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"The path on the hillside is a stripe of light,
"a three-dimensional effect.
"There's nothing theoretical about this.
"Everything is where it is supposed to be.
"Not merely light and shadow and balance and color,
"but the unprepared for,
"the element that informs as well as verifies the work."
"As the light in the Salle Caill in the Jeu de Paume changes,
"the painting changes too.
"Like the sun slowly emerging from behind a cloud,
"it opens and displays more of itself."
"The people and the setting are from the previous century.
"Women and children descending the path."
"There's absolutely nothing savage about this picture.
"Flowers, fruit trees, foot-worn path, wooden fence.
"Nothing to disturb."
"The element of feeling is calm.
"Difficulty disappears."
"An early summer afternoon in the house in Chicago.
"I'm ten years old. The sky is very dark, a thunderstorm."
"I'm sitting on the floor in my room, the cool tiles.
"The rain comes, at first very hard then soft."
"I'm playing a game by myself.
"Nobody else is around except perhaps my mother in another part of the house."
"There is and will be for a while nothing to disturb me."
"This is my most beloved childhood memory.
"An absolutely inviolable moment totally devoid of difficulty."
"It's the same feeling I have
"when I look at Renoir's Chemin Montant dans les Hautes Herbes."
"I doubt very seriously if my father would have understood this feeling."
Everything was related to Chicago.
And Chicago was a great place.
That cynical kind of attitude.
A kind of a toughness.
That was Chicago to me.
First of all, as Hemingway said, "Don't ignore the weather."
But I never could forget the weather.
"Roy had been told that hell was boiling
"but when he and his mother flew up from Miami and arrived in Chicago
"during the dead of winter, he decided this was a lie.
"Hell was cold, not hot
"and he was horrified that his mother had delivered him to such a place.
" 'My mother must hate me,' Roy thought, 'to have brought me here.' "
I remember one time...
I was on Clark Street
and I went to a newsstand...
you know, and it was kind of a miserable day.
The newsagent, the newsie, you know, in one of these kiosks
was talking to some old woman
And he had asked her about her son or daughter,
something like that, and...
she said, "Oh, they moved to Florida," or California, someplace like that.
And the newsie says,
"Oh, yeah, they're not tough enough."
And she said, "Yeah, they're not like us."
There was that attitude.
Many years ago, when I first started writing,
a friend of mine who I'd gone to high school with
he said, "You know, you're really writing history here."
I asked him what he meant. He said, "Well, that's really what it is."
He says, "You're just keeping track of the time,
"not necessarily only your life or your observation,
"but you know, thinking about the history of a place
"and people and language."
The past isn't dead.
The Roy stories are a bit different for me
because it's certainly the most autobiographical of my work.
I said, "I just want to remember the time that I had with my mother."
and so I created Roy...
..and his mother.
A lot of it is based on things that more or less...happened,
but much of it not.
You know, fiction has a very simple definition.
It means that you made it up.
You use all of the information, all of the experiences that you have.
All of this, it all goes into the work.
And then you tell the story that you want to tell.
"Before you were born,
"I got very sick and your dad made me go to Cuba to recover."
"I stayed in a lovely house on a beach next to a lavish estate."
"It was a perfect cure for me,
"lying in the sun without responsibilities."
"Was Dad with you?"
"No, I was alone."
"There was a Chinese couple who took care of the house and me.
"Chang and Li were their names."
"How long were you there?"
"Six weeks.
"I was so happy just by myself,
"reading, resting, swimming in the Caribbean Sea."
"It really was the best time of my life. Until, of course, I had to leave."
"Why did you have to leave?"
"To make sure you were a healthy baby.
"I needed to be near my doctor, who was in Chicago."
She and my dad had a friend
who was the maître d' in the restaurant at the Belden Stratford Hotel.
One of the places where my dad kept his money,
in the safety deposit boxes, you know, in the hotel safe,
who was a gay guy named Barry,
who was a very good friend of theirs.
And so she really had good associations with the name, anyways.
That's it. I'm named after, you know,
a gay maître d' at the Belden Stratford.
She had been a University of Texas beauty queen in 1944 or thereabouts.
After that, she left Texas and went to New York, modeled there,
then came to Chicago.
She was modeling fur coats
for Joseph Kennedy in the Merchandise Mart...
..when my father met her.
She was almost 20 years younger than my father.
My father always had money.
"He was a strong person," Roy said.
"People liked and respected him, didn't they?"
"Yes. He handled things his own way. People trusted him."
"You know, your father never gave me more than $25 a week spending money,
"but I could go into any department store or good restaurant
"and charge whatever I wanted."
"I'll tell you something that happened not long after he and I were married."
"We were living in the Seneca Hotel, where you were born,
"and there was another couple in the hotel we were friends with.
"Ricky and Rosita Danilo.
"Rosita was a little older than I. She was from Puerto Rico.
"And Ricky was a few years younger than your dad,
"who was 19 years older than me.
"What business was Ricky in?"
"Oh, the rackets, like everybody in Chicago.
"But he wasn't in your father's league. He looked up to Rudy."
"Anyway, late one afternoon, your father came home
"and I was wearing a new hat, blood red with a veil,
"and he said it looked good on me.
"I told him I was just trying it on.
