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SPRING-SUMMER AT SCHOOL
Whereas the large majority of the men of 74-75
corridor
were heading home after surviving, partially surviving,
existing through, or being ruined with a glimmer of hope as a
result of final exams, C T was already signed up for classes
during the summer months at the University. His father was
certainly understanding, for his son was measuring up to any
standard he could have imagined. He expressed some doubt
earlier in the year, however, that he was doing the right
thing. Mr. Lerman needed a summer data enterer of C T's
quality again at his firm. It took a great effort on C T's
part, based on a presentation as haughty as any sales pitch,
to show that these two half-semesters of school would make
graduation much easier for him in two years.
It wasn't the easiest finding a place to live
on campus.
While many students moved away and left vacancies for the
summer all about, the dormitories realized a profit only in
issuing twelve- or eight-month leases. It would be cost-
inefficent to provide a second lease to C T when he wouldn't
be coming back and the room couldn't be turned around rapidly
in the fall for a newly arriving and fully-entitled eight-
month freshman. He might have liked living in Lodge Hall for
the four months while he took his three classes, but it
wouldn't be the same without the somehow pleasant
unpleasantry of the gang on the corridor. Not only would
Franklin's stereo be off continually; it would be gone. He
secretly wished that people were more compulsive and a little
more enduring so that, like in the real world of work he had
known the summer before in the computer room trading shifts
with Samantha, education could go on all the time and such
discontinuities as he faced were not a problem.
In week 14 of the winter semester, then, C
T was faced
with arranging living space. He'd already been through
R.O.T., an acronym for "Registration On Terminal," that
massive and oftentimes frustrating system to all but the most
avid computer scientists whereby electives are taken by the
means of a mad scramble on a network of "dumb" terminals with
equally dumb operators. Professional integrity and restraint
was all that kept C T from issuing several choice expletives
at the ineptitude of the operator assigned to him when he
registered for his spring courses, Linear Simulation and
Matrix Methods.
He knew he needed to consult with someone
who knew about
finding a good deal when it came to his housing options,
although none of Mr. Lerman's real estate brokerage ties led
as far as the University, and in any case, the kind of
quarters he wanted are usually unlisted in the real world of
real estate. His primary clients sold "estates" that were
"real." At the same time, however, C T knew that this was
his big break; a chance to stand aloft in the world of
business. He had the funds authorized from his father for
the apartment, and his mother, amazed at the low grocery
bills he had rendered the summer before as chef and home
economist, gave complete assurance to her husband that he
would bring his living in well under the dormitory budget.
With this mandate, then, he went to the Tenant's Listing
Organization, an offshoot of radical, self-righteous consumer
awareness whose presence seemed highly out of place in its
current context. It had been developed at first to wage war
against Establishment landlords who ignored and exploited
their tenants. It was a mission of high conscience for its
founder, Thomas Marcy, who in the peak of the revolutionary
movements of the late 1960's crusaded for the rightful
collectivization and control of student housing both on and
off campus.
C T found the duplex home where the TLO was
still
situated. There were fresh coats of paint on every surface
and an American flag flew on a short post in the manicured
front lawn. A sign over the left door read: "Business
Office." The other sign said "Private. Use other door."
C T
decided on the left door, obviously, the one more likely to
be open and not alarm wired--the glass had those metal-film
strips at the edges to alert the authorities of a break-in.
A woman about the age of Tammy but decidedly more ingrained
in vocationalism sat inside at the front desk. She was
moving cards in a pasteboard box. "Hello?..." he
volunteered. What kind of consumer organization could this
be, he wondered, when their mission had gone to their heads
in the way it appeared to have?
"Mr. Marcy will be out in a minute," she said,
looking
at him briefly and deciding it wasn't worth looking. He
wasn't an MBa candidate, destined to try for his millions in
the junk bond market. C T walked to the other side of the
living room that had been converted to a reception area. A
bulletin board had some yellowed placards from the old days.
One of them read,
"'Life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness...'
"Brothers and
sisters, where we live is part of
our liberty.
