The question was whether I could get Bell stopped without putting another man's hand back on the shop door. I told myself that was why I crossed town with my injured hand tucked inside my coat. There was another reason, less handsome: loading bundles had frightened me. I had felt my fingers fail beneath a weight I once could have carried. Feld's floor was opening again, and I had no place on it. Somewhere underneath my concern for Esther lay the hope that an old connection might still feed me.
I went to a room where I had sometimes been admitted before. My dealings there belong to this imagined account of my life, not to Buchalter's public record. A man at the entrance recognized me and looked at my empty hands. He did not move. Behind him, somebody dragged furniture across a bare floor. I asked to see Buchalter. The man told me to wait outside, then closed the door against my shoe. I pulled my foot clear before he could shut it harder.
For nearly an hour I watched deliveries crowd the curb. Twice I nearly left. Then the door opened, and I was waved through without welcome. I climbed after the man, keeping my bad hand off the banister because the pressure hurt. At the upper landing, he searched my face as though my purpose ought to be written there. I had prepared a careful request, one that would sound like concern for business rather than a plea for protection. On the stairs it began to sound familiar.
Buchalter stood beside a table with his coat still on. I had seen men grow elaborate in his presence, explaining small matters until they became large ones. I meant to avoid that. He indicated a chair; I remained standing because sitting would make the visit feel settled. In this private scene, all I could know was what I saw: a tired-looking man waiting for me to speak, and a door behind me that another man had quietly pulled almost shut.
I said Bell was troubling Feld's shop. Buchalter waited. I described the reopened floor, the workers coming back, the chance that another confrontation would empty it again. I did not mention Ruth. Her wages were not a reason to bring him into our affairs. Nor did I offer Esther's suffering as a credential. Yet even with those things withheld, I heard what I was doing. I had brought the shop to a place where the people working in it had no voice.
“What are you asking me for?” he said. I could have answered in half a dozen respectable ways. A word. An understanding. Permission to tell Bell that somebody wished him elsewhere. Instead, I looked at the chair I had refused. If I carried such a message downstairs, Feld would open tomorrow because I said he could. Esther would pass the entrance under an assurance she had never requested. I would have acquired my old position without having to stand outside in the weather.
“I came to ask you to speak to him,” I said. My mouth had gone dry. “I'm withdrawing it.” Buchalter glanced toward the door, then back at me. “Then there's nothing to settle here.” I nodded. He did not ask about my hand or offer an answer I could take away. That should have disappointed me. Instead, the plainness of it left me nowhere to hide. I had come carrying my own temptation, and no one else had undertaken to remove it.
The man outside led me down. At the street door I asked whether there was anything I ought to collect from the old room, any tools that might have been overlooked. He shook his head and held the door open. I understood the dismissal without adding a threat to it. Whatever access I had possessed was not a wage or a pension. I stepped into a delivery boy's path, apologized, and caught his slipping parcel against my chest. My right hand buckled.
He took the parcel back before it fell. For a moment I stood with my arm pressed to my ribs, breathing through the pain. Across the street, a shopkeeper was raising an awning with a crooked pole. Ordinary work continued without waiting for me to find an honorable way into it. I started toward Feld's, intending to ask whether his reopening needed a pair of hands for an hour. At the corner I stopped. Ahead of me, Bell turned toward the shop's street.
He walked quickly, coat swinging open, and did not look behind him. I crossed against a wagon, touched its tailboard to keep my footing, and followed. I had nothing from that upstairs room to put between us. Bell reached Feld's entrance and took the stairs two at a time. Through the open doorway I heard Esther directing somebody to leave a bundle by the window. I broke into a run before Bell disappeared above the first landing.