A pair of cutting shears lay across Esther's bundle, and I recognized the bent finger bow before I saw the man reaching for them. They belonged to Isaac. He stood at the far end of the borrowed workroom, saw me in the doorway, and pulled his hand back. I had left my trunk with my lodging-house keeper and come looking for Esther. Now I had to decide whether to enter a room where my arrival stopped ordinary business.
Esther knotted a length of string around two coats. “Either come in or let the light through.” I stepped inside. Abandoned belongings filled the narrow aisle between tables: aprons, lunch tins, rolled patterns, things carried away from Feld's in haste or brought from the interrupted meeting. Esther was sorting them for return. A woman tried to lift a hamper over a chair and caught her skirt. I freed the cloth, then took the hamper before she could object.
“Where?” I asked. Esther pointed toward the rear stairs. The hamper pressed against my sore knee as I squeezed down the aisle. Somebody moved a stool, but nobody moved a chair far enough to make the passage easy. At the stairhead I set the load down and came back for the coats. Isaac watched me without speaking. His wrist showed a dark mark where I had held it. I kept my eyes on the bundles.
I had rehearsed a request while walking there: if Esther would tell Feld I had left Bell, perhaps he would let me cut again. It sounded shabby with her bent over other people's property. I said it anyway, less handsomely than rehearsed. She straightened. “You want me to tell him what sort of man you are?” “Only that I'm finished with Morris.” She pushed Isaac's shears toward me. “Then finish something. These still have to get back.”
Some of the tools were disputed. Men had borrowed from one another, and after the removal nobody trusted a claim made through the other side. Esther would not settle ownership by recognizing my familiar face. She named two places where workers were waiting and told me to take the bundles openly. “Let them look,” she said. “Don't tell them I've guaranteed anything.” I put the shears inside the coats so the point would not catch a passerby's hand.
The first delivery was three blocks away, above a shop selling buttons by the card. Two men stopped me on the stairs. One had helped bar the meeting-room door against me. I set the bundle on a tread and backed down far enough for him to untie it. He shook out every coat. A lunch tin fell and burst open, spilling a spoon and hard bread. I stooped to gather them, but he told me to leave them where they lay.
I waited while they searched the linings. The narrow stair smelled of old paste, and people squeezing past brushed my shoulder against the wall. Finally the man gathered the bread himself and nodded toward the street. I held out my hand without thinking. He looked at it until I lowered it. Outside, I stood beside a pushcart until the shame stopped feeling like anger. There was another load waiting, and neither feeling would carry it down the stairs.
At the second place Isaac met me below the door. He took his shears out, opened them once, and checked the blades against the daylight. “You could have given me to him,” he said. “I nearly did.” He wrapped the shears in an apron. I wanted him to mention that I had stopped short, but he had already turned away. I carried the empty hamper back myself. Its wicker handle had raised a blister across the base of my thumb.
Esther was sweeping scraps into a pan when I returned. I told her where each bundle had gone, including the searches. She asked no questions about my reception. I took the broom while she carried the last tin to its owner. When she came back, I asked whether she would look at Feld's shop—not speak for me, only see whether people could work there again. She leaned the dustpan against the wall and considered the request.
“Looking isn't agreeing,” she said. I told her I understood, though I had already begun hoping too much. She made me move a table so the woman with the caught skirt could get her own bundle through. We lifted together, Esther at the other end, and set it clear of the aisle. Only then did she answer. She would inspect the floor if Feld wanted workers back. First there was one condition: Bell must not control its entrance.