Hot Night in the City

much'. I didn't tell her that this particular boy would rather be allowed to pursue his game than be dragged up there to spend time with a boring old lady and a scarecrow. Instead, I sat across from her and nibbled grumpily. But she just smiled at me, then looked over at her husband and sighed with satisfaction, as though everything was all right, now that we were all back together again.

I noticed that when she drank her milk she looked into the glass, like little kids do. And that's when it struck me that, like her husband, she was strangely young. She had white hair, sure, but her skin was smooth and her eyes bright. It was as if, living as they did, without hopes or fears or work or play, time had flowed lightly over them, without eroding their features, and they had remained eternally young and oddly—ghostlike.

As I left, she pressed a nickel into my hand. I protested that I hadn't done anything to earn it, but she just squeezed my hand around it, so I left thinking how nice people can be worse than mean ones, because you can't fight back against nice people.

I found my mother and sister sitting on our front stoop to get a breath of cooler air, and I joined them. I told them about the McGivneys, and Mother was surprised to learn that there was a Mr McGivney. Anne-Marie rubbed the goose bumps that had risen on her arms at the thought of sitting in the same room with a crazy man who just stared out the window all the time. I told her he wasn't crazy, just sort of... well, damaged, but she said damaged men were just as scary as crazy ones, and she didn't care how many nickels they gave me. Mother said I shouldn't accept money unless I did some chore to earn it. Otherwise it was like accepting charity, and LaPointes didn't do that; they worked for everything they got. But she was glad I'd made some new friends, and she was sure I'd be a big help to them... poor lonely old people. I almost told her that I resented being made to feel responsible for them, but I didn't because I was afraid she'd realize how often I felt the same resentment about having to get us off Pearl Street some day.

The next morning, there was a third boy outside the A & P, and he had a brand-new cart and a sign with professional-looking lettering that offered to carry groceries for 4?. You could tell from his clothes that he wasn't poor, just a regular kid lucky enough to have a new cart and somebody—probably a father—to help him paint his sign and to advise him about undercutting the competition. I could see right off that offering to carry the groceries for four cents was a smart scam, because most of the women would give him a nickel, and they wouldn't ask for their penny change back because that would make them seem too petty; so he'd get the job by underbidding us, then he'd end up getting as much as we did. I'll bet his father was a salesman with a slick line. Well, I drew this new kid aside and had a little talk with him, explaining that there wasn't enough business for three kids, and this had been my idea in the first place. Then I put on a concerned look and told him that I was worried about how sad his mother would feel if he came home with no front teeth and his fancy wagon all kicked in and— Out of the corner of my eye I could see the manager watching me from inside the store, so I just pointed at the middle of the rich kid's chest and skewered him with squinted-up eyes, which on my block meant 'You're standing real close to the edge, kid!' then I swaggered back to my battered old cart.

But he stayed, and I didn't get a single customer that day, bracketed as I was by a bigger competitor and a more attractive one. I stuck it out until the A & P closed that night. But I didn't bother to come back again. What was the use?

That Friday our weekly $7.27 welfare check came, so we were able to buy the tube, although it meant having potato soup every night that week, rather than the usual two. But I liked potato soup and still do, despite the gallons of it I consumed as a boy. That evening I stood in front of the Emerson on one leg in a narcotic state of deep soul-comfort, my head bowed, my eyes half-closed, totally absorbed in the exciting worlds of Jack Armstrong, The Green Hornet, and The Lone Ranger, Masked Rider of the Plains. The world was right again.

After my sister and I did the supper dishes, the three of us sat in the front room, listening to Friday night's run of suspense programs. We always turned off the lights and listened in the dark, with only the faint yellow glow of the radio's dial because it made the stories deliciously spooky on such programs as Suspense and The Inner Sanctum, and The Whistler, a man who walked by night and knew many things. He knew strange tales hidden in the hearts of men and women who had stepped into the shadows. Yes, he knew the nameless terrors of which they dared not speak!

