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[Assistant] Oh good, precious, you're still here, said Mother, stepping out of the kitchen and coming towards them. I have a little free time now, if, oh. She said, noticing Bruno standing there. Bruno, what are you doing here? I was going into the living room to read my book, said Bruno. Or I was trying to, at least. Well, run along into the kitchen for the moment, she said. I need a private word with Lieutenant Cotler.


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[Assistant] And they stepped into the living room together as Lieutenant Cotler closed the doors in Bruno's face. Seething with anger.


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[Assistant] Bruno went into the kitchen and got the biggest surprise of his life. There, sitting at the table, a long way from the other side of the fence, was Shmuel.


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[Assistant] And his terrified face broke into a broad smile when he saw his friend standing there.


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[Assistant] What are you doing here?" repeated Bruno, for although he still didn't quite understand what took place on the other side of the fence, there was something about the people from there that made him think they shouldn't be here in his house. He brought me, said Shmuel. He? asked Bruno. You don't mean Lieutenant Cotler? Yes, he said there was a job for me to do here.


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[Assistant] And when Bruno looked down, he saw 64 small glasses, the ones mother used when she was having one of her medicinal sherrys, sitting on the kitchen table, and beside them, a bowl of warm soapy water, and lots of paper napkins.


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[Assistant] He held his hand out, and Bruno couldn't help but notice that it was like the hand of the pretend skeleton that Herlist had brought with him one day, when they were studying human anatomy. I'd never noticed before, he said in a disbelieving voice almost to himself. Never noticed what, Ashmole?


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[Assistant] In reply, Bruno held his own hand out so that the tips of their middle fingers were almost touching.


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[Assistant] How did he get like that? He asked. I don't know, said Schmool. It used to look more like yours, but I didn't notice it changing. Everyone on my side of the fence looks like this now. Bruno frowned.


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[Assistant] He thought about the people in their striped pajamas and wondered what was going on at Outwith and whether it wasn't a very bad idea if it made people look so unhealthy. None of it made any sense to him.


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[Assistant] Not wanting to look at Shmoor's hand any longer, Bruno turned round and opened the refrigerator, rooting about inside it for something to eat.


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[Assistant] There was half a stuffed chicken left over from lunchtime and Bruno's eyes sparkled in delight.


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[Assistant] For there were very few things in life that he enjoyed more than cold chicken with sage and onion stuffing.


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[Assistant] I'm very glad you're here. He said speaking with his mouth full. If only you didn't have to polish the glasses. I could show you my room. He told me not to move from this seat or there'd be trouble.


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[Assistant] I wouldn't mind him said Bruno, trying to sound braver than he really was.


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[Assistant] After a moment Bruno realised what he was looking at and immediately felt guilty. I'm sorry Schmuel, he said quickly, I should have given you some chicken too, are you hungry? That's a question you never have to ask me, said Schmuel, who although he had never met Gretel in his life, knew something about sarcasm too.


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[Assistant] Wait there, I'll cut some off for you, said Bruno, opening the fridge and cutting another three healthy slices. No.


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[Assistant] If he comes back, said Schmool, shaking his head quickly and looking back and forth towards the door. If who comes back? You don't mean Lieutenant Cotler?


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[Assistant] He's not going to mind, said Bruno who was confused by how anxious Shmuel seemed. It's only food. I can't.


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[Assistant] I should have eaten them when you offered them. Now it's too late. If I take them, he'll come in and- SHMOOL! HERE! said Bruno, stepping forward and putting the slices in his friend's hand. Just eat them! There's lots left for our tea. You don't have to worry about that. The boy stared at the food in his hand for a moment.


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[Assistant] Lieutenant Kotler reappeared in the kitchen and stopped when he saw the two boys talking.


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[Assistant] Bruno stared at him, feeling the atmosphere grow heavy, sensing Schmuel's shoulders sinking down as he reached for another glass and began polishing.


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[Assistant] Ignoring Bruno, left-handing Kotler marched over the schmool and clattered him.


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[Assistant] He looked up at Lieutenant Cotler, who frowned, leaning forward slightly and tilting his head as he examined the boy's face.


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[Assistant] He was here when I came in, said Bruno. He was cleaning glasses.


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[Assistant] Merely staring at the floor and looking as if he was trying to convince his soul not to live inside his tiny body anymore, but to slip away and sail to the door and rise up into the sky, gliding through the clouds until it was very far away.


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[Assistant] Polishing all these glasses, said Lieutenant Cotler in a very quiet voice now, so quiet that Bruno almost couldn't hear him.


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[Assistant] Come on, little man, said Lieutenant Cotler, coming towards Bruno now, and putting an unfriendly arm around his shoulder.


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[Assistant] You go to the living room and read your book and leave this little... to finish his work.


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[Assistant] He wondered how a boy who thought he was a good person really could act in such a cowardly way towards a friend.


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[Assistant] He sat in the living room for several hours but couldn't concentrate on his book.


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[Assistant] Every afternoon that followed, Bruno returned to the place in the fence where they met, but Schmuel was never there.


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[Assistant] After almost a week he was convinced that what he had done was so terrible


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[Assistant] Shmuel, he said, running towards him and sitting down, almost crying with relief and regret. I'm so sorry, Shmuel. I don't know why I did it. Say you'll forgive me. It's all right, said Shmuel, looking up at him now. There was a lot of bruising on his face, and Bruno grimaced, and for a moment he forgot about his apology.


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[Assistant] And then didn't wait for an answer. Was it your bicycle? Because that happened to me back in Berlin a couple of years ago. I fell off when I was going too fast and was black and blue for weeks. Does it hurt? I don't feel it anymore, said Shmoor. It looks like it hurts.


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[Assistant] And when he said that, Schmuel smiled and nodded, and Bruno knew that he was forgiven, and then Schmuel did something that he had never done before.


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[Assistant] He lifted the bottom of the fence up like he did whenever Bruno brought him food. But this time he reached his hand out and held it there, waiting until Bruno did the same, and then the two boys shook hands and smiled at each other.


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[Assistant] The Adirondacks with Sally? Wrong. I'll never attempt that again. I was discouraged last year. Can't you guess anything else? You're not very inventive. I'll tell you, Daddy.


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[Assistant] If you promise not to make a lot of objections.


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[Assistant] I warn your secretary ahead of time that my mind is made up. I am going to spend summer at the seaside with a Mrs. Charles Patterson.


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[Assistant] I'm to give lessons in English and Latin to the younger daughter too. And I shall have a little time to myself, and I shall be earning fifty dollars a month. Doesn't that impress you as a perfectly exorbitant amount? She offered it. I should have blushed to ask more than twenty-five.


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[Assistant] Princeton commencement, and our examinations exactly coincide, which is an awful glow. Sally and I did so want to get away in time for it, but of course, that is utterly impossible.


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[Assistant] I haven't an idea what you do in the summer or how you amuse yourself. I can't visualize your surroundings. Do you play golf? Or hunt? Or ride horseback? Or just sit in the sun and meditate? Anyway, whatever it is, have a good time. And don't forget Judy.


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[Assistant] It's the sweetest book you ever saw. It is, truly. I think of nothing else.


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[Assistant] Then I write and write and write till suddenly I'm so tired that I'm limp all over. Then I go out with Colin, the new sheepdog.


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[Assistant] And romp through the fields and get a fresh supply of ideas for the next day.


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[Assistant] Maybe later on I'll get cold and critical and sniffy. No, I'm sure I won't. This time I've written a real book. Just wait till you see it.


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[Assistant] It's a deteriorating process, evidently.


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[Assistant] There isn't much of any farm news. The animals are all in the best of health. The pigs are unusually fat.


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[Assistant] The cows seem contented and the hens are laying well. Are you interested in poultry? If so, let me recommend that invaluable little work, 200 eggs per hen per year.


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[Assistant] Poor Jimmy is having a hard time peddling his bonds. The Farmers National at the corners wouldn't have anything to do with them.


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[Assistant] But to be the manager of a flourishing overall factory is a very desirable position, don't you think? Just now he turns up his nose at overalls, but he'll come to them.


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[Assistant] I hope you appreciate the fact that this is a long letter from a person with writer's cramp.


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[Assistant] But I still love you, Daddy dear, and I'm very happy.


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[Assistant] With beautiful scenery all about, and lots to eat, and a comfortable four-post bed, and a ream of blank paper and a pint of ink. What more does one want in the world? Yours as always, Judy. P.S. The postman arrives with some more news. We are to expect Master Gervie on Friday next to spend a week. That's a very pleasant prospect.


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[Assistant] Only I'm afraid my poor book will suffer. Master Gervey is very demanding.


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[Assistant] After he got punched, Sal started playing basketball in the alley behind our building.


