I didn't much like Celia's suggestion. But I couldn't think of a better one. And we had to spend the next five or six hours somewhere.
"So why not the Mendelsohns?" said Celia. "It's a little early for their party, but I'm sure we'll be welcome."
"All right. But we've got to keep quiet about our ... troubles. I don't want that shlub to have the last laugh on me."
It was an evening in early fall, and the sun was setting, but not fast enough for my comfort. I craved the protection of darkness. We already had passed two police cars headed eastward, and each time I cringed helplessly, and Celia and Freddie ducked down out of sight. Possibly the red sunset tones were falsifying the green of our car. Otherwise, I can't see how they overlooked us.
Traffic was starting to thin out as we arrived over the Mendota district of Chicago. This was kind of a marginal area—no longer desirable, not yet slum—where respectable poor people maintained some semblance of pride in their old dilapidated solar-heated homes. It was an area so thick with grime and industrial soot, that I had a hard time making out the roof markers from two-hundred feet. The glass and concrete dwellings were universally alike in pattern, a hollow square with patio in the center. Yet despite the general poverty below, I failed to see a single house that didn't have a rattletrap aircar of some kind parked in the rear. All except the Mendelsohn house. The Mendelsohns never owned a car. They had turned their backyard into a vegetable garden.
"Think they'll mind if I land there?"
"Not when they're leaving tomorrow."
I landed gently, nevertheless. Solly was sensitive about plants.
I think they were really astonished to see us. The girls ran into each other's embrace with squeals of recognition. Solly and I shook hands with a good deal more restraint. Dolores was tossling Freddie's hair. Then we went into their house.
It was pretty bare, of course. They had packed most of their things; probably had them stored aboard ship by now. But there was enough furniture left that went with the house for us to sit down on.