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He was sweating. That terrible fever sweat when you have stomach flu. He was
pale, as pasty and pale as a worm, and his little hands were gripping the arms
of the chair so tightly
I could see his knuckles in bold relief. I dashed over to him, excusing myself
from the middle-aged couple looking at the new 21 Mediterranean model.
 Jeffty!
He looked at me, but his eyes didn t track. He was in absolute terror. I
pulled him out
of the chair and started toward the front door with him, but the customers I d
deserted yelled at me,  Hey! The middle-aged man said,  You wanna sell this
thing or don t you?
I looked from him to Jeffty and back again. Jeffty was like a zombie. He had
come where I d pulled him. His legs were rubbery and his feet dragged. The
past, being eaten by the present, the sound of something in pain.
I clawed some money out of my pants pocket and jammed it into Jeffty s hand.
 Kiddo... listen to me... get out of here right now! He still couldn t focus
properly.
 Jeffty,
I said as tightly as I could,  listen to me! The middle-aged customer and his
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wife were walking toward us.  Listen, kiddo, get out of here right this
minute. Walk over to the Utopia and buy the tickets. I ll be right behind
you. The middle-aged man and his wife were almost on us. I shoved Jeffty
through the door and watched him stumble away in the wrong direction, then
stop as if gathering his wits, turn and go back past the front of the Center
and in the direction of the Utopia.  Yes sir, I said, straightening up and
facing them,  yes, ma am, that is one terrific set with some sensational
features! If you ll just step back here with me...
There was a terrible sound of something hurting, but I couldn t tell from
which channel, or from which set, it was coming.
Most of it I learned later, from the girl in the ticket booth, and from some
people I
knew who came to me to tell me what had happened. By the time I got to the
Utopia, nearly twenty minutes later, Jeffty was already beaten to a pulp and
had been taken to the manager s office.
 Did you see a very little boy, about five years old, with big brown eyes and
straight brown hair... he was waiting for me?
 Oh, I think that s the little boy those kids beat up?
 What!?!
Where is he?
 They took him to the manager s office. No one knew who he was or where to
find his parents--
A young girl wearing an usher s uniform was kneeling down beside the couch,
placing a wet paper towel on his face.
I took the towel away from her and ordered her out of the office. She looked
insulted and snorted something rude, but she left. I sat on the edge of the
couch and tried to swab away the blood from the lacerations without opening
the wounds where the blood had caked.
Both his eyes were swollen shut. His mouth was ripped badly. His hair was
matted with dried blood.
He had been standing in line behind two kids in their teens. They started
selling tickets at 12:30 and the show started at 1:00. The doors weren t
opened till 12:45. He had been waiting, and the kids in front of him had had a
portable radio. They were listening to the ball game. Jeffty had wanted to
hear some program, God knows what it might have been, Grand Central Station,
Let s Pretend, The Land of the Lost, God only knows which one it might have
been.
He had asked if he could borrow their radio to hear the program for a minute,
and it had been a commercial break or something, and the kids had given him
the radio, probably out of some malicious kind of courtesy that would permit
them to take offense and rag the little boy. He had changed the station... and
they d been unable to get it to go back to the ball game. It was locked into
the past, on a station that was broadcasting a program that didn t exist for
anyone but Jeffty.
They had beaten him badly... as everyone watched.
And then they had run away.
I had left him alone, left him to fight off the present without sufficient
weaponry. I
had betrayed him for the sale of a 21 Mediterranean console television, and
now his face was pulped meat. He moaned something inaudible and sobbed softly. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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