In the Night Café Read Online Free PDF

on it—he’d stuffed it into his pocket in the elevator. It was babyish, he’d declared, and I’d felt it would be wrong to press the issue.
    I wanted him to have his dignity. In fact, I wanted to give him everything—enough to last a lifetime. I remember almost feeling that I could and at the same time thinking I didn’t know at all what I was doing. I’d been only a kid myself the last time I’d been alone with one.
    We had four hours. I told Tommy, “I’ll take you wherever you want.” That was a little overwhelming for him, he wasn’t used to making choices. He asked for the Empire State Building, but couldn’t come up with anything else. He’d become shy with me all over again. I kept thinking he knew as well as I did what the day was really for.
    It took ages to find a cab. Finally one came into view, but an old woman tottered into the street under an enormous black fur coat and flagged it down. She called to us to get in with her. “You don’t want to stand around with your little boy in an awful wind like this.” A wind like this could knock you down, she told us. When I told her we’d be getting off at the Empire State Building, she said, “Well, that’s very educational.”
    She chattered away at us. “Your little boy,” she kept saying.
    I didn’t correct her. Tommy was kneeling beside me on the backseat, staring out the window.
    â€œIs this young man your only child?” she asked.
    I said, “I’m not his mother. He’s my husband’s child.” To say it in the present tense made Tom alive for a moment.
    Tommy had turned his head. His blue eyes penetrated mine. I felt he was telling me, Don’t give away our secret.
    The old woman pursed her lips and said disapprovingly, “Well, I thought you seemed young to have such a nice big boy.”
    I had theories about kids. Superlatives were supposed to impress them—what was biggest or best or had the most of something. Of course, any seven-year-old boy would have to go right to the top of the Empire State Building. “And now for the longest elevator ride in the world!” I said to Tommy when we got out of the cab on Fifth Avenue. I even made him pause on the sidewalk and directed his eyes upward to the bright needle of the radio tower.
    He did what I told him, he threw his head back obediently. But now that we’d arrived, he showed no excitement.
    â€œI don’t want to,” he said. “I don’t want to go up.” His voice had a blanched-out sound to it, and I should have paid more attention.
    â€œSure you do,” I said. We’d crossed the street and I was starting for the entrance to the lobby to buy tickets.
    Tommy pulled me back by my sleeve. “It’s too high for me,” he insisted.
    I made a try at telling him we’d be safe, we weren’t going to go outside, but he had such a pinched, stricken expression on his face that I stopped pretty quickly.
    â€œOkay,” I said. “Too many floors?”
    He gave a forlorn little nod that made me feel terrible. I could see he thought he’d let me down.
    I got him away from there, started walking him up Fifth Avenue, though I didn’t know where we’d be going next. I hated the way everyone got damaged, even kids, that Tommy would see his tall building and have to think of falling. I remember wishing for crowds, wishing Christmas hadn’t gone from all the shops. The mannequins were on uninteresting vacations now in Hawaii or Bermuda, languid and brown under nylon bougainvillea. The wind sent dirty bits of paper scudding along the gutters.
    Near Rockefeller Center we found a small broadcasting exhibit where you could see yourself on TV. Sheepish-looking people would show up on a large screen and on a row of television sets in the front window. Tommy said it was neat.
    We waited on line and we each took a turn getting on the