He stepped out of his room and stopped the first person he crossed — a tenant named Dorothy Perkins. She was carrying a basket of laundry down the stairs. Dorothy was also studying at the university, but had avoided Langston since he had moved in.
“Excuse me, ma’am.” She stopped and turned around and waited for him to continue. “Somebody has just stolen twenty-five dollars from my room. My only twenty-five dollars, as a matter of fact. It was here two hours ago. Have you seen anybody who doesn’t belong in this house?”
“You, too?”
“What do you mean, me, too?”
“You had money stolen, too? We’ve all been losing things — money, watches, chains, rings — for the last few weeks.” “The last few weeks! I moved in a few weeks ago.” “Yeah,” she said with a grin. “We noticed.” “Wonderful,” he said. “Let me tell you something, ma’am.” “Excuse me, but — “
“Please let me finish. I don’t steal. I don’t need anybody’s chains or watches or rings. I don’t need their money. I mean, I could use it, but I wouldn’t take it. I’m a student, and I don’t steal. I do need my twenty-five dollars, however. It was my food money.”
“I’m sorry about your twenty-five dollars. I lost forty. But I was trying to tell you something.”
“What’s that?”
“Ma’am sounds like it’s out of the American south. It traditionally suggests an imbalance in power between two people speaking. Generally, the ma’am has the power, and the one speaking to her doesn’t. I would appreciate it if — “
“What are you studying, anyway? I heard you were at the university, too.”
“Sociology. As I was saying, I would appreciate it if you would refrain from calling me ma’am. It shows a deference that I find socially offensive.” Langston felt his cheeks burning. “I’m sorry about your money,” she said. “That’s tough luck. You may call me Dorothy. Now, if you’ll please excuse me.” Langston stepped to the side, and Dorothy continued down the stairs with her load of laundry.
The next day, Langston was holding a small, cast-iron frying pan, about to set it down on his hot plate, when he heard a scream. Still holding the pan, he stepped out of his room and saw a door open down the hall.
Dorothy rushed out. “There’s a thief in my room.”
“Where’d he go?”
“In the bathroom.”
Armed with the frying pan, Langston headed toward the bathroom. A young boy dashed out, crashed into Langston, knocked him off balance, tried to make a run for the hall, but turned when Dorothy beat him to it and slammed the door. He ran to the open window and climbed out onto the fire escape.
“Stop or I’ll shoot,” Langston cried out.
The boy got all the way out. Langston pursued him, frying pan in hand. He struggled out the window and again shouted, “I’ll shoot!” The boy skipped to the edge of the platform. As he was about to take the steps down the fire escape, Langston hurled the cast-iron pan. It caught the boy on the shoulder. The boy fell down. The pan tumbled onto the fire escape, clattered down the stairs, slammed into the landing one flight down, and fell out into the air. It landed in the alley one arm’s length away from another tenant named Mario. “Jesus Christ,” Mario screamed.
“Sorry,” Langston shouted.
“You trying to kill me or what?”
“Come on up. I caught a thief.”
“You what?”
“He shot me,” the boy screamed. “I’ve been shot. This man shot me.”
“Settle down. If I’d shot you, you wouldn’t be hollering like that. All I did was slow you down with a frying pan.”
Dorothy joined them on the fire escape. “You could have hurt him.”
The boy started crying. Langston stepped up to him. White boy, torn jeans, dirty hair, dirty face, only thirteen or so. Not old enough to have hair under his arms.
“What’s your name, son?” Langston said.
“Johnny Riley.”
Mario arrived, breathless. “Is this the little fucker who took sixty bucks out of my shoes last week?”
“Calm down, Mario,” Langston said. “He’s just a kid. Get some ice, would you? And Dorothy, could you bring me a wet washcloth?”
Dorothy turned away, went to the bathroom, and brought back the washcloth. Mario got ice from the store next door. Langston wrapped the ice in the washcloth and pressed it against the welt on the boy’s shoulder.
