MR. DOOM DIDN’T leave his door unlocked the next day, and the maid didn’t clean. But he did the day after, Wednesday. From the top of the marble stairs in the lobby, I watched him leave without locking up.
According to Louis and Danny, the maid came right away after Mr. Doom left, and it took her about ten minutes to clean. Then he came back fifteen minutes or so after she finished. But they were just guessing, because neither of them had a watch.
I started counting seconds as soon as he closed the door. It was easy. I just kept track of my heart pounding. Blam one. Blam two.
Blam three hundred. Five minutes, and the maid still hadn’t come. By now I could have opened the cabinet, gotten the carving, and been out of there. Blam six hundred, and she still hadn’t come.
Blam six hundred and forty-eight, and a maid came out of the stairwell carrying a feather duster and pulling a Hoover. She strolled toward Mr. Doom’s office, taking her own sweet time.
She opened the door, went inside, and I started counting again. If she took a whole ten minutes I’d only have five before Mr. Doom came back, and I didn’t know if that was enough.
She was out when I got to three hundred and eighty-five, about six minutes. I started down the stairs, still counting. A prefect opened the door from one of the stairwells. I froze. He went into the side hallway. He had stopped me for twenty-five seconds. I had eight minutes left. I could probably do it twice in eight minutes. I continued down the stairs, starting a new count. Blam one. Blam two.
Don’t let anybody come into the HHB. Don’t let anybody come through the hall.
Nobody did. I opened the door to the office and closed it behind me, fast. Blam eighteen. I smelled furniture polish.
Blam twenty-one. My hand was shaking so bad I couldn’t get the key into the lock and then I dropped it. Blam twenty-five. Don’t rush. You’re making it worse. Take a deep breath. Try again. Blam twenty-nine.
I heard footsteps. I dove for the kneehole of the desk. The footsteps got louder, passed the door, and got softer.
I’d lost count of the seconds. The key went in. I tried to turn it. It wouldn’t turn. Was it the wrong key? I jiggled it. The lock moved. It was the right key! I pulled. The door stuck for a second, then opened. The glass rattled.
More footsteps.
I took out the carving. I touched Papa.
I moved a china donkey, a bowl of seashells, and a wooden box to fill in the empty space on the shelf. Now I’d just put the key back in the desk—
The door opened. Mr. Doom!
“Whaa? Whoo?” he roared. He blocked the door. Black shape in the doorway. Light around him.
He wasn’t getting the carving back! I hugged it to my chest. He wasn’t going to beat me again! I rushed at him. Jumped—leaped. Reached up. Threw his specs over my shoulder. Threw the key.
Had to get out. He was yelling—words, sounds. “Where . . . You won’t . . . Can’t see . . . Just let me . . .”
I dodged him. His arms were going up, down, sideways—hunting. I sprang back. He wouldn’t get out of the way.
Between his legs. I was a bullet. A cannonball. I hurtled through. He shouted, grabbed. He had my foot. I pulled. Kept going. I was through. He had my shoe.
People running. Mr. Meltzer. Other prefects. Boys. I shot across the lobby. A boy opened the front door for me—older—not an eleven. He had green eyes. Funny how I noticed.
I was out—outside. It was raining. Sleeting. I ran through the gate, and kept going. My shoeless foot—cold, cold! Ran toward Broadway. Stepped on something sharp—ouch! Kept running. Three prefects—Mr. Meltzer—behind me. Half a block. Mr. Meltzer catching up. Out of breath. A quarter block—
Broadway—people—peddler’s cart—laundry wagon—taxi—trolley at a stop. Trolley! People getting on. Mr. Meltzer at the corner. I ran into the street. One more to get on. I stood behind the trolley. Hurry up, mister. Get on! He did. Start! Start! The trolley moved. I jumped onto the back bumper. Almost dropped the carving.
Good-bye, Mr. Meltzer.
I hung on to the back of the trolley window with my right hand and clutched the carving with the other. My teeth were chattering.
I didn’t have a cent. My money was back at the HHB. The trolley was heading downtown.
Where could I go? Nowhere.
It was a laugh. When I wanted to run away, I had to stay. And when I wanted to stay, I had to go.