"He asked me where I'd gotten it
"and I said it was a gift from Ricky Danillo,
"that I'd come back to the hotel after having lunch with Peggy Spain
"and the concierge handed me a hat box with a note from Ricky."
"What did the note say?"
"Well, I don't remember exactly, something about how he hoped I'd liked it,
"that when he saw it in the shop window, he thought it suited my style."
"Your dad didn't say anything,
"but the next day when I was down to the lobby,
"I saw that one of the plate glass windows in the front was boarded up.
"I asked the concierge what happened
"and he told me that Rudy had punched Ricky Danillo
and knocked him through the window, then told the hotel manager
"to put the cost of replacing it on his bill."
"That night, I said to your dad,
" 'You knocked Ricky through a plate glass window just because he bought me a hat?' "
"What did he say?"
" 'No, Kitty. I did it because he didn't ask me first.'
"That's the kind of guy your father was.
"I didn't say another word about it."
"What happened to the hat?"
"I never wore it. I gave it away to someone."
My father was always in love with my mother.
I don't know that my mother was in love with my father...
..except that he took care of her
and I think she needed that. She needed to be taken care of.
Of course, my father said, "Whatever you need Dorothy."
I mean, he was, I'm sure, struck by her...looks and so forth.
My father started very early involved with organized crime,
but he was a smart guy and, in those days, when Prohibition came in,
in order to have access to drugs and liquor, right,
you had to be a doctor or a pharmacist.
So he went to pharmacology school
at the University of Illinois in Chicago, campus.
And, uh, now he could write script
and he could get liquor and all that sort of stuff.
"According to Nanny, my mother's mother,
"my dad didn't even speak to me until I was five years old.
"He apparently didn't consider a child capable of understanding him,
"or a friendship worth cultivating until that age
"and he may have been correct in his judgment."
"I certainly never felt deprived as a result of this policy."
"If my grandmother hadn't told me about it,
"I would've never known the difference."
"My dad never really told me about what he did or had done
"before I was old enough to go around with him."
"I picked up information as I went..."
"..listening to guys like Albert and some of my dad's other friends,
"like Willy Nero in Chicago or Dummy Fish in New York."
"I supposedly lived in Chicago,
"but my dad had places in Miami, New York and Acapulco."
"We traveled, mostly without my mother,
"who stayed at the house in Chicago and went to church a lot."
"Once I asked my dad if we were any particular religion
"and he said, 'Your mother's a Catholic.' "
"When Dad and I were in New York one night,
"I heard him talking in a loud voice to Dummy Fish in the lobby of the Waldorf.
"I was sitting in a big leather chair
"between a sand-filled ashtray and a potted palm
"and Dad came over and told me that Dummy would take me upstairs to our room.
"I should go to sleep, he said. He'd be back late."
"In the elevator, I looked at Dummy and saw that he was sweating."
"It was December, but water ran down from his temples to his chin."
" 'Does my dad have a job?' I asked Dummy. 'Sure, he does,' he said."
" 'Of course, your dad has to work, just like everybody else.' "
" 'What is it?', I asked.
"Dummy wiped the sweat from his face
"with a white-and-blue checkered handkerchief.
" 'He talks to people,' Dummy told me.
" 'Your dad is a great talker.'
But in any event my dad liked living in hotels.
He liked the impermanence of it.
We were living in the Seneca Hotel.
It was then a hotel on Chestnut Street in Chicago, near the lake.
And it was near my dad's place of business...
which was a combination liquor store and pharmacy
on the corner of Chicago and Rush Street in the middle of the club district.
So it was very convenient for him, you know,
just to walk a few blocks to his place,
right across the street from the old Water Tower.
The one thing I can say is there was a very strong...presence.
From my father, from his father, from his brother.
These guys were... In Yiddish it's called shtarker.
It really means "tough".
They were not people to mess around with.
Now, I never really saw anything happen,
overtly so.
I heard stories.
"There were alway people coming in and going out of his dad's store
"and men hanging around, talking or whispering to each other
"or just standing and waiting."
"His dad seemed to know all of them
"and did not mind that none of them ever bought any liquor."
"The only times Roy saw a bottle of whiskey or gin
"change hands with one of them
"was when his dad gave it to him and did not ask for money."
"Sometimes a showgirl from the Club Alabam next door came in
"and, without saying anything, went down the rickety inside staircase
"into the basement with Roy's father."
"They would come back a few minutes later
"and the girl would kiss his dad on the cheek
"and say, 'Thanks a million, Rudy,'
"or, 'You're a swell guy,' before leaving."
"The showgirls came in on a break from rehearsals
"wearing only high heels and a skimpy costume under a coat."
"Roy thought they were all knockouts
"and asked his father what they wanted to see him about.
" 'They need a little help from time to time, Roy,' his dad said
" 'and I give them something to make 'em feel better.' "
" 'What do you give them?' 'It's not important, son.
" 'They're poor girls and I like to help people if I can.'
" 'They always kiss you goodbye?
"Roy's father smiled and said,
" 'That's how they show their appreciation.' "
To describe it as a drugstore is not entirely accurate,
because, as I say, yes, there was a pharmacy part of it,
there was a soda fountain in there and it was a liquor store
and then downstairs, in the basement,
guys were making deals and all that sort of stuff
and making book, you know, on the races or whatever it happened to be.