I awoke one morning to the chilling realization that summer vacation was almost over and, what with trying to earn extra money and spending time up at the McGivneys', I hadn't gotten enough good out of it... sort of like a Popsicle that melts while you're obliged to talk politely to a nun, and you don't get to suck it white before it falls off the stick. Next year I would be ten, and I felt that advancing to a double-digit age was significant... the end of childhood, because once you get into two digits, you're there for the rest of your life. And another thing: all my life it had been nineteen-thirty something, and nineteen-thirty had a solid, comfortable sound, but next year would be nineteen-forty. And that 'forty' looked funny when you wrote it down and felt awkward in your mouth when you said it. Everything was changing. I was growing up before I was finished with being a kid! This would be my last summer before I had to give up my story games and start in earnest doing what I could to get us off Pearl Street.

All right, I accepted that bringing my mother's damned ship into port was my responsibility. But I couldn't take care of Mrs McGivney, too. I intended to play as hard as I could for the next two weeks until school and my burdensome adulthood started, and that meant I needed all my time for myself, for my games, for listening to the radio, for wandering the streets in search of mysteries and adventures, and there just wouldn't be any time to waste sitting around with the McGivneys.

I avoided the back alley for a week, during which I revisited one by one all the story games I had ever played so I would never forget the exhilarating fun of them. That week I fought off Richelieu's swordsmen, ran cattle rustlers off the streets of Albany once and for all, and led an expedition to the Elephant Graveyard, where we almost lost Reggie and Kato. On Sunday, I changed into play clothes right after six o'clock mass and went off to spend the morning playing one of the best games of all: Foreign Legion, which involved not drinking anything after supper the day before so I'd be good and thirsty by the time I had crossed Broadway towards the river, passed through the tangle of still-sleeping all-Negro streets that was called Blacktown, and scrambled over the high wooden wall of an abandoned brickyard that had huge piles of sand and gravel. I staggered through the endless sand, stumbling and slipping as I climbed the pile, blinded by the glaring sun, suffering terribly from thirst made worse by the fact that I was weakened by half a dozen spear wounds inflicted by perfidious Arabs whom I had always treated well, unlike some of my brother Legionnaires. My throat was parched, and I muttered to myself that the pools of icy water I saw all around me were only mirages. Must... keep... going. I wanted nothing more than to give up the struggle and just lie down and let death overwhelm me, but I couldn't. No, I must go on! There was a standpipe with a spigot by a watchman's hut, and it was part of the game to hold the vision of that cool, clear water in my mind as I crawled on my hands and knees over the piles of sand and gravel, dragging my wounded leg behind me (sometimes both legs) but determined to carry the message from what was left of my decimated company besieged in the fly-blown outpost of Sidi-bel-Abbes to the colonel of the regiment stationed at our headquarters in the noisy, bustling city of Sidi-bel-Abbes. (All right, so I knew the name of only one desert city! Is that a crime?) By taking the least direct path possible and weaving my painful, half-conscious way over the great central sandpile again and again, I could drag the game out to past noon, by which time my lips were crusty and my tongue thick with thirst. When at last I arrived at the standpipe, I put my head under it, ready for the blissful shock of its cool dousing, my fingers almost too weak to turn the rusty spigot. In a hoarse voice I cried out to Allah to give me strength. Give me strength! And I gave the spigot a desperate twist with the last of my fading strength...

...but no water came out. They'd cut off the water since last summer! Anything to spoil a game! Jeez!

By the time I got back to my block, I was really thirsty, so I cut through the back alley to get to my apartment as quickly as I could.

Three sharp clicks of a coin against the window above me... Oh no! And there she was, gesturing for me to come up. Nuts! Nuts! Double nuts!

But this time it would be different. As I trudged glumly up the dark stairs of 232, I confected a plan to free myself of this lonely old lady and her loony husband: I would mope and be rude, so she wouldn't want my company any longer. But first...

'Could I have a glass of water, Mrs McGivney?'

'Why, of course, John-Luke!'

I gulped it down, rather than sipping it slowly, savoring the life-saving sweetness of it, as I would have done