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Junior groaned.
“—so I walked right in, and it was so warm and toasty in the foyer! I walked up the stairs with no one to see me and I went to your room and tried to open the door but it was locked.”
“You knew that,” Junior said. “You saw me lock it.”
“Did I? Well, I don’t know; I must have been distracted. You hurried me out of there so fast …‘Well,’ I thought, ‘okay, I’ll just sit in the hall and wait. At least it’s warm,’ I thought, and I sat right down on the floor in front of your bedroom door.”
He groaned again.
“And next thing I knew, it was ‘Awk!’ I think I must have fallen asleep. ‘Awk!’ I heard, and there was this colored girl standing over me, eyes as big as moons. ‘Miz Davies! Come quick! A burg-ular!’ she screeches. When she could clearly see I was dressed nicely. And Mrs. Davies heard and came ru
“Lord God, Li
“Well, what could I say? I figured since she was a woman … wouldn’t you think? I thought she might say, ‘Oh, you poor little thing. You must be chilled to the bone.’ But she was ugly to me, Junior. I should have guessed it, from that dyed hair. She said, ‘Out!’ She said, ‘You and him both, out! Here I was thinking Junior Whitshank was a decent hardworking man!’ she says. ‘Why, I could have got way higher rent from someone who’d take his meals here, but I let him stay on out of Christian spirit and this is the thanks I get? Out,’ she says. ‘I’m not ru
Junior gripped his forehead with one hand.
“Then she stood right there like I was some sort of criminal, Junior, watching every move while I packed. Colored girl standing next to her with eyes still big as moons. What did they think I would steal? What would I want to steal? I couldn’t find any suitcase for you and so I asked real polite, I said, ‘Mrs. Davies,’ I said, ‘do you think I might borrow a cardboard box if I promised to bring it back later?’ But she said, ‘Ha! As if I’d trust you!’ Like a little old cardboard box was something precious. I had to pack your things in a tied-up pair of your overalls, for lack of anything better.”
“You packed all I owned?” Junior asked.
“All in this big lumpy tied-up hobo bundle. And then I had to—”
“You packed my Prince Albert tin?”
“I packed every little thing, I tell you.”
“But did you pack my Prince Albert tin, Li
“Yes, I packed your Prince Albert tin. Why’re you making such a fuss about it? I thought you smoked Camels.”
“I don’t smoke anything nowadays,” he said bitterly. “It costs too much.”
“Then why—?”
“Let me get this clear,” he told her. “I don’t have a place to live anymore, is that what you’re saying?”
“No, and me neither. Can you believe it? Would you ever think that she could act so ugly? And then I had to carry all those things down the street — my suitcase and that great knobby bundle and your canister with the bread inside and — oh! Junior! Your milk bottle! I forgot your milk bottle! I’m so sorry!”
“That’s what you’re sorry about?”
“I’ll buy us another. Milk was ten cents at this store I went past. I’ve got ten cents, easy.”
“You are telling me I’m sleeping on the street tonight,” Junior said.
“No, wait; I’m getting to that. There I was, toting all our worldly goods, walking down the street and crying, and I was looking for a ROOM TO LET sign but I didn’t see nary a one so finally I just knocked on some lady’s door and said, ‘Please, my husband and I have lost our home and we’ve got no place to stay.’ ”
“Well, that would never work,” Junior said. (He didn’t bother dealing just now with the “husband” part.) “Half the country could say that.”
“You’re right,” Li
“What?”
“And it’s a nicer room, too. It’s got a bigger bed, so you won’t have to sleep on a chair. No bureau, but there’s a nightstand with drawers, and a closet. The lady let me have it because her husband’s been laid off work and she’s been thinking for a while now, she said, that maybe their little boy should move in with his sister so they could rent his room out for five dollars a week.”
“Five dollars!” Junior said. “Why so steep?”
“Is that steep?”
“At Mrs. Davies’s I pay four.”
“You do?”
“Is this with meals?” Junior asked.
“Well, no.”
Junior looked longingly toward Mrs. Davies’s house. For one half-second, he contemplated climbing her steps and ringing the doorbell. Maybe he could reason with her. She’d always seemed to like him. She had asked him to call her Bess, even, but that would have felt impertinent; she had to be in her forties. And just this past Christmas Eve she had invited him down to her parlor for a glass of something special (as she called it) that she had bought at the paint store, but that had been sort of uncomfortable because even though Junior missed having people to talk to, somehow with Mrs. Davies he hadn’t been able to think of a single thing to say.
Maybe he could make like he had come to return his key, and then he would happen to mention that he barely knew Li
But right while he had his eyes on the house, a little gap in the parlor curtain closed with an angry snap, and he knew there was no use trying.
He set off toward the Essex, and Li
“Oh, she’s ‘Cora Lee’ already, is she.”
“She thinks we’re just real cute and adventurous to be up here on our own so far away from our families.”
“Li
“Well, what else could I tell people? How would anyone give us a room if they didn’t think we were married? Besides: I feel married. It didn’t even feel like I was telling a story.”
“ ‘Lie’ is what they call it up here,” he told her. “They don’t pussyfoot around calling it a ‘story.’ ”
“Well, I can’t help that. Down home it’s rude to say ‘lie,’ as you very well know your own self.” She gave him a little poke in the ribs, and they started walking again. “Anyhow,” she said, “neither one applies, not ‘lie’ nor ‘story’ neither. I honestly feel like you and I have been husband and wife forever, from a time before we were born, even.”
Junior couldn’t think where to begin to argue with that.
They had reached his car now and he walked around to the driver’s side and got in and started the engine, leaving Li