THEN IN THE NINTH MONTH the trouble started. It would be very easy to pick out one incident, one day, one area of misunderstanding in that month and say: “That was where it began.” It would be easy, but not accurate. It might have been one instance or a combination of many. It might have been the girl who came into the living room, when I was going over the proposed blueprints for a new settlement house, and who lingered too long outside his room in conversation because her father was a builder somewhere. Or it might have been nothing at all. But after that time he warned me about being too friendly with his company.

Another night, when I was leaving the bathroom in my shorts, he came out of his room with a girl who smiled.

“Hi,” she said to me.

I nodded hello as I ducked back into the bathroom.

When he had walked her down to the door he came to my room and knocked. He did not have a drink.

“Why didn’t you speak to my company?” he demanded.

“I was in my shorts.”

“She felt bad about it. She asked what the hell was wrong with you. What could I tell her—‘He got problems’?”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “But I didn’t want to stop in my shorts.”

“I see through you, Howard,” he said. “You’re just jealous of me and try to insult my girls to get to me.”

“Why should I be jealous of you?”

“Because I’m a man and you’re not.”

“What makes a man anyway?” I said. “Your fried eggs and wheat germ? Why should I be jealous of you or what you bring in?”

“Some people don’t need a reason. You’re a black devil and you’ll get yours. I predict that you’ll get yours.”

“Look,” I told him, “I’m sorry about the girl. Tell her I’m sorry when you see her again.”

“You treated her so bad she probably won’t come back.”

I said nothing more and he stood there silently for a long time before he turned to leave the room. But at the door he turned again and said: “I see through you, Howard. You’re a black devil.”

It should have ended there and it might have with anyone else. I took great pains to speak to his girls after that, even though he tried to get them into the room as quickly as possible. But a week later he accused me of walking about in his room after he had gone out, some two weeks before.

“I swear I wasn’t in your room,” I protested.

“I saw your shadow on the blinds from across the street at the bus stop,” he insisted.

“I’ve never been in your room when you weren’t there,” I told him.

“I saw you!”