The ball followed the shout, arcing back over the street to land and roll in the young gra.s.s to the other boys' feet. Nick disappeared into the house.

"Wow," said Yevgeny, after a moment of thoughtful silence. "That must be her, huh? Princess Annie?"

"Yeah. I guess so."

It was the first time either boy had seen more of her than a wing of hair, a curve of cheek and a flash of dark eye.

"She's pretty."

"Yeah. I guess so."

"Wow," said Yevgeny again. "It's just like in Baba's story about the three princes, only American, just like you said." He bent to pick up the ball, looking at it as if seeing it for the first time. "Do you suppose it really works?"

"Maybe. Maybe it's like faith. You know-it's believing that makes it work. Like with 'Hail Marys.'"

Yevgeny's gaze was severe. "'Hail Marys' really work."

"Yeah, but I asked Father Z once and he said that what makes 'Hail Marys' work isn't the words, but faith in the words."

"You think?"

"Yeah. But I think Nick had sort of already picked his princess. It wasn't like the ball really found her."

"So what?" Yevgeny's eyes glittered. "Let's try it, Ganny. Let's see if the ball will find us princesses, too."

Ganady started to ask what either of them would want with a princess in the first place, then realized the question would lack conviction.

"Well..." was what he said.

Yevgeny picked up the bat and cast about the park for a place from which to swing it. He chose the spot they traditionally used as home plate for impromptu games of ball, closed his eyes, and turned himself about in a circle.

"Yevgeny," said Ganady. "This is silly."

"No it's not. It's magic!" laughed the other boy. "Look at me! I'm Baba Yaga's house!" He kept turning.

The old men at their chess game looked up to watch and gesture, no doubt wondering aloud what had become of boys these days. Before Ganady had time to be thoroughly mortified, Yevgeny stopped turning, tossed the ball up and swung. He connected solidly, the ball shot away-a line drive, out of the square to the south.

Both boys ran.

On the curb at Reed, they paused in bemus.e.m.e.nt, for though the ball had arced cleanly into the street, it was nowhere to be seen. They peered under cars, peeked into flower boxes, and were contemplating the door-well of Giovanni's Shoe Repair when a soft voice behind them said,"I think it bounced into that flower box."

They turned, eyes falling in unison on a pet.i.te blonde with eyes that rivaled Yevgeny's for sheer blueness. They were locked on Yevgeny's face at the moment, while the cheeks flushed pink and lips the color of spring roses parted soundlessly. She wore a sweater as blue as her eyes and a headband to match, while a dark blue skirt swirled above blue bobby sox and loafers from which new pennies gleamed.

"Your baseball," she said, and pointed upward. "I'm afraid it went up there."

Her words were softly accented in the rhythms of the homeland. A glance at Yevgeny's face showed this was not lost on him, and that he was lost.

"Yeah?" he said, but made no effort to look where she was pointing.

Ganady did look. The flower box in question was on the second floor of the brownstone before which they stood. Worse, it was above the bas.e.m.e.nt-level stairwell.

The girl nodded. "I know the old woman who lives there." Her nose wrinkled delicately. "She's not very nice."

"You don't think she'd give it back?" asked Ganny, when he realized Yevgeny's tongue had gone lame.

"I don't think so."

Ganny sighed. "I guess I'll just have to go up and get it, then."

The girl looked at him for the first time, her princess-perfect face showing wide-eyed concern. "Oh, but how dangerous of you!"

Ganady shrugged, squared his shoulders and tucked his glove into the waist of his pants. He took one step toward the brownstone, eyeing the bas.e.m.e.nt railing, when Yevgeny, coming suddenly to his senses, said, "No, I'll get it!" He blushed violently. "After all, I hit it over here, didn't I?"

Seconds later, while Ganady and the princess looked on, he was teetering on the wrought-iron railing.

"Your friend is very brave," said the princess. "Or very foolish, yes?"

Ganny glanced at her and was surprised by the glint of humor in her eyes. He grinned. "Yeah, well, he's kind of a show-off, I guess."

She laughed. It was a bubbling rill of sound that reminded Ganady of his mother.

"Show-off, yes," she repeated, her eyes on Yevgeny. "What are your names?"

"That's Eugene," said Ganny wickedly, and felt a very tiny stab of contrition. "A lot of people call him 'Gene.'"

"Gene," she repeated, watching 'Gene' climb from the railing to the first floor window sill.

