The Soft Clatter of Old Tin Spoons Stirring Autumn Embers at Midnight – Rewrite

The Soft Clatter of Old Tin Spoons
Stirring Autumn Embers at Midnight

     I love Central Park in the Fall. The city feels fresher and cleaner for some reason. As I walked past the Zoo, I heard a kid crying. I remembered what it was like to be a kid. But that was back in the days before MTV and acid rock. Being Jewish meant something back then. Now the kids don’t even go to the synagogue half the time. Man oh man I sure wish I could be a kid again. Just to taste
Mom’s Passover supper would make me a happy man.
     Now I’m just a grouchy old man. But hey nobody said life got easier as you get older. I walked past the lox and bagel man and gave him the evil eye. I don’t know why I’m such a mean old son of a gun. But if I don’t feel good I don’t pretend to. What you see is what you get.
     Then I beheld this girl—this Annabel Lee type, fragile and pale straight out of the Poe poem I read in high school before I quite school and got a job to support the family. She’ll grow up one day. It happens to the best of us. She looked like she was all alone. I really feel sorry for these kids.
     When I was growing up, we knew who we were. I was from the fourteenth ward in Brooklyn. My name is Eddie Rhein. Me I’m not the brightest, but I’m not exactly weak in the head either. I know how to judge a person when I meet them. I can tell right away. Ms. Bloom, my 3^rd– grade teacher, said I had street smarts.
     Black lipstick, rings through her nose and lip like she was ready to be hitched to a wagon. She was wearing this gown that looked like a funeral shroud for a flapper. I’d seen the flappers in the twenties; they were celebrating the vote, not a reefer. That old movie Reefer Madness—people laugh, but it had a point. If living numb and out of touch isn’t a form of craziness, I don’t know what it takes to meet the definition. I could never afford to let my reflexes get that dull.
     And those lip rings! She looked like she’d been caught on a hook. But beneath the charcoal eyelashes, she was leaking tears. She looked like a pigeon who hadn’t found a piece of popcorn in days.
     “Hey,” I said, leaning into my own bluntness. So’s I walked up to her and said, “Hey, it can’t be so bad. What happened, your boyfriend break up with ya?”
     She looked down at the dead leaves, saying “Yes. I just don’t have the will to live anymore.”
     So, I looked at her kind of puzzled like. I felt like an actor in her soap opera. I said, “You give up pretty easy, darling. I’ve been through five wives. Five! You act like it’s the end of the world. Grow up. Life’s got plenty more misery and joy in the tank for you. Quit the self-pity. Get a new boyfriend or try being alone. Besides, who are you trying to be—the Bride of Dracula?”
     “That I should be so worthy.”
     I sat down. My knees were creaking, and I had nothing but time and old age. I said, “Well jeez; My Papa, God rest him, was a Goldstein until Poland became America and he became a Rhein. He did what he had to. We all do. It broke his heart to lose the family name. He did what he had to.”
    She looked up at me from her charcoal eyelashes with those sad puppy eyes and whined, “You don’t understand. With him, I felt like somebody. I felt like I was unique. He initiated me into the
Goth/Vampire scene. Now that he’s gone, I don’t have anybody. I am nothing.”
     “Listen, when I was coming up in the fourteenth ward in Brooklyn, we didn’t have the luxury of being ‘unique.’ Ever hear of the Great Depression?” She played with a lock of her black velvet hair.
     She said, “That’s how I feel now, depressed. It’s like I’m in a deep pit of despair from which I will never climb out of. I spent the morning in front of St. Mark’s church weeping for my lost faith.” I began to actually feel sorry for this little girl.
     I said, “Hey would you like a lox and bagel. That’ll cure the blues any day.”
     She said, “Uggh” I felt a little embarrassed. I wondered if she was enjoying my company or felt like getting the heck away from this crazy old man. But my Mama fed the street urchins and she never steered me wrong. And I had a pot of Mulligan stew in the fridge. Anyhow, I said, “Come on. You look like a sparrow that hasn’t found a worm in weeks. Let’s get some food.”
     Then came the kicker. She looked at me with a pleading look and said, “Mister, I don’t have anywhere to sleep tonight. My boyfriend kicked me out and my parents live in Omaha. I’m plumb broke. Could I crash at your place tonight?” I did the sign of the cross—a habit picked up from the Italian kids in the old neighborhood.
     We hoofed it from the park to the subway, descending into the belly of the city, then across to the projects, where I lived, on Avenue D. Kids were playing stickball in the playground in the courtyard between the buildings.  We took the elevator to the 7th floor. I heard loud Puerto Rican music coming from the upstairs apartment. We took the elevator to the seventh floor, the smell of the hallway a mix of cabbage and cleaning fluid.
     That evening, I warmed up a pot of Mulligan Stew. She spooned the broth and slurped it down while eating just barely more than enough of the meat and potatoes to feed a sparrow although a hungry one. I said, “I promise to make them more savory next time. Did I put too much salt in the goulash?”
     “Mister,” she said, looking up from the steam, her eyes rimmed with enough kohl to satisfy a pharaoh’s embalmer, “if I am going to fit into this dress, I have to watch how much I eat. Your stew is far better than the ramen noodle soup I’ve been eating. I’ve already put on weight from the carbs—the heavy, processed starch of the ramen. But I was hungry. Your stew is way more satisfying than the ramen.”
     “Why in the name of God would you want to starve yourself?”
     “Mister, no self-respecting Goth boy would be with a voluptuous girl.”
     “I married several such women,” I countered, the memory of those marriages rising like a collection of expensive, broken watches. “Voluptuousness was once considered a sign of health, a sturdy woman!”
     “I don’t have money. I am just a dark beauty with a voracious appetite and only this black lace dress with eyeliner to keep me appealing as my raven tresses turn grey. I would be lost without them. Sorry if I sound like the stereotypical teenage girl with a major daddy complex to you.”
     “We all have problems,” I said, leaning against the Formica. “Mine is Jewish guilt—feeling the eyes of every rabbi since the Exodus burning into the back of my neck.”
     “Like when I pigged out on fudge brownies after giving chocolate up for Lent?” she asked.
     “Or like when I gave up Manischewitz wine,” I added, “and started hitting the non-kosher sauce, feeling guilty as the milkman in ‘Fiddler on the Roof’ when the damn fool disowned his daughter because she married a gentile.”
     “Mr. I never heard of ‘Fiddler on the Roof’. My Dad thinks the Goth scene is of the devil and came close to disowning me so I sure don’t want to think about that tonight.”
     I thought to myself what wild hair got into me to allow my place be a flophouse for a girl who dresses for a funeral every day?
