of our health protection package? What other plan, I ask you, is so excellent as to give compensation for your gouged-out eye and broken skull?”
“Nobody sent me,” I assured him. “I come here on my own.”
Naf the Sport tugged at his suspenders, rocked on his heels. “Why, that demonstrates real initiative, son,” he said with questionable sincerity.
My impulse was to tell him “I’m not your son,” while on the other hand I thought that one could do worse.
“Problem is,” he continued, “our records show your papa is already on our books. Mr. Shein, Mr. Turtletaub,” he shifted his eyes, one lazy and one lynx, toward either of his colleagues, “what is our policy toward clients that get a little behind in their payments?”
Said the chinless Mr. Turtletaub, whose age I reckoned as somewhere between twenty-five and sixty, “We nail their putz to the doorpost and eat their family.”
Naf the Sport made a face. “I don’t think we need to resort to such extreme measures in this case. In fact, I think the kid here is mistaken about his own mission. Didn’t your papa send you over as a gesture of good faith? You’re like collateral, what they call surety, ain’t that right? Until he gets his finances in order, you are your papa’s marker, so to speak.”
“My papa is giving you bupkes,” I stated categorically, and felt ticklish all over.
Naf the Sport fastened a look on me with his good eye, then shrugged regretfully. “In that case,” he said, “the marker’s no good to us, is it gentlemen?” which meant he’d abandoned the hostage idea. Then he gave the nod to his yeggs, who abruptly grabbed me about the chest and ankles. Before I could wriggle free I was lifted horizontally, carried kicking across the room, and tossed through the window that Naftali Kupferman had opened onto Forsyth Street. There were some seconds when I was pleasantly airborne: laundry flapped, pigeons cooed; then I plummetted ass over elbows into the awning above a grocer’s cart. The soggy canvas tore apart from my weight, dumping me into the produce bin underneath, which itself collapsed in an avalanche of ripe tomatoes. I tumbled along with the fruit onto the pavement and scrambled instantly to my feet, saturated head to toe in pulpy juice. The shag-bearded grocer cursed me, the market wives mistaking the juice for gore screeched like magpies, but I was too incensed to even pause and inspect myself for broken bones. Setting my jaw, I charged back into the building, taking the steps three at a time; I reached the landing and flung myself into the office, where all three men and the peroxide receptionist were still gathered at the open window, looking out. The advantage of surprise in my favor, I leaped onto Shtrudel Louie’s back, somehow managing, even as I tightened my hold on Shtrudel’s throat, to deliver a battery of swift kicks to Turtletaub’s breadbasket. In the ensuing knock-down-drag-out I must have inflicted some damage and damage must have been inflicted on me, but I was unaware of anything but the euphoria of battle. At some point their dandified ringleader, looking on from his vantage by the window (the receptionist having crawled under her desk) shouted, “Cease already and desist!” His colleagues backed off without argument, leaving me to continue throwing haymakers at the stuffy air. Eventually I became conscious that my adversaries, their disordered garments stained with blood or tomato juice, their bruised heads glazed in sweat, were staring at me with something like wonder.
“So, Kid,” said Naftali, “is shlepping ice your chosen profession, or are you looking for something with more opportunity for advancement?”
It was the invitation I’d been angling for all along.
I left Karp’s Ice Castle without a backward glance, nor do I think that Karp even missed me, while my worried mama took every occasion to quiz me about where I spent my days, never mind the nights. I made sure, however, that those occasions became less frequent, and in the end Shmerl Karp and his sightly wife had to accept the fact that their son had grown beyond their control. If they were at all aware of my associations, I gave them no chance to object—though I might have pointed out that my connection with Naf the Sport was in essence a mitzvah, since my membership in his organization prompted the gangleader to give my father’s business a pass. Meanwhile, though the school term had begun again, my former alma mater saw