The Assistant

At that moment Frank came out of the back with Helen. Though the clerk spoke a musical Italian, Morris recognized a dirty word. He struck his assistant across the face and they wrestied furiously on the floor, Helen screaming mutely.

As for what he would do with Frank, after long pondering the situation, thinking how the clerk had acted concerning their increase in business – as if he alone had created their better times – Morris at length decided that Frank had not – as he had assumed when Karp told him the news – tried to trick him into believing that he was responsible for the store’s change for the better. The grocer supposed that the clerk, like himself, was probably ignorant of the true reason for their change of luck.

It was a medium-sized box of some sort with something heavy in it

She had, she thought, changed in changing him.

His guess was good, soon Helen arrived.

All this he thought he would someday tell Morris. He knew the Jew well enough to feel sure of his mercy.

to change his life before the smell of it suffocated him.

itting to Morris that he was one of the guys that had held him up

Al Marcus, the paper products salesman

He had escaped out of the Russian Army to the U.S.A., but once in a store he was like a fish fried in deep fat.