I love to see that morning sun come up. This shop was more dilapidated, maybe owned by someone so good-hearted he’d give money for any instrument, starving in there, worse off than Artie. The window was piled with scarred instrument cases, their leather stained and rubbed away: cases for clarinets, flutes, bassoons, no doubt with dull, creaky instruments still inside, sold by some musician or would-be musician who finally gave up—took the office job, married the girl. On top were instruments with no cases at all: blotchy trumpets, greenish and dented, parts of clarinets, dull gray flutes. He was on his way home from work. He’d begun walking down Broadway instead of getting into the subway. He’d walked miles. Artie had taken a job unwillingly, but he wasn’t young. He couldn’t pretend his luck would change any day. He worked in Evelyn’s uncle’s shoe store. His brothers had been too embarrassed to look at him when the Board of Ed fired him, too embarrassed to hear Artie’s angry explanations, or just unwilling to let their crazy brother work in their various businesses, in which room might have been found for somebody who could read and count.