So we were confronted pretty quickly, especially in a place like Chicago,
which was, of course, renowned for its corruption.
We just grew up with it.
It was just part and parcel of the whole thing.
It was part of the culture.
It seemed like, my dad and his friends, they already knew who'd won
before the election took place.
So you make of that what you will.
I will faithfully discharge the duties of Mayor of Chicago...
According to the best of your ability.
According to the best of my ability.
Mr. Mayor, it's a great privilege for me
to be the first to officially call you "Mr. Mayor".
We want the finest police and fire department in the nation.
We must provide the opportunity for every citizen
to have decent housing.
We must have slum clearance.
While we are clearing the slums,
we must prevent the spread of blight into the other neighborhoods.
It was Daley.
I mean, the politics. The city was ruled with an iron hand.
Certainly my father was involved with a lot of these people, in terms of...
Not as a politician, but as a mover and shaker in the city.
Everybody was on the take. It was, you know...
Bribes were just a part of the territory.
- Good afternoon, madam. - Why are you stopping me?
You were speeding.
Well, if I was speeding, so was everybody.
I'm not going any faster than the other cars.
You were driving 40 miles per hour in a posted 25 mile zone.
You had better get your speedometer tested.
I wasn't driving that fast.
Let me have your driver's license, please.
Can't you forget about this, Officer?
"While Roy's mother was in the Land of 10,000 Lakes,
"there was a sanitation workers strike in Chicago.
"Garbage piled up in the streets and alleys.
"Now the weather was very warm and humid and the city started to stink."
"Big Cicero, the hunchback with the twisted nose
"who once wrestled Killer Kowalski at Marigold Arena
"and now worked at the newsstand on the corner near the house,
"said to Roy's grandmother, 'May they rot in hell, them garbage men.
" 'They get a king's ransom as it is, just for throwin' bags.
" 'Cops ought to kneecap 'em, put 'em on the rails.
" 'The Mayor'll call in the troops soon if it don't end, you'll see.' "
"Roy's grandmother said,
'Don't have a heart attack, Cicero.'
" 'Already had one,' he said."
"One afternoon, Roy looked out a window at the rear of the house
"and saw rats running through the backyard.
" 'Nanny, look!' Roy shouted, 'Rats are in our yard!' "
"His grandmother came into the room and looked out the window.
"The rats were climbing up the wall.
"She grabbed a broom, leaned out the window with it
"and began knocking the rats off the yellow bricks."
"They fell down onto the cement,
"but quickly recovered and headed back up the side of the house.
"Roy's grandmother dropped the broom into the yard
"and slammed the window shut."
"If the Mayor really did call in the army, like Big Cicero said he might,
"they could use flame-throwers to fry the rats."
"Roy closed his eyes and saw hundreds of blackened rodents,
"sizzling on the sidewalks."
My grandmother apparently said something to my mother at one point.
Nanny said, "How can you be in the same bathroom with that man?"
My grandmother really worked hard on my mother.
She really was the one who caused the divorce.
Now, my father's family also didn't like my mother.
Because she was so different. First of all, she's a shiksa, right,
so they were suspicious of her.
She was completely different than they were in her manner
and her looks and that kind of thing.
I heard, many times, people refer to my mother
as a divorcee, divorced woman.
And that seemed somehow humiliating to me.
"Roy and his mother had come back to Chicago from Cuba
"by way of Key West and Miami
"so that she could attend the funeral of her Uncle Ike, her father's brother."
"Roy was six years old and though he would not be going to the funeral -
"he'd stay at home with his grandmother, who was too ill to attend -
"he looked forward to seeing Pops, his grandfather,
"during his and his mother's time in the city.
"It was mid-February and the weather was at its most miserable."
"The temperature was close to zero,
"ice and day-old snow covered the streets and sidewalks
"and sharp winds cut into pedestrians from several directions at once."
"Had it not been out of fondness and respect for his father's brother,
"Roy's mother would never have ventured north
"from the tropics at this time of year."
"Uncle Ike had always been especially kind and attentive to his niece
"and Roy's mother was sincerely saddened by his passing."
"She and Roy had first stopped on the way in from the airport to see Roy's father,
"from whom his mother had recently been divorced, at his liquor store
"and were now in a taxi on their to Roy's grandmother's house
"when she told the driver to stop
"so that she could buy something at a pharmacy."
" 'Wait here in the cab, Roy,' she said. 'It's warmer.
" 'I'll only be a couple of minutes.' "
"Roy watched his mother tiptoe gingerly across the frozen sidewalk
"and enter the drugstore."
"The taxi was parked on Ojibway Avenue,
"which Roy recognized was not very far from his grandmother's neighborhood."
" 'That your mother?' the driver asked.
" 'Yes.'
" 'She's a real attractive lady. You live in Chicago?'
" 'Sometimes,' said Roy.
" 'My grandmother lives here. Right now, we live in Havana, Cuba
" 'and Key West, Florida.'
" 'You live in both places?'
" 'We go back and forth on the ferry. They're pretty close.'
" 'Your parents got two houses, huh?'
" 'They're divorced. My mom and I live in hotels.'
" 'You like that? Living in hotels?'