We must be happy. The landlords
and Housing
are unaware of the very contradiction
they spout.
We are not hypocrites."
At this point, the door to the kitchen opened.
A man in
a pinstripe vest with a fitted broadcloth button-down shirt
and an Italian silk tie walked out. He held himself well.
"Mary, get me the National Coalition papers when you have a
chance. Hello." He noticed C T only after he stood up and
walked to the center of the room, in his way.
"Nice stuff on the board over there.
I was hoping your
office could get me an apartment for the summer and maybe
next year." Thomas Marcy regarded him in the obligatory
humanistic frame. He was not a hypocrite.
"We are allied with campus in getting places
for kids
like you to live in. They can't handle the load, seeing they
have dorms to run." He reached into his vest pocket for his
reading glasses when Mary came back with the requested
documents. "We have many fine rooms and flats in our files,"
Mr. Marcy assured him. "Let Mary show you what to do."
He
took the papers and retreated to the kitchen-made-office.
There were, indeed, several good rooms and
flats listed
in the file box. C T took laser photocopies, at 15 cents
each, of four likely candidates and set out about town to
find his new place to live. He decided to let his hunches
work the magic for him. His father built this in him. "Why,
it's not so much a matter of sticking the poor guy with a car
he doesn't want and not have him come back. You build him up
first from the one you know he doesn't want and then he
will."
The first listing was his least favorite.
The
weatherbeaten plywood sign read, "University Manors. Rental
Info. 4589-012." After he had called that number earlier,
the leaseholder arranged to meet him in the flat he was
subletting for the summer. C T thought it looked like the
walkup he and his sister had lived in for the seven years
before Mr. Prime got on his feet. It was a large apartment
for one, but C T's hunches were somehow right. The gangling
spaces with bare walls and summer cottage furniture were not
for him.
After this, he investigated a prefabricated
slot in the
"Barton Towers" complex on the northern side of town. The
apartment was on the 12th floor and had a commanding view of
the Arboretum and the Mall. C T could see the entire path
he'd walked that night after the 74-75 guys had dumped him,
or the other way around. It had all the prerequisites of
classic off-campus University living, with track lights and a
dowel partition. He liked the view. The only problem came
when he found the rent didn't even include electricity or
gas. He knew then how his father must feel about keeping up
a house.
His third choice resembled more of the living
pattern he
found typical in himself. It was on ground floor, and it
would be more like living at home. The house was on the
western side of town and had had a separate apartment
remodeled into the back. But the owners who lived in the
front reminded him of the parents of that little girl back in
the city who didn't like him after he had set off a thermite
explosion in their sandbox. A large dog was also weakly
chained to a post near the sideboard garage. He knew he had
no yard privileges, and that he had better move on.
It turned out that his last ditch move kept
him from the
ditch. The address was 703 DeSoto Street, in a fashionable
neighborhood like the one Tammy had lived in with her high
school friend dorm roommate before she graduated. The
building was constructed in the 1940's, C T estimated,
probably in response to GI Bill housing needs. The original
tenants had fought in The Good War, he thought, remembering
a
Studs Terkel book, so they were a little more respected. The
manager lived in the first apartment inside the door. When C
T greeted him with as much enthusiasm as this search had left
him with, the surly man picked up his pencil and notepad and
made a check on the curled page.
"3B. Single bedroom, $290.00, water,
gas, electric.
Can be occupied married for $80.00 more. No pets. How long
you want to lease?"
"At least the summer, maybe next year."
"O K. I'll give you a four month lease
with option for
another twelve." Could the deal have been made, C T wondered?
This was unusual salesmanship. He wouldn't want his Dad to
know if he were being suckered by such a lowbrow. He changed
his mind when he saw the apartment, however. Mr. Marcy's
outfit was performing, despite its hypocrisy. That
generation had turned out to have good practical interests in
mind, after they got over the late '60's. Apparently, in the
time since the War, the capital outlay on the building had
been recouped from the hides of a generation of students and
then some of their children. He signed the lease and wrote
the landlord a check for the security deposit and the first
month's rent.
Next Chapter: The Quantum Leap