Now that I’m a free citizen again, I dig out my black sweater, look disgustedly at the butch haircut, and go out to mail my letter.
Later on I get into a stickball game again on Twenty-first Street. Cat comes along and sits up high on a stoop across the street, where he can watch the ball game and the tame dogs being led by on their leashes. That big brain, the super of Forty-six, is standing by the delivery entrance, looking sour as usual.
“Got any burglars in your basement these days?” I yell to him while I’m jogging around the bases on a long hit.
He looks at me and my short haircut and scratches his own bald egg. “Where’d I see you?” he asks suspiciously.
“Oh—Cat and I, we get around,” I say.
3
Nick and I have been friends pretty much since I can remember. Our mothers used to trade turns fetching us from kindergarten. Nick lives around the corner on Third Avenue, upstairs over the grocery store his old man runs. If anyone asked me how come we’re friends, I couldn’t exactly say. We’re just together most of the time.