Tiffany Street (46 page)

“Of course,” Seb said irritably. “In my mother’s house. On Islington Crescent. With her husband who was my brother. During an air raid. While you were visiting them. Why bring up that gory business now?”

Because I could suddenly hear that terrifying crunch crunch crunch which had not been terrifying when I first heard it in the back room of Abe Lebenbaum’s candy store on Avenue D.

“Because I think Hannah would like Lillian to have this,” I said finally.

Seb looked down into his glass for a long, long moment.

“Sorry I snapped at you,” he said. “Yes. Yes, of course. Lillian will understand that.”

“Losing this TV series,” I said. “Will it change your plans about going home to England?”

“Not at all,” Seb said. “All it will do is speed them up. We can go almost at once. Lillian and I have enough to get us there and settle in. I may not do extraordinarily well at the beginning, but I’ll build. I’m not Beerbohm Tree, as I think I just told you, but I’m a good actor.” The wintry smile sped across the handsome face. “And, of course,” Seb said, “my charm remains unimpaired.”

I could not, of course, say the same for Benny Kramer. Even if I could, it would not have helped. All the charm in the world could not have helped.

The series of
Boing
! that had exploded around me during the past few days suddenly felt like the sections of a stockade that had been hammered into place one by one. A sense of entrapment had closed in on me.

Returning from the Philadelphia chore for Shloymah Berel Schlisselberger I had been shocked to find myself asking Benny Kramer: Is this a way for a man to spend his life? Turning away from the unpleasant answer, I had run into the fists of the black man in front of Penn Station. While my head was still throbbing Sebastian Roon, by telling me he wanted to go back to England to die, had forced me to the realization that I had reached the age where it frightened me to lose people. I did not want my friends to go away from me, but they were going.

The death of my barber had made it brutally plain that it did not matter what anybody wanted, or achieved. Even happiness. Things happened without your consent. They were going to continue to happen. I was going to lose more people. Every day from now on. There was no way to stop the erosion of the brightness it had taken half a century of industrious myopia to put together. And Jack, the brightest part of the brightness, had made it plain that only to a boy from East Fourth Street was East Fourth Street an unshakably solid platform on which to build a life.

Time was running out, and Benny Kramer had found in the past few days that there was no turning away from inevitable questions and their unpleasant answers. What had I done with the time I’d had? The time that had seemed endless until the
Boings
of the last few days had driven home the savage truth that time always ran out. There was no way to make it go in the other direction. It never had. It never would. Not for anybody. Not for Benny Kramer.

“Benjamin,” Seb said. “Why don’t you and Elizabeth Ann come along to England? It will be like old times.”

His words brought into focus what I had been trying for days to avoid knowing. It was never going to be like old times. Never again.

“No,” I said. “Elizabeth Ann and I couldn’t do that.”

“I don’t understand why not,” Seb said. “You’re not a poor man, and there’s plenty of work for American lawyers with British firms, and Jack is perfectly safe for the next two years.” I didn’t answer. “Benjamin,” Seb said. “When Lillian and I go, you and Elizabeth Ann will be all alone.”

At least in one respect Benny Kramer’s luck had held. There were men he knew who didn’t have someone to be alone with.

“I know,” I said. “But we’ll have a lot to remember.”

“You can remember it with us,” Seb said. “In England.”

“It won’t be the same,” I said. “Elizabeth Ann and I can’t go. I don’t know why, Seb, but we can’t.”

“I know why,” Seb said.

He sounded angry. He turned to look out the window. So did I. Forty-eighth Street was exploding with the senseless noises that had become part of the city. The silhouette of a huge building crane swung slowly past the group at the big round table up front, where Professor Pfeiffer was telling the story of Somerset Maugham and the Internal Revenue Service.

“It’s a filthy mess,” Seb said. He turned back. I could see from his face that I’d had it wrong. He was not angry. He was bitter. “But to some poor trapped fools it’s the same damnable thing that Blackpool is to me,” he said. “Home, blast it. Home.”

I did not answer. Seb pushed my glass a couple of inches closer to me.

“Go ahead,” he said. “Gin is better than nothing.”

I took a sip. It tasted the way gin has always tasted to me. The way I felt now.

“Poor Benjamin,” Seb said. “‘He fought with none because none was worth his strife. Natures he loved, and after nature, art. He warmed both hands at the fire of life—’”

“And put it out,” poor Benjamin said.

“I wouldn’t be so hasty about writing him off,” Seb said. “You forget something crucial.”

“What’s that?” I said.

“The lad has
oyach
,” Sebastian Roon said.

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 1974 by Jerome Weidman

Cover design by Kelly Parr

978-1-4804-1074-9

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