"I invented a lens," he said, and reached in a corduroy jacket pocket and withdrew a round thick polished piece of glass double the size of a silver dollar.
"That's nice."
"It enables a person to see things a billion times bigger than they really are." He held it up for the sun to bounce off it: the sun was under a cloud.
"No kidding."
"I ground it myself, with emery cloth." He was walking beside me. now; he leaned in and spoke in a hushed tone, touching my arm. "I've been offered a thousand dollars for it. I'm holding out for five thousand."
I removed his hand from my arm. carefully, with a polite smile; I even made some conversation: "How'd you find out that lens was so strong?"
He smiled. Smug. Proud. "I experimented on a bedbug. I put a live bedbug under this glass, and I could see every muscle in its body. I could see its joints and how it worked them. I could see its face; no expression in its eyes, though. Bugs don't have much native intelligence, you know."
"Yeah, I heard that. So long."
He was behind me now. but calling out to me. "You couldn't do that with an ordinary lens!"
No. you couldn't.
I drank too much rum that night, and decided I had to get rid of this fucking case before it turned me into a lush.
In a little over a week I'd be going to Florida; tomorrow. I had to see Mary Ann Beame and tell her I couldn't find her brother.
So the next afternoon I drove north on Michigan Avenue, past the Wrigley Building and the Tribune Tower and the Medinah Athletic Club and the Allerton Hotel, toward the landmark those skyscrapers now dwarfed: the old water tower, a Gothic churchlike building with its tower thrust in the air like a gray stone finger- perhaps a middle finger, considering the talk circulating of late that the North Side's sole survivor of the Great Fire was to be torn down to speed the flow of Michigan Avenue traffic.
The water tower, at Michigan and Chicago avenues, gave its name to Tower Town. Chicago's Greenwich Village, and was at the district's center- though the exact boundaries of Tower Town were a bit hard to define. It vaguely encroached on the Gold Coast, north of Division Street, but came to an abrupt halt at Grand Avenue, on the south. It sneaked west of Clark Street, and crossed Michigan Avenue to move eastward into Streeterville. an area named after a squatter who lived in a shack (but which now ran to some of the fanciest apartment buildings in the city)- State Street was its main north-south road, and Chicago Avenue bisected it east-west.
That's where Tower Town was; what it was was streets whose "quaintly" run-down buildings housed tearooms (Ye Black Cat Club), art shops (The Neo Arlimusc), restaurants (The Dill Pickle Club), and bookstalls (The Radical Book Shop). Above the shops were garrets and "studios," as demonstrated by the flower boxes hanging from sills above, and the Studio for Rent signs in some of the shop windows. Like most big-city "bohemias," there was an effort, conscious or not, to attract tourists, and shimmers; but on a cold Thursday at dusk, the wind blowing the snow around like a minor dust storm, its streets were empty of anybody but the young artists and students who lived here, and they tended to have hands burrowed in the pockets of their corduroy coats, moving forward without looking, which was what they were good at, after all.
I'd been to the Dill Pickle Club before; it was a landmark like the water tower. But I never expected to be back a second time. I hadn't been impressed by the garish nude paintings on the walls, or the dark, smoky dance floor, or the little theater that seated fewer people in the audience than onstage, or by the stale, paper-thin chicken sandwiches that passed for food.
Now here I was back at the Dill Pickle, sitting at a table, just me and a candle and no tablecloth, waiting for Mary Ann Beame, trying not to listen as at a nearby table three long-haired boys in denim and dark sweaters talked with two short-haired girls in long black skirts and dark sweaters. They were all smoking, all drinking coffee or tea. Each of them seemed to be carrying on his or her own conversation. One of them was discussing the superiority of his poetry to that of a friend's (not present) and went on at length to point out that if he were an editor he would have none of that shit in his poetry magazine; oh, Harriet Monroe might, but it wasn't good enough for his (nonexistent) magazine. One of the girls was discussing a recent showing of "primitive art" at the Neo Arlimusc by a sixty-two-year-old clothing peddler from Maxwell Street who painted Jewish sweatshop scenes on cardboard: "The artist's expression will out! Poverty-stricken, he seizes upon the only medium within his grasp!" A pale frail-looking male was denouncing Kipling and Shakespeare (to name two) but later spoke admiringly of Kreymborg, while another, better-fed male was telling of his landlady throwing him out because she couldn't understand anyone not having beds and chairs in an apartment, and also because he had long hair. The final girl, a zoftig brunette with a nice full mouth, pretended to be upset that she was prostituting herself by posing nude as an artist's model (outside Tower Town) for a dollar an hour; actually, she was proud of herself. I was about ready to check my wallet for a spare dollar when Mary Ann Beame floated in.
She was wearing the black coat with the black fur collar again. I rose and helped her out of it. and she slung it over an extra chair at the table I'd been eavesdropping on; nobody seemed to mind, or for that matter notice. She wore a beret, white this time, and a navy-blue sweater with a diagonal white zigzag pattern throughout, like lightning, with a navy skirt. She put her little purse on the table and sat down. her wide. Claudette Colbert eyes looking at me expectantly, a little smile hesitantly forming on the red Claudette Colbert lips.
I hadn't spoken to her on the phone: I had got a male voice at the number she gave me. and left a message for her to meet me here, or to call me if she couldn't. So she probably thought I had news about her brother Jimmy. I didn't.
I told her so.
"I spent five days looking," I said, "and didn't find a trace of him. Nothing to indicate he's been in Chicago at all."
She nodded patiently, the eyes narrowing a bit. but still wide enough to get lost in; the lips pursed a bit. like a kiss.
"I tried the papers, most of the Hoovervilles. combed the near North Side…"
"You mean you thought he might've been that close to where / live?"
"Sure. Over on North Clark Street."
"That's full of derelicts."
"Right. And I asked around Bughouse Square. I did find one guy who seemed to know you, but that's as close to a lead as I got."
"What do we do now?"
"I'd suggest give up. My guess is he changed his mind at the last minute and took that freight to California or New York or someplace- someplace other than Chicago."
"No," she said firmly, shaking her head. "His ambition was to be a reporter for the Trib; that's what he would've tried first."
"And he well may have. Tried, got nowhere, and hopped a freight elsewhere."
"I want you to keep looking."
"I think it would be pointless. You'd be wasting your money."
"It's my money."
"It's my time. And I don't want to spend it looking for your brother."
For a minute I thought she was going to cry; but she didn't. She thought about it, but she didn't.
"Look," I said. "He'll turn up. The country's fall of kids riding the rails, looking for excitement." And work. I thought.
A big bushy-haired guy in a black sweater and denims came up to the table and took our order. I asked him how the chicken sandwiches were; he said good as ever. I ordered ham. Mary Ann waved off my suggestion that she order a sandwich and asked only for a cup of tea. I asked for some of that. too.
"Did you just come from the Merchandise Mart?" I asked.