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[Assistant] Our living room windows face that way. And I heard him dribbling his ball back there from about 3.30 to 5 every day.


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[Assistant] There was a rusted out metal hoop with no net that made a clanging sound whenever he hit it.


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[Assistant] Sal and Luis's apartment is mostly the same as ours.


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[Assistant] We have the same rectangular bedrooms. The same pull-chain light in the hallway.


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[Assistant] The same weird shaped kitchen with the same unpredictable ovens. There's right below ours. There are differences.


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[Assistant] Their kitchen floor is yellow and orange linoleum squares instead of the white with gold flakes that we have. And Sal's bed is up against a different wall in the bedroom.


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[Assistant] But we have the same bathroom floor, these white hexagonal tiles.


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[Assistant] If I look at them long enough, I can see all kinds of patterns in those hexagons. Lines, arrows, even flowers. They kind of shift into these different pictures.


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[Assistant] It's the sort of thing a person would never try to explain to anyone else.


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[Assistant] But once, when we were little, I told Sal about it, and then we went into his bathroom to stare at the floor together. Sal and Miranda. Miranda and Sal.


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[Assistant] Sal played basketball more and more and talked to me less and less.


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[Assistant] Then, the last time I asked, he told me while standing in our lobby and looking at his feet.


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[Assistant] I was lucky, I guess, that this was the same week Julia decided to punish Anne-Marie for something.


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[Assistant] The girls at school had been hurting each other's feelings for years before Sal left me and I was forced to really notice them.


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[Assistant] I had seen which ones tortured Alice Evans, who, even though we started sixth grade, still waited too long to pee and never wanted to say out loud that she had to go. These girls would wait until Alice was pretty far gone.


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[Assistant] Jiggling one foot and then the other. And then they would start asking her questions.


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[Assistant] Alice, they'd say, did you do today's page in the math workbook yet? Where it says multiply to check your answer. How did you do that?


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[Assistant] And then she'd desperately hop around while showing them.


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[Assistant] I knew the way the girls all paired up, and Julia and Anne-Marie had been paired up for a long time. Julia I hated. Anne-Marie I had never thought about much.


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[Assistant] My first memory of Julia is from the second grade, when we made self-portraits and art.


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[Assistant] She complained there was no cafe au lait colored construction paper for her skin, or 60% cacao chocolate color for her eyes.


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[Assistant] I remember staring at her while these words came out of her mouth and thinking, Your skin is light brown. Your eyes are dark brown. Why don't you just use brown, you idiot?


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[Assistant] Jay Stringer didn't complain about the paper, and neither did any of the other ten kids using brown.


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[Assistant] I didn't complain about the stupid hot pink color I'd been given. Did my skin look hot pink to her?


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[Assistant] But I soon found out that Julia wasn't like the rest of us. She took trips all over the world with her parents.


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[Assistant] She would disappear from school and show up two weeks later with satin ribbons worked into her braids. Or with a new green velvet scoop neck dress. Or wearing three gold rings on one finger.


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[Assistant] She learned about 60% cacao chocolate, she said, in Switzerland, where her parents had bought her a lot of it, along with a little silver watch she was always shoving in people's faces.


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[Assistant] I still don't know what Anne-Marie did wrong, but during silent reading period that Tuesday, Julia told her that, as punishment, she wasn't going to have lunch with Anne-Marie for the remainder of the week.


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[Assistant] Julia was big on announcing things in a loud voice so that everyone could hear.


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[Assistant] So on Wednesday, I asked Anne-Marie if she wanted to go out to lunch with me, and she said yes.


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[Assistant] In sixth grade, kids with any money, even just a little, go out for lunch unless something is going on and they won't let us.


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[Assistant] Like the first week of school, when there was a man running down Broadway stark naked, and we all had to eat in the school cafeteria while the police tried to catch him.


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[Assistant] Mostly kids go to the pizza place. Or to McDonald's. Or, every once in a while, to the sandwich place. Which has a real name, but which we called Jimmy's. Because there was never anyone working there except one guy called Jimmy.


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[Assistant] Pizza is the best deal. A dollar fifty will buy two slices, a can of soda, and a cherry blow pop from the candy bucket next to the register.


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[Assistant] That first day together, Anne-Marie and I got lucky and found two stools next to each other at the counter under the flag of Italy.


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[Assistant] I found it slightly gross to eat pizza with Anne-Marie because she peeled the cheese off her slice like a scab and ate it, leaving everything else on her plate.


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[Assistant] But she laughed at my jokes, which I mostly stole from Richard, who is bad at telling jokes but knows a lot of them. And she invited me over to her house after school, which more than made up for it.


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[Assistant] I would be spared an afternoon of listening to Sal's basketball.


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[Assistant] And the laughing man might be asleep under his mailbox by the time I walked home.


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[Assistant] The long hot summer was coming to an end and I was feeling ill and depressed.


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[Assistant] I was also short of money, so I had little chance of escaping from the dusty London streets, and would have to spend the autumn economically between my rooms in the city and my mother's house.


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[Assistant] My mother and my sister Sarah lived in a cottage in Hampstead in the northern suburbs, and I usually went to see them twice a week.


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[Assistant] This evening I arrived at the gate of the cottage just as it was starting to get dark.


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[Assistant] I had hardly rung the bell before the door was opened violently.


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[Assistant] And my Italian friend, Professor Pesca, rushed out to greet me.


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[Assistant] Pascha was a language teacher who had left Italy for political reasons and made his home in England.


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[Assistant] He was a strange, excitable little man who was always trying to be more English than the English.


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[Assistant] And it never for a moment occurred to me that he did not know how to swim.


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[Assistant] Fortunately when he suddenly sank to the bottom I was able to dive down and save him.


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[Assistant] From that day on, he was my grateful friend, and that evening he showed his gratitude to me in a way that changed my whole life.


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[Assistant] Now my good friends, he said, when we were all in my mother's sitting-room, I have some wonderful news for you.


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[Assistant] I have been asked by my employer to recommend a drawing teacher for a post with a rich family in the North of England. And who do you think I have recommended? The best drawing teacher in the world, Mr. Walter Hartright.


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[Assistant] The next morning I wake up early, cut myself a big piece of Richard's birthday cake for breakfast, and start writing the letter.


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[Assistant] I'm writing it in the journal with the clouds on the cover that mom gave me for Christmas.


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[Assistant] I'm at the top of the second page when it dawns on me that this letter I'm writing is kind of a horrible burden. And I start feeling really sorry for Marcus. It's not a letter that most people would want to get.


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[Assistant] I know it will be a big relief to know that he didn't accidentally cause the laughing man's death. Your death, after all. That's a good thing.


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[Assistant] But at the same time, he'll understand that he saw his own death. Which I have to think is a very hard thing.


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[Assistant] And he'll also realize that he's going to discover the secret of traveling through time.


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[Assistant] Which is a thing so incredible that most people would consider it a miracle.


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[Assistant] Of course, he's the total hero of the story. But there isn't a happy ending for him.


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[Assistant] I start at the very beginning, when you first showed up in the fall. And I'm thinking about everything you did. The spot on the corner where you stood. Your kicking practice. The way you muttered to yourself, book, bag, pocket, shoe. There was a reason for all of it. Except for one thing.


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[Assistant] I don't understand why you used to lie on the ground with your head under the mailbox. Why?


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[Assistant] It must have been annoying the way kids were always banging on it. I raised my head slowly from the journal.


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[Assistant] No one is on the corner, which is good, because I probably look pretty strange lying face up on the sidewalk and inching myself under the mailbox. It isn't as easy as I thought it would be.


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[Assistant] The underside of a mailbox is really ugly. A bunch of paint splattered metal joints and bolts. I see the square of paper right away.


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[Assistant] It's small, about the same size as the notes you left me, and it's wedged under a metal seam so that it stays flat against the bottom of the box.


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[Assistant] I realize that it's held there with a key. Our old key. The one we hid in the fire hose. I adjust my head so that I'm looking straight up at the paper. The way you must have.


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[Assistant] A woman's face stares down at me, drawn in pencil. She's old like you were.


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[Assistant] Her white hair is pulled back behind her head. Her dark eyes are looking to the side a little. And she has this playful smile. It's really kind of a beautiful drawing. People can get old all different ways, I guess. Some people change a lot, like you.


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[Assistant] I could have stared at your face for a week and I never would have guessed that you were Marcus.


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[Assistant] You were so much thinner than he is. And the bones above your eyes stuck out. Maybe that was because of what you put yourself through. All the diamond jumping.


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[Assistant] But the old woman's face in the drawing still holds some youth. It's the dark eyes maybe, or the smile.


