Chapter 101

In hindsight, it was easy for Andrew to identify his misstep—a blunder so garishly bright, it glistened like fool’s gold.

That morning at the A&P, as he’d stood considering packages of ground beef, a long, freckled arm reached across him.

“’Scuse me,” the woman had said, plucking a package of lamb chops from the shelf.

Startled, Andrew scampered away, tugging viciously at the flat cap until it nearly covered his eyes. In the cereal aisle, he waited and waited for the finger-pointing, shouting, and sirens. Minutes passed, and when nothing in the store changed, he unstuck himself and hurried toward the registers.

He realized too late that he was standing behind the woman with the freckled arm. He tried to back out of the lane but was blocked by a young black mother pushing a cart stacked high with canned goods and soap powder. Heart knocking against his rib cage, Andrew closed his eyes and took three deep breaths.

The freckle-armed lady set her purse on the counter. Andrew chanced a glance at the well-worn navy-blue handbag flecked with tiny lacerations and stains. It looked familiar.

Andrew raised his eyes and saw that he was standing next to his hero, his warrior queen: Eudora Penny. His anxiety was replaced with giddy delight. Feigning interest in a rack of TV Guides, he inched closer to her six-foot frame.

Eudora Penny collected her change from the cashier, looped the purse handles over her shoulder, and started away. Andrew, as if hypnotized, abandoned his shopping cart and followed her out of the store. When she stopped at Henry’s Vegetable and Flower Stand, Andrew remained outside, hovering over the buckets of fresh flowers like a pollinating honeybee.

Had Andrew abandoned his pursuit of Eudora, he would have made it back home in time to thwart the watery catastrophe, so that the black superintendent wouldn’t have entered his apartment to fix the leak and then stayed when he saw the thing he could never forget.

But Andrew continued to shadow Eudora on her morning rounds, debating how and if he should strike up a conversation with her. It had been years since he’d engaged in small talk of any kind. His interaction with people had been limited to his monthly sojourn into Manhattan to conduct business with a decrepit old man known as Abraham the Jeweler.

Once a month Andrew took the train to visit Abraham in his tiny office at the back of his jewelry shop on West 47th Street. Before they got down to business, the two would exchange observations about current events and the weather, but little else, as Abraham fixed the loupe into his right eye to begin examining the pieces Andrew had brought him.

When he was done, Abraham would grunt, remove the loupe, scribble an amount on a piece of paper, and slide it across the desk to Andrew. If Andrew was pleased with the figure, Abraham would place the money into an envelope, hand it over, and send him off with a “Shalom.”

* * *

245 fell into view, and Andrew realized that his window of opportunity was closing, so he hastened to catch up to Eudora.

Up ahead, the singing cripple rolled toward them. Eudora bounced her head in greeting; Andrew turned his face away, but out of the corner of his eye he saw the old vet make the sign of the cross over his heart and then aim his finger at him.

Now, Eudora was at the door of the building, silver key poised over the lock. Desperate, Andrew called out to her in German. Eudora’s head jerked mechanically around as if her mind and body were at odds with the decision to respond.

“Um, yes?”

He saw her eyes then. They weren’t a disappointment; in fact, they looked exactly as he had imagined—deep, ocean blue like his own. Andrew panted out a few more words of German.

“I’m sorry,” Eudora said, raising her voice, “I don’t understand. I. Speak. English.” She tapped her chest with every word.

Andrew raised a palm. “Kein problem, tut mir leid, Ihnen die Mühe gemacht zu haben.”

Her mouth a thin line, Eudora pushed the door open and stepped aside. “After you.”

Andrew scuttled past. “Danke.”

“Have. A. Good. Day,” she squalled, heels clicking on the floor as she hurried to her apartment.

Andrew’s feet did not touch the steps; elated as he was, he floated to the second floor. The door to his apartment was as he had left it and so he entered without any misgivings.

When he saw Harlan sitting in the darkness with the riding crop resting in his lap, Andrew didn’t try to run or scream for help because he had suspected for some time that his stolen life was steadily inching to a close. Perhaps that’s why he’d finally had his up-close-and-personal with Eudora Penny? God wanted him to know that He was as benevolent as the religions claimed.

The years pressed down on Andrew’s shoulders, and his spine bent with the weight. He swiped the cap from his head, clumsily rounded the side table, and sat down on the couch across from the black man. The plastic covering crackled faintly beneath his thighs. Outside on the sidewalk, the singing veteran rolled his wheelchair to the building, leaned over, tightened the laces of his brown shoes, then stood up and walked away.