorsill, he went instead down the cellar, and mounting the dumb-waiter, wriggled through the little window in the air shaft, into the store toilet. Once in the back, the clerk shaved and had his coffee. He thought he would stay in the store till somebody told him to scram; and even if they did, he would try in some way to stay longer. That was his only hope left, if there was any. Turning the front door lock, he carried in the milk and rolls and was ready for business. The register was empty, so he borrowed five dollars in change from Sam Pearl, saying he would pay it back from what he took in. Sam wanted to know how Morris was and Frank said he didn't know. Shortly after half past eight, the clerk was standing at the front window when Ida and her daughter left the house. Helen looked like last year's flower. Observing her, he felt a pang of loss, shame, regret. He felt an unbearable deprivation -that yesterday he had almost had some wonderful thing but today it was gone, all but the misery of remembering it was. Whenever he thought of what he had almost had it made him frantic. He felt like rushing outside, drawing her into a doorway, and declaring the stupendous value of his love for her. But he did nothing. He didn't exactly hide but he didn't show himself, and they soon went away to the subway. Later he thought he would also go and see Morris in the hospital, as soon as he knew which one he was in-after they got home; but they didn't return till midnight. The store was closed and he saw them from his room, two dark figures getting out of a cab. Monday, the day the Norwegians opened their store, Ida came down at seven A. M. to paste a piece of paper on the door saying Morris Bober was sick and the grocery would be closed till Tuesday or Wednesday. To her amazement, Frank Alpine was standing, in his apron, behind the counter. She entered in anger. Frank was miserably nervous that Morris or Helen, either or both, had told her all the wrong he had done them, because if they had, he was finished. "How did you get in here?" Ida asked wrathfully. He said through the air shaft window. "Thinking of your trouble, I didn't want to bother you about the key, Mrs." She vigorously forbade him ever to come in that way again. Her face was deeply lined, her eyes weary, mouth bitter, but he could tell that for some miraculous reason she didn't know what he had done. Frank pulled a handful of dollar bills out of his pants pocket and a little bag of change, laying it all on the counter. "I took in forty-one bucks yesterday." "You were here yesterday?" "I got in how I explained you. There was a nice rush around four till about six. We are all out of potato salad." Her eyes grew tears. He asked how Morris felt. She touched her wet lids with a handkerchief. "Morris has pneumonia." "Ah, too bad. Give him my sorrow if you can. How's he coming along out of it?" "He's a very sick man, he has weak lungs." "I think I'll go to see him in the hospital." "Not now," Ida said. "When he's better. How long do you think he'll be there?" "I don't know. The doctor will telephone today." "Look, Mrs," Frank said. "Why don't you stop worrying about the store while Morris is sick and let me take care of it? You know I make no demands." "My husband told you to go out from the store." He furtively studied her face but there was no sign of accusation. "I won't stay very long," he answered. "You don't have to worry about that. I'll stay here till Morris gets better. You'll need every cent for the hospital bills. I don't ask a thing for myself." "Did Morris tell you why you must leave?" His heart galloped. Did she or didn't she know? If yes, he would say it was a mistake-deny he had touched a red cent in the register. Wasn't the proof of that in the pile of dough that lay right in front of her eyes on the counter? But he answered, "Sure, he didn't want me to hang around Helen anymore." "Yes, she is a Jewish girl. You should look for somebody else. But he also found out that Schmitz was sick since December and kept closed his store in the mornings, also earlier in the night. This was what improved our income, not you." She then told Frank that the German had sold out and two Norwegians were opening up today. Frank flushed. "I knew that Schmitz was sick and kept his store closed sometimes, but that isn't what made your business get better. What did that was how hard I worked building up the trade. And I bet I can keep this place in the same shape it is, even with two Norwegians around the corner or three Greeks. What's more, I bet I can raise the take-in higher." Though she was half-inclined to believe him, she couldn't. "Wait, you'll see how smart you are." "Then let me have a chance to show you. Don't pay me anything, the room and meals are enough." "What," she asked in desperation, "do you want from us?" "Just to help out. I have my debt to Morris." "You have no debt. He has a debt to you that you saved him from the gas." "Nick smelled it first. Anyway I feel I have a debt to him for all the things he has done for me. That's my nature, when I'm thankful, I'm thankful." "Please don't bother Helen. She is not for you." "I won't." She let him stay. If you were so poor where was your choice? Taast and Pederson opened up with a horseshoe of spring flowers in their window. Their pink handbills brought them steady business and Frank had plenty of time on his hands. During the day only a few of the regulars came into the grocery. At night, after the Norwegians had closed, the grocery had a spurt of activity, but when Frank pulled the strings of the window lights around eleven, he had only fifteen dollars in the register. He didn't worry too much. Monday was a slow day anyway, and besides, people were entitled to grab off a few specials while they could get them. He figured nobody could tell what difference the Norwegians would make to the business until a couple of weeks had gone by, when the neighborhood was used to them and things settled back to normal. Nobody was going to give specials away that cheap every day. A store wasn't a charity, and when they stopped giving something for nothing, he would match them