"Yeah. My name's Ganady. Everybody calls me Ganny, though."

She favored him with a direct appraisal.

"Nadezhda Chernenko," she said and wrinkled her nose again. "I like to be called 'Nadia.' I live right there."

She pointed to a house of mellow golden brick two doors up. The golden-haired princess lived in a golden castle.

Yevgeny was now perched atop the first-floor window and was reaching up for the flower box.

"We live on the zibete," said Ganady, watching his progress.

"The...the zee-bett?" asked Princess Nadia. She shook her head.

"Seventh Street. The zibete, that's-em-that's Yiddish for 'seven.'"

"Oh. Are you Jewish?" She glanced from him to Yevgeny, a tiny furrow creasing her brow.

"We're Catholic. But my Baba is Jewish, so..." He shrugged.

"Oh, me too. Catholic. We go to Saint Stanislaus."

"Us too," said Ganny. "I wonder we've never seen each other."

"Oh, we go to early ma.s.s and always sit in the back because my little brother cries sometimes."

"I've got it!" proclaimed Yevgeny. He clung to the window box by one hand. The other was raised, triumphantly, fingers wrapped around the baseball.

At that exact moment, the window was flung open, a frizzled gray head popped out and a voice like the dead of winter demanded, "What are you doing, you zle (children)? Stj! Odejdz! Go away!"

A broom issued forth from the window then, flailing at the baseball in Yevgeny's hand.

Startled, Yevgeny slipped and fell, skidding down the wall and landing, feet first, in the flower box one floor below. The broom withdrew as swiftly as it had appeared.

"Zawolam policje!" cried the old woman and brought the window down on a spate of Polish invective.

Ganny and Nadia ran to where Yevgeny was attempting to extricate himself from the window box. He had managed to do this by the time they reached him. The three quickly withdrew to the sidewalk to examine Yevgeny's wounds. He had sc.r.a.ped the palms of both hands thoroughly and had gone through the knee of his chinos.

"Oh, dear!" said the Princess Nadia, her brow puckered with sweet concern. "You have hurt yourself. If you come to my house, you can wash and put some ointment on it."

"Well...yeah...sure," said Yevgeny and sent Ganady a significant look.

"Uh, I gotta go," Ganady said. "My, um, my brother is waiting for me in the park."

Yevgeny nodded vigorously. "Oh, yeah. That's right. Uh, see you later, okay?"

"Sure." Ganny bent to pick up the baseball bat his friend had left lying on the sidewalk.

Nadia tugged lightly at Yevgeny's sleeve. "Come on, Eugene," she said. "My house is right there." She drew him gently away toward the golden castle. "Can I please call you 'Gene?' I am Nadia."

"Uh. Oh, sure, Nadia. 'Gene' is fine."

Gene is fine. Ganady Puzdrovsky mouthed the words incredulously. He tapped the bat against the sidewalk, glancing around for the ball. It was nowhere in sight.

He considered checking the first-floor flower box into which his friend had fallen, but the thought that The Broom might have really called the police dissuaded him.

He wandered back into Pa.s.syunk Square, bemused, feeling as if he had just stepped into Baba's story. Except, of course, that Annie and Nadia were not real princesses, but only regular girls, and there were no bows and arrows and no King of the Sea to turn his daughter into a frog.

Standing in the Square, gazing from Thirteenth to Reed, Ganady was overcome with a strange wistfulness. His brother and his best friend had both seemingly stepped into an enchantment, while he lacked the means to join them.

He wavered toward returning to the old woman's flower box, but then remembered what was snuggled at the bottom of his jacket pocket.

He dug The Baseball out and turned it in his hand. It was, perhaps, his imagination that the scuffed sphere grew warm in his palm or that the sky and trees and the fresh, spring gra.s.s glowed, but he knew the ball had its own peculiar magic. It must have, for it had found his glove among all the upraised and eager gloves at the Mack.

He did not stop to ask himself what he would do with a princess, were he to find one (or even a real girl). He knew only that the other two princes in this American fairytale had achieved their goal without even a magical ball to aid them. He held the Thompson-to-Waitkus miracle in his hand.

He did not stop to ponder or reason or calculate. He sucked up the sense of moment as if it were a chocolate malted elixir, then tossed the ball into the air. There it hung for a perfect, glowing, breathless instant before he swung the bat in a gleaming arc.

