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Show 183 wreathed with clouds. It was that bad: I felt as if I was growing another self, like a tumor. "You white aristocrats. I'll bet your family owned slaves too." "Wait! Just stop. My grandfather was an abolitionist. My father fought the Germans in World War One, and I did in World War Two. And all I want, all I want is to be friends." "Ha! I know you. You've been trying to make me ever since I've known you." "OK, take the damn bus home." "It's too late. I'll wait right here till people start going to work in the morning." But while I was dvwnsrtew'-vs coming out to brush my teeth at the laundry tub, I heard her go upstairs. I listened and she knocked on Ed's door, there was talk, and the door closed on them. I wished I hadn't heard that; it was not conducive to friendship. But the next morning there was Ed sleeping on the uncomfortable living room couch. "What are you doing out here?" I asked, smiling cheerfully. He looked very sour. "Some Communist you picked up." That day I decided to move out of the Co-op. It wasn't the dim light or the smell so much, the spiders or even the child-sized desk and chair; what really was getting to me was a strange fungus growing on my toes. Besides, I'd heard about another place, what had been a pretty fancy apartment building on Drexel and 56th now made into a rooming house, the front steps as broad as a church, the entranceway a large stone arch so that its tenants called it The Castle. Only U. of Chicago liberal-intellectual elite lived there, I'd heard, but I thought I'd try anyhow. The manager was a student named Ben Gordon, who looked me over while I looked his room over. On the first floor in front, with |