" 'We've always lived in hotels. Even when my mom and dad were married.
" 'I was born in one in Chicago.'
" 'Where's your dad live?' 'Here mostly.'
" 'Sometimes he's in Havana or Las Vegas.'
" 'What business is he in?'
"Roy was getting anxious about his mother.
"The rear window on his side of the cab kept steaming up
"and Roy kept wiping it off.
" 'My mother's been in there a long time,' he said.
" 'I'm going in to find her.' 'Hold on, kid. She'll be right back.
" 'The drugstore's probably crowded.'
"Roy opened the curbside door and said,
" 'Don't drive away. My mom will pay you.'
"He got out and went into the drugstore.
"His mother was standing in front of the cash counter.
"Three or four customers in line were behind her.
" 'You dumb son of a bitch!',
his mother shouted at the man standing behind the counter,
" 'How dare you talk to me like that?'
"The clerk was tall and slim
"and he was wearing wire-rim glasses and a brown sweater.
" 'I told you,' he said, 'We don't serve Negroes.
" 'Please leave the store or I'll call the police.' "
" 'Go on, lady,' said a man standing in line.
" 'Go someplace else.'
" 'Mom, what's wrong?' Roy said.
"The customers and the clerk looked at him.
" 'This horrible man refuses to wait on me because he thinks I'm a Negro.'
" 'But you're not a Negro,' Roy said."
" 'It doesn't matter if I am or not.
" He's stupid and rude.' "
" 'Is that your son?' the clerk asked.
" 'He's white,' said a woman in the line.
" 'He's got a suntan, but he's a white boy.'
" 'I'm sorry, lady,' said the clerk.
" 'It's just that your skin is so dark.'
" 'Her hair's red,' said the woman.
" 'She and the boy have been in the sun too much down south somewhere.'
"Roy's mother threw the two bottles of lotion she'd been holding at the clerk.
"He caught one and the other bounced off his chest
"and fell on the floor behind the counter.
" 'Come on, Roy. Let's get out of here,' said his mother.
"The taxi was still waiting with the motor running and they got in.
"The driver put it into gear and pulled away from the curb.
" 'You get what you needed, lady?' he asked.
" 'Mom, why didn't you tell the man that you aren't a Negro?'
"Roy's mother's shoulders were shaking and tears were running down her cheeks.
"He could see her hands trembling as she wiped her face.
" 'Because it shouldn't matter, Roy.
" 'This is Chicago, Illinois, not Birmingham, Alabama.
" 'It's against the law not to serve Negroes.'
" 'No, it ain't, lady,' said the driver.
" 'Well, it should be,' said Roy's mother.
" 'How could they think you're black?' The driver said.
" 'If I'd thought you were a Negro, I wouldn't have picked you up.' "
Chicago: a city of beauty, strength and power.
Chicago: commercial capital of the nation,
agricultural market and industrial center of the world.
Chicago: the most American of American cities.
One thing I have to say is that neither my mother nor my father
ever exhibited any kind of racist attitude.
Nor were they homophobic.
I never heard any kind of racial slur
or homophobic slur
from either one of them. Why? I really couldn't tell you.
I have no big answer,
except maybe the Jews in my family felt the prejudice,
which I'm sure they did.
I was very fortunate I think,
to not have to inherit or really deal personally
with those kinds of prejudices.
So I consider that sort of a blessing, in other words.
I saw my father, but I don't remember ever living with him,
because I was five when they got divorced.
We moved into the apartment on Rockwell Street.
It was a pretty working class neighborhood.
Our next door neighbor Frank McLaughlin was a doorman at the Drake Hotel.
I mean everybody's father was a plumber or something,
you know, like that. A tradesman of some kind.
DeWitt Clinton Public School.
These places, God.
Clinton was a gigantic, prison-like edifice.
It went from K through 8.
So the older boys basically preyed upon the younger kids.
Typical Chicago school.
White, certainly.
There were no black students there at the time.
Some Puerto Ricans, maybe.
I concentrated early on on sports...
..so I was always playing ball.
Depending on the season, baseball, basketball, football.
My only distinction was that I was the sports editor
of my grammar school paper, The Clinton Echo,
My only journalistic experience, in eighth grade.
"Roy did not so much mind
"the two feet of new snow that had fallen overnight,
"but ice had hardened during the early morning hours
"and created a carapace upon the sidewalks that made them dangerous to negotiate.
"The elderly and enfeebled were advised to stay home.
"Stepping cautiously on his way to school,
"Roy stopped in front of Walsh's Drugstore on Blackhawk
"to take a copy of the day's Sun-Times
"from the bundle on the ground in front of the entrance.
"Walsh's would not open for another hour,
"so Roy left a dime on the bundle, rolled up the paper,
"stuck it under his arm and continued towards the school."
"He wished he could be with his father right now in Havana, Cuba,
"where the temperature was in the mid-80s and the trade winds were blowing.
"His dad had gone to Cuba on business and was staying at the Hotel Nacional,
"his regular place of residence when he was on the island."
"Roy enjoyed sitting out on the terrace there,
"early in the morning, when it was coolest, drinking lemonade
"and munching lightly-toasted and sweet-buttered Cuban bread."