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[Assistant] It's hard to say exactly how we recognize other people.


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[Assistant] But I know without a shadow of a doubt that this woman is Julia. Marcus and Julia.


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[Assistant] I think about how she whipped her diamond ring off and used it to explain the way she sees time. And the way Marcus stared at her afterward.


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[Assistant] Maybe he was thinking that he wasn't alone in the world after all.


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[Assistant] I get this rush of happiness, this flood of relief. Marcus won't be alone. He'll have a partner. He'll have Julia.


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[Assistant] I'm wiggling out from under the mailbox. Some guy with a big black dog is looking at me funny.


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[Assistant] And I suddenly remember what you said to me. Practically on this exact spot. The afternoon I gave you my soggy cheese sandwich.


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[Assistant] I leave the drawing there, wedged underneath the mailbox with our key. It doesn't seem right to take it.


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[Assistant] I figure it will be there for a long time and then, someday, it'll just blow away.


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[Assistant] Six long, lonely months passed, and I had little to do but think of absent friends.


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[Assistant] I received a cheerful letter from Walter Hartright after he arrived in Honduras.


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[Assistant] And just before he set off with the expedition into the forest. Since then, I have heard nothing. There was no news of Anne Catherick or Mrs. Clements.


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[Assistant] Poor Mr. Gilmore fell very ill and had to give up work, but his business is continued by his partner, Mr. Curl.


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[Assistant] Mrs. Vasey has moved to London to live with her sister, and Mr. Fairley, I believe, is secretly delighted to have his house free of women. Most of all, of course, I thought about Laura.


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[Assistant] Many letters came from her, but she said very little in them. She told me she was well, but hardly mentioned her husband, and wrote not a word about Count Fosco whom they had met in Austria, not Italy. I understood from her silence that she did not like him.


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[Assistant] All she said was that her Aunt Eleanor, Madame Fosco, was quieter and more sensible than she had used to be.


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[Assistant] I read this very thankfully and told the messenger to say that I understood the letter.


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[Assistant] As I spoke these words, Count Fosco came round the corner and suddenly appeared in front of me. Completely taken by surprise, I stared at him speechlessly. The messenger drove away in his cab, and the Count took my arm to walk home with me.


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[Assistant] He talked pleasantly of this and that, and asked no questions about letters or messengers, so I assumed he had found out everything. He must have read my letter, returned it to the post-bag, and now knew that I had received an answer.


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[Assistant] There was no point in trying to deceive him, so I said nothing, and just tried to seem quite cool and calm. Back at the house we found that Sir Percival had returned.


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[Assistant] In an even worse mood than before, it seemed.


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[Assistant] When I told him Laura was out looking for her bracelet, he growled, Bracelet or no bracelet? I shall expect to see her in the library in half an hour.


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[Assistant] I turned to go into the house, but behind me heard the Count saying to Supercible,


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[Assistant] May I have five minutes talk with you here on the grass?


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[Assistant] They walked off together and I went inside to the sitting room to think over all that had happened.


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[Assistant] Before long, however, the door opened softly and the Count looked in. Good news, Miss Halcombe, he said.


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[Assistant] The business of the signature is put off for the moment. I'm sure you are relieved.


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[Assistant] He went out before I had recovered from my amazement.


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[Assistant] There could be no doubt that this change was due to his influence.


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[Assistant] His discovery of my writing to London and receiving an answer had caused him to interfere. Now there was even more to think about but...


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[Assistant] Exhausted by worry and the heat of the day,


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[Assistant] My eyes closed and I fell into a little sleep. I woke to find Laura's hand on my shoulder.


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[Assistant] I know now exactly who was to blame.


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[Assistant] But it took quite a time to put all the different pieces of information together.


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[Assistant] When I first began to be aware of my surroundings again during my recovery, I knew nothing, of course, about the letters. I knew only that I was not in my usual bedroom, and there was a foreign lady looking after me. I had no idea who she was, and she would not answer any of my questions.


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[Assistant] So I was very relieved a few days later when the familiar face of Mrs. Mitchelson appeared.


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[Assistant] Oh, Mrs. Mitchelson, I said. I'm so glad to see you. Please tell me what's been happening.


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[Assistant] You've had typhus fever, Miss Howcomb. You've been very ill. But you're getting stronger now, I'm happy to say. Typhus? No wonder I feel so weak. And my sister, Lady Glide? I do hope she didn't catch the infection? No, no, she didn't.


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[Assistant] Mrs. Mitchelson would not look me in the face, and I began to feel worried. Was she afraid to tell me something?


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[Assistant] Is my sister ill? Please, Mrs. Mitchelson, I must know. No, she's not ill, but...


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[Assistant] But she's not here. She went away yesterday to London and is going on to Limeridge today. I stared at her. Laura? Gone? I could not believe it. What did it mean? Had something terrible happened?


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[Assistant] I remembered the conversation I heard during the night on the veranda roof, and my heart filled with fear.


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[Assistant] Sir Percival left the house last night to go abroad, she said. The Count and Countess have gone to London, and the servants have all been dismissed, except for a cook and the gardener.


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[Assistant] The shock of this news was so great that I felt faint. Mrs. Mitchelson hurried to fetch me a glass of water.


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[Assistant] Try not to worry, you must rest now and try to sleep a little.


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[Assistant] Some people call the lake pretty, said Sir Percival, pointing to the view. I call it ugly.


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[Assistant] It looks just the place for a murder, doesn't it? What do you think, Fosco?


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[Assistant] My dear Percival, the Count protested, the water is too shallow to hide a body. Only a fool would murder someone here. A wise man would choose somewhere else.


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[Assistant] Wise men do not murder, said Laura, looking at him with dislike.


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[Assistant] I'm sure you cannot give me an example of a wise man who has been a criminal. My dear lady, said the Count, it is impossible to give an example


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[Assistant] Because a wise man's crime is never found out.


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[Assistant] As he spoke he was playing with his white mice in their little cage and suddenly noticed that one of them was missing.


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[Assistant] Percival, he said, come here, look at this in the sand, blood. Everyone seemed alarmed.


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[Assistant] So I had to explain about the wounded dog I had found. Whose dog was it? asked Sir Percival.


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[Assistant] The housekeeper said it was Mrs. Catherick's dog, I replied, remembering too late that the visit was meant to be kept secret.


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[Assistant] What the devil was Mrs. Catherick doing here?


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[Assistant] Count Fosco laid his hand on Sir Percival's arm. My dear Percival, gently, gently.


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[Assistant] To my great surprise, Sir Percival apologized to me, and Count Fosco then said, Why not question the housekeeper, Percival, since she seems to know all about it? Sir Percival took the point.


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[Assistant] And immediately left us to return to the house.


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[Assistant] And still belong to a secret political society. Let's call it the Brotherhood. I can't tell you its real name.


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[Assistant] But I took too many risks and did something which put other members in danger.


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[Assistant] There is a president in Italy and presidents abroad. Each of these has his secretary.


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[Assistant] The presidents and secretaries know the members, but members don't know each other until it is considered necessary.


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[Assistant] Every member of the Brotherhood is identified by a small round mark burnt into the skin high up on the inside of their left arm.


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[Assistant] He rolled up his sleeve and showed me his own mark.


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[Assistant] If anyone portrays the Brotherhood, he went on, he is a dead man.


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[Assistant] The members at that time were brought face to face with the President and were also brought face to face with me. You understand me?


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[Assistant] I see it in your face, but tell me nothing. I beg you, let me stay free of a responsibility which horrifies me.


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[Assistant] Near Oxford Street he stopped to read a sign announcing an opera.


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[Assistant] And then went into the opera ticket office which was nearby. I went over to read the sign.


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[Assistant] The opera was being performed that evening, and it seemed likely that the count would be in the audience. If I invite Pesca to the opera, I thought.


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[Assistant] So I bought two tickets myself, sent Pesca a note, and that evening called to take him with me to the opera.


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[Assistant] The music had already started when we went in and all the seats were filled. However, there was room to stand at the sides.


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[Assistant] The audience, including the count, rose to look about them.


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[Assistant] When the Count was looking in our direction, I nudged Pesca with my elbow. You see that tall, fat man? Do you know him? No, said Pesca. Is he famous? Why do you point him out?


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[Assistant] Because I have a reason for wanting to know more about him. He's an Italian and his name is Count Fosco. Do you know that name? Look.


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[Assistant] Stand on this step so that you can see him better.


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[Assistant] After my first happiness at meeting Laura, I felt there was a strangeness between us, and I realized she had changed.


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[Assistant] I was sure we would soon get back to normal, but she had lost her innocent openness. She was unwilling to talk about her married life.