“Two weeks in med school and he already thinks he’s a doctor,” Dorothy mumbled.
“Why’s he babying the kid?” Mario said.
Langston let it be known that he wanted a minute alone with the boy. He led the youth to his room.
“Do you know where I come from, Johnny?” “Africa? You’re not a cannibal, are you?”
“Don’t be an ass. I’m from the United States. Down there, you can get shot breaking into somebody’s home.” “So why didn’t you shoot me?” Langston grinned and placed the washcloth back on Johnny’s shoulder. “I didn’t need to. I had the frying pan.”
Langston struck a deal with the boy. Nobody would call the cops, if Johnny would bring back the money and the goods he had stolen.
Langston opened his door. Mario and Dorothy were there, both smiling. “You folks hear all that?” “Sure did,” Mario said. “Does it suit you okay?”
“It suits us fine, Mr. Social Worker,” Dorothy said.
“I would have beat him up,” Mario said, “but I guess that’s why I’m a gardener and you’re studying to be a doctor.”
Johnny went home. Mario followed him, to make sure he came back. He did return, with most of the money and the stolen goods. Langston took Johnny on a walkabout and made him meet everybody he’d stolen from. People seemed to accept getting most of their money back, and Johnny went home.
Langston asked Dorothy if she had heard of Baltimore crab cakes. She hadn’t. He said there was a nice place by the waterfront that served them.
“Is that an invitation?” she said.
“It is. I wouldn’t like you to miss out on them.”
Dorothy smiled and touched his arm. “Well, let’s try them, sometime.”
The tenants at 117 Pembroke Street took good notice of the new black medical student. They saw his U.S. army trunk delivered to the house a week after he moved in. They noticed that he ate kippers for dinner. They heard he had rented his room at a bargain price. After he nabbed the house thief, tenants began approaching Langston directly. He helped one man write a letter to his parole officer, and guided another to a doctor for treatment of venereal disease.
One evening, while he was reading an anatomy text and whistling “The A Train,” Langston heard a knock on his door. He got up to answer it. Before him stood a young woman whose bright red lipstick made her mouth look like a kissing machine. Her skin was as white as skin got, her eyes blue and alive, her hair pinned up in a bun.
“You’re Langston, I know,” she said. “I’m Stella Tanner. I live downstairs with my husband.”
“Well, come on in.”
Stella stepped in and glanced at the single bed and the books stacked in plastic fruit crates. “I can’t stay. I have to go to work. But do you mind if I ask you something?”
“Go right ahead.”
“If I don’t like somebody who is a Negro, does that mean I’m prejudiced?”
“That depends on why you don’t like him.”
“It’s a her. And it’s because she’s a bitch. Always giving me a hard time, never nice to me, never nice to the customers, thinks the world owes her an apology.”
“Who is this woman?”
“I’m a waitress at the Mars Café. This woman I’m talking about works there part-time.”
“The Mars Café? Where’s that?”
“You haven’t been to the Mars Café? It’s more than a café — it’s an institution. It’s been in business for decades. Nobody will deny that we’ve got the best raisin bran muffins you ever tasted. And our breakfasts — “
?
??How about your coffee? You got good coffee?” “Not bad. Coffee’s coffee. Anybody’ll give you coffee. But —” “Sorry, Stella, but coffee is not coffee. There’s good coffee, and there’s bad coffee. I’ve been in Toronto for four weeks and I’ve only found one place so far — one place! — that serves passable coffee.”
Stella put her hands on her hips and smiled. “We were talking about whether I’m prejudiced.”
“How am I supposed to know? You know the answer better than anyone else.”
“I don’t think I am. I just plain don’t like that woman. But that doesn’t have to mean I’m prejudiced, does it?”
“It doesn’t have to,” Langston said. “I’m prepared to accept that you’re not prejudiced, if that’s what you want to hear me say. But just don’t prove me wrong.”
Stella leaned forward and kissed Langston on the cheek. “You’re a doll. My husband told me what you did the other day with that kid who’d been stealing from everybody. I gotta tell you I was very impressed. For a while, my husband and I wondered if it was you who was ripping everybody off.”