in service and also prices and get his customers back. Tuesday was slow, also as usual. Wednesday picked up a little, but Thursday was slow again. Friday was better. Saturday was the best day of the week, although not so good as Saturdays lately. At the end of the week the grocery was close to a hundred short of its recent weekly average. Expecting something like this, Frank had closed up for a half hour on Thursday and taken the trolley to the bank. He withdrew twenty-five dollars from his savings account and put the money into the register, five on Thursday, ten on Friday and ten on Saturday, so that when Ida wrote the figures down in her book each night she wouldn't feel too bad. Seventy-five less for the week wasn't as bad as a hundred. Morris, better after ten days in the hospital, was brought home in a cab by Ida and Helen and laid to bed to convalesce. Frank, gripping his courage, thought of going up to see him and this time starting out right, right off. He thought of bringing him some fresh baked goods to eat, maybe a piece of cheese cake that he knew the grocer liked, or some apple strudel; but the clerk was afraid it was still too soon and Morris might ask him where he had got the money to buy the cake. He might yell, "You thief, you, the only reason you stay here still is because I am sick upstairs." Yet if Morris felt this way he would already have told Ida what Frank had done. The clerk now was sure he hadn't mentioned it, because she wouldn't have waited this long to pitch him out on his ear. He thought a lot about the way Morris kept things to himself. It was a way a person had if he figured he could be wrong about how he sized up a situation. It could be that he might take a different view of Frank in time. The clerk tried to invent reasons why it might be worth the grocer's while, after he got on his feet again, to keep him on in the grocery. Frank felt he would promise anything to stay there. "Don't worry that I ever will steal from you or anybody else any more, Morris. If I do, I hope I drop dead on the spot." He hoped that this promise, and the favor he was doing him by keeping the store open, would convince Morris of his sincerity. Yet he thought he would wait a while longer before going up to see him. Helen hadn't said anything to anybody about him either and it wasn't hard to understand why. The wrong he had done her was never out of his mind. He hadn't intended wrong but he had done it; now he intended right. He would do anything she wanted, and if she wanted nothing he would do something, what he should do; and he would do it all on his own will, nobody pushing him but himself. He would do it with discipline and with love. All this time he had snatched only glimpses of her, though his heart was heavy with all he hoped to say. He saw her through the plate glass window-she on the undersea side. Through the green glass she looked drowned, yet never, God help him, lovelier. He felt a tender pity for her, mixed with shame for having made her pitiable. Once, as she came home from work, her eyes happened to look into his and showed disgust. Now I am finished, he thought, she will come in here and tell me to go die some place; but when she looked away she was never there. He was agonized to be so completely apart from her, left apologizing to her shadow, to the floral fragrance she left in the air. To himself he confessed his deed, but not to her. That was the curse of it, to have it to make but who would listen? At times he felt like crying but it made him feel too much like a kid to cry. He didn't like to, did it badly. Once he met her in the hall. She was gone before he could move his lips. He felt for her a rush of love. He felt, after she had left, that hopelessness was his punishment. He had expected that punishment to be drastic, swift; instead it came slowly-it never came, yet was there. There was no approach to her. What had happened had put her in another world, no way in. Early one morning, he stood in the hall till she came down the stairs. "Helen," he said, snatching off the cloth cap he now wore in the store, "my heart is sorrowful. I want to apologize." Her lips quivered. "Don't speak to me," she said, in a voice choked with contempt. "I don't want your apologies. I don't want to see you, and I don't want to know you. As soon as my father is better, please leave. You've helped him and my mother and I thank you for that, but you're no help to me. You make me sick." The door banged behind her. That night he dreamed he was standing in the snow outside her window. His feet were bare yet not cold. He had waited a long time in the falling snow, and some of it lay on his head and had all but frozen his face; but he waited longer until, moved by pity, she opened the window and flung something out. It floated down; he thought it was a piece of paper with writing on it but saw that it was a white flower, surprising to see in wintertime. Frank caught it in his hand. As she had tossed the flower out through the partly opened window he had glimpsed her fingers only, yet he saw the light of her room and even felt the warmth of it. Then when he looked again the window was shut tight, sealed with ice. Even as he dreamed, he knew it had never been open. There was no such window. He gazed down at his hand for the flower and before he could see it wasn't there, felt himself wake. The next day he waited for her at the foot of the stairs, bareheaded in the light that fell on his head from the lamp. She came down, her frozen face averted. "Helen, nothing can kill the love I feel for you." "In your mouth it's a dirty word." "If a guy did wrong, must he suffer forever?" "I personally don't care what happens to you." Whenever he waited at the stairs, she passed without a word, as if he didn't exist. He didn't. If the store blows away some dark night I might as well be dead, Frank thought. He tried every way to hang on. Business was terrible. He wasn't sure how long the grocery could last or how long the grocer and his wife would let him try to keep it alive. If the store collapsed everything would be gone. But if he kept it going there was always the