     Just as the doubt began to settle in my gut—heavier than the beef and the carrots—she said something as funny as Groucho Marx. She said, “Isn’t the cost of barbecue tempeh on Avenue A unseemly? What has this country come to when a sad-eyed, Pre-Raphaelite vampirette like me can’t afford a decent dish of healthy food. But now I have you to feed me.”
     She smiled then, a flash of white in the dim light, and I felt the sudden, cold weight of my grocery budget sinking like a stone in the Hudson. I was no longer Eddie the gruff old man; I was a provider of stew to the undead, a man whose bank account was about to be sacrificed on the altar of black lace and eyeliner.
      By the time we finished eating, the rain over Avenue D did not fall so much as it rattled, a cold, gray sheet that smelled of river salt and 1985. Inside Apartment 4B of the Lillian Wald Houses, my world moved to a much slower, older clock. It was midnight, the hour when the rest of Manhattan was either screaming or sleeping, but in my kitchen, the only sound was the soft clatter of old tin spoons against the sides of two mismatched porcelain bowls. A pot of split pea soup hummed on the burner, casting a pale circle of steam into the dim light. Across from me sat Gloria, a creature of stark black velvet and smeared eyeliner, dripping onto my linoleum floor like a misplaced shadow. She looked entirely too sharp for the room, yet as I pushed a steaming bowl toward her, the rhythm of the storm outside seemed to soften, tamed by the simple, quiet grace of a hot meal.
     The afternoon heat had finally surrendered to the grit of the city, trading the harsh glare of day for the neon-soaked shadows of evening. Twenty-four hours had bled away since I’d pulled her out of the cold dampness of the street, and the frantic, shivering stray of yesterday had settled into a cautious quiet.
     She was standing at the sink, drying the dishes with a faded tea towel. I watched her notice the small, cracked glass dish on the counter where I always dump my keys and loose change. Inside it sat three faded, yellowed slips of cardboard.
     She picked one up, squinting through her heavy eyeliner. “What are these?” she asked, her voice carrying that smoky, late-night rasp. “They look like they survived a fire. Or a flood.”
     I smiled, taking a tin spoon from the drying rack. “Worse. They survived sixty years of my pocket lint. Those are my ticket stubs, Gloria. New Amsterdam Theatre, 1927.”
     She flipped the cardboard over, tracing the elegant, faded script with a chipped, black-painted fingernail. “Ziegfeld Follies,” she murmured. “Sounds like a cult. Or a really dramatic post-punk band.”
     I couldn’t help but chuckle as I stirred a fresh pot of coffee. “No punk about it, my dear. It was the greatest show on earth. High glamor. Beautiful girls draped in pearls, comedy acts that could make a stone laugh, and music that stayed in your ribs for weeks. I skipped four lunches a week just to afford a seat in the very last row of the balcony.”
     She scoffed gently, though her eyes were wider than she liked to admit. “You starved yourself to watch girls dance in feathers? That sounds kind of tragic, Eddie.”
     I gently took the stub from her hand, looking at it with a warmth that always lived just behind my eyes when I thought of those years. “It wasn’t tragic at all. When those lights went down, the whole world forgot it was broke. For two hours, nobody was poor. We were all living in gold.” I looked up at her, letting a playful glint slip into my expression. “Besides, you wear all that velvet and lace just to sit on the cold steps of St. Mark’s. Is that so different?”
     A small, rare smile cracked through her dark lipstick. “Touché, old man,” she conceded. “But at least my tragedy has a better soundtrack.”
     “Debatable,” I said, handing her a steaming mug of coffee. “Now sit down and let me tell you about the night Will Rogers forgot his ropes.”
     I watched her collapse on my couch and fall asleep. Then the snoring started. My God, it was like a freight train barreling through the living room. I sat there, feeling like the world’s biggest schmuck. What was I doing with a stray kid? She was skinny as a rail, a “pixie stick.” In my day, women had substance. She looked like a stiff wind would take her to New Jersey.
     What’s an old fart like me doing taking in a spoiled little girl? I wondered if she was even eighteen. She oughta be back home letting her mama feed her and fatten her up some. The bass from the Puerto Rican music next door thumped against the thin walls of my apartment in the Lillian Wald Projects. It was the autumn of 1985, and instead of enjoying a quiet evening on the Lower East Side, I had a creature of the night sitting at my cramped kitchen table.
     A few nights later, she was sitting across from me at the cramped kitchen table. Gloria adjusted one of her heavy leather bracelets, blew a wayward strand of dyed-black hair from her pale brow, and studied me thoughtfully over the rim of a chipped coffee mug.
     “Tell me the truth, Eddie,” she said softly, her dark eyes searching mine with a sudden, aching sincerity. “Why me? You don’t know me from Adam. Most guys your age see the boots and the white makeup and cross the street, but you take in a stray bat. Why the sudden burst of empathy? Did I catch your eye because I look like some wild Flapper girlfriend you had back in the Roaring Twenties? One whose unconventional, devil-may-care ways unsettled your delicate sensibilities but secretly mesmerized you?”
     I let out a raspy laugh, shaking my head. “A flapper? Honey, you didn’t remind me of some old flame. When I saw you crying out there in that crazy get-up, I couldn’t ignore you like I do most of the street urchins, because you reminded me of a little boy I used to know. Henry.”
     Gloria arched one of her heavily penciled eyebrows, placing a hand on her chest in mock offense. “A little boy?” she said. “Well, there goes my dark mystique. Do tell, Eddie. How exactly does the Queen of the Damned remind you of some kid named Henry? I’m captivated here, because surely little Henry didn’t wander around the neighborhood wearing fishnets and black lace.”
     “Because of the face,” I told her. “I don’t know why, but it was like seeing a ghost. You’ve got the exact same wiry body. The same big eyebrows. The same tiny cheekbones and unkempt hair. Hell, you even have the exact same mole right there on your cheek.”
     She instinctively touched her face, a warm glint in her eye. Her hand lingered on her cheek, her tough exterior melting into something tender and fiercely curious. “He meant a great deal to you, didn’t he? Please, Eddie… tell me about him. Who was he?”
     “Henry Herschel. He was a dirty little ragamuffin who lived down the road from us when I was growing up,” I explained, feeling that old, familiar ache in my chest. “Walked around in ratty clothes. He was born out of wedlock, and his father drank like a fish and beat his mother. I couldn’t get the little brat off my mind. He looked so pathetic, his ribs sticking out like rafters. I always wondered why I was so lucky and he wasn’t. It didn’t seem fair. Ever since then, I’ve had a warm spot in my heart for the unlucky. The outcasts.”