“So maybe you are prejudiced, after all.”
“Very funny. Why don’t you come by the café sometime?”
“I will.”
“I shouldn’t be telling you this, but Dorothy Perkins told me she fancies you.” Stella let out a loud laugh. “If I wasn’t married, I’d be giving her a run for her money.”
Langston found that the best way to keep up with his medical studies was to plan his weeks from start to finish. During the academic year, they all went the same. Classes or library study from eight a.m. to eight p.m., Monday to Friday, with breaks only for his bagged lunch and a stroll outside to clear his head. In the evening, he would walk home, buy food, and make dinner. His meals were always quick and cheap, and never required more than a pot, a plate, a bowl, and cutlery. From nine to midnight, more studying. From midnight to one a.m., he would listen to jazz, go for a walk, write a letter or two, or take a bath. On Saturdays, Langston slept till nine and studied from then until six. On Saturday nights, he partied, chatted with his co-tenants, or went out to see westerns. On Sunday mornings at ten, he’d order the all-you-can-eat breakfast special at the Mars Café, eating three plates of scrambled eggs, sausages, hash browns, and toast for seventy-five cents. Then he’d stroll south to Kensington Market, pick up cheeses, cold meats, kippers, and sardines, spend an hour reading the New York Times, and knock back an espresso in an Italian café on College Street. Then he would walk home, drop his food in the tenants’ common fridge, eat lunch, and study until eight in the evening. After that, it was free time.
On one such free evening, Langston wandered into the common room of the Pembroke Street house and found Dorothy Perkins trying to explain the differences between the Canadian and the American electoral systems to Mario and to Stella.
“You’re telling me that in the United States, you don’t even get to vote directly for or against the president?” Mario said. “You gotta vote for people in this electoral college, who then vote for their candidate? What good is that? Why not just vote for the president without anybody standing between him and the voters?”
“Well, our system’s just as indirect up here,” Dorothy said. “We don’t get to vote for a prime minister.”
“Sure we do,” Mario said.
“No, we don’t,” Dorothy said. “Let me explain.” “Let’s ask Langston,” Stella said. “He’s gonna be a doctor. He’ll know.”
“What difference does it make if he’s going to be a doctor?” Dorothy said. “Why are you people always putting doctors up on pedestals? Doctors are among the most conservative, reactionary forces in North America.”
“Maybe,” Stella said. “But they’re smart. And we never had one living here before.”
“What are you talking about, smart?” Dorothy said. “Why should he know any more about politics than you or me?”
“Don’t get overheated,” Stella said. “I’m just asking the man what he thinks. He’s been standing here with us for five minutes and you haven’t let him open his mouth yet.”
Dorothy glared at Stella.
“She likes him,” Mario said. “Why else would she be running him down all the time?”
“Like him? I can’t stand good-looking, cocky, successful men!”
Langston finally got a word in. “Well, thank you, Dorothy. I like you, too. Remember that crab dinner we were talking about some time back?”
“Take your crab and crack it,” Dorothy said. She stomped out of the room.
“She’s a bit sensitive today,” Mario said.
“Must be her period,” Stella said.
Dorothy stepped back into the room. “That’s an insulting comment.”
“What’s wrong with saying you’re having your period? Are you?” “Your question is insulting to women. And it’s none of your business.”
“I can’t insult women if I’m one myself. Langston, is there any way that I — a woman — can insult women?” “What are you asking him for?”
“Cool out, chick,” Stella said. “We know you like him. And he likes you. This isn’t high school, sweetie. You’re allowed to like people. We all got hormones.”
Dorothy stood speechless beside Langston. She turned to him, and planted her mouth on his. He pulled back, slightly. She clasped his head with her hands and kissed him for at least ten seconds. Mario drummed the table with his fingers.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Stella called out. “In this corner, we have Cool Cat Cane. And in this corner, we have Puckered Perkins. Let the two of them do battle no more.”