"After breakfast at the Nacional,
"Roy would usually go swimming in the hotel pool.
"Then he would get dressed and walk by himself
"over to the Sevilla-Biltmore to have lunch with his father."
"Most of the time, Roy's father would be there already,
"seated in a booth at the rooftop restaurant
"with two or three other men.
"There were framed black and white photos on the walls of the restaurant,
"in two of which his dad could be seen smiling and holding a cigar."
"It was Roy's mother's third husband, Sid Wade,
"who told Roy that his father had died.
"Roy and Sid did not get along."
"Roy's mother had married Sid two years before, when Roy was ten,
"and it had since been obvious to Roy that if this husband had a choice,
"he would prefer Roy were not part of the deal."
"Roy had gotten home from school to have lunch
"and Sid took him into what had been Roy's grandfather's room,
"before he moved to Florida to live with Roy's Uncle Buck.
"Ice coated the windows.
" 'Listen Roy, your father died this morning,' Sid said."
"Roy knew his father was in the hospital being treated for colon cancer.
"He'd had an operation a few months before
"and needed to sit on a rubber pillow at the kitchen table.
"Also, since then, Roy had seen his father's second wife Evie
"giving his dad shots with a large hypodermic needle."
"Despite the illness, Roy's father did not appear
"to have lost his strength or his sense of humor."
"The only difference Roy noticed was that his dad was at home more."
"Usually he was at his liquor store
"from early afternoon until three or four in the morning
"and sometimes he didn't go home for 24 hours.
" 'In my business, there's always something going on,' he told Roy."
" 'If I don't pay attention, I end up paying in other ways
" 'and if that happens too many times, pretty soon I won't be in business.' "
I didn't even know, really until the very end.
He was in the hospital and my mother said,
"Call your father tonight, he's in the hospital."
Then I did try to call, but they said he was sleeping.
And the next day he was dead.
I think I felt, even while my father was alive,
that I was...somehow...
on my own.
You had to learn how to handle yourself
and take care of yourself and to be self-aware,
but really very observant
and aware of your surroundings.
"When my mother married her third husband,
"I, at the age of 11, was given the duty, or privilege
"of proposing a toast at the banquet following the wedding.
"My Uncle Buck coached me.
" 'Unaccustomed as I am to public speaking...', I was to begin."
"I kept going over it in my head."
" 'Unaccustomed as I am to public speaking...',
"until the moment arrived
"and I found myself standing with a glass in my hand, saying,
" 'Unaccustomed as I am to public speaking...'
"I stopped.
"I couldn't remember what else my uncle had taught me to say, so I said,
" 'I want to propose a toast to my new father...',
"I paused, 'and my old mother.'
"Everybody laughed and applauded.
"I could hear my uncle's high-pitched twitter.
"It wasn't what I was supposed to have said, that last part.
"My mother wasn't old, she was about 30, and that wasn't what I'd meant by old.
"I meant she was my same mother. That hadn't changed.
"No matter how often the father changed, the mother did not."
"I was afraid I'd insulted her.
"Everybody laughing was no insurance against that.
"I didn't want this new father
"and, a few months later, neither did my mother."
"When he was 11 years old,
"Roy began waking up between 4:00 and 4:30 in the morning,
"four hours before he had to leave for school.
"His mother, her husband and Roy's sister were asleep
"and so long as he kept to the back of the house,
"he did not disturb them."
"No matter what the weather was, even if it was freezing or raining,
"Roy liked to go out onto the back porch to feel the fresh air and watch the sky."
"He could imagine that he lived alone
"or, at the least, that this third stepfather did not exist."
"His old mother had married her third husband a few months before.
"But Roy knew it wouldn't last.
"They were fighting all the time
"and Roy did not want to continue living with them.
"He loved his mother, but she was constantly
"on the verge of a nervous breakdown."
"Roy had overheard her talking on the telephone to his grandmother,
"telling her she needed to be hospitalized or sent to a sanitarium...
"..somewhere she could rest.
" 'Otherwise,' his mother said,
" 'something terrible might happen.'
" Roy figured this meant one of three things -
that she would kill herself, or her husband,
or that her husband would kill her. "
"Roy had come to understand that his mother gave very little thought
"to how her bringing these men into his life might affect him.
"He knew now that it was up to him to control his own existence,
"to no longer be subject to her poor judgment and desperation."
I think my mother's happy life ended when she was about 30.
I think from the age of about 19 or 18 to 30 was about it for her.
Her health really started to deteriorate, severely...
and her marriages didn't work out.
My father always had money.
Although never in an ostentatious way.
And after he died, there was no more money.
I went to work at the age of 11,
delivering food on a bicycle for a Chinese restaurant,
Kow-Kow, which was on Devon Avenue and Rockwell.
25 cents an hour, a dime a delivery.
There wasn't a whole lot of parental supervision,
as far as I was concerned.
My instruction was in the street.
You know, from early on, I always loved movies.
I always thought it was the greatest potential art form,
because it had everything.
I'd go to two or three movies a day sometimes when I was a kid.
I was on my own.
And I saw a lot of bad movies, as many bad movies as I saw good movies,
probably more.
But I never thought about it in an academic way.
To me, it was really... an education.
I watched everything and I developed a sense of narrative..
..how to tell a story, just from watching movies.
