It was awful,” Mitzy tells me afterward. It’s just the two of us in her kitchen. Her mother has gone for a lie-down. Her uncle is behind bars. I want to take her hand, but I don’t because, well, because I’m the loser who doesn’t have the guts, even after all we’ve been through together.
She props her elbows on the table, sending a few walnuts skittering. “They brought us into a room at the back of the police station. It was small, I could feel it. Cold, too, and it stank of tobacco. We sat at a table with that detective guy—Barker, whatever his name is.”
“A nice cozy chat?” I scoff.
She rolls her unseeing eyes. “He said something like, get Duvid to talk or else. Then they brought him in. In shackles. I could hear the clinking. They think they’ve got their man.”
But have they got my man? Is Duvid the person I’m supposed to rescue?
“Tell me what happened.” I drum my fingers on the table. “Tell me everything.”
She scratches her forehead. “Well, Mama lit into him before he even sat down. In Yiddish, obviously. Duvid, tell me what’s going on, she says. Duvid, they think you’re the Ripper.”
“And?”
“And he doesn’t say a word.” I slump back in my chair. “Then I gave it a whirl. Just tell us where your knives are, I tell him. They only want to look at them, not take them away from you. I begged him to spill. Not a peep.”
It’s funny, in a way. I think of myself as pretty creative, pretty good at coming up with stories, putting characters in strange situations and figuring out how they get from point A to point B. But for the life of me, I can’t come up with a single reason Duvid would do this to himself. I can’t deduce, induce, reduce, introduce, or produce one reasonable explanation. Maybe I’m trying to apply logic where it doesn’t belong. Maybe this is beyond reason, beyond sanity even.
“Then Mama got a little hysterical,” Mitzy goes on. “Shouting. Jumping out of her seat. Slapping the table. You’re just making yourself look guilty, she hollers. I know you aren’t a killer, Duvid. We all know it. You just need to prove it.”
“Let me guess,” I say. “More silent treatment.”
“No, he finally decided to speak.” She rubs her eyebrows, exhausted. “He said, it must be getting late, Bina. You should take Maya home.”
“Fool.”
“And then something really weird happened.” Mitzy lowers her voice. “Uncle Duvid started to cry.”
Wow, I didn’t think the guy had it in him. Emotion, I mean. Other than anger, that is.
“And, Abe.” She touches my arm. “Don’t ask me how, but I knew he’d never cried in front of anyone before. Not even when Papa died. I knew it to the bone. And now there he was, weeping.”
I decide here and now that Duvid Kraskov really is my man, that he’s the one I need to rescue. I only wish I had the slightest idea how to do it.
Mitzy takes her hand off my arm. “Listen, whatever he’s hiding, it’s important. To us, I mean. I can feel it. We have to find out what he’s covering up.”
“Okay, all right.” My fists are on the table. “Let’s take it on then. Let’s look for his knives. Or go at Duvid from a different angle. Hit him where he lives.”
She nods and tucks one leg under her. “Barker said maybe Duvid will think better of it after a night in the pokey. That’s what he called it—the pokey.”
“Maybe he’s right.”
“Or maybe Uncle Duvid will rot in jail.”
“No. No way,” I say. “Not going to happen.”
“You don’t know that.”
She’s right. I don’t know anything. I don’t know if we’ll get out of the slum, or if Mitzy will get back her eyesight, or if we’ll ever eat crappy school cafeteria food again. All I know is that I can’t sit here and do nothing.
“Look, I have an idea.” I finger-comb my hair. “I’m going to try talking to Duvid myself.”
“Abe, he wouldn’t even talk to his own family. Why would he talk to you? You’re a stranger.”
“Maybe that’s the point. Maybe his relatives are the last people he’ll tell his secret to.” I hadn’t thought of this before, but now it kind of makes sense. “Maybe a stranger is exactly what he needs.”
“But—”
“What’ve we got to lose?” I say.
“He could get upset with you for butting in, that’s what.”
“He’s already upset with me, Mitz. Just for, y’know, existing.” She makes a little snort through her nose. “Am I right?” I ask.
“I guess, yeah.” She untucks her leg. “Listen, Abe?”
“Uh-huh?”
“I just, I…this is off topic, but…” She pulls at a loose sleeve thread. “What do you think about when you walk the track before school every morning?”
Wait, she’s seen me? I didn’t think anyone, least of all Mitzy Singer, had noticed me. Not ever, and especially not at seven in the morning. “I, uh, it’s not very interesting.”
“That’s what people say when they’re hiding something interesting.”
I look around for an escape hatch. Surprise, there isn’t one.
“And you promised, no secrets.”
