"One hunnert and t'oiteen," Murray said with some pride, point-ing to a three-story building that had a storefront clearly marked EDDIE SPIVAK, DENTAL SUPPLIER.
Eric sighed with relief. Some of the ground-level stores on both sides of the street looked empty from looting. Eddie Spivak's win-dows boasted iron grills and there was a pull-up aluminum shutter across the front, a certain deterrent to pilfering. Murray pulled over to the side and instantly people's heads popped out of the upper-story windows.
"Neighbors!" he said with some disgust as he turned off the mo-tor. "So?"
Eric had already vaulted out of the truck back and was running down the narrow walk between Eddie's and number 115. He pounded on the door.
"Eddie? Eddie Spivak? It's Eric, Eric Sachs. Are you there? Open up! Is he home?" Eric craned his neck up, looking through the iron slats of the fire escape at the observers. "I'm a dentist. An old cus-tomer of Eddie's. Where is he?"
"He's in. Leastwise," an old woman cried in answer, "ain't seen him or his missus today," she added warily.
"EDDIE!" Eric put his hands to his mouth to shout. "IT'S ERIC SACHS!" He rattled the doorknob and then stopped, peering through the grill on the small window set in the door, trying to see inside. Suddenly the door was pulled in and an old man stood in the doorway, staring at what to him was evidently an apparition. He had a scalpel in his raised hand that he immediately lowered after recog-nizing his visitor.
"Dr. Sachs!" The man came forward, embracing Eric enthusiasti-cally. "I can't believe my eyes and ears. It's been years! Where did you go to?"
"Long story" Eric said, "but do you still have any supplies? I'm setting up my office in a new location and I need a few things: if you have them."
"Who'd rob a shop like mine?" Eddie said, shrugging. Then he saw the truck and its load. "You really are moving, aren't you? Sudden?" "Sudden," Eric said, grinning as Kris and Jelco joined them, Zainal following more slowly. "These are my friends Kris Bjornsen and Jelco. And Zainal behind them is also."
"What's a Greeme doing on this side of the Hudson?" Eddie asked, suddenly half-closing the door as if he feared Jelco might barge into his premises.
"Escorting us. We had to work through coord channels, you might say," Eric said with a dismissive flick of his hand.
"Haven't done much business," Eddie said in a gloomy tone. "Who has time for dentistry when the world has gone to pot?"
"I do," Eric said. "How's Suzie? The grandkids?"
"Suzie's been ill, and I don't know where my son, the lazy wretch, has got to." Evidently the shortcomings of his son was an old topic of conversation between them, but Eddie stepped back and gestured po-litely for Eric to enter.
Kris, a spare pack with more than a dozen rolls in it looped over her arm, followed. There was an acrid smell in the air, similar to the one in Eric's small laboratory. Every profession has a special kind of odor attached to it, she thought.
However, nothing was wrong with Eddie's olfactory senses be-cause he sniffed, probably catching the odor of the rolls.
"I need some porcelains. Some of the good Liechtenstein ones," Eric said. "The darker shades, if you still have any."
Eddie gave a shrug. "Darker shades aren't that much in demand. Come."
He beckoned them farther in and flipped at a wall switch. Lights came on.
"Well! Whaddya know. Lights. Lights, Suzie. She's been doing some knitting, you see. Someone supplies the wool, she supplies the hands," he said, again shrugging off such a necessity. "No one teaches girls housewifely arts anymore, you know"
The lights showed a small foyer with two stools and a countertop. Eddie lifted the edge of the section near the wall and walked back into an area where he stored his wares.
"Good to have light. You'll be able to see the Vitapan shade chart." He rooted under the counter for a moment and then handed Eric a piece of cardboard with what looked to Kris like teeth inserted around the edges. Eric immediately started examining it, glancing from time to time at Zainal. Then, as if recalling himself to the task at hand, Eric pulled a piece of paper out of his shirt pocket.
"I gotta list of other things I'll need. Jaw trays. Sizes one and two, mandibular-oh, twenty-one through twenty-four."
Eddie gave a little guffaw. "Whom are you doing dentures for? Neanderthal man? Don't know if I have any jaw trays those sizes. But maybe I have:" He walked straight to a row of cardboard boxes, neatly extracting one about halfway down with such a deft yank that none of the ones above it were disturbed. It clattered when he put it on the countertop.
"And some bonding gel. Several tubes of that, please."
"Hmm. Got that, and you're lucky," he added a moment later, four tubes flat on his hand. "Last I got and who knows when more will be made. Not that there's such a big demand for this either. Where are you setting up practice?"
"Botany," Eric said, then tapped the porcelain teeth. "I'll have all the colors from B-four through D-three."
"Done." Eddie was pulling out yet another drawer: they could hear the clicking of glass against glass, and then he started pulling in-dividual vials out, setting them on a tray.
"Next? You don't know what a relief it is to be back at work," Ed-die said with a huge sigh.
"Who's dere wid you, Eddie?" asked a querulous female voice from the small hall that led to the back of the building.
"Eric Sachs, Suzie."
"Eric? But I heard he got transported." Eddie gave Eric a wide-eyed stare.
"I was, but I'm back, Suzie. Good to hear your voice," Eric said, raising his to be heard.
"Oy, Eric, you wouldn't believe what we've been through," Suzie said, and a very frail-looking woman came into the light of the foyer. Her hair was skinned back from her face and bundled into a neat chignon. She clutched an old plaid dressing gown around her and her face looked pinched with hunger and sorrow.
"I have a little idea, Suzie m'dear, and it must have been dreadful for you," Eric said sympathetically.
"Don't kvetch, Suzie. This is business," Eddie said, evidently to forestall a litany of disasters.
"How's Molly keeping?" she asked, willing to exchange informa-tion as well as kvetch.
"I don't really know," Eric said, darting a glance at Kris.
"We may be able to find out today," Kris said, hoping that Dan Vi_ tali might have a connection to the Florida coords so Eric could check the registry lists of the area.
"So many friends dead, and gone who knows where?" Suzie said, her tone plaintive. "How are you finding clients these days, Eric?" She pointed with a worn and arthritically gnarled hand at the tray Ed-die was filling.
"I find those I can," Eric replied. "It's good to contemplate being useful again." He shot a grin at Zainal, who was still in the shadows of the doorway.
"Useful is good," Suzie agreed and sat down abruptly on one of the stools. It rocked under her and Eric steadied her by the arm. She wasn't a big woman but awkward. She hauled a handkerchief out of her pocket and blew her nose. "Always a cold. Never am warm enough these days. I could have gone to visit Becky in Florida before it happened. At least I would have been warm."
"Stop with the kvetching, Suzie. Who's been warm this winter? No one." He evidently asked and answered many questions out loud, for she shrugged and inched herself to a comfortable position on the stool, hugging her thick dressing gown around her. Then she sniffed, looking around.
"I smell bread. Oh, God, I'm going out of my mind. I can smell bread." Then she looked at Kris. "I haven't smelled bread in months!" "We have brought bread and some other food to trade for these items," Eric said. "We thought that was better than money."