How's a story put together?
"Roy was walking to his after school job at the Red Hot Ranch
"when a girl about his age, whom he didn't know,
"came up to him and said,
" 'Isn't it terrible? I just want to scream.' "
"Roy looked at her face.
"The girl was crying, but she was still pretty.
"She had blonde hair and gray eyes.
"At closer inspection,
"Roy realized that the girl was older than he'd first thought.
"She was about 18 or 19.
" 'Isn't what terrible?' he asked.
" 'You didn't hear?'
" 'I don't know,' said Roy, 'Hear what?'
" 'The president's been shot! He's dead!'
"Fresh tears shot out of the girl's eyes and poured down her cheeks.
" 'Can you hold me?' she asked him.
" 'I need to be held, just for a few seconds.'
"Even though he was two or three years younger than the girl,
"Roy was at least two inches taller.
"He put his arms around her.
"She sank her head into his chest and continued sobbing.
" 'I'm shattered,' she said.
" 'I never imagined anything so terrible could happen.' "
" 'Do they know who shot him?'
"The girl moved her head side to side without taking it off Roy's chest.
" 'A woman shouted it from the window of a bus.' "
" 'Maybe the woman was crazy,' Roy said,
" 'maybe it didn't happen at all.'
" 'No, it happened.
" 'I've been walking for blocks and blocks and other people said it too.'
"The girl remained in Roy's embrace for about a minute before she pulled away
"and wiped her face with the end of her scarf."
"It was a windy, cold day. The sky was overcast.
"Roy could feel snow in the air.
" 'Thank you,' the girl said.
Her gray eyes were bloodshot.
" 'This is the worst thing that ever happened to me.' "
"Later that night, after Roy had gotten home from work
"and watched the news on television, he thought about what the girl had said,
"that the assassination of the president
"was the worst thing that had ever happened to her,
"even though she was not the person who had been murdered."
"When things go wrong, Roy decided,
"people are shocked by the discovery of their own lack of control over events.
"Perhaps now the girl would understand
"just how fragile the appearance of order in the world really was.
"All Roy wanted to think about was how pretty she was
"and how good it felt to hold her."
I learned something about women.
About girls and women.
I learned that girls had...
very clearly...
a sexual agenda, as well.
I mean, it's an interesting thing,
I mean, if you can put yourself in that timeframe, especially.
They were not just interested in sex, but they liked it.
That was the great revelation.
They really liked it.
"It was mid-November, but not too cold.
"The sky was entirely gray, without birds of any kind,
"a condition that made Roy feel
"as if he were among the last survivors on a dying planet."
"He and Jimmy Boyle walked down Ravenswood to Montrose,
"turned left and headed toward Kenmore Avenue.
"The streets were as empty as the sky."
" 'What if they don't come?" Jimmy said.
" 'Then we'll go hang around the Loop. Maybe meet some girls there.' "
"Nobody was on the corner of Kenmore and Montrose.
"So the boys turned south and walked along the east side of the cemetery.
" 'Know anybody who's buried in there?' asked Jimmy.
" 'No, my dad's buried in Rosedale.'
" 'There they are,' Jimmy said, 'I told you she'd be here.'
"Standing halfway down the block were two girls,
"both wearing black scarves around their heads, navy blue peacoats,
"short black skirts with black tights and black fruit boots.
"One of them was smoking a cigarette.
" 'Bad girls,' said Roy.
" 'I hope so,' said Jimmy Boyle.
"When the boys got closer,
"Roy could see that the girl who was smoking was also chewing gum.
"She had dark hair and dark eyes The other one was Jimmy's."
" 'Hi, Babs,' Jimmy Boyle said. 'This is Roy.'
" 'Hi, Jimmy,' Babs said. 'Hi, Roy. This is Sunny.'
" 'Is that Sunny with a U or an O?' said Roy.
"Sunny cradled her right elbow in her left hand.
"She held her cigarette in her right hand and did not smile.
"She cracked her gum.
" 'She spells it with a U,' said Babs.
" 'Roy like in Roy Rogers,' said Sunny.
" 'Roy Rogers is cute,' Babs said.
" 'My mother says he's part Indian.'
"Sunny was wearing make-up
"to conceal some pimples on her chin and cheeks,
"but Roy thought she was good looking,
"maybe even beautiful, like Gene Tierney.
"He'd heard his friend Frankie's mother, who read a lot of Hollywood fan magazines,
"say that Gene Tierney was crazy
"and had to be put in a nuthouse on a regular basis.
"In any case, Sunny was a lot cuter than Babs,
"though what Jimmy had said about Babs' skin was true."
" 'We gonna go somewhere?' asked Babs.
" 'Where do you want to go?' said Jimmy.
" 'I'm hungry,' she said, 'let's go to Billy The Greek's on Irving Park.
" 'We can cut through the cemetery.' "
"Jimmy and Babs walked off first and Roy and Sunny followed.
"After a minute, Sunny said to Roy,
" 'I'm Greek. My folks come from Piraeus.
" 'They had me here though, so I'm Greek-American.'
" 'I'm first generation American too,' said Roy.
" 'My father was from Vienna, Austria.'
" 'I don't think I've ever met anyone from Austria.' "
"Sunny tossed away her cigarette. She was about the same height as Roy.