     Gloria’s edgy veneer softened, her dark eyes showing genuine sympathy before she took a quiet sip of coffee. “It breaks my heart to think of a child suffering like that,” she murmured, a genuine sorrow pooling in her eyes as she reached out to briefly, warmly touch my arm. “It sounds like he never knew what it was to be safe. Were you one of the lucky ones, Eddie? Did you have someone to look out for you?”
     “I had a mama who looked out for me,” I said. “I know lots of kids these days don’t have mamas like the one I had. She would never have let me wander around some strange city like a bum. She was big, round, and full of love. When she hugged me, she’d smash my face right between her breasts.”
     Gloria let out a warm, ringing laugh, her dark eyes dancing as she stood up and stepped around the table to wrap her arms affectionately around my neck. “I’m afraid my chest isn’t quite the vast, overstuffed feather-bed sanctuary your Mama’s was,” she teased, a tender, mischievous smile playing on her lips. “I’m working with a more moderate, though proudly generous, pair of soft velvet cushions. But my boyfriend always swore they were the absolute perfect fit for a soul-healing embrace, and I’m hoping they’ll bring a little of that same warm, fiercely loving comfort to you right now as I hold you, my grumpy but lovable old bear.”
     She pulled me in, and I didn’t fight it. Beneath the harsh, studded leather of her jacket and the cold clink of her gothic jewelry, she was wonderfully soft and radiating a vibrant heat. It wasn’t the enveloping, overwhelming smother of my mama’s embraces, but rather a firm, profoundly tender comfort that grounded me instantly. Resting against the gentle curve of her chest, I breathed in the scent of rain, cheap vanilla perfume, and the crisp autumn night. For a fleeting second, the heavy, lonely years just melted away. It was a passionately compassionate hug, the kind that reminded an old, tired man that he was still alive, still seen, and still capable of being held.
     She pulled back just enough to look into my face, her dark eyes brimming with a radiant, profound affection. She reached up, gently brushing her thumb across my warm cheek. “You’re blushing, Eddie,” she whispered, her voice a soothing, velvet purr. “Has it been so long since you’ve experienced the genuine comfort of a woman’s embrace that you are embarrassed by the feelings that surface when I hug you? Don’t be bashful, my sweet friend. Just let yourself be held. Let yourself feel loved.”
      I felt my face grow even hotter, a sheepish but genuinely tender smile breaking through my stubborn, wrinkled facade. I cleared my throat, deeply moved by her warmth but desperate to steer away from my own raw vulnerability.
      “I suppose it has been a while,” I admitted softly, gently patting her hand before I stepped back. “But the only woman who ever really knew how to hold onto me without making me feel like a complete fool was my mother.” I chuckled, finding my emotional footing again as she finally released me and we both settled back into our chairs.
     “Every time I came home from the service,” I continued, smiling as she finally released me and settled back into her chair, “she’d grab me at the door and have a huge spread ready. Corned beef and cabbage, pot roast, mamaliga, Gefilte fish, and matzos. She knew the value of a good meal.”
     “She sounds absolutely wonderful,” Gloria whispered, a wistful, profoundly affectionate smile gracing her lips. “To be loved so deeply, to be cared for like that… it’s a beautiful thing to carry with you.”
     “She smothered me a little, spoiled me a little. That’s what moms are for,” I admitted. “Even when I was grown, she called once a week to see if I was eating right. My belly would get so full I’d sit on the couch and start to fall asleep. She’d throw a blanket over me, sit in her easy chair, and fall asleep too. A couple hours later, we’d wake up and play Scrabble. She always beat me. She might have looked simple, but she had a good head on her shoulders, telling me stories about Poland and her village. She always tried to make me feel better about the world. Told me God had a plan for everyone. Even little Henry.”
      “Well, it looks like her plan worked out for you,” Gloria nudged, gesturing playfully around the tiny apartment. “Even with the booming salsa soundtrack.”
     “That Puerto Rican music goes on all night. Usually, it doesn’t bother me,” I sighed, rubbing my temples. “And honestly? You snore like my ex-wife did, but still, you bear a striking resemblance to Henry. And even a tough New Yorker like me has a heart for the hard-luck cases.”
     Gloria leaned forward, her expression filled with a gentle, understanding warmth. “I know it hurts when things fall apart, Eddie. Was the snoring the breaking point, or was it just two people who couldn’t find their way back to each other?”
     “She couldn’t stand my cursing, and I couldn’t stand her snoring,” I said, waving a hand with a gentle smile. “That, and a few other little habits that rubbed us both the wrong way. Anyhow, water under the bridge. She married a nice clerk from Brooklyn and they have a good life in his Brownstone, and I’ve got my peace here.”
     I looked at the clock. It was getting late, and I was wondering what I was going to do about her.
     “Still, I enjoy my simple pleasures,” I explained softly. “Going for ice cream on the weekend. Bullshitting with the boys at the café on Tuesdays. It’s a routine. Everybody needs a routine. Now, with you crashing here, my routine is a little shaken up. I might be an old guy, maybe a little too crabby to really fix things for you, but I couldn’t just leave a kid out on the street.”
     “I know my being here disrupts the peace you’ve built, Eddie,” Gloria said, her voice catching with quiet gratitude. “You’re sharing your sanctuary with a stranger, and I can’t tell you how much that means to me.”
     “I had a tough time with my own boy from my first marriage,” I admitted, my voice dropping a little. “He was a bit lost. Rebellious, got into some trouble. He moved out to Vegas and became a blackjack dealer. Rarely calls or writes. Breaks my heart a little, if I’m being honest, but he had to find his own way.”
     Gloria leaned back, her dark eyes softening as she studied me. “You’re a grumpy old bear, Eddie.”
     “I know,” I said with a slight wink. “But I have the consolation of knowing I could be here for you tonight. You just needed a safe place to crash, and even if I can’t solve everything, you’re out of the cold. So finish your coffee. Tomorrow, we’ll get you a good breakfast and figure out the next step.”
     I watched her swirl the dregs of her mug, her black lipstick leaving a dark crescent on the chipped ceramic. The booming bass of the salsa music next door seemed to punctuate the sudden, heavy silence between us.
     “But seriously, kid,” I said, leaning forward and resting my weathered hands on the table. “Don’t you want to go home?”
     Gloria set the mug down and leveled a flat, deadpan stare at me. “No, I don’t, Eddie. I really, truly don’t. I’d rather take up permanent residence in a mausoleum.”
     I let out a heavy, tired sigh, feeling every single one of my years. “Well, I guess I have to put on my therapist hat and help change your mind so you can go back to being the well-adjusted girl you need to be. Really, you can’t crash here forever. I barely have enough room in this apartment for my own neuroses, let alone a roommate who dresses for a funeral every day.”