“Battle?” Langston said. “All I did was ask her out for crab cakes.”
“And I accepted,” Dorothy said. “When?” he asked.
“Didn’t you hear me?” She kissed him again.
They made plans to see each other on the next weekend.
On every street they walked, people turned their heads. Langston liked to catch them red-handed. He would turn and wave at the very moment another had pivoted to stare.
“You’re quite the looker, Miss Perkins. You’ve been making heads swivel since we left Pembroke Street.”
“They’re not looking at me, kiddo,” Dorothy said. “They’re looking at us.”
“Well, when they look at us, they’re really looking at you. They’re thinking, damn, that woman is fine on the eyeballs.” Dorothy placed her arm in his. “Am I fine on your eyeballs?” “Ma’am,” he said, prompting her to poke him in the ribs, “you are fine on my pupils, and easy on my irises, so fine, indeed, that I’m already looking past the crab cakes. Kiddo, I’m going to have you for dessert.”
Dorothy coughed in her throat, took her arm out of Langston’s, straightened her skirt, and said, “Well, you know what they say about carts and horses. How about if we concentrate on lunch?”
It was the first time Langston had set out to have a good meal in a good Canadian restaurant. It was also the first time he had been accompanied to a restaurant by a white woman. He figured it could go one of three ways. The maître d’ could tell them that all the tables were reserved — although Langston had tried to eliminate that possibility by making a reservation by telephone. The maître d’ could be cold and uninviting. Or, he could treat them like any other couple. The latter it turned out to be, and Langston made a mental note that he now had two restaurants — this one and the Mars Café — that he could fall back on in need.
They started with the house wine and lobster chowder. They clinked glasses. Langston mentioned that the restaurant was a long step up from Pembroke Street.
“Pembroke has its down sides,” Dorothy said, “and it certainly isn’t as clean or quiet as I’d like, but it’s important to me to support a mixed rooming house.”
“Mixed?”
“Mixed race, and mixed sex. You don’t find it all that often here. I want to support it.”
“So you’re making a statement by living there.” “Sure.”
“Not me,” Langston said. “I met the landlady on a bus and she said she had a vacancy and that’s the end of the story.”
“But don’t you feel socially engaged, living in that house? You may have arrived by fluke, but now that you’re there, don’t you feel committed to it?”
“Not particularly.”
“You’d just as soon live anywhere else?”
“It suits me for now. I like the cheap rent. I like the people. I like you.”
“I suppose it’s too much to ask a doctor to be progressive.”
“You’ve got a point,” Langston said. “Medical training transcends all racial and cultural differences and transforms each and every one of us into a social swine.”
“You’re making fun of me.”
“I was returning the favor. Stop trying to make a political issue of the fact that I’m not wedded to the rooming house. I don’t go around getting wedded to things or people every day. Give it a break, why don’t you? Laugh a little.”
“Wedded to things or people. I like that. I do get worked up pretty easily.” Dorothy told him that she had thought of herself as a socialist until recently, when she’d begun hearing more and more rumors about mass arrests and killings by Stalin in the USSR. Apart from her MA studies in sociology and her part-time secretarial job, Dorothy said she worked as a volunteer for the Toronto Labor Committee for Human Rights. It documented and fought cases of discrimination. It was trying to convince the Ontario government to pass human rights legislation. She asked if he was involved in any sort of social activism.
“This feels like a job interview.”
“It isn’t. We’re just chatting. Over a very nice lunch, by the way. So. What are you committed to?”
“Nothing, other than that I’m quite religious.” She straightened. “Really? What religion?” “I’m an orthodox carnivore.”
She broke into a fit of laughter. “You’re incorrigible. I love it. It’s your humor. It’s so — well — human.”
“I am. Despite my race.”
“That’s not what I meant, and you know it.”
He touched her arm. “I come from a family that would interest you. My father is a church minister. And my great-grandfather escaped from slavery, settled in Oakville around 1850, and —”