Free It's Like This, Cat by Emily Cheney Neville

sidewalk.
    "See? He likes you," I say. "He won't have anything to do with most guys, except Tom."
    "Who's Tom?"
    So I tell Ben all about Tom and the cellar and his father disappearing on him.
    "Gee," says Ben, "I thought I had trouble, with my father practically telling me how to breathe better every minute, but at least he doesn't disappear. What does Tom do now?"
    "Works at the flower shop, right down there at the corner."
    Ben feels around in his pockets a minute. "Hey, I got two bucks I was supposed to spend on a textbook. Come on and I'll buy Mom a plant for the holidays, and you can introduce me to Tom."
    We go down to the flower shop, and at first Tom frowns because he thinks we've just come to kid around. Ben tells him he wants a plant, so then he makes a big thing out of showing him all the plants, from the ten-dollar ones on down, so Mr. Palumbo will see he's doing a good job. Ben finally settles on a funny-looking cactus that Tom says is going to bloom pretty soon.
    Ben goes along home and I arrange to pick him up on Monday. I wait around outside until I see Tom go out on a delivery and ask him how he likes the job. He says he doesn't really know yet, but at least the guy is decent to work for, not like the filling-station man.
     
    I sleep late Monday and go over to Peter Cooper about eleven. A lot of kids are out in the playgrounds, and some fathers are there tossing footballs with them and shouting "Happy New Year" to each other. It sounds odd to hear people saying that on a warm day in September.
    Ben and I wander out of the project and he says, "How do we get to this Fulton Street?"
    I see a bus that says "Avenue C" on it stopping on Twenty-third Street. Avenue C is way east, and so is Fulton Street, so I figure it'll probably work out. We get on. The bus rockets along under the East Side Drive for a few blocks and then heads down Avenue C, which is narrow and crowded. It's a Spanish and Puerto Rican neighborhood to begin with, then farther downtown it's mostly Jewish. Lots of people are out on the street shaking hands and clapping each other on the back, and the stores are all closed.
    Every time the bus stops, the driver shouts to some of the people on the sidewalk, and he seems to know a good many of the passengers who get on. He asks them about their jobs, or their babies, or their aunt who's sick in Bellevue. This is pretty unusual in New York, where bus drivers usually act like they hate people in general and their passengers in particular. Suddenly the bus turns off Avenue C and heads west.
    Ben looks out the window and says, "Hey, this is Houston Street. I been down here to a big delicatessen. But we're not heading downtown anymore."
    "Probably it'll turn again," I say.
    It doesn't, though, not till clear over at Sixth Avenue. By then everyone else has got off and the bus driver turns around and says, "Where you two headed for?"
    It's funny, a bus driver asking you that, so I ask him, "Where does this bus go?"
    "It goes from Bellevue Hospital down to Hudson Street, down by the Holland Tunnel."
    "Holy crow!" says Ben. "We're liable to wind up in New Jersey."
    "Relax. I don't go that far. I just go back up to Bellevue," says the driver.
    "You think we'd be far from Fulton Fish Market?" I say.
    The driver gestures vaguely. "Just across the island."
    So Ben and I decide we'll get off at the end of the line and walk from there. The bus driver says, "Have a nice hike."
    "I think there's something fishy about this," says Ben.
    "That's what we're going to get, fish," I say, and we walk. We walk quite a ways.
    Ben sees a little Italian restaurant down a couple of steps, and we stop to look at the menu in the window. The special for the day is lasagna, and Ben says, "Boy, that's for me!"
    We go inside, while I finger the dollar in my pocket and do some fast mental arithmetic. Lasagna is a dollar, so that's out, but I see spaghetti and meat balls is seventy-five cents, so that will still leave me bus fare home.
    A