He pulled the outer door open, stepped onto the wet brownstone stoop, and paused for a second, looking back into the narrow hall where the radiator continued its rhythmic, metallic clatter.
"Get some sleep, Walter," he said.
"I will," I told him.
"After I take a walk."
I waited until Callahan’s sedan pulled away from the curb, its tires hissing through the slush, before I pulled on my overcoat, took my hickory cane from the corner behind the umbrella stand, and walked out down the steps.
The morning was cold, but the wind had died down, leaving the Fairhaven street under a soft, pearl-gray sky that smelled of burning coal and wet asphalt.
I did sleep after that first walk, though not as quickly as I had promised. For several nights, the stairs returned in dreams. I would hear the envelope strike his thigh and wake with my hands pressed flat against the mattress. The advocate said such reactions did not mean I regretted helping. I had never thought regret was the right word. I regretted that the choice had existed at all.
On the street, familiar people had their own ideas about what I had done. The grocer called me brave. A neighbor said I should have left it to younger men. I accepted the groceries and changed the subject. Neither judgment described the long months when I had done little besides take notes and wonder whether the next complaint would make somebody else's shift harder. A single night made a tidy story of an untidy kind of work.
I carried my cane past the corner where Ruth once waited for the bus. The paving stone there rocked underfoot, just as it had when she was alive. I made a note to report it and smiled at myself. Apparently a man could help expose extortion and still remain an irritating citizen with opinions about municipal maintenance. I hoped that would always be permitted. It was a more practical hope than expecting good government to arrive with one set of arrests.
Near the station, I saw Teresa coming up from the night service. She had spoken with the advocate and agreed to an interview. She did not thank me dramatically. She asked how my shoulder felt. I asked whether her contractor had changed her schedule. She said no, then added that she had kept the notice of her assigned hours in case it did. We had become people who preserved ordinary pieces of paper because we understood how quickly an ordinary account could be rewritten.
At the entrance I paused. The steps were damp, and a maintenance worker had placed a warning sign near a loose tile. I gripped the handrail and took my time. Standing up for oneself did not require walking faster than a bad knee allowed. Below, the lights were on. A train announcement rose through the stairwell, flattened by echoes until the destination became familiar before the words were clear. I had used this station for decades. I wanted the right to use it again without performing courage for anyone watching.
The children from the parochial school down the block were walking two by two along the sidewalk in their navy blazers, their satchels swinging against their knees, while the owner of the green grocery on Orchard Street was unrolling his canvas awning to keep the damp off the wooden apple crates.
I walked down the avenue with my cane striking the pavement in a slow, steady measure.
My knee felt stiff, the joint grinding slightly when I stepped off the curb, but the pain stayed where it belonged—behind the bone, familiar and manageable, like the weight of an old overcoat that had seen too many winters.
When I reached the entrance to the Mercer-Halden station, the street-level gates were wide open.
The shopkeeper at the corner had kept a paper bag behind the counter for me. Bread, two apples, and a small piece of cheese. I asked what I owed. He named the ordinary price and waited for my coins. I was grateful he had not decided a little attention in the papers made my groceries a public occasion.
He asked whether I would be at the next tenants' meeting. I said yes if the stairs did not defeat me. He offered to bring the attendance sheet downstairs afterward so I could record a concern without making the climb. Nothing about the offer required a newspaper photograph. It was the kind of accommodation a neighborhood could make before a man's knees forced him to disappear from its conversations.
A new transit patrolman was standing by the token booth, his leather gear fresh and uncreased, his silver badge polished bright against his blue wool coat.