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[Assistant] And I saw that there were no warm feelings between her husband and her. It wasn't long before she asked me about Walter.


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[Assistant] As for Sir Percival, his manners are sharper and less pleasant.


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[Assistant] On meeting me he simply said, Hello, Miss Halcombe, glad to see you again, and then walked past me. Little things seemed to annoy him a great deal, for example,


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[Assistant] The housekeeper told him a man had called to speak to him a week ago, but had left no name. Sir Percival demanded a description of the man, which poor Mrs. Mitchelson was unable to give.


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[Assistant] And Sir Percival stormed out of the room in great anger.


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[Assistant] Layla Jackson, who lives in the downtown projects and who might have AIDS, comes running up to me as I walk out our building's door to the bus stop. She is out of breath.


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[Assistant] I look at her and could imagine a boy watching her chest heave up and down like that.


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[Assistant] And suddenly get romantic feelings, it being so big and all, split like two kickballs bouncing.


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[Assistant] I turn my eyes to hers, which are crying. Layla Jackson's eyes are red. She has her baby TT in her arms, but it's cold out here and she doesn't have a blanket on him or nothing.


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[Assistant] I say to her, Layla honey, you're gonna freeze that baby to death.


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[Assistant] And I take my jacket off and put it over him, the tiny bundle.


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[Assistant] Layla Jackson says, Thanks Lori man, I got a favor to ask you, please don't tell me no, please man.


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[Assistant] Layla always makes her words into a worry sandwich.


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[Assistant] She says, man, I need me a new babysitter cause I've been took TT over to my mother's but now she don't want him with the others and now I can't do nothing till I get me a sitter.


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[Assistant] She says, that means I got to take this brat to introduction to humanities with me. Shit man, he's gonna cry and I won't pass the test on Spanish discoverers. Shit man.


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[Assistant] Then Layla Jackson thinks a minute and says, Okay Lori, I'll give tea to you at lunch in the cafeteria bed. And I'll be round your place round six for him, or maybe seven. Thanks man.


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[Assistant] Then she bends down and kisses TT on his forehead.


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[Assistant] And he glows with what I know is drinking up an oasis when you are in the desert for so long.


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[Assistant] Because she still has my jacket, and TT is waving the letter knife around like a flag.


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[Assistant] She says that her cousin Rakim was looking for me and to let me know he would be waiting for me round his way. Yes. I say to her, see you Leila, honey.


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[Assistant] Before, I used to not go to Jane Addams when I was supposed to.


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[Assistant] I got in the habit of looking for Rakim, Layla's cousin, underneath the Bruckner Expressway, where the Spanish women sometimes go to buy oranges and watermelons and apples cheap. He was what you would call a magnet, only I didn't know that then.


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[Assistant] I didn't understand the different flavors of the pie. I saw him one day and I had a feeling like I wanted him to sit on my lap and cradle me. That's when I had to leave school.


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[Assistant] Rakeem taught me how to be afraid of school and of people watching us. He said, don't go back. And I didn't.


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[Assistant] Part of me was saying that his ear was more delicious than math four. I didn't go to Jane Addams for six months.


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[Assistant] On the BX17 bus I see Tammy Ferguson and her twins and Joe Smalls and that white girl Laura.


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[Assistant] And one time when the B crew girls were going to beat her butt in front of the building, she broke down crying and told them that her real parents were black from the south.


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[Assistant] She told them she was really a negro and they all laughed and that story worked the opposite than we all thought.


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[Assistant] Laura became their friend, like the B crew girl's mascot. And now she's still their friend.


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[Assistant] People may laugh when she ain't around, but she's got her back covered.


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[Assistant] She's loyal and is trying to wear her thin flippy hair in cornrows, which in the old days would have made the B crew, both boys and girls, simply fall out. When Laura's around, the B crew girls love to laugh.


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[Assistant] She says it loud enough for all the grown up passengers to hear. They don't look at me. They keep their eyes on whatever their eyes are on. But I know their ears are on me.


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[Assistant] Tammy Ferguson always swears she would never help a white girl, but now she can't pass up this opportunity. So she says, you tight ass homo, go suck some faggot dick.


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[Assistant] Tammy's kids are taking turns making hand prints on the bus window.


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[Assistant] I keep moving. It's the way I learned. Keep moving.


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[Assistant] I go and sit next to Joe Smalls in the back of the bus, and he shows me the Math 3 homework he got his baby's mother Tareen to do for him.


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[Assistant] He claims she is smarter now than when she was in school at Jane Addams in the spring. He laughs. The bus keeps moving. I keep moving even though I am sitting still.


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[Assistant] I feel all of the ears on us, on me and Joe, and the story of Tareen staying up till 4am, on the multiplication of fractions, and on remembering that she had promised Joe some ass earlier.


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[Assistant] But seeing that he was sound asleep snoring anyway, she worked on ahead and got to the percent problems by the time the alarm went off. Ha ha, Joe laughs. I got my girl in deep check. Ha ha.


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[Assistant] Tammy Ferguson is busy slapping the twins to keep quiet and sit still. But I can feel Laura's eyes like they are a silent machine gun. Faggot, faggot, sucked dick, faggot.


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[Assistant] Now repeat that 100 times in 1 minute and that's how I am feeling.


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[Assistant] Not an afro, but silky hair covering me all over. Because I am so cold, because I am so alone.


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[Assistant] A mat of thick delicious hair that blankets me in warmth.


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[Assistant] And therefore safety and peace and solitude and ecstasy.


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[Assistant] She's only four and I am fourteen. We hold each other smiling. Keep moving.


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[Assistant] Then I am already around the corner from school while the bus pulls away with Laura still on it because she has fallen asleep in her seat and nobody has bothered to touch her.


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[Assistant] On the corner of Prospect Avenue and East 167th Street where the bus lets me out, I see Rakim waiting for me. I am not supposed to really know he's there for me, and he is not supposed to show it.


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[Assistant] He is opening a pixie stick candy and then he fixes his droopy pants so that they are hanging off the edge of his butt. I can see Christian Dior undies.


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[Assistant] When I come nearer, he throws the pixie stick on the ground next to the other garbage and gives me his hand just like any B-Crew boy would do when he saw his other crew member.


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[Assistant] Only we are not B crew members. We get run over by the B crew. He says, yo man, did you find Layla? I nod and listen to what he is really saying.


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[Assistant] Rakim says, do you know that I got into Math 3? Did you hear that shit? Ain't that some good shit?


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[Assistant] He smiles and hits me on the back and he lets his hand stay there. I say


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[Assistant] See what I told you before, Rakeem. You really got it in you to move on. You're doing alright, man. He grunts and looks at his sneakers.


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[Assistant] Last year the B-Crew boys tried to steal them from him, but Rakim screamed at them that he had aids from his cousin.


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[Assistant] And they ran away, rubbing their hands on the sides of the buildings on the Grand Concourse.


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[Assistant] Rakeem says, man, I don't have nothing in me except my brain that tells me, nigga, first thing, get your ass up in school. Make them know you can do it.


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[Assistant] I say, Rakim, you are a smart man. I wish I had your smart. I would be going places if I did.


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[Assistant] He says, and then Lori, I got to get people to like me and to stop seeing me. I just want them to think they like me. So I got to hide me for a while. Then you watch, Lori man, much people will be on my side.


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[Assistant] I say to him, Rakim, you got Layla and baby TT and all the teachers on your side and you got smart. You have it made.


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[Assistant] He answers me after he fixes his droopy pants again.


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[Assistant] So that they are hanging off exactly the middle of his ass. Man, they are whack. You know what I would like to do right now, Lori? You know what I would like?


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[Assistant] Shit, I ain't seen you since you went back to school. And since I went back. Hell, you know what I would like?


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[Assistant] But it ain't happening cause you think I'ma look at my cousin Layla and her bastard and love them and that will be enough. But it will never be enough. I think about sitting on his lap.


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[Assistant] I did it before, but then I let months go by because it was under the Bruckner Expressway and I believed it could only last a few minutes.


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[Assistant] It was not like the kind of love when I had the kids because I believed they would last forever.


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[Assistant] He walks backwards away, and when he gets to the corner, he starts running. No one else is on the street. He shouts, Rocky's pizza. I'mma be behind there, man. We got the school fooled. This is the master plan. I'mma be there, Lori. Be there.


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[Assistant] I want to tell Rakim that I have missed him and that I will not be there, but he is gone. The kids are enough. The words are important. They are all enough.


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[Assistant] The front of Jane Addams is gray-green with windows with gates over all of them. I am on the outside.


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[Assistant] And I am smiling at Mr. D'Angelo and feeling like this won't be a complete waste of a day.