     Her sarcastic armor cracked just a fraction. The playful smirk vanished, replaced by the exhausted, brittle look of a kid who had been running for way too long.
     “Eddie, I don’t have a home,” she said quietly, her voice losing its brassy edge. “My Dad took one look at my boots, my makeup, and my music, and decided my Goth ways are strictly Satanic. He practically tried to exorcise me before throwing me out. Please… don’t make me go back.”
     I looked at her. Really looked at her. Beneath the spikes, the pale powder, and the tough-girl act, she was just another Henry. Another stray left out in the rain by the people who were supposed to be her umbrella.
     “You’ve had some hard luck recently,” I said, my voice softening, entirely betraying my grumpy exterior. “I won’t press the issue at the moment.”
     Gloria exhaled, her shoulders dropping two inches as the tension finally left her wiry frame. “Thank you, Eddie,” she whispered, offering a small, entirely genuine smile. “You are the best.”
     “Yeah, yeah, don’t spread it around. You’ll ruin my terrible reputation,” I grumbled, pushing myself up from the table.
     I grabbed a spare knitted blanket from the hall closet and tossed it to her. As she curled up on my lumpy sofa, pulling the afghan over her leather and lace, I stood in the kitchen doorway and shook my head.
     What a situation, I thought to myself. I survived the Great Depression, a world war, and a wife who snored like a pneumatic drill, only to end up in my twilight years running a halfway house for displaced vampires. At this rate, I’ll be buying black eyeliner by Tuesday and asking the record store clerk for bands named after unpleasant medical conditions.
     But as the salsa music thumped steadily through the thin walls and Gloria’s breathing finally leveled out into the heavy rhythm of sleep, the cramped little apartment suddenly felt a whole lot less empty.
     Finally, I fell asleep.  I woke up at six in the morning.  My bed was a mess. I must’ve tossed and turned all night.      
     I got up and she was still sleeping on the couch snoring.  I ate a little breakfast and let her sleep.  I felt more comfortable with her snoring than having to talk to her.  I knew her type; completely self-absorbed and spoiled rotten.  I’d rather get lectured by the rabbi than talk to her. 
     It got to be about eleven in the morning.  She was still sleeping.  She must not have slept for days I thought, or maybe she was just one of those young night owls who partied all night and slept all day.  This was Just what I needed, some kid to keep me up all night; coming in at six in the morning with me worrying about her the whole night. 
     But why would I worry?  After all, I didn’t know her from Joe Blow.  She was a complete stranger.  I couldn’t understand why I even cared. Still, for some reason though I did.  Maybe it was because she was the spitting image of Henry Herschel.  I dunno.  I needed to get out and wash some clothes. But I knew I couldn’t leave her here all alone.  For all, I knew she might be a kleptomaniac.  She might clean me out.  So I sat there at the kitchen table reading the newspaper.
     Finally, around one o’clock, she woke up.  She yawned real big showing her perfect set of teeth. I once had perfect teeth.  But I wasn’t complaining. After all, at my age, I was lucky not to be in diapers.  I considered myself a lucky man.
     She sat up on the couch.  I watched her sitting hunched over on the couch as she bent her head down, curled her fingers and ran them through her knotty bunched hair trying to smooth it down.  She
said, “Mister you got any aspirin?”
      I said, “It’s in the cabinet in the bathroom.”
      She pleaded, “Could you get it for me?  I’ve got cramps in my stomach.  I don’t feel much like getting up.”
     I said, “Hey I’ve got cramps every day of my life.”
     I got up and got the aspirin.  As I stood at the kitchen sink, I realized she probably had menstrual cramps.  I got back to the room and handed her the aspirin.  I said, “I’ve got to go out shopping.  Care to join me?”
      She said, “Mister, I can hardly move.  I feel like my insides are on fire.”
      I said, “Listen kid.  I can’t leave you here alone. I know you’re probably a good person. But I don’t know you.”
       She stretched her neck back popping it as I stood over her.  She said, “Ok.  Listen, I’m sorry to be so much trouble.  But could you get me some tampons?  My parents will pay you back. I promise.” I wondered what the checkout lady would think of me checking out with tampons with a little girl by my side. We left and walked down the street around the block to the grocery store.  I got a grocery cart and put in a box of pretzels, some sardines, and some bread.  The little girl put in a box of tampons. 
     As we checked out, I thought I was going to have a heart attack, when the check out lady, Angie, whom I had known for over twenty years, picked up the box of tampons.  She looked at the little girl
who was hunched over holding her stomach.  She said, “Eddie, who is that little girl?”
      I said, “Her name is Gloria. And we all get heartburn once in a while.”
      Gloria said, “Eddie. Please hurry I’ve got to get home.  I’m hurting really bad.”
      Angie said, “Eddie, she needs to see a doctor.”
      I picked up my bag and said, “Angie, what do you want me to do?  I don’t have any money. What do I look like?  The good Samaritan?”
      Angie said, “I know underneath that mean exterior you’re a good person.  I’ve known you too long.  I know better.”
       I said, “What are you, my analyst? If I need advice I’ll write Dear Abby.”
    Angie frowned and said, “Listen to me, Eddie Rhein.  Get this girl to a doctor. There’s a free clinic on 2nd Avenue.  Take her there Eddie.”  Angie handed me my other bag. We stopped by my apartment and I dropped off the groceries.  I hailed a taxi which took us down Houston Street to 2nd Avenue.
     We took the elevator up the old building.  The floor creaked and the hallway was dark.   We got to a door with a large cloudy glass window. On it said, gynecologist/Pediatrician.   I opened the door and
walked into the waiting room.  Behind the window was a tiny old wrinkled woman with thick horn-rimmed eyeglasses.   
     She said, “Please sign in and the doctor will be with you shortly.” We waited over an hour. Nobody else was in the room and I couldn’t understand what the problem was.  I sat there
giving the receptionist the evil eye.  She looked up at me, looking miffed and closed the window. 
     Finally, the nurse came.  She was a big woman. I felt like telling Gloria, “You need to eat more if you want to be big and healthy like this woman.” I knew that was impolite and I restrained myself. 
     I sat out in the lobby and waited for what seemed like forever.  I read about half of the national geographic.  Finally, Gloria came out carrying a bottle of pills. 
     She said, “Listen, Mister, I’m not good at remembering to take medicine.  Could you remind me when it’s time?”
     I said, “Geesh!!”
     She said, “Come on Mister Rhein.  Please help me.”
