“I’m tired. I told you.” He flung open the front door of the apartment. “It wouldn’t make any difference if you were Zoroastrian!”
“It would be an improvement!” The young man was standing in front of the apartment door with a key in his hand. Now he peered over Archie’s shoulder and waved. “Hi, Sis,” he called. “Introduce me to the new boyfriend.”
“This is my ex-brother, Ebenezer,” she told Archie. “His name is Archimedes Jones,” she added to her brother.
“Jones? That’s not a Jewish name. And you don’t look Jewish, either,” Ebenezer decided.
“Neither do you," Archie told him.
“Well, I'm not. I’m a Puritan. A born Puritan,” he added with a significant look at Helen. “But then I'm not courting my sister in her nightgown at six in the ayem, so I don’t have to be Jewish.”
“Enough! You bum!” Zeke Steinberg came running into the foyer and confronted his son. “You’re nobody to be talking that way about your sister, a nice Jewish girl! And besides, you’re dead! We sat shiva for you! So what are you dong here?"
“I left a book here. The Memoirs Of Cotton Mather. I came back for it.”
“The doorman saw you coming in?” Mama Steinberg asked anxiously, peering at her son over her husband’s shoulder.
“That he did!” the son admitted with relish.
“Oy!” she sighed. “What will the neighbors think?”
“No consideration! Look what you’re doing to the woman,” Papa Steinberg growled at his son.
“Your own mother!” Helen Steinberg added.
“Look,” Archie interrupted, feeling ill at ease in the middle of the family quarrel. “I’m going to split now, so I’ll just say goodbye.” He started edging around Ebenezer, who was still blocking the doorway.
“Zeke, stop him!” Mama Steinberg walled.
“So What’s the matter? He wants to leave, let him."
“The doorman,” Mama Steinberg reminded her husband. “It’s not bad enough he sees one goy coming up-—” She pointed dramatically at her son. “-—but now he’ll see another goy leaving. And besides, think of Helen’s reputation.”
“Ooh! That’s right,” Helen chimed in. “Do something, Pa! ”
“So all right! You there, Jones. Just wait a minute ’til I figure something out.”
Archie waited obligingly. “See how it is when you fool around with these Jewish girls,” Ebenezer told him sotto voce. “Before you turn around, the whole family’s telling you when you can go to the bathroom.”
“I got it.” Papa Steinberg snapped his fingers. “He’ll just have to leave the way he came.’
“Oh, no!” Archie exclaimed. “Not the dumbwaiter again!"
“It was good enough to come, it’s good enough to go!” Mama Steinberg insisted.
“I don't care if you're the best chess player in the whole world,” Papa Steinberg added. “Some consideration you have to have for Helen’s reputation, too.”
“It wouldn’t have been so bad if they’d become Irish Catholics,” Ebenezer confided. “But there’s nothing worse than a Puritan Jew when it comes to courtship traditions.”
“Oh, all right.” Archie gave up. “I’ll leave by the dumbwaiter.”
The whole family escorted him back into the kitchen. Papa Steinberg took his elbow and helped him back onto the dumbwaiter platform. Mama repacked the bags of garbage neatly so he could hold them more comfortably on his journey downward. Helen stacked the baby bottles in his lap. Ebenezer merely stood to one side and miffed.
“What’s that awful smell?” he wanted to know. “This thing never did come up roses, but I never remember it stinking this bad. It smells like--” He left the sentence unfinished out of a remnant of deference to his mother.
“That’s what it is,” Archie told him. He explained about the trained poodles.
“Come again, I'll make chicken soup,” Mama Steinberg told him.
“Maybe Friday night,” Papa suggested.
“We’ll play chess,” Helen promised.
“Goodbye,” Archie said as they all beamed at him and shut the door in his face.
It closed with a rather loud slam. Immediately the door to Archie’s left popped open. The Scandinavian maid’s face appeared, her watery blue eyes squinting myopically .
“Yust the same I sure you a relative for the Steinbergs," she told Archie. “Only Ebenezer and some cousins ain’t Jewish either come and leave this way.” She closed the door again without waiting for an answer.
Archie reached for the rope to pull himself downward. Just as his hand fastened on it, the door on the other side opened. “WOOF! WOOF!” The poodle which had appeared in the opening sprang for Archie’s throat. But Archie was too fast or him. He yanked the rope and descended before the dog could leap to the dumbwaiter platform. By way of revenge, there was a tinkling onto the roof over Archie’s head.
However, there were more troubles in store for Archie. Just as he reached the fourth floor on his way down, another door opened and the brunette in the evening gown stared out at him.
“RAPE!” she screamed. “HELP! RAPE!”
“And I’m happy to see you again, too,” Archie greeted her. “But I’m a little rushed right now and I can’t stop in, so it’s no good your pleading.” He yanked hard on the rope and continued down.
Just as he passed the next floor, the ropes were yanked in the opposite direction. The dumbwaiter moved up. Archie pulled it down again. A muttered curse from above and another yank. A brief tug of war which Archie lost. It ended with two more bags of garbage being dumped into his lap and the dumbwaiter door closing.
He had a hard time juggling them as he continued lowering himself. The result was that he inadvertently banged on the door at the first level. Immediately, it opened.
“Must be the diaper man, darling,” a female voice said. An arm appeared and a load of dirty diapers was deposited atop the pile of garbage Archie was already holding. The door was closed.
Finally Archie reached the basement. He managed to pry the dumbwaiter door open from the inside. Just as he was climbing out, a voice accosted him.
“Just where do you think you’re coming from?”
Archie turned around to face a man in the overalls and work shirt of a janitor. “The Steinberg apartment,” he told him, too tired to lie.
“Oh.” The janitor nodded knowingly. “You’re not Jewish.”
“That’s right. I’m not Jewish.”
“You look awful,” the janitor told him. “And you smell worse.”
“I know that.”
“There’s asparagus sticking out of your left ear. That's a pretty funny place to put asparagus. What do you put it there for?”
“I ran out of cauliflower,” Archie told him with as much dignity as he could summon. “That’s why.”
“Oh.” The janitor nodded as if that explained everything. “Well, I’ll be seeing you.” He turned away and started walking toward the other end of the cellar.
“So long.” Archie headed for the exit.
When he was outside, he paused for a minute and took stock. It had been a long hard night and he should probably head straight for home and bed. But the address next to the last name on his list, Helen Giammori, was only a few blocks away. Archie decided he might as well check it out first.
It turned out to be a seamy residential hotel on a side street in the Eighties between Columbus and Amsterdam. The clerk at the desk didn’t bother looking up from his racing form as Archie entered the lobby. His eyes stayed glued to it as he muttered a room number in answer to Archie's question about where he’d find Helen Giammori.
Archie took the self-service elevator up and then walked down to the end of a long hallway. He knocked at the door and idly picked at the peeling wallpaper as he waited for an answer. When none came, he knocked again and resumed his peeling.