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[Assistant] The sun has hit the windows of Jane Addams and there is even heat around our books. Mr. D'Angelo notices me but looks away.


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[Assistant] Brandy Bailey, who doesn't miss a thing, announces so that only us three will hear. Sometimes, when a man's been married long, he needs to experience a new kind of loving. Ain't that what you think, Lori?


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[Assistant] For that, she gets thrown out of the classroom and an extra day of in-school suspension. All ears are now on me and Mr. D'Angelo. I am beyond feeling, but I know he isn't.


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[Assistant] He starts out saying, class, what do we remember about the piston, the stem and the insects?


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[Assistant] Why couldn't anything ever happen? Why does every day start out one way hopeful, but then point to the fact that ain't nothing ever going to happen? The people here at school call me ugly for one.


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[Assistant] I know I got bug eyes, and I know I am not someone who lovely things ever happen to, but I ask you, doesn't the heart count? Love is a pie, and I am lucky enough to have almost every flavor in mine.


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[Assistant] Mr. D'Angelo turns away from my desk and announces a surprise quiz, and everybody groans, and it is a sea of general unhappiness, but no one is more than me.


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[Assistant] Knowing that nothing will ever happen the way I'd like it to. Not this flavor of the pie.


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[Assistant] And I am thinking, Mr. D'Angelo, do you know that I would give anything to be like you?


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[Assistant] What with all your smarts and words, and you know how to make the people here laugh, and they love you.


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[Assistant] Mrs. Cabrini pulls me aside and whispers, My dear Lori, when are you ever going to pass this city wide?


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[Assistant] You certainly have the brains, and I know that your intelligence will take you far, will open new worlds for you.


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[Assistant] Put your mind to your dreams, my dear boy, and you will achieve them.


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[Assistant] You are your own universe. You are your own shooting star.


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[Assistant] People round my way know me as Lori, and the name stays.


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[Assistant] Cousin Cece says the name fits, and she smacks her gum in my face whenever she mentions that.


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[Assistant] She also adds that if anyone ever wants to kick my ass, she'll just stand around and watch because a male with my name and who likes it just deserves to be watched when whipped.


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[Assistant] My real name is Lawrence Lincoln Jefferson Adams. It's the name on my school records.


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[Assistant] It's the name Ma says I got to put on my application to college when the time comes. She knows I've been failing these citywide tests.


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[Assistant] And that's why she wants to practice words with me every day.


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[Assistant] She laughs when I get them wrong, but she's afraid I won't learn them on my own.


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[Assistant] Ma says they have to be proper words with proper meanings from a dictionary. You got to say them right.


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[Assistant] This is important if you want to reach your destiny, Ma says. Like for instance the word library. All my life I've been saying that library.


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[Assistant] And even though I knew it was a place to read and do your studying, I still couldn't call it right. Do you see what I mean?


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[Assistant] I'm about doing things, you see, finally doing things right. Cousin Cece always says,


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[Assistant] What you learnin' all that shit for? Don't you know it takes more than looking up words to get into a college, even a damn community college? Practicing words like that. Is you a complete asshole?


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[Assistant] And her two kids, Byron and Elizabeth, come into the kitchen and ask me to teach them the words too. But Cece says it will hurt their eyes to be doing all that reading. And besides, they are only eight and nine.


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[Assistant] When she is not around, I give them words with up to 10 letters. Then they go back to TV with the other kids.


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[Assistant] When we have a good word sitting, me and Ma, she smoothes my face with her hands and calls me Lawrence, my fine boy.


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[Assistant] She says, you are on your way to good things. You just got to do things the proper way. We kiss each other. Her hands are like the maid in the movies. I know I am taken care of.


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[Assistant] I look at her four desks away and I remember the night when I went out for baby diapers and cereal and found her crying in front of a fire hydrant. I let her cry on my shoulder.


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[Assistant] I told her that her father was a sick man for sucking on her like that. The note says, please give me a chance.


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[Assistant] My mother's sister who wants me and the kids to call her by both names can't get out of her past.


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[Assistant] Sometimes I try on her clothes when I'm with the kids and we're playing dress up. My favorite dress is her blue organza without the back.


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[Assistant] I seen a steensmith wear this during the daytime and I fell in love with it.


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[Assistant] I also admired her for wearing a dress with the back out in the day, but it was only a ten second admiration.


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[Assistant] Because then she opens her mouth and she is forever in her past.


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[Assistant] Her favorite time to make us all go back to is when they lynched her husband, David Saul Smith, from a tree in 1986 and called the TV station to come and get a look.


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[Assistant] She can't let us go one day without reminding us in words. I never want to be like her, ever.


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[Assistant] Everybody cries when they are in her words because they feel sorry for her. And Esteen Smith is not a someone, but a walking, haunted house.


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[Assistant] I start dreaming about the kids while the others are standing in line to use the power saw. I love to dream about the kids.


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[Assistant] They are the only others who think I am beautiful besides Ma and Anita.


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[Assistant] They are my favorite flavor of the pie, even if I got others in my mind. Most of the time there are eight.


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[Assistant] But when my other aunt Samantha comes over, I got three more.


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[Assistant] Samantha cries in the kitchen and shows Ma her blue marks and it seems like her crying will go on forever. Me, I want to take the kids minds away.


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[Assistant] We go into Ma's room, where there is the TV, and we sing songs like, Old Grey Mare, and Bingo was his name-o. Or new ones like, Why you treat me so bad. And, I try to let go. Or else I teach them Math 4.


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[Assistant] Or else I turn on the TV so they can watch Bugs or He-Man and so I can get their ironing done.


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[Assistant] Me, I love me some kids. I need me some kids.


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[Assistant] Joe Smalls talks to me in what I know is a friendly way. The others in woodworking for you don't know that.


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[Assistant] Lori man, that bitch Toreen got half the percentage problems wrong. Shit.


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[Assistant] Be glad you don't have to deal with no dumbass Tareen bitch. She nearly got my ass a F in Math 3.


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[Assistant] I get a sad look on my face, understanding, but it's a fake look.


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[Assistant] Why you talkin' that shit, Joe Man? Lori don't ever worry about bitches.


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[Assistant] Perry Sampson says, no, Lori never ever thinks about pussy as a matter of fact, never ever. Franklin says, hey Lori man, tell me what you think about then.


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[Assistant] What can be better than figuring out how you're going to get that whole man? Tell me what. Mr. Samuel's the teacher.


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[Assistant] Turns off the power saw just when it gets to Barney Moore's turn.


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[Assistant] He has heard the laughter from underneath the saw screeching. Everybody gets quiet. His face is like a piece of lumber. Mr. Samuels is never soft. He doesn't fail me.


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[Assistant] Even though I don't do any cutting or measuring or shellacking, he wants me the hell out of there.


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[Assistant] And after the saw is turned off, Mr. Samuels, for the first time in the world, starts laughing. The absolute first time.


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[Assistant] And everybody joins in because they are afraid of this. And I laugh too.


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[Assistant] Because I'm hoping all the ears will go off me.


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[Assistant] Mr. Samuels is laughing, ha ha, like he's from the country. Ha ha, ha ha. His face is red. Everyone cools down and is just smiling now.


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[Assistant] Then he says, class, don't mess with the only girl we got in here. Now it's laughter again.


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[Assistant] Daniel Phibbs says, yeaah, Mr. Samuels is on.


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[Assistant] Franklin laughs, no fags allowed, you better take your sissy ass out of here, lest you want me to cut it into four pieces. Joe Smalls is quiet and looking out the window. Junior Sims laughs, come back when you start fucking bitches. Keep moving, keep moving. I pick up my red bag and wade towards the door.


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[Assistant] My instinct is the only thing that's working and it is leading me back to biology. But first, out the room.


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[Assistant] Inside me, there is really nothing except for Ma's voice. Don't let them boys. But inside, there is nothing else.


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[Assistant] With his eyelashes, Rakim swept the edges of my face. He let me know they were beautiful to him. His face went in a circle around mine, and dipped in my eyes, and dipped in my mouth.


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[Assistant] He traveled me to a quiet place where his hands were the oars and I drifted off to sleep.


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[Assistant] The thin bars of the shopping cart where I was sitting in made grooves in my back.


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[Assistant] Layla Jackson comes running up to me, but it's only fourth period because she wants to try and talk some sense into Tyrone. She hands me little T.T.


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[Assistant] Tyrone makes like he wants to come over and touch the baby, but instead he flattens his back against the wall to listen to Layla. I watch as she oozes him. In a minute they are tongue kissing, because they are the only two people who will kiss each other.


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[Assistant] Everyone says that they gave themselves AIDS and now have to kiss each other because there ain't no one else.


