A Book of Great Worth by Dave Margoshes

water and held his hand up to the light to examine the cut. It wasn’t very deep but the glass had severed a big vein, an artery perhaps, and the blood wouldn’t stop seeping out. “Her husband? Her mother?”
    “Worse,” Shmelke said gloomily. His belligerence had suddenly faded and he stared at the raw wound on my father’s hand as if he were considering how a similar gash would look on his throat. “What happened to your hand?”
    “It’s nothing,” my father said. All of a sudden, he wanted to speak no more of it. All he wanted was to go to his room, drink a whisky and lie on his bed in the dark, where he knew the sound of shattering glass would reverberate in his ears all morning long. “What is it, Shmelke?”
    “She’s pregnant.”
    “Ah, so that’s it.” My father turned back to his hand, wrapping toilet paper around it till it was bulky as a crumpled package.
    Shmelke observed this in silence, pursing his lips like water wings bobbing in a rough sea. “You know, maybe, a doctor?” he blurted out finally.
    My father looked up from his hand into Shmelke’s face and was washed with a wave of disgust. He re membered the blank, stoical eyes of Schecter staring up at him and he felt, suddenly, very tired.
    “Sure, sure,” he said. He brushed past Shmelke. “I’ll see in the morning.” He walked down the hall.
    “And Morgenstern?” There was a plaintiveness in Shmelke’s voice my father had never heard before and it made him stop, his hand on the knob of his own door.
    “Yes?”
    “You could talk to her, maybe?”
    My father turned around. “Now?”
    “Sure, now. She’s in my room, waiting. She won’t go. All night, practically, she’s here. She won’t give me any peace. And Mrs. Lowe...” He nodded towards the stairs.
    “Waiting for what?” my father asked. “Talk to her about what?”
    “Tell her about the doctor you know. Tell her about how safe and sure this doctor is, how they take preclusions and it’s no more than getting your tinsels out, just a little cut and...”
    My father didn’t wait for him to finish. He went down the hall and into Shmelke’s room without knocking. The woman was sitting on the bed, her knees together and her hands clasped on them like a schoolchild waiting to receive her lesson. “Hello,” my father said. “My name is Harry Morgenstern. I live here, down the hall.”
    The woman looked up at him and blinked. She was a small, very dark girl, hardly out of her teens, with a pointy chin and shoulders that didn’t seem to matter. Her face was so dark, my father couldn’t clearly make out her features, but she seemed pleasant enough, though hardly pretty. There was a blue kerchief with lit tle white flowers on her head. “Where’s Louis?” she de manded. Her voice was small but strong, like a rain that seems innocent enough but wets you through.
    “I’m right here, my little flower,” Shmelke said from the doorway. “My friend Morgenstern, the novelist, he’s a man of the world. Believe me, to him this is nothing. He’s seen this sort of thing dozens of times.” He made a snapping motion with his fingers but they wouldn’t connect and there was only a rasping sound. “It’s only a triffle.”
    My father sat on the bed beside the woman. She glared at him but, after a moment, her gaze softened.
    “Why don’t you leave us for a moment, Shmelke? There’s a bottle in my room. Help yourself.” He had to fumble in his pocket with his left hand for the key. They waited until the door had closed, Shmelke’s footsteps sounded in the hall, and another door could be heard opening, then closing. Then my father and the black woman looked at each other again.
    “He’s very stupid, our friend,” my father said simply.
    “Ain’t no friend of mine, not any more,” the woman said. “But stupid, that’s for sure.”
    “I’m not the man of the world Shmelke says I am,” my father said, smiling, “but I can see trouble.”
    “I’ve got plenty