Free City Boy by Jean Thompson Page B

wardrobe of pastel trouser suits. Jack had seen the two of them negotiating the stairs, the daughter coaxing, overhelpful, Mrs. Lacagnina still bundled in her rug of a coat and head scarf, still wary and silently mumbling. They seemed a perfect representation of the Old World and the New, or how within one generation the antique and wizened might be transformed, might gain flesh and bloom with color. Jack had said hello to the daughter a couple of times but nothing more, hadn’t given her much thought aside from feeling relieved that Mrs. Lacagnina had someone to take care of her, until the daughter arrived at Jack’s door to introduce herself.
    Jack had been having a difficult day. It was a Friday, and Chloe was at the office, and there was nothing but his own contrary self to blame if he didn’t get any writing done. He’d sat down at eight o’clock with his coffee and the newspaper for the half hour he allowed himself. There was still something fresh and promising about the morning before the clock reached nine and sent the whole world to work. After the paper, he indulged in another of the stay-at-home’s guilty pleasures, checking CNN for Breaking News. Assured (and faintly disappointed) that there were no hostage situations or terrorist attacks in progress, he looked out the front window. Nothing he saw gave him any excuses to procrastinate. Across the street was an apartment building nearly as old as their own but less well maintained, showing signs of slatternly neglect about the awnings and tuck-pointing. Next to that, a yellow brick four flat with a tiny yard fenced in wrought iron and twin urns of geraniums on each side of the front walk. So it went on down the length of four blocks, modest blight next to modest gentrification, until you reached Clark Street and its commercial traffic. It was June, and Jack guessed it was going to be a fine warm day, although the sky was the familiar Chicago no-color. Particulates. You had to wonder just how much you shoveled into your lungs in an average day.
    Finally he picked up his manuscript and began to read. He had thirty pages of a novel, a bare start. The novel was about childhood, childhood being the one stage of life that Jack felt he might have sufficient credentials to write about. Sometimes this seemed like a good idea, other times, like today, it seemed, well, juvenile. Or at least unambi-tious. He’d heard an artist on a television program say that design was more important than execution. If a bad orchestra played Mozart, it was still Mozart. This was what worried him about his novel, that no matter how he shined up the writing itself, no matter how elegant insightful vivid, etc., it would still be in the service of a mediocre idea.
    It was after lunch, he’d written only a few crabbed sentences, he was trying to decide if he should put the work sadly aside for the day or allow himself a tantrum. The problem with computers was that they were too expensive, too much of an investment, to simply pitch them out the window in a fit of pique.
    The door buzzer sounded. As badly as the writing was going, Jack was still unhappy at being interrupted. He wanted to sulk in peace. Looking through the peephole, he saw the broad face of Mrs. Lacagn-ina’s daughter, her lips painted apricot to match her blouse. He opened the door, said “Yes?” in a tone of polite exasperation.
    “You know who I am, right?”
    “You’re—”
    “Because you shouldn’t go opening your door if you don’t know people. Toni Palermo. My mom lives upstairs.”
    Jack spoke his name, asked what he could do for her. “If I could have two minutes of your time,” Mrs. Palermo began. Jack surrendered and invited her inside, either from some reflex or good manners or so as to have a better excuse for accomplishing nothing. He couldn’t decidewhich. Mrs. Palermo stepped across the threshold, took in the apartment at a glance. “Nice,” she pronounced. “What’s that, is that what they