“What the fuck happened to you?” he gasped. Then, helping me into his swivel chair, he mumbled, “You poor baby.”

“Nothing happened! I got into a fight. I’m better now.” I shoved the wallet into my pocket.

“Are you sure Marty or Ternevsky had nothing to do with this?”

“Yes.”

He glared at me with such dismay that I was curious to see myself. Looking into the small wall mirror, I saw my face filled with Halloween colors and inflated like a balloon. The streaks of blood in the pupils of my eyes accented the nightmarish effect. It hurt me when I laughed.

“You really should go to a hospital.”

“I just checked out of one.” I held up my wrist to show him the plastic ID bracelet.

“They should’ve been able to do a lot more for you than this,” he pointed to my face, a case in point.

“They wanted me to stay for a week.”

“Why didn’t you?”

I stared at him for a moment until he looked away. He probably sensed my worry, my distrust of him. “I’ll be ready to work tomorrow.”

“Don’t be silly. You’ll scare people away.”

“Miguel, how close are we to finishing up here?”

“Huh?”

“Toward Hoboken.”

“Real soon.”

“I’d like you to sign some kind of document stating that I have at least twenty-five percent of this business.”

“If I signed something like that it might imply our little situation here.” He pointed to the gauge.

“I’m completely unprotected. If I can’t get some kind of documentation, I want my share of the money.”

“Even if I did try to screw you, all you’d have to do is turn me in. That’s pretty good insurance.”

“Yeah, but after all this is done …”

“Look, there’s still a lot of time before we’re finished here, and you’ll see the title of the place in your name by then.”

“Listen,” I replied, using his line of reasoning against him, “if you can trust me about this little secret then you can certainly trust me not to turn you in. Besides, if I turned you in, I sure as hell don’t gain anything by it.”

“All right!” he finally said, and sitting at the desk he took out a piece of paper and said, “Now, what would you have me write?”

1 dictated some feeble statement saying that he owed me thirty percent of any movie theater he might buy and operate. He signed and dated the document and gave it to me. I knew that it and a nickel couldn’t get me a ride on the Staten Island Ferry. But it offered some psychological comfort.

“I’m sorry,” he finally said. “I don’t know what prompted all this, but I’ve been a little edgy lately.”

“Why are you edgy?”

“Because I saw someone in a car across the street most of yesterday.”

“Probably some pimp.”

“Maybe, but I figure that the only way they can catch us is by counting exactly how many people come in over the course of a day and then checking it with our figures.”

“Maybe we should stop for a while.”

“Well, you can if you want, but we’re very close and time’s getting shorter. I’m making a dash for the finish line.”

“Then I’m with you.”

“Well, you’re no use to me like this. Straighten things out with Ternevsky, heal some, and then I’ll give you your shifts back.”

“Fine.”

“Oh, by the way,” he concluded, “I heard that Tanya’s going to be back in town in a couple days.”

“Who?”

“Tanya,” he said and then I remembered how I had fraudulently gotten the job. “We’ll all get together.”

“Great,” I replied blandly. I had enough to sweat over for the time being. I told Miguel I was staying with the fictitious Donny, but that I was broke and needed a couple bucks. Miguel opened the petty cash box, and counted out five twenty dollar bills. If memory served, that much should be able to float me for the better part of the week if I ate shitty food and checked into the Sloane House on Thirty-fourth. Even though it was a bleak outlook, I thanked him and told him all would be fine. I’d be well soon and wouldn’t disappoint his faith in me. With one hand on the cane and the other on the unclaimed documentation in my pocket, I made my way out of the theater.

It was now about five, rush hour, and the recurrent nightmare of a packed subway seemed unbearable. I took a cab to the Sloane House; my bruised body begged for that one indulgence. But the cabby knew only two speeds: accelerate like a rocket and stop on a dime. After all the potholes, I felt like a golf ball after a tournament. Abandoning the cab on Thirty-fourth and Eighth, I breached through the repeated breakers of retreating commuters heading toward Penn Station and aimed my cane toward a cheap deli with blinking Christmas lights circling a big poster in the window written in day-glow pink, “Cold cut sandwiches, only $1!” I went in and asked for a dozen sandwiches.

“What kind?” a drab Arab asked.

“Bologna, liverwurst, salami, and ham—all on rye with mustard.” All the processed meats looked alike, but didn’t look like anything resembling meat. For dessert, I got two boxes of Entenmann’s chocolate chip cookies and a big bag of Wise potato chips. It was enough to convert someone to anorexia. They shoved the shit in a white plastic bag and it came to eighteen bucks. I walked over to the Sloane House. The front desk was thronged with a group of foreign students passing through New York for a couple days or so. I stayed closely behind them. Then came my turn, “Where are you from?”

“Here.”

“I’m sorry but the Sloane House is only for people from out of town.” I quickly took out the bogus wallet. Sven had a New Jersey drivers license. “I’m sorry I thought you said where was I presently. I’m from”—I checked the address—“Fort Lee.”

“Why don’t you go home?”

“I want to visit for a while.”

“May I see your ID?” I showed her Sven’s drivers license.

“You don’t look anywhere near thirty-six.”

“Thank you. The living’s been easy,” I said, hunching over my cane. She let me sign; she then told me more rules and details and said I could either pay up front or pay on a day-to-day basis. I paid for four days in advance, which left me with about ten bucks to rebuild my life after I had recovered.

“Don’t you have any luggage?” the desk clerk asked. I held up my white bag of groceries and explained that I travelled lightly. She made me sign a small white piece of paper and gave me a room on the eleventh floor. I waited for the elevator, which took forever, and soon found my tiny room and locked the door behind me. The narrow view of a courtyard emptying into a parking lot could make a Salvation Army Band suicidal. Tying a knot around my food bag, I let it dangle out the window in order to keep it preserved during the length of my convalescence.

A towel was provided by the hotel, so I stripped down to my bruises and bandages for a shower. With my right hand gripping the towel and the cane in my left, I limped out through the hall to the communal bathroom. Passing the stalls and sinks I moved toward the rear, approaching a racket of babbling voices, but I couldn’t make out a single word. The shower room was tiled water-tight with a single large drain in the center of the floor. Everything tilted toward the center. Grouped around the drain was a crew of Indian-looking sailors who were squatting naked scrubbing their salty uniforms against the rough floor just as their fathers probably had. Under the spout furthest away from them, I carefully washed away all the caked pus and dried blood. As the water jetted against my skin, I felt increasingly more sensitive. I figured that pain killers had to be among the dose of pills I was given at the hospital that morning. When their effects began to taper, agony slowly replaced it. As I stuck my face under the stream of water, the dull pain reminded me that my nose was broken. The pain started getting worse and aside from feeling faint I realized that the hot water was making the bruises swell and the unhealed scabs were reopening. Nodding farewell to the crew, I returned to the front part of the bathroom.