Free Harry Kaplan's Adventures Underground by Steve Stern Page B

chamber of curiosities, this shmutzerama. If you asked me, he was born for the job.
    Naturally I appreciated the unsolicited corned beef and soda he brought me from Segal’s deli, but what I needed was moral support. Okay, so that wasn’t a service that typically figured among the puller’s duties, but tonight I had the feeling he was leaving me alone on principle. Was this supposed to be some kind of test? If so, I resented it. Here I was, doing my papa this favor, looking out for his interests and all, and what sort of thanks did I get? You couldn’t blame me for feeling a little put upon, confined as I was to this white-elephant graveyard. No wonder I decided to take the first opportunity to close up the shop.
    By about eight o’clock (though the reckoning of time in Kaplan’s was always only an educated guess) such traffic as there was had anyway ground to a halt. I supposed that my father’s customers must have put the word out that an imposter was at large in his shop. So I locked the register, closed the account books, and rehung the accessories of the pawnbroker’s trade. Then I switched off the lights and felt my resolution falter.
    Though my heart was hinting vigorously that I ought to hurry up, something else made me want to linger. The drowsy glow from my father’s scarlet neon sign was falling over me the way the poppy dust settles over Oz. It was powdering the padded shoulders of the suit coats, enflaming the glass eyes of stuffed animals, highlighting the brass of the instruments, which smoldered as if they were playing red-hot music beyond a pitch that mortals could hear. There was also the quiet, the type that suspicious heroes in cloak-and-daggers call “too quiet.” I felt like an uninvited guest, though I still couldn’t leave. I knew that the instant I stepped out the door, I would have missed my chance to see how the typewriters and pruning hooks, the fretless banjos, the scored china dishes and the birthday spoons, began their secret lives.
    I tried to tell myself there was nothing special about this particular brand of quiet; it was just that I’d never been alone in the shop before. Then I remembered that, in a sense, I wasn’t alone.
    â€œGood Shabbos, Grandma Zippe,” I called out half in jest, though of their own accord the words turned reverent in the air. “Aleha ha-sholem,” I thought I’d better add, and by way of further assurance: “You’re in good company. Nothing but the choicest merchandise here at Kaplan’s.” Hoping that Kaplan’s was satisfied at having reduced me to talking to myself, I judged it was time to make tracks.
    Outside I unfolded the lattice and locked it, then looked east where the street was a mirage come to life. The lagoon was still bobbing with shadowy skiffs, some of them hung with lanterns on the end of cane poles like fishing rods baited with light. There were reflections that the boat hulls scattered into running schools of electric minnows, and now and again a lanternless boat would scoot by like a dark blade in the air. Despite the persistence of the sirens and the faint, tinny music off in the distance, you could still hear the splashing of oars. Maybe it was because I’d been stuck inside the shop for so long, or maybe I just hadn’t counted on the kind of changes that night would bring, but the scene took me by surprise all over again. You could lose yourself in it if you weren’t careful.
    The awning had to be cranked up for the night, a chore I performed so distractedly that I never noticed Oboy sitting beneath it. Consequently, some residual rainwater that had collected in the canvas spilled over, drenching his cap and streaming down both sides of his face. This likened him, in my mind, to a sculpted rainspout on a cathedral.
    â€œUh-oh,” I think I said as I produced a handkerchief to make a clumsy pass at drying him off. But when he lifted his