The itch from a mysterious rash on my arms was immediate and real enough in this slough of the Depression of 1936, my depression. Was I not Job, out of favor with the world, my parents, my girl friend Joan, with God? Was not the boiling water of my brand new job, my hands plunged in to scrape debris from breakfast plates, just one more test of my endurance, aptitude for suffering?

Ben, the lone waiter, butted open the kitchen door, hauling with him another towering stack of dishes and the heat of the July streets, 80 in the shade already, not even 10 o’clock. The rash and itch, that giddy, maddening and hurtful ache, was concentrated on my arms steeped in the suds but seemed connected to my blood stream, to my brain. I scraped and rinsed them, raced against the clock. I needed the ten bucks a week, astonished to be blessed enough to find this job, pearl diving.

Done, I hurried to assemble rags and polish to attack the coffee urns, for shortly I would have to speed through lofts across the street collecting sandwich orders from the workers, who preferred to have their lunch delivered. Time was short. I had only an hour to race up and down the stairs, collecting orders and another hour to deliver them, for after I delivered I’d be back to washing lunch-hour plates. As I passed by Joe the Sandwich Man, a rag around his throat to catch his sweat, the wicked knife clutched in his hand, he whispered hoarsely, "Kid." I slowed and stopped. "Go in the back," he croaked. "I’ll meet you in the can."

I washed the urns with soapy water first while I digested what he’d said. I knew the world was desperate. Not only I. Who knew what evil lurked in the hearts of men, as the Shadow said. It was the first time Joe had spoken to me, and a pulse of fear like lightning struck my heart. But now, my sponge and rags in hand, the stable, heavy urns a comfort in some way, I thought more calmly, and dismissed the notion that he had a letch for me, would come at me with his knife. He was the Common Man, the man from nowhere, everywhere, the drifter, from somewhere other than New York, perhaps a farm for all I knew, lucky to find this job. What could he want of me? I put my rags down and I went in back.

He joined me a few minutes later, closed the door behind him in the tiny john, and we were inches apart in front of the toilet, with the cover awry on a busted hinge, the bare bulb hanging, dangling light pull. He was panting and I caught the tremor of his tension as he spoke. "Kid. I say it fast. You listen good.

"Eleven you go out to all the factories, collect the sandwich orders. Right? Sandwiches and drinks. Supposed to write them on a pad and bring them back to me. I make them up and stick them in the sandwich bags.You get the sodas at the counter where they check you out, expect the money after you collect. Right?"

I nodded, suddenly tremendously excited, not knowing why.

"OK. Now listen good. I’ll give you sandwich bags. Don’t use a pad. You take the orders on the sandwich bag. What will they order . . . tuna, BLT and chicken salad -- right? OK. Each bag will have a single kind, this one tuna, that one chopped egg. Got it?"

I nodded.

"OK. First order tuna you write a 1 like a line, OK? Next order tuna you make two lines. Next three lines. Got it? At the end you cross the whole thing out and write a 1 but I’ll know from the marks how many you’ll really need. Got it? Bag won’t hold more than four, so you might have two bags tuna, maybe three. No room for napkins, so stick a bunch in your pockets or under your shirt. When they check you out at the counter they’ll see a 1 on each bag and that’s all the money they’ll expect back. They’ll be so busy with the lunch crowd they won’t open up the bags to count. But you’ll collect for four, got it? 50-50 split. I’ll keep a count myself. You fuck with me I slit your throat. You want to do it, we’ll try it out today. OK?" And he walked out.

I had no time to stay, to sit on the john and think with the door closed. I followed two minutes later to complete the coffee urns, not quite prepared to meet his eyes or those of the cashier at the door.

Had I understood him? What would happen if Miss Gold, the cashier, opened even one of the bags and saw I had four sandwiches, not one? How would I remember who got what? When she checked me out, would Miss Gold pay attention that each bag was bulging as I lugged them out? Would I do this wicked thing? If I didn’t would he hurt me in some way? Did I want to do it? Well, of course I did. There was a thrill to it. For the moment I forgot my rash.

How did I come to the conclusion that I’d commit my robbery? Was I in desperate need? Not really. I could bank three bucks a week on a salary of ten. Was I getting back at Them, the System, God? Not really. I felt more like Jimmy Valentine, the gentleman safecracker, but not quite as suave. Did I need the money to splurge on Joan? Not really. She was a constant puzzlement to me, who never let me go all the way and drove me crazy. Who knew what it would take to make her mine? She wasn’t after things, nor money, nor maybe me. Did I have a single doubt, a qualm about this robbery I was about to do? None. Could I blame this chance beginning of my criminal career on The Establishment, the Great Depression, my terrible itch, my poverty? Not really.

Perhaps the robber barons felt like this, planning strategy to loot a railroad or a bank. Did they begin with penny-ante stuff like this? I doubted it. The robber barons had to know that like the guy in Les Miserables, you got arrested if you stole a loaf of bread, but made a million clear with two strokes of a pen.

I tackled all my tasks with purpose now, floor-sweeping, napkins on the counters, everything in readiness for Cook and Sandwich Man. The faster I got through with them the faster I could get out on the street, maybe half-past ten. The faster I’d run up and down the stairs the bigger batch of orders I could snag, discover lofts no one had visited before, spread out my network to a hungry clientele. If I went like sixty only paid a wage I now went double working for myself. But wait a minute. What about the drinks? What would Miss Gold think if I collected for only forty sandwiches but for two hundred sodas, which she’d count? I had too huge a head of steam to let that stop me, stuck the wads of napkins where I could, grabbed the two bundles of sandwich bags that Joe had given me and I was on my way.

