The Distinguished Guest Read Online Free Page A

from Northeastern, and maybe as a
result no one group seemed to care about it or to think it was worth the effort to maintain. There was new junk blowing around—food wrappers, cups, leftover trash—and old junk too,
grayish, cottony pieces of unnameable stuff flattened in the gutters. And when the breeze stirred, you heard, in addition to the leaves’ motion, the whispery rattle of plastic shopping bags
snagged here and there in the trees and bushes.
    Alan had grown up on the south side of Chicago and he knew that this was far from squalor, but it bothered him anyway. It bothered him, he thought, because Thomas romanticized it, held it up
against Alan’s life, Alan’s home. Thomas saw this, his own home, as . . . what? real, true, gritty. Authentic. When he came to visit Alan and Gaby, he sometimes asked how things were in
the burbs. In burbsville. The stix. The boonies.
    Alan remembered 63rd Street abruptly, their walks across it—Rebecca, Clary, himself—on the way to Sunday school. Lily would still be home, getting Sunday dinner ready, waiting until
the last minute to go to the eleven o’clock service. Paul would have gone over to the church much earlier. The three children went alone, walking through the heart of the ghetto. Rebecca was
in charge, and she drove Clary and the foot-dragging Alan along with terror of the streets, of the people still lingering in front of bars under the elevated tracks after Saturday night: “He
saw
you,” she’d whisper with vicious energy. “He’s going to
get
you. Run! Run!” It was still sometimes the terrain of Alan’s nightmares—a
blasted urban street, glass glittering in the gutters, buildings derelict and stinking, and a black person, a man usually, hunting him. (Though the one time something really threatening did happen,
it was a black woman, waked suddenly from her stuporous sleep in a doorway to see Alan in his Sunday best strolling past. A black woman who cried, “Thas my baby! My chile!” and started
to struggle up, her voice rising in pitch. “You taking my baby. Thas
my
baby!” They did run that time, and Rebecca, perhaps terrified that her tactics would be uncovered, made
them promise never, ever to tell.) From time to time when he thought of Rebecca now, doing her radical good works wherever she was, Alan wondered what she’d say if he could tell her she had
shaped the racist nightmares that pursued him for years afterward.
    Thomas came up out of nowhere on a bicycle and squealed to a halt, resting one foot on the curb. He was panting. “Hey,” he said, and grinned at Alan. Alan couldn’t help it, he
grinned back. Thomas’s curly black hair was wet, as though he’d just showered, and pushed back from his face by the wind. The face itself was bony and angular—it had thinned out
this way suddenly four or five years ago and somehow Thomas hadn’t grown into it yet. He also hadn’t shaved in a few days. He swung himself off the bike and lifted it to his
shoulder.
    Alan stood up and moved out of his way. “I’ll state the obvious,” he said. “You’re late.”
    “Sorry I’m late, Dad.” Thomas looked over his shoulder at his father as he fumbled one-handed with the key in the lock. “I got carried away.” He went in.
“Nah. That sounds like I was doing something maybe responsible. I just didn’t watch the time. I was at a friend’s for breakfast.” Alan grabbed the inner door from
Thomas’s hand and followed him up the wide, dirty stairs. The cracked linoleum formed a shallow scoop of each step. In the hallway, there was the noise of life behind the doors: a TV, a baby
wailing loudly, music—jazz—and then they were in front of Thomas’s apartment. The door was battered and scratched. Thomas unlocked three different locks. He pushed inside, set his
bike down, and yelled, “Hello?” No one answered.
    Alan headed down the long narrow hall to the bathroom. In the dim light, he tried not to see how dirty it was,