My best friend at Music and Art was a colored fellow named Andrew Christopher, who was an art major like myself but who also played trombone in the school band. Andy lived on Lenox Avenue and 123rd Street, and I would meet him each morning on the 125th Street platform of the Broadway-7th Avenue Line, which I took up from 96th Street, and which we rode together to 137th Street. We would walk up past City College and then to the school, talking about everything under the sun, but mostly about his girl friend whose name was Eunice and who went to Washington Irving High School where she was studying fashion design. Eunice was a light-skinned girl and her parents objected to Andy simply because he was darker than she. He told me this very openly, and neither of us felt any embarrassment talking about it. It was just one of the facts of life. I never went to Andy's house, though, and he never came to mine. My mother used to call Negroes "boogies."
Andy and I both won scholarships to the Art Students League in January of 1957, after we got out of Music and Art. We had submitted samples of our work in a city-wide competition, and I think only Andy and me, and a girl from Evander Childs and another girl from a school in Brooklyn were chosen, though I still can't figure why. We really weren't that good. The first day we went to the school, they showed us around the various classes so that we could decide which courses we wanted to take — we were allowed to take two courses — and at the front of one of the classrooms there was what we thought was a white plaster statue of a naked woman until she moved. We both signed up for that course, which was Life Drawing, and we also signed up for Oil Painting. I was lousy with oils. The thing I hated most about them was cleaning up afterwards. The girl from Brooklyn had red hair, and we called her Flatbush. She was always speculating about why a girl would take off her clothes and pose naked. Both Andy and I got the impression that Flatbush would have very much enjoyed taking off her clothes and posing naked. The scholarship ended in June, by Which time Andy and I were both jaded by the sight of all those naked women draped on the posing stand, and by which time I had taken the entrance exam for Pratt Institute. I was notified in July that I had been accepted. And in that same month, when Andy insisted that I pay him the dime I'd bet him on the Yankee-White Sox game, I said, "Come on, don't be so niggardly," and he got upset and refused to believe there was such a word and that it meant stingy or cheap or miserly or parsimonious. He said to me, "I knew it would come sooner or later, Jimmy, and you're a son of a bitch." Andy said that to me. Maybe I did mean niggardly, maybe I really meant niggardly. Or maybe, accustomed to playing word games almost every night of the week, twisting meanings and spellings and generally slaughtering the language, maybe I was making another pun, and maybe Andy was right to get sore, I don't know.
He went to Cooper Union in September, to study art there, and I never saw him again.
"I think I smell wood burning," Jonah said.
"Yes, indeed," Norman said. "He is thinking very hard, Jonah."
"My brother always used to say he smelled wood burning," Jonah said.
"Can you remember where the 105th came from?" Norman asked.
"No," Driscoll said.
"You've got to remember," Jonah said.
"Why? I'm not even being sued. I think I ought to remind you gentlemen of that fact."
"Not serving you was a little gambit Mr. Brackman will come to regret," Jonah said.
"Why wasn't I served?"
"I asked that very same question in a Georgia restaurant once," Norman said, and laughed.
"What did they say?" Driscoll asked.
"They said the cook had gone home."
"Had he gone home?"
"Certainly not. The cook was my cousin," Norman said, and laughed again.
"My wife is a Southerner, you know," Driscoll said.
"Yes, I know."
"I don't think she's consciously prejudiced, however," he said, and finished his drink. "Would anyone care for another martini?"
"Only unconsciously?" Norman asked.
"What do you mean?"
"Prejudiced?"
"No, I don't think so. She's a very nice girl, Ebie. Yes. Do you know how she got to be named Ebie?"
"No, how?"
"Edna Belle," Driscoll said.
"Huh?"
"Edna."
"Yes?"
"Belle."
"Yes."
"E and B."
"I don't get it."
"E. B. Ebie."
"That's very clever," Norman said. "Let's have another drink."
"I think we ought to work out this 105th Division," Jonah said.
"The hell with the 105th Division," Driscoll said. "Let Brackman work it out. Why didn't he serve me?"
"He was hoping you'd wash your hands of the whole thing."
"I almost did."
"What made you change your mind?"
"I knew Mitchell-Campbell would have brought me in, anyway."
"It's best you joined the action voluntarily," Jonah said.
"Best for whom?"
"For all of us."
"If we win this case, you know. " Driscoll started, and then shook his head.
"Yes."
"No, never mind."
"What were you about to say?"
"Nothing. Let's have another drink."
"That's a good idea," Norman said.
"Don't you have to get home?" Jonah asked.
"What's the hurry? You think the rats'll get lonely?"
"Have you got rats?" Driscoll asked.
"Very large rats."
"What are their names?" Driscoll asked, and Norman burst out laughing.
"Have you really got rats?" Jonah asked.
"Absolutely."
"You ought to get out of Harlem."
"I can't."
"Why not? You make enough money."
"My mother likes it there."
"My mother likes it on West End Avenue," Driscoll said.
"West End Avenue ain't Lenox Avenue," Norman said.
"That's for sure. Hey, waiter, we want another round."
"Listen, we've got to get back to this," Jonah said. "The 105th Division appears in The Catchpole, and it also…"
"Catchpole," Norman corrected. "There is no article. You have been told that several times already, Mr. Willow, and I'll thank you to refer to the play by its proper name."
"Yes, but nonetheless," Jonah said, laughing, "if we can discover how you hit upon that number when you were contemplating your novel, we could—"
"When I was contemplating my navel, you mean," Driscoll said.
"That's very clever," Norman said, laughing. "Have you ever tried writing?"