I’ll hear a Stones song playing when I pass. And I’m going to see my own reflection in a bunch of mirrors.
Traffic on Second Avenue was still light. Taxis honked and wove their way amid the slower-moving cars and trucks. Spring sunshine twin-kled off their windshields and bright yellow hides. While he was waiting for a light to change, Jake saw the bum on the far corner of Second and Fifty-second. He was sitting against the brick wall of a small restaurant, and as Jake approached him, he saw that the name of the restaurant was Chew Chew Mama’s. Choo-choo, Jake thought. And that’s the truth. “Godda-quarder?” the bum asked tiredly, and Jake dropped his change from the bookstore into the bum’s lap without even looking around. Now he could hear the Rolling Stones, right on schedule:
“I see a red door and I want to paint it black, No colours anymore, I want them to turn black …” As he passed, he saw—also without surprise—that the name of the store was Tower of Power Records.
Towers were selling cheap today, it seemed. Jake walked on, the street-signs floating past in a kind of dream-daze. Between Forty-ninth and Forty-eighth he passed a store called Reflections of You. He turned his head and caught sight of a dozen Jakes in the mirrors, as he had known he would—a dozen boys who were small for their age, a do/en boys dressed in neat school clothes: blue blazers, white shirts, dark red ties, gray dress pants. Piper School didn’t have an official uniform, but this was as close to the unofficial one as you could get.
Piper seemed long ago and far away now.
Suddenly Jake realized where he was going. This knowledge rose in his mind like sweet, refreshing water from an underground spring. It’s a delicatessen, he thought. That’s what it looks like, anyway. It’s really something else—a doorway to another world. The world. His world. The right world. He began to run, looking ahead eagerly. The light at Forty-seventh was against him but he ignored it, leaping from the curb and racing nimbly between the broad white lines of the crosswalk with just a per-functory glance to the left. A plumbing van stopped short with a squeal of tires as Jake flashed in front of it.
“Hey! Whaddaya-whaddaya?” the driver yelled, but Jake ignored him. Only one more block.
He began to sprint all-out now. His tie fluttered behind his left shoulder; his hair had blown back from his forehead; his school loafers hammered the sidewalk. He ignored the stares—some amused, some merely curious—of the passersby as he had ignored the van driver’s out-raged shout. Up here—up here on the corner. Next to the stationery store. Here came a UPS man in dark brown fatigues, pushing a dolly loaded with packages. Jake hurdled it like a long-jumper, arms up. The tail of his white shirt pulled free of his pants and flapped beneath his blazer like the hem of a slip. He came down and almost collided with a baby-carriage being pushed by a young Puerto Rican woman. Jake hooked around the pram like a halfback who has spotted a hole in the line and is bound for glory. “Where’s the fire, handsome?” the young woman asked, but Jake ignored her, too. He dashed past The Paper Patch, with its window-display of pens and notebooks and desk calculators. The door! he thought ecstatically. I’m going to see it! And am I going to stop? No, way, Jose! I’m going to go straight through it, and if it’s locked, I’ll flatten it right in front of m—
Then he saw what was at the corner of Second and Forty-sixth and stopped after all—skidded to a halt, in fact, on the heels of his loafers. He stood there in the middle of the sidewalk, hands clenched, his breath rasping harshly in and out of his lungs, his hair falling back onto his forehead in sweaty clumps.
“No,” he almost whimpered. “No!” But his near-frantic negation did not change what he saw, which was nothing at all. There was nothing to see but a short board fence and a littered, weedy lot beyond it. The building which had stood there had been demolished.
JAKE STOOD OUTSIDE THE fence without moving for almost two minutes, surveying the vacant lot with dull eyes. One comer of his mouth twitched randomly. He could feel his hope, his absolute certainty, draining out of him. The feeling which was replacing it was the deepest, bitterest despair he had ever known. Just another false alarm, he thought when the shock had abated enough so he could think anything at all. Another false alarm, blind alley, dry well. Now the voices will start up again, and when they do, I think I’m going to start screaming. And that’s okay. Because I’m tired of tough-ing this thing out. I’m tired of going crazy. If this is what going crazy is like, then I just want to hurry up and get there so somebody will take me to the hospital and give me something that’ll knock me out. I give up. This is the end of the line—I’m through.