Trip Wire_ A Cook County Mystery - Charlotte Carter [4]
“Not exactly,” Cliff said meekly. “They heard him speak in Washington.”
But Barry and Wilt’s difficulties didn’t end there. If Wilton’s version of the facts was to be trusted, Barry had been after Mia from the first day he laid eyes on her. Not hard to believe. Most guys were drawn to her. It seems he and Wilt had been tossing zingers at each other ever since.
“Who’s up for a function at the junction tonight?” Barry asked no one in particular. “You people are so lame,” he said when no one answered.
He passed behind my chair and gave a tug to my braid. “What’s happening, Sandy? You want to party with me, don’t you, you little sex goddess?”
He was making fun of me. Barry never ceased hitting on Mia. He flirted with our roommate Annabeth Riegel, too, and with Clea, a black friend of hers who was at the apartment often enough to be considered a roommate. But never once had he shown any interest in me.
“Sandy’s out of your league, man.”
It was Cliff who had spoken.
Barry bristled. “Say what?”
“She’s way too smart for you,” Cliff said.
Wilt leaned across the table to give him five. “Who ain’t?”
They all laughed, even Barry. “That’s okay,” he said, “I forgive youse. Here. Here’s some shit I brought you all. ’Cause I’m such a good king. You’re gonna miss me when I’m gone.”
He threw an overstuffed plastic Baggie at the table. The “shit” was stemless, pristine, and the color of straw. I got a buzz just from looking at it.
Barry was grinning at us.
“We’ll kiss your ring some other time,” Wilton said.
“Fuckin’ A, you will,” said Barry.
I wasn’t joining in the laughter. And I wasn’t really hungry, either. Suddenly restless, I soon left the table. In my room I threw a few things into my knapsack. Then I pushed into my stained brown boots and peacoat, and headed out.
2
Gray snow was flung thigh high against the parked automobiles. The neighborhood porches and front yards were festooned with Christmas tree lights and those dumb plastic Santas. I bet Forest Street, in the haunted neighborhood where I’d lived with Grandma, looked this way, too, even though it was miles away, almost in another world. Ole Chicagotown was the most rigidly segregated city in the nation, but at Christmastime most neighborhoods, black or white, tended to look the same: gaudy and sad. I wondered if it was that way all over the world.
Well, probably not in London. I bet Christmastime London was a tasteful wonderland of gaslit Victorian froufrou. That particular city was in and out of my thoughts a lot these days. I’d been a front-runner for a fellowship that would have taken me to England to study for a year. But I had pretty much blown that. So much for figgy pudding, whatever that was. For a while now, my studies have been limited to the fine distinctions between Panama Red and Acapulco Gold.
Feeling the wrath of the wind, I quickened my pace. When I reached North Avenue, I turned into the little cul-de-sac of Vine Street. My guy, Nat Joffrey, wouldn’t be home yet, but I had the key to his place, the ground-floor apartment in a rickety two-flat that had probably been built about 1850, not unlike the pitiful housing thrown up around that time in another part of town to house the stockyard workers.
Nat was one of the better people in the world. A Negro born and raised on the North Side, he was part troubadour, part philosopher, part oracle. He had a wonderful baritone voice that made him a charismatic speaker at rallies.
Kindhearted Nat, when he wasn’t bagging granola and hosing down organic celery at the Food Coop, worked tirelessly for the peace movement, edited and published political broadsides, organized folk music festivals, volunteered at skid row soup kitchens. The list went on. He was fifty-one, more than thirty years my senior.