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Saturday sale, while Dad's idea of excitement was to take me to the Plumbers and Steamfitters Union Hall down near the Battery.
        All the guys hung out there. I was their mascot. They smoked cigars, chewed gum, and ate pistachios. They shot pool at the moth-eaten table in the back room. They listened to the Yankees games or the fights at Madison Square Garden on the big Philco radio. I thrived on secondhand smoke. I loved that place.
        There was a small makeshift library where the guys left books to trade, mostly tattered maleaction-adventure paperbacks. But for me, they raided their kids' bookshelves, handing their gifts to me shyly; their kids never read them anyway. Black Beauty. The Wind in the Willows. The Red Pony. I absorbed them all.
        Dad was very careful to put the adult books on the highest shelf, where I couldn't reach them. The first book he ever bought for me was The Wizard of Oz. I always thought that was fitting. For me that was the beginning of my love of books, the most important thing in my young life.
        My aunts picking on my dad, the girls picking on Jack when he came to visit. Is that what brought this dream on?
        Cinderella. Me? Maybe Dad was telling me to keep sweeping the ashes until Prince Charming arrives so I can live happily ever after? Well? Yes and no on that one.
        Jack and Jill fell down the hill? Jack fell and fell and fell . . . Yeah, that's glaringly clear, too. He did fall, my first darling Jack, my husband, didn't he? Fell because of a bullet.
        I sigh. I don't want to let my thoughts go there. Enough. Time to get up and work at my crossword puzzle until the sun comes up.

    11

    A Three-Letter Word

    S omeone else was up early. May Levine,
         seventy-two, content with living alone on the ground floor of Building J, Phase Five, always boasted that she'd made the right choice. She had easy access in and out of her apartment. No steps to climb. No waiting for the clunky elevator.
         But this morning she would regret that choice.
         She briskly massaged her face with Pond's cold cream. Her daughter in New Jersey should only lis ten to her. Doris, the big-shot tennis player, had skin like a crocodile, while her mother's face looked twenty years younger than the rest of her body. May's mother always told her, "May, save your face or your touchas—one or the other al ways goes." Easy decision. Nobody had seen her tush in years.
         Time to get dressed. She dropped her nightie and her old lime green chenille bathrobe onto the bed. She'd had it for forty years and it was still in good condition. You didn't grow up in New York on Delancey Street without learning how to save money. She stood for a moment looking at her naked body in the closet-door mirror. What a mess! Varicose veins everywhere, sagging stomach and tush, boobies that hung straight down. From osteoporosis, she'd lost about two inches in height already. Life wasn't fair. She'd been a beauty when she was young. Why did we have to get so ugly when we got old? She sighed. She whirled about, round and round, remembering the pretty young May she used to be.
         Suddenly she froze. She thought she'd heard a noise. And then she saw something behind her re flected in the mirror. There was a man looking in her window! He had a mask on. Oh, God, she was going to be killed! Then she realized that his hand was pumping up and down along something pale and flabby.
         May screamed. "Peeping Tom! Peeping Tom!"

    It's noon and Evvie, who is always prompt, waits for me downstairs next to my car. I approach her with a nearly bursting bag of books. She, too, has a full bag. "What took you so long? I'm melting from the heat."
        "Sorry," I say as I open my trunk and pile all of our accumulated reading materials inside.
        A familiar gravelly voice calls out, "Yoo-hoo."
        We turn to see Sol Spankowitz, from Phase Three, and his best and only friend,