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"I just paid the rent each ht a money order at the post office, filled it out in your naet the money?"

"There was some in the apartencies"

"That couldn’t have lasted very long"

"And there was your check every overnment"

"My disability check, 112 ait over the years"

"Really?"

"Cost-of-living increases, I think they called it Anyway, it’s up to 428 now"

"That’s a respectable sum," I said "Or at least it would have been back in 1972 But if the cost of living has increased proportionally, then I suppose it’s still a pittance"

"It’s useful," she said "It’s gone up more than the rent has It pays the rent now, as a reat"

"I had to cash your checks," she said, "or they would know you were dead, and then I would lose the apartment Besides, I couldn’t believe you were dead If you were dead I would knoould feel so here inside me But if you were alive, surely you would not stay away for so many years Evan, where were you? What happened to you?"

I went over to the bookcase "There used to be a bottle of scotch here," I said, "but I suppose it’s long gone"

"There’s liquor in the kitchen Scotch? Or would you like some brandy?"

"Not brandy," I said with a shudder "Scotch will be fine"

"You stay here," she said "I’ll get it"

She calasses I was about to ask her just when she started drinking whisky when two things occurred to me One – it was none of my business what she did, and two – she was seventeen years past the legal drinking age (I later found out they raised the drinking age to twenty-one while I was chilling out in Union City She was really only fourteen years past it)

"Little Minna," I said, taking a glass "Did you live here alone all the time?"

"Except when I was married"

I almost dropped my drink "You were ether for a year before that At his aparte But I kept this place, Evan, and when the e broke up I s just didn’t work out"

I took a long drink of scotch I wondered hoould sit after all those years, but it went down just fine I felt the glow spreading in my body, rich and war the bone-deep chill

"Did they o to school, Minna?"

She shook her head "I stayed home," she said, "and I read the books, and I think I learned more that way than I would have learned in school And of course I had jobs, because the h to live on"

"What kind of jobs could you get?"

"In the neighborhood Helping out in the shops, delivering for the liquor store, working at the newsstand when the Sunday Tiht I was always available to work, because I didn’t have to go to school"

"Handy," I said

"Yes And then when I was seventeen I look tests and got e"

"You went to college?"

"At Coluood, because they gave ot a uistics, and then went back to history for my doctorate"

"You’re a doctor," I said