And that was when he also said what he said about what he was trying to do and also said that if he came anywhere close to what he had in mind he did not expect the sales to add up to enough to put it on the bestseller list and that if there were enough sales to encourage the publisher to offer him a contract for another book, he would consider himself as having been successfully launched on a career as a literary professional.
Man, he said, she knows that I have to try to see if I can do what I think I should be doing with a book.
And I said, She sounds like she’s the one, all right. And he said, Could be and he said, So far, so good, I must say. So now we’re going to find out if she can put up with the likes of me on a daily basis.
When he called again several weeks later, he said, Hey, man, looks like we have a change of address on our hands over here, and yes, that means that I’ve given you obvious reason to assume it implies. We’ve jumped the broom, tied the knot, and are about to give up my place on St. Nicholas and her place on Convent for a larger place over at 730 Riverside Drive, an eighth-floor place from which you can see directly across the Hudson River to Palisades Park and also a partial view of the George Washington Bridge! So, man, we’re hoping to get it all presentable enough during the next few weeks to have you all and a few other friends over for an old down up plus “up here” New Year’s Eve celebration. With pigs’ feet, black-eyed peas, collard greens, okra, and corn bread, plus down-home bootleg white lightnin’ as well as up-here champagne, and for dessert gingerbread muffins and/or sweet potato pie.
XIV
As for the one who was to be the one for the likes of me, when I got to college the main thing during those first two years was the necessity to maintain the grade-point average required for the renewal of my scholarship grant. Then there was also the no less urgent matter of coping with how my roommate was taking all of those college-level course requirements in stride as if they were as routine as current newspaper and magazine articles.
I was the one who was enrolled in the Department of Liberal Arts. He was in the Department of Architecture. But it was as if the main thing for him was the wide selection of the great books of world history, literature, philosophy, and science that he could check out of the library and read on his own.
Elementary, my dear Watson, he said when we came back from our first exploration of the card index in the main reading room and the racks and shelves of the periodicals room. Elementary. Name me any human concern that your qualified architect is not expected to know where to find the goods on. Context, my dear fellow, nor do I speak only of material surroundings and time frames.
Jerome Jefferson, polymath. T. Jerome Jefferson. Better known on campus as Geronimo from Chicago, and also as the Snake, as in snake in the grass, and as snake doctor as in snake-oil doctor. But only partly because the snake oil was actually the chemistry laboratory alcohol cocktail he used to concoct and bootleg from time to time, especially when there were campus socials.
Taft Edison, who was there only during that first year, now remembered him not only because his chem lab concoction had predance customers in the band cottage, but also because as a freshman he had joined the augmented French horn section that the band took to Chicago along with the football team for the annual game with Wilberforce University at Soldier Field.
Neither of us became involved in an ongoing relationship with a special on-campus girlfriend during those first two years. With me it was a matter of avoiding encounters that were not mutually casual, because I couldn’t spare the extra money you had to have for regular dates, treats, and ceremonial gifts. But for him, it was a matter of choice. He could afford the extra spending change, but he preferred “freelancing” because it was consistent with the bohemian nature of college life that he had in mind for us when he labeled our room Atelier 359.
When classes began on the first day of my third fall day on campus, my roommate was no longer there, because he had transferred to the School of Architecture at Yale. And as much as I missed him, I was also pleased that, so far, nobody had been assigned to replace him because I was then twenty-one years old and I had never had a room all to myself before. Now I was twenty-one and also an upperclassman.
Then it was the first week of that third October, and there she was. I was on my way up the steps of the main entrance of the library and I overtook someone I had not seen on campus before and stopped to hold the door open for her to step past me into the lobby. And in that time frame of less than one bar of music it was as if I had stepped into that enchanted boy blue zone of crepe myrtle yard blossoms and dog fennel meadows again. And I had to say something more than just hello or good morning. So I said, How is freshman orientation coming along this year? And that is how I came to know
