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Show -27? 2Q. The next morning Amelia took her parents back to the airport, then went to classes, so I had to hang around the basement apartment all day waiting for her to haul me and my suitcases back to 54th Street. .1 felt in limbo, yet I preferred going back home after dark, sneaking in when Carrie wasn't looking and later that night carrying ray suitcases back downstairs to the basement. I dreaded meeting her, that she might stop me and ask for an explanation for everything,snapping her sharkish jaws, and so I looked forward to leaving town, to traveling to Cleveland with Kite, Acut loose a little, like a Navy liberty. I thought Ben might ask me to be his best man but of course he had an old friend, a lifelong friend from the Northwest Side, Hal Dove, and other old friends too so that I was lucky he asked me to be an usher. He and Amelia and ftita left in Amelia's car, the back seat filled with luggage and juftk and no room for me. I had to ride with Hal Dove and his wife. Hal had lived in Chicago all his life, as had his wife, he was working on an M.A. in economics at Northwestern, as was his wife, and we had little to say to one another. Ditto for his wife. But Hal was quiet and actually said little, while his wife talked continuously, from Chicago to Cleveland. There, the other three ushers and I were put up by a friend of the Rubins in a knotty pine basement room, and the next morning the woman of the house drove us into downtown Cleveland to a large hotel for the rehearsal. I didn't know the other ushers, I hardly knew where I was, disoriented, lost. At the rehearsal Mrs. Rubin directed traffic furiously. "No, Ben, over here.' Hal, there.' Right there, stop! Ushers.'" She clapped her hands. "Ushers, |