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Show -41 in the basement the old hot-air furnace hummed and strained; home was depressing but also in a melancholy way comfortable. I knew my way around here. It was a familiar prison. "I can't sleep anymore," I said. "This bed is too soft." I lied hoping she'd go back to sleep. I dislike a soft bed but I can sleep almost anywhere. In New York I had a peculiarly-shaped apartment which proved too small for anything but a big hammock slung between the walls and I learned to be comfortable in that, slept in it three years. It was odd to be in Adam's house without him. To smell the odors of childhood but to be suddenly twenty-seven years old. It seems queer to get older and older and still remember those days. This black morning I felt as if I'd inherited a stranger's memories by mistake. Another person did those things I remember so well. Take for instance that man who tried to be an emperor of real estate. I worked for Wayne Thorneberry; he owned a sign company on the Miracle Mile, in Tucson, Arizona. I drove his yellow truck, painted backgrounds, climbed up the shaky boom-ladder to repair dead neon letters, dug post-holes for new Thorneberry billboards and hoisted the tricky-to-handle sheet-metal panels that carried the message. Then come night I put on my Sears-Roebuck suit and climbed into Aunt Maybelle's castoff Chrysler, a sea-green balloon-shaped pig of a car with hairy beige upholstery and dangerously soft springs. |