And missed.

Face flushed and tingling, Ganny glanced around to see if anyone had seen. The two old men were intent on their game, arguing a move, children played tag, birds flew, twittered and built nests; all were oblivious to his embarra.s.sment.

Furtively, and without ceremony, he tossed the ball up a second time and hit it, then hurried after, lest there should be another window box waiting to receive it. It flew across the intersection of Thirteenth and Reed and ricocheted off the curving roof of a parked Buick.

Ganny heard the sudden music of shattering gla.s.s. He halted, teetering on the curb. The impulse to take flight warred with the urge to confess.

Flight almost won out, but then he remembered the Ball. He dropped the bat at the curb, pushed his glove around to the back of his waistband and trotted across the street, dodging a milk truck and a bicycle.

The broken window belonged to a butcher's shop. It was a large window, made up of six panes. "Sausage King," said a paper sign taped to one pane. And above it in gold leaf, "Gus___ and Sons" was artfully lettered across two panes. He suspected there was more to "Gus" than now met the eye, for there was a gaping hole in that pane right after the letter "s" at which two white-garbed folk within the shop now gestured with great gusto.

Ganady swallowed and cautiously-not to say surrept.i.tiously-crossed the street and approached the front of the store. He crammed his hands into his pockets, felt the emptiness with a pang of loss, and scoured his mind for the right, the most apologetic words.

As he peeked in through the door, he saw one of the butchers throw the beloved ball out the back door of the shop into the alley beyond.

He almost gasped aloud. He no longer needed to confront the butcher to claim his ball, but...

Father Zembruski would say, his conscience supplied with annoying predictability, that you should confess your sin and make reparations. He sucked up his fear and squared his shoulders.

"I tell you," said a man's voice from within the shop, "if ever there was a sign from G.o.d we should replace that sign, here it is. I'm gonna call that glazier this minute."

Ganady slunk away as far as the corner, then ran to find the entrance to the alley.

Behind the butcher shop was a jungle of trash and foul-smelling garbage, among which flies buzzed happily. Ganady did not see the ball. He sent a prayer heavenward that he would find it before he was overcome by the various aromas. He gave a glance to the back door of the shop. It was shut tight against the ferocious odor.

He stood, chewing his lip, trying to imagine the trajectory the ball would have taken from the butcher's hand, how it might have bounced, how far it could have rolled.

His calculations led him to a spot where one of a trio of large garbage barrels had tilted and overflowed, loosing an avalanche of refuse onto the cobbles. He moved reluctantly toward it. Flies scattered like startled birds; Ganny batted them away, wrinkling his nose.

Bread crusts, fruit rinds, and things he did not recognize-nor wanted to-were mounded beneath the barrel, along with wadded and torn sc.r.a.ps of butcher paper.

He kicked the paper aside hopefully. No baseball. He tiptoed among the garbage, further disturbing the flies, eyeing the gaping mouth of the barrel as if something terrifying might lurk within.

Then, Ganady Puzdrovsky swallowed his misgivings, held his breath, stepped up to the barrel and peeked inside. He caught a glimpse of yellow eyes before something big and black exploded into his face with the shriek of a demon.

Ganny threw his hands up and yelped, ducking to one side as the outraged cat flew past his ear. When his heart had stopped pounding and the roaring had left his ears, and he was certain there was no reaction from the butcher shop, he straightened and shook himself all over.

Then, he nearly laughed aloud. If the ball was in that trash barrel, he had just come perilously close to being wed to an alley cat.

Back to that gaping, smelly maw he went, and peered down inside.

The Baseball sat upon a pillow of crumpled, greasy butcher paper in a shaft of brilliant sunlight. And atop The Baseball sat the largest, shiniest c.o.c.kroach Ganady Puzdrovsky had ever seen.

He stared at it in stunned revulsion. It wriggled long antennae at him, but did not scurry away.

After a moment of consternation, he reached down to flick it aside. His hand froze in the act. His mind had also frozen, caught in the moment like a b.u.t.terfly in amber. But the thaw brought a flood of thought and feeling that was nearly as paralyzing.

Eventually, Ganady unfroze his hand. He nudged the ball. The c.o.c.kroach did not move.

He picked the ball up and shook it gently. The c.o.c.kroach stayed put.

He glared at the c.o.c.kroach. It merely waved its antennae at him again, perhaps in curiosity.