" 'How old are you?' he asked.
" '14, same as Babs. What about you?'
" 'I'm 14 and a half.' "
"They walked for another minute without talking and then Sunny said,
" 'Do you like cemeteries?'
" 'Not since my dad died,' said Roy.
Sunny stopped and put her right hand on Roy's left forearm.
He stopped too.
" 'Oh Roy, I'm sorry I asked you that.'
"Roy looked into her eyes.
"They were dark brown with a tinge of red in them.
" 'It's okay," he said. 'He died a couple years ago.'
"Sunny curled her right arm through Roy's left arm
"and they began walking again.
"She took the chewing gum out of her mouth with her left hand
"and threw it on the ground.
" 'My mother died a year ago,' Sunny said,
" 'when I was in Chicago Parental.'
" 'You were in the reformatory?'
"Sunny nodded. 'What for?'
" 'Chronic truancy.' 'What's chronic?'
" 'It means I cut school too much,' said Sunny.
" 'I was upset about my mom being sick
" 'and not being able to do anything to help her.
" 'Her husband, he's not my father.
" 'My real dad went to Korea in the army and never came back.
" 'He probably went to Greece.'
" 'What about your stepfather?'
" 'Oh, yeah. He's a drunk.
" 'Worked loading trucks on South Water Market.
" 'He tried to rape my sister on her 16th birthday, so now he's in jail.
" 'It was a bad atmosphere at our house, so I mostly just stayed out all the time.
" 'I was in Chicago Parental for three months.
" 'They let me out after my mother died and her sister, our Aunt Edita,
" 'came to live with me and my sister. She's really nice.'
" 'Are you going to school again?'
" 'Oh sure. I got a B average.'
They walked slowly, letting Jimmy Boyle and Babs get way ahead.
" 'We've got some things in common, Roy.
" 'It's real important, don't you think?
" 'I mean, if we're going to be friends?'
" 'Did your stepfather ever try to do anything with you?'
" 'Uh-uh. Valerie's prettier than I am and she's got big boobs already,
" 'so he didn't pay so much attention to me. He's Hungarian.
" 'Well, I'm glad your aunt is there to take care of you.'
" 'Her husband, my Uncle Ganos, went bughouse one day
" 'and wouldn't come out from a closet.
" 'When the cops tried to pull him out, he bit one of them on his nose,
" 'almost tore it off the cop's face.
" 'My aunt said the poor man had to have it sewn back on.
" 'I was eight when that happened.'
" 'Jesus,' said Roy, 'what happened to your uncle?'
" 'He's in Dunning, the state mental hospital out on Foster.
" 'He'll probably be in there for the rest of his life.'
"When Roy and Sunny got to Irving Park, Babs and Jimmy were not in sight.
" 'They must already be at Billy the Greek's.' said Roy.
"Sunny and Roy were facing each other.
" 'Roy,' she said, 'would you like to kiss me?'
"Sunny leaned forward
"and pushed her tongue deep into Roy's mouth
"then rolled it around a few times.
" 'Where did you learn to do that?' Roy asked.
" 'Valerie taught me,' said Sunny.
" 'She's a bad girl.' "
You know, fiction has a very simple definition.
It means that you made it up.
I'm very comfortable in that world
and especially since I can reinvent it.
" 'She's gone. Solid gone.'
"That's what the guy said just before he knocked back a shot of Wild Turkey,
"walked out of the Four Horsemen into the damn blizzard
"and got hit by a bus."
" 'That's how it goes sometimes' said Heavenly Wurtzel,
"a waitress at The Broken Arrow.
" 'My dad says once your name's up there on the wall, that's it. Game over.' "
"Roy and Marvin Varnish were in a booth at the diner drinking Green Rivers."
"Marvin, a diesel mechanic for the Chicago Fire Department,
"was six years older than Roy, who was almost 16."
"Roy had met Marvin, who was a friend of Roy's cousin Kip,
"to talk about getting a car from him."
"Varnish's side job was buying old cars
"that didn't or couldn't run, fixing them up and selling them.
"He had a 1955 Buick Century with Dynaflow about ready to go.
"He told Roy that he could let Roy have it for $300.
"Roy walked with Marvin Varnish over to the firehouse
"to take a look at the Buick,
"which was parked in the alley behind the station.
"Snow was piled up a foot deep around it.
"The car was burgundy with dark green upholstery.
"Roy looked in the front passenger side window.
" 'The seats are pretty ripped up,' he said.
" 'I'll throw in a roll of tape,' said Marvin.
" 'It's got Dynaflow, like I said. You know what that is?' "
" 'No.'
" 'You turn the key in the ignition,
" 'you step on the starter button before you step on the accelerator pedal
" 'and then you goose it. Everything works.' "
" 'You smoke?' 'Uh-uh.'
" 'Good, 'cause the lighter don't work.' "
"Roy agreed to buy the car.
"As soon as he turned 16, he could get a driver's license.
" 'When's your birthday?' asked Marvin.
" 'Next month. I got the money,' Roy said. 'I've been saving up.'
" 'You want me to give you something now?'
"Marvin shook his head.
" 'It's okay, I trust you. I won't sell it to nobody else.'
