The Street Read Online Free PDF Page A

leftover instinct warned me of what was on your mind—just in case it made me know you were snuffing on my trail, slathering, slobbering after me like some dark hound of hell seeking me out, tonguing along in back of me, this look, my fine feathered friend, should give you much food for thought.
    She closed her pocketbook with a sharp, clicking final sound that made the Super’s eyes shift suddenly to the ceiling as though seeking out some pattern in the cracked plaster. The dog’s ears straightened into sharp points; the canary opened one eye and thewhispering woman almost showed her gums again, for her mouth curved as though she were about to smile.
    Lutie walked quickly out of the apartment, pushed the street door open and shivered as the cold air touched her. It had been hot in the Super’s apartment, and she paused a second to push her coat collar tight around her neck in an effort to make a barrier against the wind howling in the street outside. Now that she had this apartment, she was just one step farther up on the ladder of success. With the apartment Bub would be standing a better chance, for he’d be away from Lil.
    Inside the building the dog let out a high shrill yelp. Immediately she headed for the street, thinking he must have kicked it again. She paused for a moment at the corner of the building, bracing herself for the full blast of the wind that would hit her head-on when she turned the corner.
    â€˜Get fixed up, dearie?’ Mrs. Hedges’ rich voice asked from the street-floor window.
    She nodded at the bandannaed head in the window and flung herself into the wind, welcoming its attack, aware as she walked along that the woman’s hard flat eyes were measuring her progress up the street.

2
    A CROWD OF PEOPLE surged in to the Eighth Avenue express at 59th Street. By elbowing other passengers in the back, by pushing and heaving, they forced their bodies into the coaches, making room for themselves where no room had existed before. As the train gathered speed for the long run to 125th Street, the passengers settled down into small private worlds, thus creating the illusion of space between them and their fellow passengers. The worlds were built up behind newspapers and magazines, behind closed eyes or while staring at the varicolored show cards that bordered the coaches.
    Lutie Johnson tightened her clutch on an overhead strap, her tall long-legged body swaying back and forth as the train rocked forward toward its destination.Like some of the other passengers, she was staring at the advertisement directly in front of her and as she stared at it she became absorbed in her own thoughts. So that she, too, entered a small private world which shut out the people tightly packed around her.
    For the advertisement she was looking at pictured a girl with incredible blond hair. The girl leaned close to a dark-haired, smiling man in a navy uniform. They were standing in front of a kitchen sink—a sink whose white porcelain surface gleamed under the train lights. The faucets looked like silver. The linoleum floor of the kitchen was a crisp black-and-white pattern that pointed up the sparkle of the room. Casement windows. Red geraniums in yellow pots.
    It was, she thought, a miracle of a kitchen. Completely different from the kitchen of the 116th Street apartment she had moved into just two weeks ago. But almost exactly like the one she had worked in in Connecticut.
    So like it that it might have been the same kitchen where she had washed dishes, scrubbed the linoleum floor and waxed it afterward. Then gone to sit on the small porch outside the kitchen, waiting for the floor to dry and wondering how much longer she would have to stay there. At the time it was the only job she could get. She had thought of it as a purely temporary one, but she had ended up by staying two years—thus earning the money for Jim and Bub to live on.
    Every month when she got paid she walked to the postoffice