Perhaps it was the 2-cent-deposit Coke bottle on the stairs I hurried down. I realized that I’d seen many derelicts like this, after only a few flights. If Miss Gold wouldn’t keep a count of sandwiches why would she keep a count of the empties I brought back? Because if she did count sandwiches who knew what she would do, call the cops? So what difference would it make to her if I would tote 200 bottles out and brought 400 empties back? What would that mean to her; the deposit bottle was as good as cash. I could tell that something had just happened to my way of thinking, sense of things.

I got the hang of it fast. I raced from floor to floor, stashing empties when I found them, neatly in a row for easy access when I’d get the chance to dash back for them. Speeding like a madman I did a bunch of bags, flew back to Joe with them, so he could get a head start on this rush of business, ran off to the customers waiting to place orders in my hands. By noon I’d covered every building on the block.

Now came the test. Joe had the first batch of packed-full sandwich bags ready for me. I stacked them in a single row in a deep container as I’d planned and set them in front of Miss Gold. She jotted down a 1 for every bag. "Can I have two dozen Cokes," I asked her, never doubting my good luck. She marked them down as well.

I had to make a lot of double trips. Some people had to wait to get the sandwiches and drinks they wanted, served together if I could. It didn’t matter. I was strong. And willing to travel like the wind. I might have been selling phony claims during the gold rush or Dutch tulips. Who doubted that such enterprise paid off?

Back to my sink and pearl diving as the piles of dirty dishes tottered on the stand beside me, mind racing ahead with plans now for a busy afternoon, plus the possibility of taking orders from the corner lofts around the block. Plus why not offer them cold drinks this blazing day, desserts, give total service to my clientele, expand the offerings? I had to do the dishes triply fast because I had the empties waiting for me in the hallways to pile in Pepsi, Coca-Cola cases. Joe understood the game as quick as that, the Danish, cheesecake, chocolate doughnuts bags were filled with three, four, five of each. I was in business for myself at seventeen. I had a partner, true. A partner with a knife. But I had no intention of cheating him. What for? He’d put me on to this. Fair’s fair.

That night at quitting time we found a moment, Joe and I to go into the john. His cut was $18.95. The empty extra bottles were all mine. I’d hit the mother lode! If this went on who knew when I’d have cash enough to open up a business of my own.

To my surprise, that night with Joan, it didn’t even bother me when she removed my hand so firmly from her breast. I wasn’t fully concentrated anyway, my mind on bottles, sandwiches, the robbery I was committing in broad daylight, other lofts to try around the corner if only I could go a little faster, cut a corner on my workload here and there. I noted Joan expected more than tepid grousing at discouragement. She let me touch, just touch forbidden skin, baffled when I didn’t press my luck.

I called my parents from the phone booth when I left Joan. "Hi, Mom?"

"Murray?! Sam, it’s Murray! So hello! So late! Thinking of you all the time, my heart in my mouth, living God knows where, in all the danger, rotten neighborhoods, bad times. Your father said a little something that you didn’t like. So? What’s terrible? A reason to leave home? At seventeen!? A pisher who can’t shop for groceries? You know to cook? You’re OK? Find a job?"

"I’m doing fine, Mom. I found a job. How’s Pop?"

"How’s Pop? What does that mean, how’s Pop? Aggravated, worried just like me. You come, you’ll see. You’ll come?"

Why not? I was a great success. Perhaps they’d treat me with respect. I might even help them out a little, pay a little toward their rent. "Sure thing, Mom. I’ll be there Sunday afternoon. I work half a day on Sundays. So I’ll see you then."

"Like that? You’ll see us then? It’s what, eleven in the night. You’re too busy at eleven you have to run? Where are you running that you can’t say two more words?"

"There’s nothing more to say, Mom. I’ll see you Sunday afternoon."

I opened an account next morning at a nearby bank and put my money in each day before they closed at three. The week whirled by. The numbers staggered me, jumping twenty, thirty dollars at a clip. If this went on for for even seven months then I’d be rich. What happened different after you got rich?

On Sunday Joe didn’t show for work and Ben filled in for him. We weren’t busy anyway and I cleaned down the urns, the floors. At a little before noon the owners came, Mr. and Mrs. Rosen. He was tall, over six feet. She reminded me of my mother. They were forty, forty-five. Someone said they had another luncheonette a few blocks away. Mrs. Rosen took ten dollars from the register and paid me my salary. Pressing the money into my hand, she said "Murray. Come sit with us, Mr. Rosen and me. Would you like some coffee? How do you take it, Murray?"

This was crazy. Coffee with the bosses? They had the time for me, to know I was alive? And then I saw his face. And suddenly fear gripped me, deeper than the glimmer of Joe’s knife. "No thanks."

"Come sit with us anyway, Murray." She smiled.

"I really don’t have time," I said. "I have a date. My hours are till noon on Sunday. Then I’m off."

Mr. Rosen. "You don’t have time!? What do you mean you don’t have time? No time to sit and talk with us?"

"It’s true," I said. "I don’t have time," and started toward the door.

Mr. Rosen bellowed after me. "You walk out that door, kid, then don’t come back tomorrow morning. Hear me?"

I kept going, hoping that there were no cops, no thundering doom-laden footsteps pounding after me. Was that why Joe had not shown up, lying in a jail somewhere? I didn’t run but I didn’t take my time. I ducked into the subway, almost panicked but not quite, and went to my tiny flat. I packed my few belongings which just filled the suitcase I had come here with. It didn’t matter that the landlord would now keep the five-dollar deposit I had given him. I’d left no trace. I’d got away unscathed except for a tiny crease of conscience, not too deep.

I arrived at my parents’ home suitcase in hand. "Do you have room for a prodigal son?" I asked.