Dreadful Summit by Stanley Ellin

to the curb where there was a taxi waiting and we all got in.
    I didn’t want to go. I had to show Terry Angelus what the score was, but Dr Cooper yelled to the taxi-driver about Barrow Street and then he grabbed me so I couldn’t pull loose. But I could look around through the back window and I did, and Terry Angelus was still standing there with the big dog, rubbing her hand on her forehead, and it looked like she was crying.
    Then the taxi started going real fast so I hit my head against the window, but I didn’t care. I was glad, because I knew if she was crying she was sorry for what she did to me, and that made everything okay.

Chapter Twelve
    I KNEW where Barrow Street was. It was in Greenwich Village, because sometimes after school I would walk there and look in the bookstores. They had the best bookstores there of anyplace, because you could look around all you wanted and nobody would say anything. They had a lot of old books, too, for ten, twenty cents, and once I bought three books all for fifty cents. They were by Rider Haggard, all about a guy who was in Africa and had all kinds of adventures. They were all right.
    A lot of kids said, oh, don’t go there, don’t go there. There’s a lot of crazy guys there want to grab you and give you the works like you were a girl or something, but they didn’t scare me any. I looked around plenty, and I never saw even one like that.
    So when the taxi stopped in the middle of the block, I knew where I was even if it was so dark. It was the darkest block I ever saw, because the street light was busted and the light was out and there was hardly any light you could see in the windows all around. It was freezing cold, too, and I was all over sweat, so when the wind hit me it felt like somebody rubbing ice over my skin and my teeth started to chatter. If I’d wanted to I could have stopped them chattering, but it felt so funny I almost laughed.
    Then a newspaper came blowing along and almost hit me in the face, and I thought of the paper that blew against Mr Ehrlich’s fence. I knew when that paper stuck there I stopped being a kid, and as long as it stayed that way I was big stuff and I could do just what I wanted. Only I was scared, because if it blew away again I would have to go back to being a kid again, and didn’t want to.
    I knew what to do about that all right. When I got back home I would take a hammer and nails and nail it right into the fence so it could never blow away again. And if Mr Ehrlich or somebody tried to take it away, I would pull out the gun and let them have it. I would kill anybody who tried to take that paper away. It would be too bad for them if they tried it.
    When we got into the house it was nice and warm, and there was a lot of stairs. I could walk up the stairs all right. If I wanted to I could go up four steps at one time, only Tanya said, ‘Shh,’ and I didn’t want to make her sad again so I went up the regular way. But it wasn’t any good her saying, ‘Shh,’ like that, because the more we went up, the more I heard some music coming real loud out into the hall. I wasn’t the only one either, because Dr Cooper said, ‘That sounds like your sister all right,’ and Tanya said, ‘Goddammit. She’ll be having me thrown out of here,’ and started running very fast up the steps.
    Outside the door she had trouble looking for her key, and while I was standing there I could hear the music close up and it sounded terrific. It was real heavy stuff, and it would start out like nothing much and then all of a sudden it would open up like thunder and go right over me. Then Tanya got the door open and she ran right in and turned off the music. I wished she hadn’t done it, because it was wonderful.
    It was a big room there without any carpet at all, not even linoleum. Just plain bare wood. And books all around. More books than I ever saw anyplace except the bookstore.