Choo-choo, Jake thought. And that’s the truth.

“Godda-quarder?” the bum asked tiredly, and Jake dropped his change from the bookstore into the bum’s lap without even looking around. Now he could hear the Rolling Stones, right on schedule:

“I see a red door and I want to paint it black,

No colours anymore, I want them to turn black...”

As he passed, he saw—also without surprise—that the name of the store was Tower of Power Records.

Towers were selling cheap today, it seemed.

Jake walked on, the street-signs floating past in a kind of dream-daze. Between Forty-ninth and Forty-eighth he passed a store called Reflections of You. He turned his head and caught sight of a dozen Jakes in the mirrors, as he had known he would—a dozen boys who were small for their age, a dozen boys dressed in neat school clothes: blue blazers, white shirts, dark red ties, gray dress pants. Piper School didn’t have an official uniform, but this was as close to the unofficial one as you could get.

Piper seemed long ago and far away now.

Suddenly Jake realized where he was going. This knowledge rose in his mind like sweet, refreshing water from an underground spring. It’s a delicatessen, he thought. That’s what it looks like, anyway. It’s really something else—a doorway to another world. The world. His world. The right world.

He began to run, looking ahead eagerly. The light at Forty-seventh was against him but he ignored it, leaping from the curb and racing nimbly between the broad white lines of the crosswalk with just a perfunctory glance to the left. A plumbing van stopped short with a squeal of tires as Jake flashed in front of it.

“Hey! Whaddaya-whaddaya?” the driver yelled, but Jake ignored him.

Only one more block.

He began to sprint all-out now. His tie fluttered behind his left shoulder; his hair had blown back from his forehead; his school loafers hammered the sidewalk. He ignored the stares—some amused, some merely curious—of the passersby as he had ignored the van driver’s outraged shout.

Up here—up here on the corner. Next to the stationery store.

Here came a UPS man in dark brown fatigues, pushing a dolly loaded with packages. Jake hurdled it like a long-jumper, arms up. The tail of his white shirt pulled free of his pants and flapped beneath his blazer like the hem of a slip. He came down and almost collided with a baby-carriage being pushed by a young Puerto Rican woman. Jake hooked around the pram like a halfback who has spotted a hole in the line and is bound for glory. “Where’s the fire, handsome?” the young woman asked, but Jake ignored her, too. He dashed past The Paper Patch, with its window-display of pens and notebooks and desk calculators.

The door! he thought ecstatically. I’m going to see it! And am I going to stop? No, way, José! I’m going to go straight through it, and if it’s locked, I’ll flatten it right in front of m—