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[Assistant] People walk past them and don't even notice that he has his hand up her shirt, squeezing the kickball. TT likes to be in my arms. I like for him to be there.


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[Assistant] We were underneath the concrete bridge supports and I had my hands on the handle of a broken shopping cart where I was sitting. Don't go back, Rakim was telling me. Don't go back. And he whispered in my ear and I thought of all the words I had been practicing and how I was planning to pass that city wide. Don't go back, he's saying.


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[Assistant] And he sat me on his lap, and he moved me around there.


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[Assistant] They don't need you, he said, and you don't need them. But I do, I told him. This feeling can last forever, he said.


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[Assistant] No it can't, I said, but I wound up leaving school for six months anyway. That shopping cart was my school.


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[Assistant] I hold TT carefully because he is asleep on my shoulder and I go to catch the BX17 back to my building.


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[Assistant] Esteen Smith stays in her past, and that is where things are like nails.


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[Assistant] I want to tell her to always wear her blue organza without the back. If you can escape, why don't you all the time?


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[Assistant] You could dance and fling your arms and maybe even feel love from some direction. You would not perish. You could be free.


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[Assistant] When I am around and she puts us in her past in her words.


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[Assistant] She tells me that if I had have twitched my ass down there like I do here, they would have hung me up just by my black balls.


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[Assistant] The last day Rakim and I were together, I told him I wanted to go back to school, to everyone.


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[Assistant] The words, I tried to explain about the words to Rakim.


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[Assistant] I could welcome him into my world if he wanted me to.


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[Assistant] Hey, wasn't there enough room for him and me and the words?


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[Assistant] Hell no, he shouted, and all the Spanish women turned around and stared at us.


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[Assistant] He shouted, you are an ugly ass bastard who will always be hated big time. And I don't care what you do. This is where your world begins and this is where your world will end. Fuck you. You are a pussy man. Get the hell out of my face.


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[Assistant] She says it's good that I am home because there is trouble with Tommy again and I need to watch him and the kids.


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[Assistant] While she goes out to bring Lula Jean home from the movies, which is where she goes when she plans on leaving Tommy.


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[Assistant] They got four kids here, and if Lulajene leaves, I might have to drop out of school again.


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[Assistant] I set TT down next to Tommy on the sofa bed, where I usually sleep.


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[Assistant] Tommy wakes up and says, hey man, who you bringing to visit me?


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[Assistant] I go into the kitchen to fix him some tea and get the kids lunch ready.


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[Assistant] Shaniqua is playing the doctor and trying to fix up Sean, who always has to have an operation when she is the doctor. They come into the kitchen to hug my legs and then they go back in the living room. Tommy sips his tea and says, who was that chick this morning, lorry man? I say, I don't know. I begin to fold his clothes.


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[Assistant] Tommy says, man, you don't know these bitches out here nowadays. You want to show them love, a good time and a real deep part of yourself and all they do is not appreciate it and try to make your life miserable.


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[Assistant] He says, well, at least I got Lula. Now that's some woman. And he is asleep.


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[Assistant] Shaniqua and her brother Willis come in and ask me if I will teach them math for tonight.


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[Assistant] Aunt Esteen rolls into the bedroom and asks me, why do I feel the need to take care of this bum? And then she hits her head on the door frame.


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[Assistant] She is clicking her heels. She asks, why do we women feel we always need to teach them? They ain't going to learn the right way. They ain't going to learn shit. That's why we always sew alone. Click, click.


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[Assistant] The words I will learn before Ma comes home are soliloquy, disenfranchise, catechism. I know she will be proud. This morning before I left,


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[Assistant] She told me she would make me a turkey dinner with all the trimmings if I learned four new words tonight.


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[Assistant] I take out my dictionary, but then the kids come in and want me to give them a bath and baby TT has a fever and is throwing up all over the place.


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[Assistant] I look at the words and suddenly I know I will know them without studying.


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[Assistant] And I realized this in the bathroom, and then again a few minutes later, when Layla Jackson comes in cursing because she got a 60 on the humanities quiz. She holds T, but she doesn't touch him.


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[Assistant] She thinks Tyrone may be going to some group where he is meeting other sick girls and she doesn't want to be alone.


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[Assistant] She curses and cries, curses and cries. She asks me why things have to be so fucked.


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[Assistant] Her braids are coming undone and I tell her that I will tighten them up for her. That makes Leila Jackson stop crying.


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[Assistant] She says, and to top it off, Rakim is a shit.


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[Assistant] Soon her crying stops and she is thinking about something else.


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[Assistant] But me, I know these new words and the old words without looking at them, without the dictionary, without Ma's hands on my head.


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[Assistant] Lashima and Tata come in and want their hair to be like Leila's.


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[Assistant] And they bring in the Vaseline and sit around my feet like shoes.


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[Assistant] Tommy wakes up still in sleep and shouts, Lula, get your ass on in here. Then he falls back to sleep.


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[Assistant] Because I know I will always be able to say the words on my own. I can do the words on my own and that is what matters. I have this flavor of the pie and I will always have it. Here in this kitchen, I was always safe, learning the words till my eyes hurt. The words are in my heart.


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[Assistant] Ma comes in and shoves lulagene into a kitchen chair.


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[Assistant] She says, kids, make room for your cousin, go in the other room, and tell Tommy to get his lame ass out here.


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[Assistant] Layla, you can get your ass out of here, and don't bring it back no more with this child sick out his mind.


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[Assistant] Do your hoeing somewhere out on the street where you belong.


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[Assistant] Tommy, since when I need to tell you how to treat your wife? You a stupid heel. Learn how to be a man. Everybody leaves, and Ma changes. She says, I ain't forgot that special dinner for you, baby. I'm glad you're safe and sound here with me. Let's practice later.


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[Assistant] I tell her, okay ma, but I got to go meet Rakim first.


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[Assistant] She looks at me in shock, and then out the corner of my eye I can tell she wants me to say no, I'll stay, I won't go to him, because she knows.


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[Assistant] But I'm getting my coat on and Ma has got what will be tears on her face because she can't say no and she can't ask any questions. Keep moving. And I am thinking of Rocky's pizza.


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[Assistant] And how I will be when I get there and how I will be when I get home because I am coming back home and I am going to school tomorrow. I know the words and I can tell them to Rakim and I can share what I know. Now he may be ready. I want him to say to me in his mind, please give me a chance.


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[Assistant] And I know that behind Rocky's Pizza is the only place where I don't have to keep moving.


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[Assistant] Where there is not just air in me that keeps me from crumbling, but blood and meat and strong bones and feelings.


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[Assistant] I will be me for a few minutes behind Rocky's Pizza, and I don't care if it's just a few minutes.


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[Assistant] I pat my hair down in the mirror next to the kitchen door.


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[Assistant] I take Anita's letter knife out of my jacket pocket and leave it on the table next to where Tommy is standing telling his wife that she never knew what love was till she met him and why does she have to be like that talking about leaving him and shit.


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[Assistant] You keep going that way, and you won't ever know how to keep a man, bitch.


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[Assistant] Do not act that often jest and laugh. She's old but true. Do swine, it's all the drop.


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[Assistant] I rather will suspect the sun with cold than thee with water.


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[Assistant] Thus all the wintertime, at still midnight, Walk round about an oak, with great ragged horns, And there he blasts


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[Assistant] He has my goodwill, and none but he to marry with Nan Page. That slender, though well-landered, is an idiot. And he, my husband, best of all effects.


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[Assistant] He, none but he shall have her, though twenty thousand worthier come to crave her.


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[Assistant] My master sir, my master Slender, sent to her, seeing her go through the streets.


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[Assistant] What says she? I pray, sir? Mary, she says that the very same man that beguiled Master Slender of his chain... Cousin'd him of it. Oh.


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[Assistant] I would, I could have spoken with the old woman herself. I had other things to have spoken with her too from here. What are they? Let us know.


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[Assistant] Why sir? They were nothing but about Mrs. Anne Page to know if it were my master's fortune to have her or no. His! His is fortune!


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[Assistant] That you may grow preparation for a Duke of Germany.


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[Assistant] Hmm, I never prospered since I first swore myself a Primera. Well, uh,


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[Assistant] Here's the letter, we'll sign some what. Good heart.


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[Assistant] Now my co-mates and brothers in exile, hath not old custom made this life more sweet than that of painted pomps?


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[Assistant] Are not these woods more free from peril than the envious court?


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[Assistant] Here, feel we, but the penalty of Adam, the seasons difference.


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[Assistant] These are counselors that feelingly persuade me what I am.


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[Assistant] Sweet are the uses of adversity, which, like the toad, ugly and venomous,


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[Assistant] Where's yet a precious jewel in his head? And this our life, exempt from public haunt, finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything.


