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They went on an overhead train too. She called it an “El,” They had to go up on a high platform to catch it. Old Dudley looked over the rail and could see the people rushing and the automobiles rushing under him. He felt sick. He put one hand on the rail and sank down on the wooden floor of the platform. The daughter screamed and pulled him over from the edge. “Do you want to fall off and kill yourself?” she shouted.

Through a crack in the boards he could see the cars swimming in the street. “I don’t care,” he murmured, “I don’t care if I do or not.”

“Come on,” she said, “you’ll feel better when we get home.”

“Home?” he repeated. The cars moved in a rhythm below him.

“Come on,” she said, “here it comes; we’ve just got time to make it.” They’d just had time to make all of them.

They made that one. They came back to the building and the apartment. The apartment was too tight. There was no place to be where there wasn’t somebody else. The kitchen opened into the bathroom and the bathroom opened into everything else and you were always where you started from. At home there was upstairs and the basement and the river and downtown in front of Fraziers … damn his throat.

The geranium was late today. It was ten-thirty. They usually had it out by ten-fifteen.

Somewhere down the hall a woman shrilled something unintelligible out to the street; a radio was bleating the worn music to a soap serial; and a garbage can crashed down a fire escape. The door to the next apartment slammed and a sharp footstep clipped down the hall. “That would be the nigger,” Old Dudley muttered. “The nigger with the shiny shoes.” He had been there a week when the nigger moved in. That Thursday he was looking out the door at the dog—run halls when this nigger went into the next apartment. He had on a gray, pin-stripe suit and a tan tie. His collar was stiff and white and made a clear-cut line next to his neck. His shoes were shiny tan—they matched his tie and his skin. Old Dudley scratched his head. He hadn’t known the kind of people that would live thick in a building could afford servants. He chuckled. Lot of good a nigger in a Sunday suit would do them. Maybe this nigger would know the country around here—or maybe how to get to it. They might could hunt. They might could find them a stream somewhere. He shut the door and went to the daughter’s room. “Hey!” he shouted, “the folks next door got ‘em a nigger. Must be gonna clean for them. You reckon they gonna keep him every day?”

She looked up from making the bed. “What are you talking about?”

“I say they got ‘em a servant next door—a nigger—all dressed up in a Sunday suit.”

She walked to the other side of the bed. “You must be crazy,” she said. “The next apartment is vacant and besides, nobody around here can afford any servant.”

“I tell you I saw him,” Old Dudley snickered. “Going right in there with a tie and a white collar on—and sharp-toed shoes.”

“If he went in there, he’s looking at it for himself,” she muttered. She went to the dresser and started fidgeting with things.

Old Dudley laughed. She could be right funny when she wanted to. “Well,” he said, “I think I’ll go over and see what day he gets off. Maybe I can convince him he likes to fish,” and he’d slapped his pocket to make the two quarters jingle. Before he got out in the hall good, she came tearing behind him and pulled him in. “Can’t you hear?” she’d yelled. “I meant what I said. He’s renting that himself if he went in there. Don’t you go asking him any questions or saying anything to him. I don’t want any trouble with niggers.”

“You mean,” Old Dudley murmured, “he’s gonna live next door to you?”

She shrugged. “I suppose he is. And you tend to your own business,” she added. “Don’t have anything to do with him.”

That’s just the way she’d said it. Like he didn’t have any sense at all. But he’d told her off then. He’d stated his say and she knew what he meant. “You ain’t been raised that way!” he’d said thundery-like.