     I said, “Do you need help brushing your teeth too?  Going to the potty?  I’m the old man.  You should be helping me remember things.”
     We rode a cab back to my apartment.  When we got back to the apartment the Puerto Rican music had stopped.  I felt a little more relaxed.  I put on one of my old records of Benny Goodman.  The girl said, “Mister that music is really grating.  Could we turn on the radio?”
     I asked, “What’s a matter?  You don’t like swing?”
     Gloria said, “Mister Rhein, I’ve never even heard of swing.  Please, I’ve got a terrible headache.  Can’t we listen to the radio?”
     I walked across the room and turned off the phonograph.  She walked over to the radio and asked, “Mister, how does this thing work?”
     I turned the knob and showed her how to adjust the frequency.  I was about to go out of my mind. She turned on some noise that I wouldn’t even say resembled music.  It sounded like a cat being strangled.  I thought, “This is worse than the Chinese water torture.”
     I yelled, so my voice would carry over the racket, “I can’t take it anymore!!”  I walked over to the radio and turned it off.   She said, “What did you go and do that for, mister?”
     I said, “Kid, when are you going to call your parents?  Don’t you want to go home?”
     She looked at me with those sad puppy eyes. She said, “Mister, my parents don’t even know I’m here.  They think I’m off at college in Boulder. I can’t call them and ask for plane fare.
My father would kill me.”
     I said, “Come on, I did stupid things when I was a kid.  My parents never did more than ground me, or take away my allowance.”
      “You don’t know him,” Gloria said, her voice trembling. “He would cut me off in a New York minute. He’d decide I was too wild for the Rockies and exile me to the University of Nebraska. I can’t stand Nebraska—the monotony of the corn fields, the stifling social expectations! Please, Mister Rhein, let me scramble some funds together and I’ll go back. I promise. I’ll be a ghost. You won’t even know I’m breathing your air.”
    I stood facing her by the radio.  She looked down at the floor with the most pitiful look I had ever seen.  “And how,” I asked, “are you going to conjure this money? Do you have a career in bank robbery I’m unaware of?”
     Gloria went into the bathroom.  I heard her sniffling and crying.  I knocked on the door.  She said, “What do you want?”
     I said, “Gloria, I’m sorry.  I’m just a crabby old man.  I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.  Listen, I know you don’t want to put up with me for long. Why don’t you call your papa and talk to him?”
     She began crying louder then.  I said, “Ok, ok. You can stay.  Just follow through on your promise.  Go out and look for a job.  It’s better than you hanging around here and us getting in each other’s hair.”
       She sobbed, “OK.”
     The light of the kitchen was the kind that catches the dust motes of a city reeking with smog and rotting carcass of an America where fat cats were making a buck off the little man. I sat there, Eddie Rhein—a man of certain years, a man whose arteries felt like the rusted plumbing of a West Side tenement. Across from me sat Gloria, a cross between Dracula’s daughter and ‘Little Orphan Annie’, who had found a place in my heart in spite of her ways that a grouchy old son of a gun like me with a face like a crumpled paper bag couldn’t understand.
      She went out that night and didn’t come back until morning.  I stayed up until midnight waiting for her. I finally decided that I wasn’t going to let her screw up my sleep schedule like she had the rest of my routine, and I fell asleep.  I woke up at ten in the morning and she was snoring on the couch.  I made coffee and sat reading the newspaper.  I looked at the classified and saw a waitress job at a restaurant just around the corner.  Around twelve thirty she woke up.  I offered her some coffee and toast.  She sat across from me nibbling on the toast.  As little as she ate I wondered that she could
even stay alive, much less work.  I asked her, “Where’d you go last night?”
     She said, “Oh, I went to a rave. It was really cool.”
     I asked her, “What’s a rave?”
     She said, “It’s Just a kind of wild party; lots of dancing, drinking, techno music.”
     I raised my eyebrows.  I asked, “Any drugs?”
     Gloria smiled and continued eating.  I said, “Listen, young lady, little girl, whatever, I will not tolerate drugs in this house.”
     Gloria said, “Mister Rhein all I did is smoke a little grass. What’s wrong with that?”
     I put down my newspaper and looked her straight in the eyes.  I was thinking, Lord, when will the nightmare end?  I said, “Now listen to me and listen closely.  If I catch you or hear of you taking
any illegal substances, I’ll put you on the street.  Do you hear me?”
     Gloria frowned and nodded, putting down the toast she was nibbling on.  She said, “Mister I’m not really hungry.  I’ve got to get out and get a job.”
     I picked up the newspaper and held it up to the waitress job.  I said, “Why don’t you try here?  This looks like it might be right up your alley.”
     She looked at me and curled her lips. She said, “Mister Rhein…”  I interrupted her and said, “Please quit with the Mister Rhein.  Call me Eddie.”
    She said, “Yes, as I was saying Eddie, I don’t think I’d make a good waitress.  I have a bad memory and wouldn’t remember the orders.”
    I yelled, “Well what do you propose to do then; you think you could work at an office; you with the rings in your lip and nose and sleeping all day?”
    Gloria said, “Listen, Eddie, I have experience.  I worked for a summer at a body piercing place.  My father didn’t know and I don’t want you to tell him.”
     I said, “Hey do what you have to do.  That’s what everyone does, rich or poor, smart or dumb.” But I was thinking, my God, this little monster is a new shock every minute.  It’s a wonder she hasn’t
given me a coronary already.
    She went out that afternoon and once again stayed out all night.  This time I went to bed at ten. I had a hot toddy and that did the trick.  When I woke up though, she still hadn’t come home.  I was really worried.  I stayed at home waiting.  I expected to hear about her on the news, found in some alleyway.  Finally at about six that evening she came in.   I nearly keeled over when I saw the young boy with her.   She said, “Eddie, this is my friend Alex.  Is it ok if he and I watch some TV together tonight?”
    I felt my heart skip a beat.  I said, “This is not a cheap motel.  I will not have you turning this place into a cat house.”
    She looked over at her boyfriend and said, “Alex, you wait right here.  I need to talk to Eddie alone.”
     Gloria took my hand and led me into the bedroom.  We sat on the bed together and I let out a sigh that felt as though it had been building since the Truman administration.  Gloria patted me on the back.  She said, “Mr. Eddie.  Alex is really a nice boy.  He goes to NYU.  I promise we won’t sleep together.  He won’t even stay the whole night.  I just want to watch some TV with him.  I swear he’ll be gone by morning.  I just need someone to talk to.  Please, Mr. Eddie.”
    I said, “Yea, I guess, I’m not much good company for you.  I’m just a crabby old man who does nothing but bitch and complains.  I guess I can let the kid stay.  After all, it’ll get you outta my
hair.”