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[Assistant] And yet it irks me the poor dappled fools being native burgers of this desert city should in their own confines with forked heads have their round haunches gored. Indeed, my lord.


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[Assistant] Why would they have me go and beg my food? Or with a baste and boisterous sword enforce a thievish living on the common road? This I must do, I don't know what to do, yet this I will not do, do how I can.


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[Assistant] I rather was to object me to the malice of a diverted blood and bloody brother.


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[Assistant] How well in thee appears the constant service of the antique world, when service sweat for duty, not for mead.


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[Assistant] And having that to choke their service up even with their having it is not so with thee. But poor old man thou prunes to rotten trees.


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[Assistant] It cannot so much as a blossom yield in lieu of all thy pains and husbandry. But come my way, we'll go along together.


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[Assistant] Says cover the wild, the duke will drink under this tree. It's been all this day to look for you.


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[Assistant] If ever you have looked on better days, if ever been where bones have knolled to church, if ever spattered any good man's feast, if ever from your eyelids wiped a tear and know what is to pity and be pitied, let gentleness my strong enforcement be.


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[Assistant] In the which hope I blush and hide my sword. True is it that we have seen better days and have with holy bell been knolled to church.


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[Assistant] And sat at good men's feasts and wiped our eyes of drops that sacred pity hath engendered, and therefore split you down in gentleness.


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[Assistant] If that you were the good Sir Roland's son, as you have whispered faithfully, you were.


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[Assistant] I, by my life, and never desire to see thee more.


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[Assistant] Therefore be out of hope a question of doubt. Be certain nothing truer. It is no jest that I do hate thee and love Helena.


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[Assistant] Fair Helen told me of their stealth, of this their purpose hither, to this wood, and I in fury hither followed them. Fair Helena in fancy following me. But my good lord.


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[Assistant] This is James Alamick, first in reading Gold Coast from the Atlantic Monthly.


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[Assistant] That spring, when I had a great deal of potential and the money at all, I took a job as a janitor.


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[Assistant] That was when I was still very young and spent money very freely and went almost every night.


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[Assistant] I drifted off to sleep lulled by the sweet anticipation of that time when my potential would suddenly be realized.


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[Assistant] And there would be caps of biographies of my life on dust jackets and many books, all proclaiming he knew life on many levels.


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[Assistant] But now much later I think it might have been because it is possible to be a janitor without becoming one. And at parties or at mixers, when asked what it was I did for a living.


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[Assistant] It was pretty good to hook my thumbs in my vest pockets and say comfortably why I am an apprentice janitor. The hippies would think it degenerate and really dig me.


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[Assistant] And people and philosophy and law and business will feel uncomfortable trying to make me feel better about my station while wondering how the hell I managed to crash the party. What's an apprentice janitor, they would ask. I haven't got my card yet, I would reply. Right now I'm just taking lessons.


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[Assistant] There's lots of complicated stuff you have to learn before you get your own card and your own building. What kind of stuff? You were nature born thing, raised nature for another. Why race?


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[Assistant] Because I would say in a low voice, look around, let someone else shoot over here.


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[Assistant] You have to be able to spot Jews and Negroes who are passing. That's terrible, was surely said then, with a hint of indignation. It's an art, I would add masterfully.


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[Assistant] But if they get in, it's my job to make their state just as miserable as possible. Things are changing. Now the speaker would just look at me in disbelief.


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[Assistant] It's janitorial objectivity, I would say, to finish the thing, as the speaker began to edge away. Don't hate me. I will call after him to his considerable embarrassment. Somebody has to do it.


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[Assistant] It was an old building near Harvard Square. Comrade Aiken had once lived there, and in the days of the Gold Coast,


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[Assistant] Before Harvard built its great houses, it had been a very fan haven for the rich. But that was a world ago.


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[Assistant] And this building was one of the few monuments of that era which had survived.


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[Assistant] The lovey had a high ceiling with thick redwood beams.


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[Assistant] And it was replete with marble floor, fancy iron work and an old fashioned house telephone which no longer worked. Each apartment had a small fireplace.


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[Assistant] And even the large bathtubs and chain toilets, when I was having my touch of nature,


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[Assistant] Made me wonder what prominent personage of the past had worn away all the newness. And being there, I felt a certain affinity towards the rich.


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[Assistant] It was a funny building because the people who lived there made it old.


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[Assistant] I expected to find it occupied by a company of hippies, hopeful working girls and disordered graduate students.


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[Assistant] Instead, there was a majority of old maids, dowagers, asexual and alleged men.


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[Assistant] Homosexual young men, if you marry couples and a teacher.


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[Assistant] No one was checking up there and walking through the quiet halls in the early evening, I sometimes had the urge to knock on a door and expose myself, just to hear someone breathe hard for once.


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[Assistant] Down by the Charles, happy students were making love while sad-eyed middle-aged men watched them from the bridge. It was a time of activity. Low students were busy sublimating. Business school people were making records of the money that they would make. The Harvard houses were clearing out, and in the square, bearded potbushes were setting up their restaurant tables in anticipation of the summer school faithfuls.


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[Assistant] There was a change of season in the air, and to comply with its urgings, James Sullivan, the old superintendent, passed his three beaten garbage cans on to me.


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[Assistant] With the charge that I should take up his daily rounds of the six floors and with unflinching humility.


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[Assistant] And his weekly check of $22 from the company that managed the building would not support anything. So out of compromise, he was retired to superintendent of my labor.


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[Assistant] While I skillfully lugged my three overflowing cans of garbage out on the building, he sat on his bench in the lobby, faded and old and smoking, and patched loose blue pants. He watched me.


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[Assistant] He was a chain smoker and I noticed right away that he very carefully dropped all of the ashes and butts on the floor and crushed them under his feet until there was a yellow and grey smear.


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[Assistant] All the while, eyeing me like a cat in silence as I hauled the mini cans of muck out to the big disposal unit next to the building.


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[Assistant] When I finished, he gave me two old plates to help stock my kitchen, and his first piece of advice.


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[Assistant] Sit down for Christ sakes and take a load off your feet, he told me.


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[Assistant] I sat on the red bench next to him and accepted the wilted cigarette he offered me from the crushed package he kept in his sweater pocket.


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[Assistant] Now I'll tell you something to help you get along in the building, he said. I listened attentively.


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[Assistant] If any of these sons of bitches ever ask you to do something extra, be sure to charge them for it. I assured him that I absolutely would.


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[Assistant] If they can afford to live here, they can afford to pay, the bastards. Undoubtedly, I assured him again. And another thing he added.


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[Assistant] That I knew very well my station in life and that I was not about to haul cat shit or anything of that nature.


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[Assistant] He looked at me through his thick lens glasses for a long time. He looked like a cat himself. That's right, he said.


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[Assistant] And if they still try to sneak it in the trash, be sure to make the bastards pay. They can afford it.


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[Assistant] He crushed his seventh butt on the floor and scattered the mess some more while he lit up another.


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[Assistant] I never hauled out no cat shit in 30 years I've been here, and you don't do it either. I'm going up to wash my hands, I said. Remember he called after me. Don't take no shit from any of them.


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[Assistant] I protested once more that upon my life I would never, never do it. Not even for the prettiest girl in the building. Going up in the elevator, I felt comfortably resolved that I would never do it. There are no pretty girls in the building.


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[Assistant] I never found out what he had done before he came there, but I do know that being a janitor in that building was as high as he ever got in life.


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[Assistant] He had watched two generations of the rich pass the building on their way to the yard.


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[Assistant] To produce, to acquire, to procreate, and to send back sons and daughters so that the cycle will continue.


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[Assistant] He watched the cycle from when he had been able to haul the cans out for himself, and now he could not, and he was bitter. He was Irish, of course.


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[Assistant] And he took pride in our accomplishments when he could have none of his own.


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[Assistant] He had known Frank O'Connor when that writer had been in Harvard.


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[Assistant] It told me on many occasions how O'Connor had stopped to talk every day on his way to the yard. He had also known James Michael Curley


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[Assistant] And this most colorful memory of the man was a long ago day when he and James Curley sat in a Boston bar, and one of Curley's runners had come in and said, Hey Jim, Saul Bernstein, the Jew wants to see you.


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[Assistant] And I would immediately put aside my garbage can and laugh with him over the hundred or so colorful insignificant little details which made up a whole lifetime of living in the basement of Harvard.


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[Assistant] I knew that they were the reflections of a lifetime and the happiest moments you would ever have being sold to me cheap, as youthful time is cheap, for as little time and interest as I wanted to spend. It was a buyer's market.


