TEETH
337
his plane tickets to New York; for that's where he was going, one
hour and ten minutes after finishing up her mouth.
Her disappointment was immeasurable. Back she walked along
Fifty-third Street, hardly looking at the colors which the sun stirred
up in the chubby western clouds, hardly aware of the birds singing
goodnight to her from the cottonwood as she pushed her legs past
each other down Harper, Blackstone, Dorchester, Kenwood, and then
up Kimbark towards her apartment.
Nor did she see Mr. Givens, the housepainter, till he was
practically at her feet. "Hey there, Miss Wilmer. How ya doing this
fine evening?" He'd taken off his cap, was in coveralls, and he carried
a paper bag. Miss Wilmott's heart, which had jumped with fear,
calmed in recognition. And then in a brilliant flash, she remembered
the beautiful dinner waiting twenty feet up from where they stood.
The rest was simple. "Mr. Givens, I couldn't be more happy to see
anyone. Guess what just happened to me?" and she told him about
someone being called away from the dinner she'd cooked, an
emergency. Could he help her out and share it?
"Why Miss Wilmer, that's really something. I'm just going on
up to the Blackstone Library with a couple of hamburgers and a
jelly doughnut. I'm reading that Memoir book you told me about.
Best thing I ever looked at. I'd like to come up, it's real nice of you.
I'll read at it tomorrow night."
So Mr. Givens came and sat down at the table she'd set the
night before between her green troglodyte and the TV set with her
complete supply of Wedgwood picked up in the corners of State
Street pawn shops and Maxwell Street stands. It was a wonderful
dinner, praised by Mr. Givens as the last word in a lifetime of
good eating.
He was not bad company, either. He had strong opinions about
everything. There were the rich, who always argue about bills, never
paid you what they'd agreed to, always trying to cut your throat;
there were the sports-crazy people of Chicago, blowing off the air
raid sirens when the ball team won the darn pennant; there were
the "jaw-breakers" (whom she didn't identify with John Birchers
till
he lumped them with the Bund and the Ku Kluxers) out to
loot everybody by scaring them out of their brains, not that there
were too many around to be scared out of; there were these Care-