I looked down at the carving, at Papa and Mama and Gideon and me, waiting on line to get on the ark. The family we should have been. The trolley lurched, and I held on with both hands, the carving between my elbows and my chest. Then the trolley steadied, and I looked at the bottom of my shoeless foot to see if I’d cut it. Miraculously, no blood was seeping through the sock.
The trolley stopped. The conductor was getting out to chase me. I jumped off into a freezing puddle and ran.
I was safe from Mr. Doom, and I had the carving, but I’d never see my buddies again.
It took me over four hours to reach my old neighborhood. After the first trolley, I jumped on anything I could, mostly trolleys, and stayed on till the driver chased me off. If a furniture truck driver hadn’t let me ride inside with him from 60th Street to Houston Street, I might have frozen to death.
I had decided to go to Aunt Sarah and Aunt Lily’s. As soon as the truck driver dropped me off, I knew I was home. I could have been blind and I would have known. It was the stink. Garbage and crap—horse crap and people crap. In all the times I’d thought about home, I hadn’t thought once about the smell.
It was a quarter to six when I got to Aunt Lily and Aunt Sarah’s building on Eldridge Street. I wished they weren’t boarders. It was going to be bad enough telling them what had happened without the whole Cohen family hearing it too. The hallway seemed narrower and darker than I remembered. I climbed the stairs, hugging the carving and trying to make my teeth stop chattering.
I had loused everything up. I should have waited for a day when the maid came right away. I should have just watched to see what happened, to see if it went the way Louis and Danny had said. I could have waited. There was no emergency.
I knocked on the door.
“Who could that be?” Mrs. Cohen opened the door. “Dave? Is that you? Dave Caros? You’re soaking wet. Come in.”
I went in and stood, dripping on the cracked linoleum in their kitchen. It was warm in here. I sneezed. Mrs. Cohen had been washing one of her boys in the washtub next to the sink. There were soapsuds in his hair, and he started crying.
Aunt Sarah rushed to me from the front room. “Dave! What happened?”
Aunt Lily was right behind her. “You’re drenched.”
Mr. Cohen and another son came out of the bedroom. The two little girls stood in the doorway to the front room. They all stared at me.
Aunt Sarah hurried back into the front room. “I’ll get a towel.”
Mrs. Cohen started rinsing the crying kid in the tub. “It’s all right,” she crooned.
The Cohens’ apartment seemed tiny, but it was the same size as our old place. I didn’t remember our apartment being so small.
“Where’s your shoe? Sarah, he’s missing a shoe.”
Aunt Sarah came back. I handed Papa’s carving to her. “Aah, pyew, he’s filthy. Get me a washcloth, Lily. Take your clothes off, Dave.”
“I’ll just be a minute.” Mrs. Cohen got her kid out of the tub, and I started washing myself at the sink. At the Home we had hot water.
Mrs. Cohen shooed her daughters into the front room. “We’ll give you some privacy.” Mr. Cohen and his sons went back into the bedroom. I was alone in the kitchen with Aunt Sarah and Aunt Lily, but it wasn’t private. Everybody could hear everything.
After I finished at the sink, Aunt Sarah washed my shirt. Aunt Lily brushed as much of the mud as she could off my jacket and knickers. Then she put something on the stove to heat. Aunt Sarah gave me two towels to wrap myself in and told me to sit at the table. In a few minutes Aunt Lily handed me a bowl of hot spinach-and-bean soup. Aunt Sarah draped my clothes over the stove to dry.
“Where’s Papa’s carving?” I asked.
“I washed it too,” Aunt Lily said, pointing. It was on the floor near the door, drying on newspapers.
“Dave,” Aunt Sarah said, “what did you do this time?”
I told them. They thought I shouldn’t have gone into Mr. Doom’s office. And they thought I should have stayed and apologized when I was caught. Neither of them believed me about the beating I would have gotten. They didn’t even think Mr. Doom had been stealing when he took Papa’s carving.
“He was just keeping it safe for you,” Aunt Lily said.
“It’s not as if you’re a paying customer,” Aunt Sarah added.
When I finished my soup and some bread, Aunt Lily asked Aunt Sarah, “Can’t he stay here tonight? I hate to go out again.”
From the front room Mrs. Cohen called out, “Certainly he can stay tonight. No charge.”
But Aunt Sarah took my clothes off the stove. “They probably called the police. We have to take him right away.”
I should have known better than to come here. I should have known they’d bring me back.