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[Assistant] In those days, I believed myself gifted with a boundless perception and attacked my daily garbage route with a gusto super enforced by the habit knowledge that behind each of the 50 or so doors in our building lived a story which could, if I chose to grace it with the magic of my pen, become immortal. I watched my tenants fanatically, noting their perversions, their visitors, and their eating habits. So intense was my search for material


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[Assistant] That I had to restrain myself from going through the refuse scrap by scrap


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[Assistant] But at the top most layer of muck, without too much hands holding the process, I set my perceptions to work.


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[Assistant] By late June, however, I had discovered only enough to put together a rather naive Henry Miller novel, the most colorful of discoveries being 1. The Lady in 24 was the alumnus of Paducah College 2.


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[Assistant] Couple in 55 made love at least 400 times a week, and the wife had not yet discovered the pill. 3. The old lady in 36 was still having monthly inconvenience. 4.


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[Assistant] The two fatso's in 56 consumed nightly an extraordinary amount of chili. Five.


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[Assistant] The fat man in 54 had two dogs that were married to each other, but he was not married to anyone at all. Six. The middle-aged single man in 63 threw out an awful lot of flowers.


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[Assistant] Disturbed by the snail's progress I was making, I confessed my futility to James one day as he sat on his bench, chain-smoking and smearing butts on my newly-waxed lobby floor.


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[Assistant] So, you want to know about the tenants, he said, his cat's eyes flicking over me. I nodded. Well, the first thing to notice is how many Jews there are. I haven't noticed any Jews, I said. He eyed me in amazement.


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[Assistant] Well a few I said quickly to prevent my treasure perception from being dull any further. A few Halley said there is no Jew sitter in anybody. How can you tell? He gave me the undecided look again. Where do you think all that garbage comes from? He nodded thiebly towards my bulging cans.


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[Assistant] I looked just in time to prevent a stray noodle from slipping over the brim. That's right, he continued, Jews are the biggest eaters in the world. They eat the best too. I confessed then that I was of the chicken soup generation.


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[Assistant] You don't know that in certain restaurants they take the free onions and pickles off the table when they see the juice coming? I held my head down and shamed over the bounteous heap.


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[Assistant] He un-mucked an empty pate can. Look at that, he said triumphantly. Go make stuff no less. That's in 44, I said. What else? He said all annoyingly.


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[Assistant] In 1946, a Swedish girl moved in up there and took a Jewish girl for a roommate. Then the Swedish girl moved out and there has been a Jewish dynasty up there ever since.


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[Assistant] I recall that 44 was occupied by a couple that threw out a good number of SS Pierce cans, Sylvester Gah bottles, Assault of Broken Records, and backed issues of Evergreen and The Realist. You're right, I said. Of course, he replied, as if there were never any doubt. I can spot them anywhere, even when they think they're passing.


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[Assistant] He leaned closer and said in a you and me voice, but don't ever say anything bad about them in public. That Anti-Defamation League will get you. Just then his wife screamed for him from the second floor, and a dog joined her and beat against the door. He got into the elevator painfully and said, don't ever talk about them in public. You don't know who they are, and that Defamation League will take everything you got.


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[Assistant] Sullivan did not really dislike Jews. He was just bitter towards anyone better off than himself. He lived with his wife on the second floor.


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[Assistant] And two hours after I had mopped and waxed that section of the floor,


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[Assistant] There was sure to be a layer of dirt, grease, and crushed scattered tobacco from their door to the end of the hall.


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[Assistant] And I did not ever want to have to go in there for any reason because I feared something about it I cannot name. Mrs. Sullivan I found out was from South Africa.


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[Assistant] She kept little cans of meat posted at strategic points about the building, and I often came across her in the early morning or late at night.


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[Assistant] Throwing scraps out of the second floor window to stray cats.


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[Assistant] Once, when James was about to throttle a stray mouse in the apartment, she had screamed at him to give the mouse a sporting chance.


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[Assistant] Whenever she attempted to walk, she had to bounce herself against a wall or a rail. And she hated the building because it confined her. She also hated James and most of the tenants.


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[Assistant] On the other hand, she loved the Johnny Carson show. She loved to sit outside on the front steps because she could go no further unassisted. And she loved to talk to anyone who would stop to listen.


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[Assistant] She never spoke coherently except when she was cursing James and then she had a vocabulary like a drunken sailor.


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[Assistant] She had great shrill lungs and her screams accompanied by the rabid barks of the dog could be heard all over the building.


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[Assistant] She was never really clean, her teeth were bad, and the first most pathetic thing in the world


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[Assistant] What to see her sitting on the steps in the morning watching the world pass in a stained smock and a fresh summer blue hat she kept just to wear downstairs with no place in the world to go.


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[Assistant] James told me on the many occasions of her screaming that she was mentally disturbed and could not help herself.


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[Assistant] The admirable thing about him was that he never lost his temper with her.


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[Assistant] No matter how rough her curses became and no matter who heard them.


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[Assistant] And the second most pathetic thing in the world was to see them slowly making their way in Harvard Square. He supporting her.


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[Assistant] Through the hurrying crowds of miniscule summer girls, jay-pressed, avileggers, beatniks, and bust Japanese tourists decked in cameras who would take pictures of every inch of Harvard Square except them.


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[Assistant] Once the hippie had brushed past them and crawled back over his shoulder,


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[Assistant] Don't break any track records, Mr. and Mrs. Speedy molasses.


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[Assistant] Also on the second floor lived Ms. Sahara, a spinster who hated Sullivan as only an old maid can hate an old man.


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[Assistant] Across from her lived a very nice, gentle, celibate man named Murphy who had once served with Montgomery in North Africa and who was now spending the rest of his life cleaning his little apartment and gossiping with Mrs. O'Hara. It was an Irish floor.


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[Assistant] I never found out why Mr. Harrow hated the Sullivan's with such a passion.


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[Assistant] Perhaps it was because they were so unkempt and she was so superciliously clean.


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[Assistant] Perhaps it was because Ms. Sahara had a great deal of Irish pride and they were a stereotyped Irish. Perhaps it was because she merely had no reason to like them.


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[Assistant] She was a fanatic about cleanliness and put out her little bit of garbage wrapped very neatly in yesterday's Christian Science Monitor and tied it above with a fresh piece of string.


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[Assistant] Collecting all those little neat packages, I would wonder where she got the string and imagined her at night breaking meat market locks with a hairpin.


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[Assistant] And hobbling off with yards and yards of white cord concealed under the grey sweater she always wore.


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[Assistant] I could even imagine her back in her little apartment, chuckling and rolling the cord into a great white ball by candlelight. Then she would stash it away in her bread box. Mrs. Harrah kept her door slightly open until late at night.


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[Assistant] And I suspected that she heard everything that went on in the building.


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[Assistant] I had the feeling that I should never dare to make love with Gusto for fear that she would overhear and write down all my heavy time phrases to be maliciously recounted to me if she were ever provoked.


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[Assistant] She had been in the building longer than Sullivan, and I suppose that her greatest ambition in life was to outlive him, and then attend his wake with a knitting ball and needle.


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[Assistant] She had been trying to get him fired for 25 years or so and did not know when to quit.


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[Assistant] On summer nights when I painfully mopped the second floor,


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[Assistant] She would offer me root beer, apples or cupcakes while trying to pump me for evidence against him.


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[Assistant] He's just a filthy old man, Robert, she would declare in a little old lady whisper. And don't think you have to clean up those dirty old butts of his. Just report him to the company.


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[Assistant] Oh, I don't mind, I would tell her, gulping the root beer as fast as possible. Well, they're both a couple of luscious, if you ask me. They haven't been sober a day in 25 years. Well, she's sick too, you know. Ha. She would throw up her hands in disgust. She's only sick when he doesn't give her the booze. I've fought to keep down a burp. How long have you been here?


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[Assistant] She motioned for me to step out of the hall and into her dark apartment. Don't tell him she's not in towards Sullivan's door. But I've been here 34 years. She waited for me to be taken aback. Then she added, and it was a better building before those two luchers came. She then offered me an apple. I asked five times if the dog's barking bothered me.


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[Assistant] Got me to dust the top of a large chest to have her to reach, had me pick up the minute specks of dust which fell from my dust cloth, pressed it in the root there on me, and then showed me her family album.


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[Assistant] As an afterthought, she had me take down a big old picture of her great grandfather, also to have for her to reach, so that I could dust that too.


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[Assistant] Then together we picked up the dust from it which might have fallen to the floor.


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[Assistant] He's really a filthy old man, Robert, she said in closing. And don't be afraid to report him to the property manager anytime you want.


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[Assistant] I assured her that I would do it at the slightest provocation from Sullivan.


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[Assistant] He lifted his cigarette at hand and let the long ash fall elegantly to the floor.