“Well, the first thing to notice is how many Jews there are.”

“I haven’t noticed many Jews,” I said.

He eyed me in amazement.

“Well, a few,” I said quickly to prevent my treasured perception from being dulled any further.

“A few, hell,” he said. “There’s more Jews here than anybody.”

“How can you tell?”

He gave me that undecided look again. “Where do you think all that garbage comes from?” He nodded feebly toward my bulging cans. I looked just in time to prevent a stray noodle from slipping over the brim. “That’s right,” he continued. “Jews are the biggest eaters in the world. They eat the best too.”

I confessed then that I was of the chicken-soup generation and believed that Jews ate only enough to muster strength for their daily trips to the bank.

“Not so!” he replied emphatically. “You never heard the expression: ‘Let’s get to the restaurant before the Jews get there’?”

I shook my head sadly.

“You don’t know that in certain restaurants they take the free onions and pickles off the tables when they see Jews coming?”

I held my head down in shame over the bounteous heap.

He trudged over to my can and began to turn back the leaves of noodles and crumpled tissues from #47 with his hand. After a few seconds of digging he unmucked an empty paté can. “Look at that,” he said triumphantly. “Gourmet stuff, no less.”

“That’s from #44,” I said.

“What else?” he said all-knowingly. “In 1946 a Swedish girl moved in up there and took a Jewish girl for her roommate. Then the Swedish girl moved out and there’s been a Jewish Dynasty up there ever since.”

I recalled that #44 was occupied by a couple that threw out a good number of S. S. Pierce cans, Chivas Regal bottles, assorted broken records, and back issues of Evergreen and the Realist.

“You’re right,” I said.

“Of course,” he replied as if there was never any doubt. “I can spot them anywhere, even when they think they’re passing.” He leaned closer and said in a you-and-me voice: “But don’t ever say anything bad about them in public; the Anti-Defamation League will get you.”

Just then his wife screamed for him from the second floor, and the dog joined her and beat against the door. He got into the elevator painfully and said: “Don’t ever talk about them in public. You don’t know who they are and that Defamation League will take everything you got.”