“You really want to know?” I cringe. “Okay, all right. It’s how I get ideas for my stories. I, yeah, I write short stories.” There, I said it.
She tilts her head at me. “And you get new ideas by walking the same quarter-mile loop every day? Looking at the same old soccer field and bleachers?”
“It’s not that. It’s not the scenery exactly. It’s the walking, I guess, the moving, the quiet. It just works for me.”
“Hmm.” She moves to the edge of her chair. “So, ideas just pop into your head when you’re out there?”
“Sort of.”
“Tell me one. Tell me an idea you got on the track.” Now she’s putting me on the spot. She’s asking me to set one of my creative seedlings on the table. No one has ever asked me to do that before. “Unless it’s too personal,” she adds.
“No, it’s okay.” Nerve-racking but okay. “Right now, I’m working on a story about…about…” It’s on the tip of my tongue. I can almost taste it, it’s so close. Think, think.
“Gone?” she asks softly.
“Ye—no, I have it. It’s about a town where the flu is going around. Except that instead of making you sick, this flu makes you smarter.”
“Uh-huh.” She’s really listening, I think. Like she’s, I don’t know, interested in what I’m saying. Like she cares about what goes on inside my head. Which is weird—mind-blowing, actually.
“So everyone’s trying to catch this flu,” I say. “Only, no one knows how long the smarts last. Or what happens to you down the road. Or…well, that’s as far as I’ve gotten.”
“Cool.” She’s drawing little figure eights on the table with her finger. “The writing, the walking, the ideas. I like it.”
“Thanks,” I mumble, still feeling blown away. “So. So anyway, what do you think about when you sit on the memorial bench after school every day?”
“Absolutely nothing—that’s the whole idea.” She closes her eyes and touches her hands together namaste-style. “Clearing my mind. Keeping the world out of my head for a few minutes, you know?”
“Yeah, I do.” I smile a little bit. “That’s what the track is for me. No people, no house noises, no traffic lights. Empty space, free for ideas to drop into.”
She opens her eyes. “I wish an idea would drop into our heads right now.”
“Me too.”
She doesn’t say anything after that, and I can’t think of anything to say, and the silence is starting to feel a little awkward, or a lot awkward. I mean, where do you go with a conversation after you’ve shared all this private, serious stuff? You don’t start talking about the weather or tomorrow’s lunch menu, you just don’t.
“Anyway, it’s time for me to get going.” I push my chair back a couple of inches. “Tomorrow I’ll—”
“Abe.” She grips my arm. “Abe, listen.”
“Okay.” I move my chair back in.
“The reason I never say anything when you walk past me on the bench every day.” She clenches me a little tighter. “The reason I don’t say hi back.”
“But I don’t say hi.”
Her forehead wrinkles. “What?”
“There’s nothing for you to say hi back to. I don’t say hi in the first place.”
“You don’t?”
I shake my head. “I can only get up the nerve to nod.” Another crystal-clear memory.
“But…oh.” She sounds baffled, like she can’t understand why someone like me would be nervous about talking to someone like her. “Okay, fine. The reason I don’t nod back. It’s because I’m afraid.”
This makes me laugh. “You, afraid of me?” There’s no universe where a Mitzy Singer should be afraid of an Abe Pearlman. Not this Abe Pearlman, and not the billions of Abe Pearlmans in all the parallel universes that might be out there. It’s ridiculous.
She loosens her hold on me. “Not afraid of you. Not you as a person. I’m afraid—ugh, how do I say this?”
“Just say it.”
“Okay, all right.” She fidgets in her seat, like she can’t find a comfortable position. “I’m afraid if I do something nice for myself—make a friend, have some fun—if I tempt fate, then my cancer will come back. Just to show me who’s boss.” Her hand slides away as she droops back into her seat.
So Mitzy is afraid she’s going to die. And she’s afraid to live. What a terrible place to be. I clear my throat. “Another case of ‘I don’t think that’s how the world works.’”
“I know, I’m stupid.”
“No, you’re brilliant.” And then I do something bold before I have the chance to change my mind. I put my hand on top of hers. Which may not be much in the big picture of bold romantic gestures, but it’s freaking audacious for the likes of me.
She doesn’t take her hand back. Maybe she’s too sad to pull away—sad about the cancer, about being afraid, about being blind. But maybe, just maybe, she kind of likes the way my fingers feel on hers.
That’s all that happens tonight. It feels like a lot. I’ve shared some stuff with Mitzy. I’ve sort of held her hand. Yeah, that’s plenty for one night. Besides, I need to save what’s left of my chutzpah if I’m going to confront Duvid tomorrow.