     Gloria kissed me on the cheek and said, “Thanks, Eddie. You’re the best.  And you’re not bad company.  You really care.  You’re a really kind
man.  I’m going to miss you when I go back home.”
     I smiled and said, “Awww, get outta here. You’re going to make me soft carrying on like that. I’ve got to be a tough old bastard to live in this city.” I lay in bed propped up against the wall on my pillow.  I could hear them through the wall giggling together. I tried to make out what they were saying but couldn’t.  I thought if I hear anything funny out there he would be outta here in a New York minute.  Then again, I thought, what if I caught them in the middle of hanky-panky?  I’d feel really silly standing out there breaking something like that up.  I’d probably turn red, might pass out.  Things like this are better-left undercover, pardon the pun.  I put my earplugs in and went to sleep.
     The next morning, the sun crawled through the grime of my window like a burglar who’d realized there was nothing worth stealing. I woke up with my back feeling like a pile of dry kindling. I pulled out the earplugs—those little foam plugs are a miracle of modern science, let me tell you—and for a second, the silence of the apartment was so heavy
I thought maybe the two of them had evaporated into a cloud of hairspray and bad intentions.
     I shuffled into the kitchen, my feet slapping against the linoleum. The living room was a sight. There they were, the two of them, draped over my sofa like a couple of discarded coats. Alex, the NYU genius, was sprawled out with one leg hanging off the cushion, wearing boots that looked like they belonged to a coal miner from the old country. Gloria was curled into a ball, her black lace dress all bunched up, looking smaller than a minute.
     I started the percolator. The sound of it—glug-chew, glug-chew—was the only thing keeping me tethered to the Earth. I looked at them and felt this pinch in my chest. It wasn’t the angina, either. It was that old Jewish ache, the one that comes from seeing something fragile and knowing the world is a giant hammer.
     “Hey,” I barked, not too loud, but enough to rattle the cage. “Rise and shine. The early bird gets the worm, though in this neighborhood, the early bird usually just gets mugged.”
      Alex jumped like I’d fired a starter pistol. He sat up, rubbing his eyes, looking confused by the presence of a ceiling that wasn’t covered in glow-in-the-dark stars.
     “Morning, Mr. Rhein,” he mumbled. He looked like a decent enough kid under all that charcoal around his eyes. A little soft in the middle, maybe, the kind of kid who’d never had to swing a shovel or dodge a truant officer.
     “Listen, Alex, let’s have breakfast. You don’t want to be hungry during your exam. Take a seat young man.”
     “Well, I still have a couple of hours before class.” We sat at the table and had some cornflakes and bananas in milk. “Listen Alex there is something you should know about Gloria. I don’t know if she told you but she recently had her heart broken by a man. Now I know these days relationships have ups and downs like the stock market. I’ve been through five marriages myself.” And I put on my best fatherly smile. “but if your Dow Jones dips and you have to let her go at some point, be gentle. Because if I ever catch wind of you treating her as any less than a lady, I’ll break your legs, tough New Yorker that I am, capeesh?”
     “Mr. Rhein, you have my word on my honor as a gentleman and a scholar.”
     “Would you like a cup of coffee? The caffeine will keep you alert for your exam.”
     “I’d love some coffee.”
     “Mine isn’t the gourmet stuff. Just a chicory blend.”
     “My tastes aren’t extravagant.”
     “You are a man after my own heart.”
     “We see eye to eye on ladies and coffee and I am sure a lot more.”
     He downed the bowl of cereal and wiped the milk mustache from his face. “Mr. Rhein, please tell Gloria I am sorry but I had to leave early to make my class and that I send my love.”
     “I will do that young man. You can count on it.”
     He gave Gloria a little squeeze on the shoulder—she was still dead to the world—and scurried out the door. When the bolt clicked shut, I felt a better after our talk. But my grocery budget was still screaming for mercy, and I had a girl on my couch who treated noon like it was dawn.
     I sat down with my second cup of coffee and a stale bagel. I started thinking about my old man again. If he’d seen me taking in a girl who dressed like a professional mourner, he’d have hit me with a rolled-up Forward. “Eddie,” he’d say, “charity is for the synagogue, not for every waif with a nose ring.”
      But then I remembered him giving his last nickel to a guy on the corner of Delancey because the guy’s shoes were held together with twine. We’re a people of contradictions, I guess. You spend half your life trying to be hard as a rock just so the soft parts don’t get bruised.
     Gloria finally stirred around one o’clock. She sat up, her hair looking like a crow’s nest after a hurricane.
     “Eddie?” she croaked.
     “The one and only,” I said. “You look like you’ve been through the wars. Drink some juice. You got color like a ghost, and not the fashionable kind you’re aiming for.”
     She stood up, shivering a little. “Where is Alex?”
     “He had a morning class. He sends his love.”
     And there sat Gloria at the kitchen table, the morning sun hitting that nose ring of hers until it shone like a holy relic. She looked settled, rooted, like a person who had finally figured out which way the earth rotated.
     I pulled up a chair. Now, Gloria wasn’t exactly a fountain of charity with her expressions; if smiles were gold bullion, she’d be the stingiest miser in the Lower East Side. But today? She was practically dripping with the stuff. She had this soft, gooey grin, the kind you only see on ladies who have just decided the world isn’t a total dump because they’ve found someone to provide the upholstery.
    “Gloria,” I said, “you look like you’ve been hit over the head with the mallet of love. You’re glowing. Did that kid Alex do that to you, or is it just the light reflecting off the toaster?”
     Her little smirk cracked wide open and she let out a laugh—a real, honest-to-God sound I hadn’t heard since she landed on my doorstep. “Eddie,” she said, “Alex was just the ticket. He made me forget the crumb who tossed me out on the street. I don’t even regret getting evicted now, because it landed me here with you, and Alex—well, Alex is the cherry on my sundae.”
     I looked at her hard then, giving her the full “concerned father” treatment, the kind that usually involves a heavy brow and a lot of unsaid warnings.    
     “Listen,” I told her, “you can have him over for a bite of supper sometime. But don’t let him go breaking your heart. If he starts acting the fool, I’ll have some choice words for him—and they won’t be from the dictionary of polite society.”
     “Eddie Rhein,” she chirped, “you’re my knight in rusty armor. You might be a bit long in the tooth, but I bet you’d still stand up for my honor if
some guy tried to tarnish the goods.”
     “My armor isn’t just rusty, kid, it’s practically oxidized through, and I don’t know a lick of jujitsu,” I countered. “But as long as you’re under this roof, if I see some snake-oil salesman trying to sell you a bill of goods he’s got no intention of delivering, I’ll see to it he never casts a shadow here again. I can smell a shyster from a mile off; it’s a gift of the age.”
