Against the back of the building was a fire escape. It didn’t descend all the way to the ground. The last segment was a metal ladder with a cement counterweight. By turning over a garbage can and standing on its base, Jack was able to reach up and grab the lowest rung. As soon as he put his weight on it, it came down with a clatter.
Jack climbed up the ladder. When he stepped off onto the grate of the first landing, the ladder retracted to its original position with equal clamor. Jack stood still for a few minutes to be sure that the din didn’t disturb anyone. When no one stuck their head out of a window to complain, Jack continued climbing.
On each floor Jack had ample opportunity to glance in at the various domestic scenes, but he assiduously avoided doing so. It wasn’t pretty.
When he saw it close-up, Jack found true poverty enervating. Jack also kept his eyes elevated to avoid looking down. He’d always been afraid of heights, and climbing the fire escape was a test of his fortitude.
As Jack approached his own floor he slowed down. The fire escape serviced both his kitchen window and his bedroom window, both of which were ablaze with light. When he’d left that morning, he’d left all the lights on.
Jack sidled up to the kitchen window first and peered in. The room was empty. A grouping of fruit he’d left on the table was undisturbed.
From where he was standing he could also see through to his door to the common hall. His repair was still in place. The door had not been forced open.
Moving to the second window, Jack made sure that the bedroom was as he’d left it. Satisfied, he opened the window and climbed in. He knew he’d been taking a chance leaving the bedroom window unlocked, but he thought it worth the risk. Once inside his apartment, he made a rapid final check. It was empty with no sign of any unexpected visitors having been there.
Jack quickly changed into his basketball gear and exited the same way he’d entered. Given his acrophobia, descent was more difficult than ascent, but Jack forced himself to do it. Under the circumstances, he wasn’t wild about stepping out of his front door unprotected.
When Jack got to the street end of the tunnel, he paused in the shadows to view the area immediately in front of his building. He was particularly concerned about seeing any groups of men sitting in cars. When he was reasonably confident there were no hostile gang members waiting for him, he jogged down to the playground.
Unfortunately, during the time he’d taken to climb up and down the fire escape and change clothes the crowd at the playground had swelled. It took Jack even longer than usual to get into the game, and when he did, he ended up on a comparatively poor team.
Although Jack’s shot was on, particularly his long jumper, his team mates’ weren’t. The game was a rout, to Warren’s delight; his team had been winning all night. Disgusted with his luck, Jack went to the sidelines and picked up his sweatshirt. Pulling it over his head, he started for the gate.
“Hey, man, you leaving already?” Warren called out. “Come on, stick around. We’ll let you win one of these days.” Warren guffawed. He wasn’t being a bad sport; ridiculing the defeated was part of the accepted playground behavior. Everybody did it and everybody expected it.
“I don’t mind getting whipped if it’s by a decent team,” Jack shot back. “But losing to a bunch of pansies is embarrassing.”
“Ohhhh,” Warren’s teammates crooned. Jack’s retort had been a good one.
Warren strutted over to Jack and stuck his index finger into Jack’s chest. “Pansies, huh?” he said. tell you what. My five would devastate any five you could put together right now! You pick, we play.”
Jack’s eyes swept around the court. Everybody was looking in their direction. Jack considered the challenge and weighed the pluses and the minuses. First of all, he wanted more exercise so he did want to play, and he knew that Warren could make it happen. At the same time, Jack understood that picking four people out of the crowd would irritate the ones he didn’t pick. These were people Jack had been painstakingly cultivating over the past months to accept him. Beyond that, the people who were supposed to have winners would be especially vexed, not at Warren, who was insulated from such emotion, but at Jack. Considering all the angles, Jack decided it wasn’t worth it. “I’m going running in the park,” Jack said.