The Assistant Chapter 4, Section 6 Summary

  • Frank hatches a plan to converse more with Helen. He goes to the library, where he knows she often goes during the week.
  • She soon arrives, as expected.
  • When she leaves, Frank follows her.
  • He suggests a walk through the park. It's cold, but Helen goes along.
  • She first feels irritation, which she supposes comes from her mother's warnings about gentiles.
  • It passes. Helen thinks there may be more to Frank than she supposed. Yeah, like peeping and armed robbery.
  • Frank segues from a comment of hers about snow to a story about St. Francis that he remembers. In the story, St. Francis couldn't sleep, worried he'd made the wrong choice about becoming a monk. He went outside and made a wife and kids out of snow and was then able to relax.
  • A priest had told Frank the story back when he was in an orphanage.
  • Helen thanks him for helping her father but warns him against a career in the grocery business.
  • Wow. No one in the Bober family likes their business.
  • Frank responds that he's just taking a breather.
  • They sit on a bench.
  • While Frank smokes, Helen asks him about the biography of Napoleon he's reading.
  • They discuss books. She's reading a Dostoevsky novel.
  • They then take turns talking about why life prevented them from completing college. For Frank, it was his constant moving and jobs. For Helen, it was helping her folks.
  • Helen would like to go to NYU during the day. She doesn't care for her secretarial job.
  • Frank tells her about his bad luck with a story about an acrobat he liked when he worked at a carnival. She came in time to like him too, but was killed in a car accident the very day she expressed her love for him.
  • They arrive back home. Helen goes inside. Frank stays out in the cold, wanting to look at the moon.
  • In her room, Helen thinks over the walk with Frank. She's impressed by him and wishes she could see the moon from her window.