     “Eddie, Alex isn’t even the headline,” she said, waving a hand. “I appreciate the coaching, really. I learned my lesson with the last guy. I’m not putting all my eggs in one basket ever again. You’re the only man I trust, like a papa figure. I’m not getting swept off into some cloud-nine romance ever again, I swear it.”
     “Well, darling, give me the frontpage news then. What’s the scoop?”
     “You’ll be happy to know,” she said, leaning in, “there was no hanky-panky with Alex. None. We spent the night brainstorming how I can get some honest work. And it hit me: I actually have a marketable skill.”
     “Now that’s a revelation,” I said. “I’m all ears. Broaden my horizons.”
     “Back in high school,” she started, her eyes getting that faraway theatrical glaze, “I wanted to be an actress. I was convinced I’d take Broadway by storm. My smile, my laugh—they were originals. And my cry? Nobody could touch it. It was this perfect, miserable cross between a widow at a funeral and a bride whose groom just caught a flu so bad the priest had to go home.”
     “Don’t tell me you’ve got some pipe dream about a talent agent discovering you and whisking you off to Hollywood,” I groaned.
     “Oh, Eddie, give me some credit. I’m not that far gone. I tried for Ophelia in Hamlet once, but I kept flubbing the lines. My memory is a sieve. I’d get up there and say, ‘There’s rosemary, that’s an antidepressant; pray, fool around and get high; and there’s goldenrod, that’s for sneezing.’ The teacher didn’t find my improvisations very funny. But,” she brightened, “I stayed in the theater as a makeup artist. My mom was a Mary Kay rep—she taught me everything. So, I’m going to freelance. Doing brides.”
     “Honest labor,” I sighed. “Thank God. At least there’s no body-piercing apprenticeship in the cards.”
     “It’s my destiny, Eddie. But I have to ask… I want to start the business right here. In the apartment. I won’t work late, I promise.”
     I rubbed my jaw. “Gloria, I’m an old geezer. Having a parade of strange women coming and going… the neighbors are going to think I’m running a house of ill-repute.”
     “I’ll put a sign on the door!” she insisted. “‘Gloria, Trained Artist: Beautifying You into a Blushing Bride.’ If anyone asks, I’ll explain. I’m good at talking my way out of corners. And it’s just until I get a car and can go mobile.”
     “Three months,” I said, pointing a finger. “A trial. And then you do house calls. I’ll go hang out with the boys at the pool club while you’re dolling up the neighborhood. It sounds so cockeyed it might actually work.”
     So, for a while, I became a refugee in my own life. One afternoon at the pool hall, I was tucked in a corner with Fred the cobbler.
     “Eddie,” Fred said, leaning over his cue, “I haven’t seen you in here this much since Nixon threw in the towel. You must be bored stiff at home.”
     “Fred, it’s a long story, and a weird one. I’ve got a boarder—a young lady—running a beauty parlor out of my living room. I’ve been displaced for the sake of commerce. She needs the experience, so I vacate the premises.”
     Fred squinted at me. “Eddie, I’ve known you forty years. You wouldn’t tip a waitress more than ten percent on a good day. Since when did you become Mother Teresa?”
     “I must’ve grown a wild hair,” I grumbled. “Don’t get used to it. I’ll be back to being an ornery son-of-a-gun before you know it.”
     Thanksgiving came and went, and I felt like an old bear exiled from his den, drinking Wild Irish Rose with the hustlers while my apartment smelled like hairspray and anxiety.
     One noon her eyes opened to the sunshine from the window. “Eddie?” she croaked. She stood up, shivering a little. “I think I’m ready to call him. My dad.”
     My heart did a little jig. “Tell him the truth. Tell him New York is big and loud and full of crabby old men who make terrible stew. He’s your father, Gloria. Unless he’s made of stone, he’ll want his little girl back in the cornfields.”
     “But what if he says no?” she asked, her lip trembling.
     I walked over and put a hand on her shoulder. It felt like holding a bird—all bone and nerves. “My gut tells me he won’t say no.”
    “Yes, but how do you know?”
     “You are his prodigal daughter. If he so devout he will welcome you back with open arms.”
     She reached for the phone—the old rotary I refused to give up because the new ones felt like toys—and I walked into the kitchen to give her some privacy. I stood there, staring at a crack in the wall, listening to the low murmur of her voice and the distant sound of a siren on Avenue D.
     I felt old. Not just ‘my joints hurt’ old, but ‘I’ve seen the movie and I know how it ends’ old. But maybe, just maybe, this kid was going to get a different ending.
     Gloria returned, “Hey I just called my Mom to let her know I was ok, not the details of my circumstances. I think a letter would be a better way to tell them for me because I don’t want them to freak out on me over the phone. Too much of a shock to my system. Besides, I’m not ready to go home yet.”
     But then, everything shifted. I came home one afternoon and found her at the table, pen in hand. The leather was gone. She was wearing blue jeans and a crisp shirt, looking like a girl headed for a school with a dress code instead of a date with a vampire. She looked like a bird testing its wings, and my heart gave a funny little thump. The sunlight was thick with dust motes, dancing like spirits in an antique shop, and I felt a wave of nostalgia for her before she’d even left.
     I sat down. My voice sounded like gravel rattling in a tin can. “What’s the verdict, Gloria? Are we declaring war or suing for peace?”
     She dropped the pen. The sound hit the table with a finality that made the sugar shaker rattle. She’d scrubbed off the kohl, wiped away the black lipstick. For the first time, I saw the girl from the Nebraska cornfields she’d been hiding under all that paint.
     “Eddie, business is a bust. I can’t keep asking you to leave your own home for a few bucks I might never make. And I’m writing to my parents,” she said, her voice steady. “I’m done with the lies, the stories, the whole spiritual rot of it. I’m coming clean.”
     I looked at her, truly looked at her, past the Halloween front she had put up and into the eyes of a young lady who was the spitting image of Garbo in her prime ready to take Hollywood by storm but Gloria was no longer acting. “Well,” I asked, “What finally cracked the dam?”
     “You did, Eddie,” she said. “I look at someone like you—a man who’s seen the gears of the world grind and yet remains stubbornly human—and it makes me feel like being a better person. You took me in. A stranger. A stray. For all you knew, I was a psycho, a grifter, one of those urban harpies who picks the bones of old men. But you trusted. You acted on a whim of pure, unadulterated decency.”