"It was snowing like crazy as Roy trudged down Minnetonka Street."
"A red panel truck was parked in front of The Broken Arrow, its motor running."
"Roy saw Heavenly Wurtzel come running out of the diner,
"a black scarf covering her head,
"and climb into the truck on the passenger side.
"A big man smoking a cigar was in the driver's seat."
"Painted on the side of the truck in yellow block letters were the words,
"NOBODY LAYS PIPE LIKE WURTZEL."
"Under the words was a telephone number,
"SOUTH SHORE 6-6000."
"The driver rolled down his window and stuck out his head
"to see if it was safe to pull out.
"He was wearing a short-brimmed brown hunter's cap with earflaps
"A hard wind blew snow in his face, causing him to squint.
"He kept the cigar clenched in his teeth."
"Roy guessed that the driver was Barney Wurtzel."
"Heavenly was only 26, but unless she got out of town soon,
"like Marvin Varnish said, her life was pretty much over."
"Roy hated thinking this,
"so he did his best to imagine himself
"behind the steering wheel of the '55 Buick Century.
"Then he remembered Marvin's story
"about a guy stumbling out of the Four Horsemen Tavern
"into the path of a bus."
"It was probably better, Roy thought,
"to not know if your name is on the wall."
It's funny, 'cause when you're a kid like that,
we thought, 'Oh, Chicago's the greatest city in the world,'
and the whole, 'Who would want to be anywhere else?'
But I knew I wasn't going to be sticking around there.
I just knew I had to get away and be on my own and create my own family,
if I were going to do that, and just have my own life.
I wanted to go everywhere else.
And I never, ever thought about staying in Chicago.
I knew I wasn't destined to remain there.
"Roy dreamed that he was on the El
"on a hot, humid summer's day."
"He was not wearing a shirt,
"only a pair of khaki pants and shoes."
"It was in the afternoon
"and he stood looking through the windows on the train doors."
"His friends and other passengers were behind him.
"He heard but did not see them."
"The train stopped at a station, and, at the last instant,
"Roy stepped out of the car onto the elevated platform."
"The doors closed behind him and the train sped away."
"Roy realized that he had gotten off too soon.
"He and his friends had been headed downtown to the Loop."
"Roy decided to walk to his house."
"When he got there, the three-story yellow brick building
"looked dirty and run-down, the lawn and bushes unkempt."
"He walked up to the front door
"and saw that it was not the door he remembered.
"It was badly abused and made of cheap material,
"the top layer peeling up from the bottom."
"Roy did not have a key.
"He stood still, sweating, wondering why he was there."
"Through the window in the front door, he saw a woman in the hallway.
"She opened the door and came out of the building."
"She was middle-aged and, despite the heat,
"was wearing a blue cloth coat, a scarf around her head
"and glasses with black frames."
"The woman did not look at Roy and was unfamiliar to him."
"He caught the door before it closed and entered the building.
"Inside the front hallway, it was dark and cool but musty.
"He walked up the stairs, past the first-floor landing."
"Sunlight streamed in through the hallway window,
"but it was muted and he could see dust floating in the air."
"When he reached the second-floor landing,
"he saw two nuns, one very young, one an older woman.
"Their habits were gray or light blue, not black and white."
"The young nun came over to Roy
"and looked closely at him, studying his face.
"She was short and her eyes were strange, one blue, one hazel,
"and they were cast in different directions."
"She said, 'Buona sera.'
"Roy was surprised that she greeted him in Italian,
"but he replied, 'Buona sera,' to her.
"The older nun took the younger sister by an arm,
"and steered her back toward the apartment door on the second landing."
"Roy did not see the older nun's face and she did not speak to him,
"only to the other nun, whom she hurriedly guided into the apartment."
"Roy continued upstairs.
"He stood in front of the door to the third-floor apartment."
"The hallway was dusty and shabby,
"the door much like the front door to the street."
"He reached into his pocket and found that he had a key to this door.
"He inserted it into the lock and entered the apartment."
"There were oriental rugs on the floor as there always had been,
"but the apartment was stuffy, close,
"as if it had not been aired out in a long time,
"and overcrowded with furniture."
"His mother wasn't home, nobody was there."
"Roy decided to go to his room
"at the rear of the apartment to get a shirt.
"He walked through the room...
"..particles of dust and dirt swirling
"in the shafts of sunlight that pierced through the brown shadows."
"Even though he knew it was the top floor of the building,
"Roy felt almost as if he were navigating his way
"through the entrails of a large animal."
"In the back room, Roy realized his clothes were gone."
"He knew now that he had not lived there for a very long time."
"He looked out the window of his old room, at tar-covered garage roofs
"and back porches with wash hung out to dry on clotheslines.
"Roy understood that he had gotten off at the wrong stop..."
"..that this was the land of the dead, and he was not supposed to be there."
"Roy would remember this dream for the rest of his life."
What I feel that I'm doing and have been doing
was recording history of that particular time and place,
mostly the '50s and early '60s, mostly in Chicago,
and that's Roy's world.
But Roy's world extends beyond the neighborhood, beyond Chicago
I always wanted to convey that feeling as well.
You know, that he wasn't going to be limited by his surroundings.
Chekhov said, "I believe in the individual."
So I'm with Chekhov.