Trip Wire_ A Cook County Mystery - Charlotte Carter [3]
I heard dishes clanging dimly in the massive kitchen, conversation, laughter. I remained where I was, on the makeshift hearth before the heater. I was thinking back on the weekend we’d all spent at the Wisconsin farmhouse owned by the parents of one of our roommates, Annabeth Riegel.
Oh, we had a great time on those enchanted walks in our clunky boots through the muddy fields, tripping like mad on the acid one of our number had supplied. And we had gorged on Mia’s gingerbread and mountains of her hand-churned ice cream. But I remembered feeling weird as I stood alone watching the sun rise from the attic window. Not lonely. Not envious of the ones who were coupling downstairs. Just a bit ill at ease.
“Sandy?”
I looked up. Cliff was in the doorway.
That’s right, he’d called me Sandy. Everyone in the house did. Not Cass—by which I had been known all my life until I packed my suitcases and moved to Armitage Avenue—Sandy.
I loved being called that.
“Great tacos,” Cliff said. “Better hurry up.”
“Okay. I’m coming.”
Another male voice rang out then. “You’re coming! Close the door, for Christ’s sake.”
That master wit was Barry Mayhew, an on-again, off-again roommate fifteen years or so older than any of the rest of us. I didn’t know the full story on him, only that he had had some kind of white-middle-class epiphany the previous year. He’d walked away from his straight job. Walked away from a wife and family out in the suburbs, too. What was the mantra? Turn on, tune in, drop out.
For Barry, the Summer of Love apparently stretched on through the fall and winter of ’67 and was still going strong at the end of ’68. His mission in life was to bed as many young women as he could. He’d hook up with one girl or another, maybe move in with her for a week or two. But eventually he always came back to the commune.
As for the turning on part of that advice, Barry was real serious about that. Not only did he buy, sell, and smoke googobs of dope, he was the source of some of our most memorable tabs. It went a long way toward compensating for all the communal duties he neglected—buying paper goods, swabbing the bathroom, and so on. Barry was rarely around to do his part. But given what he contributed over and above his share of the rent, we let him slide.
He was at the stove now, dipping a hunk of seven-grain bread into the cast-iron cauldron, being careful of the leather coat he was so proud of. “Hey, Mia. You make this?”
“Yeah,” she said. “Jesus, Barry, are you speeding again? It’s mealtime, okay? You’re ruining the vibe.”
“I’m sorry, Madam Krishna. I’ll be good. But I’m serious, baby. You can really burn some groceries.”
Wilton rolled his eyes. “Be careful there, dude,” he said. “Don’t spill nothing on your love beads.” It was okay for Wilton to pepper his language with underclass Negro slang, but he resented it when Barry talked that way.
On at least one occasion, Barry and Wilt had nearly come to blows over the black language thing. Barry had used a word that sent Wilton over the moon. He said he’d bought some bootleg records off a spook he knew.
Wilton was in Barry’s face within a nanosecond.
“Take it easy, brother man . . . Damn. We supposed to be about peace and love.” Barry’s nervous smile reminded me of the cowardly, wisecracking persona that Bob Hope took on in those silly movies of his.
“For the last time,” Wilton said, “you ain’t no nigger, Barry. You haven’t even earned the right to call me brother. What the fuck do you know about us? You were