     “Decency?” I scoffed, waving a hand to dismiss the notion. The room suddenly felt very small, crowded by the ghosts of card sharks and con artists I had known. But Gloria wasn’t marking her cards in life’s poker game. “Nonsense. I think I’m just getting a little senile, Gloria. Soft in the head. The brain cells are flickering out like old neon signs on 42nd Street. That’s your explanation.”
     “No, Eddie,” she countered, her voice rising like cantor in the synagogue I’d left so long ago. “Your mind is a diamond. You’re the one who remembers the medicine, the schedules, the tiny details of survival that I let slip through my fingers. You have a good heart. You’re blunt, yes—you have the social grace of a bulldozer—but you’re sincere. In this city of masks, you’re the only face I’ve seen.”
     I felt a prickly heat rise from my collar. It was the sensation of being seen as a ‘good’ which is a far more uncomfortable thing than being judged as ‘bad.’
     “Well,” I muttered, staring at a stain on the table that looked vaguely like the map of Poland, “Though I don’t sugar coat with people, I’ve been known to keep a poker face when the stakes were
high.”
     “Who could blame you? But I mean it,” she insisted, her gaze unwavering. “You’ve helped me grow up. I’ve never met anyone so real. You don’t put on airs; you don’t perform kindness like it’s a theater piece for an audience of one. If I could be half as true to my own messy self as you are to yours, I’d be doing well.”
     My skin tingled. The blood, long accustomed to the slow, steady pace of a man in retreat from the world, surged into my cheeks.
     “Eddie, you’re blushing!” she cried with a small, genuine smile. “You don’t have to be embarrassed by the truth of your own character.”
     “Whew,” I said, wiping my brow. “It’s a furnace in here. The radiator’s possessed. Why don’t we go for a walk? Fresh air is the perfect antidote for mushiness.”
     But I felt a gambler whose lucky streak was nearing its end. The reality of her leaving was hitting me like a load of bricks.
     “I’m going home, Eddie. Taking the Greyhound. By the time I pull into the station, the letter will have reached them. It’s the vanguard of my return. But… I could use some help. With the phrasing. How do you tell people you’ve failed them without making failure your only identity?”
      “I am not a man of eloquent words. But you must give them the truth—not the polished talk of lawyers because fool’s gold will only earn your heartache in the long run.”
     “Remind them they were young once,” I advised, pacing the linoleum. “Remind them of their own hungers and the stupidities of their youth. Tell them you’ve grown, not because you’ve won the boxing match of life but rather you got up after taking many punches in the gut.”
     I went on, a regular secular rabbi of the West Side. I told her not to abandon her dreams of Boulder, of the mountains, of an education. “If they won’t pay, you’ll find a way. Loans, grants, the honest sweat of a part-time job. The world is full of opportunities to help those who have finally decided to help themselves.”
     She listened with a quiet, solemn intensity. “I’ll do the best I can, Eddie. I’ll do what I have to.”
     “We all do what we have to,” I said, the weight of seven decades behind the words. “Rich or poor, the geniuses and the numbskulls—we all eventually have to stand and deliver.”
     I had in the cabinet the makings of the crêpes suzette mama made on papa’s payday when we could dine like royalty just for that morning. I cooked her up a skillet of those high-class French flapjacks. Gloria ate them with a silent, ravenous grace, but she had her own practicalities in mind.
     “As much as I love this edible poetry, Eddie, I need fuel for the interstate,” she confessed.  “So, I raided the refrigerator for a pastrami sandwich for the road. That is right I’m headed home.”
     I went with her to the bus station.  I gave her some bologna sandwiches to eat on the trip.  She said, “I didn’t know you ate pork, Eddie.  Aren’t you Jewish? Dat stuff isn’t kosher Eddie Rhein.”
     “I got it for you.  You’re not Jewish, are you? Though I must admit Angie, the checkout lady, wondered if I’d lost my mind.”
     “How did you explain that you’d rescued a vampirette from the jaws of the street beasts?”
      “I told her I had a growing gentile girl back home who was thin as a choir boy and needed to put some pounds on.”
     “You were my papa bear and your pad was our den where you kept me warm and well fed. Eddie, I know I already threw my arms around you right after we met, and I know you aren’t the sentimental or usually cuddly type. But my heart is just so full right now—could you give your little cub one last, proper goodbye hug?”
     “Even tough New Yorkers like me know how to hug.”
     I embraced her like my very own daughter.
     Gloria smiled and got on the bus. As the bus pulled away, she waved through the window. I smiled at her and made a peace sign. The bus disappeared around a corner. I took the subway back to my apartment. There I sat watching through my window as the kids played stickball in the courtyard park below.
     As the golden sunlight streaming through the window faded and shadows fell across the courtyard park, I watched the kids scatter to their apartments. As I sat watching the lights come on in the apartments across the courtyard, it dawned on me that Gloria had made my life more bearable. My thoughts turned to when Gloria and I ate together and the soft clatter of love and old tin spoons at midnight which was the unsaid poetry of home.
     The wind howling off the East River had teeth that night, gnawing at the concrete bones of the Lillian Wald projects. It was an ancient, Depression-era cold, the kind of chill that requires the apartment’s radiator to engage in twenty minutes of percussive throat-clearing before it even considers coughing up any heat. Shivering, I shuffled toward the hall closet to seek the armored, familiar embrace of my heavy jacket.
     I pulled the chain on the bare overhead bulb, and there, suspended like a defiant exclamation point amidst a sea of drab, sensible wools, hung a ghost made of midnight.
     It was her black velvet dress. The very same garment—a beautiful, theatrical tragedy of a dress—she had been shivering inside that dusk I found her huddled and hopeless on that bench in Central Park. Pinned to the dark, plush fabric, drooping like a pale, paper moth, was a folded note.
     My heart executed an unsteady, syncopated tap-dance rhythm it hadn’t practiced since 1938 as I unfolded the crease.
Here is a little something to hold onto, my dear, stubborn old friend.
This is the armor I was wearing when I was a lost soul and you decided to play the patron saint of Central Park. When the city nights turn cruel and the radiator starts its clanking, run your weathered hands over this velvet and remember the girl you saved. I am taking your booming laugh back with me; I’ll keep it safe in my ribcage forever.
Whenever I have to brace myself against those brutal, snowbound Nebraska winters, I will always feel the phantom weight of your thick wool coat wrapped around me. I will forever cherish how you hugged the despair right out of my bones, and how much your stubborn guidance—and dare I say, your love—meant, and will always mean, to my drifting heart.
Stay warm, old man.
Your daughter, Gloria
     I stood there in the chilly hallway, my rough fingers brushing the soft, rich nap of the velvet, and for the first time all evening, I didn’t feel the cold at all.