As Time Goes By by Michael Walsh Page A

to remember where he had come from. She kept up with the news in the Yiddish-language Daily Vorw ä rts, one of the city's biggest and most important newspapers, and she never lost the opportunity to remind him about the importance of social justice. Mir iam was an expert on social justice, since, coming from the old country, she had experienced so little of it, and she had a sense of noblesse oblige that was positively Belmontian; if the Jews could not be a lamp unto the feet of the gentiles, then who could? If there was one thing she taught her son, she was proud to say, it was tolerance; for Miriam, tolerance was a cardinal virtue because if you were tolerant of others, they would surely be tolerant of you. It was a kind of insurance policy against pogroms, and that was why she was proud to be an American, living here in the goldeneh medina, even though she spoke almost no English, read not a word of it, and, at her age, didn't intend to start. It was the el and its younger sibling, the subway, that had made it possible for the immigrants jammed into Manhattan's most crowded precincts to escape the Lower East Side. Miriam Baline worried about losing her fatherless boy to the streets, and the streets of the Lower East Side were worse than any—prime recruiting territory for some of the toughest gangs in the city. Like mothers all over New York, she prayed that her son would not fall into gangland's clutches, not take up with a group of like-minded youngsters who would rather knock over a pushcart peddler or rob a stuss game than put in an honest day's work, not gawk at the gangsters like Dopey Benny and Gyp the Blood in their fancy suits and their shiny shoes, with a girl on their arm, a gun in their pocket, and a look on their face that dared you to crack wise about it.
    Like many mothers all over New York, though, Miriam had been doomed to disappointment. Her son was heading south, not north.
    The long ride downtown gave him ample time for reflection on his depressing trajectory. He had been born, he decided, under an unlucky star. He was too young to have been able to fight in the Great War; too poor to have gone to anywhere except City College, where he had been an indifferent student and finally had dropped out; too disinterested in knowledge for its own sake to pay very close attention to his lessons; and too easily distracted by girls to do much of anything. He had no motivation and, aside from a growing fond ness for the bottle, no interests. Except for the speed of the elevated train, he was going nowhere slowly. He needed a cause.
    It was hot that summer, the way it was always hot in New York, only hotter. All the men wore suits and ties, and underneath them the sweat ran down their arms like tiny rivers. Rick often wondered whether it would puddle high enough in your shoes to splash onto the floor and embarrass you in front of the ladies. With everyone packed into the el, cheek to jowl with their equally sweaty neighbors at rush hour, it was never a pleasant ride, but it was cheap and a lot faster than walking. With luck, Rick could get downtown and back again in less than an hour with a cloth sack filled with goodies from old man Ruby's display cases.
    On this particular afternoon, however, the el was nearly empty. As he looked down into the city, Rick thought the only New Yorkers who were not stoop sit ting or fire escape napping or standing with their heads in the icebox were himself and the sole other occupant of the car, an exceptionally pretty young woman who was sitting across from him.
    To say she was the most beautiful creature he had ever seen would be an understatement. Her hair was jet black, her skin translucent white. Her figure was only partly concealed by her clothing, and the part that wasn't concealed had had his full attention for several stops. Although her skirts were long, her ankles were revealed, and as any young man would, Rick had instantly done the sum, extrapolating from the width of