Office at Night

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He has suddenly realized the window is open. He can feel it. But how far open? And who opened it? Chelikowsky. His grandfather owned a brewery. Came to the new country with a handful of hops in his pocket. Died of a pulmonary embolism at the age of forty-nine. Left his son, Chelikowsky’s father, on the Lower East Side with a cart and donkey and two hundred pounds of plums he couldn’t unload. Debts. So he went north and west, all the way to Hell’s Kitchen, did the father, who died even younger, with even less, and now Chelikowsky, failed painter, failing businessman, with his own office, is hoping to make it to fifty, and maybe celebrate a little, only someone has opened the window and he doesn’t know who. The new girl? Couldn’t be. The window weighs a thousand pounds in the summer, when the wood swells. He’s strong, Chelikowsky, a wiry ox, and he can barely budge it. Sneak a glance over at her? He can feel her looking at him, always looking. Maybe she’s got secret muscles. Some of them do. Once he went out walking up Ninth Avenue with a girl who accepted the one kiss he gave her, then knocked him out cold when he attempted a second. He sneaks a glance. So quick you can’t see it. So quick he sees nothing. Just a girl-shaped blur.

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