The Secret Cellar by Michael D. Beil Read Free Book Online Page B

style: he’s an Upper West Sider, and I’m Upper East. It’s not just the distance and Central Park that are obstacles, the UWS and the UES are like two different countries, and not necessarily friendly ones at that.
    The highlight (if you can call it that) of the conversation is when he tells me that he had crossed the park intending to surprise me after school at Perkatory and found it closed.
    “Oh. Yeah, I guess I forgot to tell you about that.”
    “Are they, like, closed for good?”
    “That’s what we’re trying to find out. Malcolm is checking it out for us. He knows the landlord. So, whatdid you do after you realized Perk was closed? Why didn’t you call me? Not that I was around, anyway. We were downtown, at the Strand, looking for this book about Alexander the Great. It’s a long story.”
    “I was getting ready to, and then my mom called and made me go home. But I checked out that new place, Coffeeteria, before I left. It’s really nice. They gave me—”
    “NO! No, no, no. You did not go in there. Raf, they’re the enemy.”
    He laughs. That’s right: Raf laughs. At me.
    “It’s not funny,” I say.
    “I’m sorry,” he says, still laughing.
    In fact, he’s still laughing as I hang up on him.
    My phone rings seconds later. I have my finger on the power button, about to turn it off, when I notice that it’s Margaret and not Raf.
    “Hey, I heard from Malcolm about Perkatory,” she says. “You won’t believe it. The inspector saw a rat. The health department closed them down on the spot.”
    “What? They forced them to close because they saw one lousy rat?”
    Margaret sighs. Loudly.
    “Sophie, I love you. You’re my best friend and I would do anything for you. But seriously … are you crazy? Of course they got shut down! Do you really want to eat at a place that has rats?”
    “There must be an explanation,” I say.
    “Well, apparently the inspector opened a cupboard in the kitchen and this furry little critter was just sitting there, staring right back at him. They’re supposed to have an official, ‘ CLOSED BY ORDER OF THE HEALTH DEPARTMENT ’ sign up on the door, but they’re trying to keep it as quiet as possible. Aldo is afraid they’re going to lose all their business to that Coffeeteria place.”
    “Well, they already have their first traitor. Raf went there today. I hung up on him when he told me.”
    “Don’t you think you’re being just a tiny bit unreasonable? Sophie, it’s a coffee shop. It’s not the end of the world.”
    “Maybe not. But in the words of Nathan Hale, ‘I have not yet begun to fight!’ ”
    “Um, that was John Paul Jones. Nathan Hale was the ‘My only regret is that I have but one life to give for my country’ guy.”
    Grrrrr. “Yeah, well, you know what I mean. It ain’t over till it’s over.”
    And frankly, my dear, I don’t care who said that.
    We have an unexpected early dismissal on Thursday because of a heating (or lack of heating) problem in the school. The temperature outside is in the teens, and snow swirls around our feet as we fight the bitter wind that’s raging down Lexington Avenue.
    When we get to the subway stop at Sixty-Eighth Street for the trip uptown, I unwrap the scarf from my head andcurse myself for stubbornly refusing to wear a hat on the way to school because of a morbid fear of “hat head.”
    At Seventy-Seventh Street, I rewrap my scarf and follow my much-better-prepared-for-the-weather friends up the stairs and then four blocks into the wind to Eighty-First. It’s so cold that the usually hearty Christmas tree sellers are huddled around electric heaters inside their huts, probably wondering why they ever left Quebec. And even though it’s barely past noon, the sky is so dark that I’m wondering if there’s a solar eclipse I didn’t hear about.
    We’re on our way to see that horrible Marcus Klinger at Sturm & Drang Books, and we’re less than thrilled about that destination. In fact, some of us