When We Argued All Night Read Online Free PDF Page A

discussion that the protesters were mostly right and the government mostly wrong, but surely everyone knew that, and figuring out in just what way they were right or wrong didn’t interest Artie. He’d always been instinctively for the powerless, the losers.
    He couldn’t afford another camera for a long time, and he was left with a grudge he’d never live past, never see around, and soon couldn’t explain. He began to feel as if he’d always been angry: angry was what he was, angry at humanity’s capacity for rage, at his own capacity. And angry at humanity’s stupidity, which made him begin, at nineteen, to laugh bitterly in a way that would eventually infuriate his wife and frighten his children. Unlike Harold, he didn’t tell stories about the protest, except for one that he’d learned not firsthand but from the newspaper. A policeman had stopped Mayor Jimmy Walker on his way into his office that day, not recognizing him, and asked where he thought he was going. The mayor replied that six million people expected him to get to work. What Artie liked—or hated—was that even though he was mayor, Jimmy Walker couldn’t count on being recognized and respected. Nobody was dignified. Everyone was a fool. The mayor was stopped from going into his own office by a stupid cop; another stupid cop smashed skulls; a third broke Artie’s camera. The afternoon didn’t make Artie hate cops forever, but it made him think that cops were stupid, and since cops were just people, people were stupid.
    Despite the Depression, Harold got his degree, and eventually the night courses added up, and Artie did too. He worked in another camera store. It closed. He wrote freelance stories about sports and continued selling photographs. At a paper, Artie met an editor who needed a book reviewer, and he thought of Harold. Harold began reviewing, then briefly had a reporter’s job. That ended, but when the Federal Writers’ Project began, he was hired.
    Roosevelt’s Works Progress Administration was offering white collar jobs to people on home relief, so Artie, who lived with his parents as Harold did, took an apartment for one month and applied. He couldn’t be on relief if he lived at home, and he couldn’t get a WPA job unless he was on relief. The investigator’s nosy questions enraged him even though he was lying, saying his parents had thrown him out. He got one check, was hired as a clerk in the WPA offices, and celebrated by buying a suit for work and a new lens for his camera. Then he gave up the apartment and moved back to his room at home. He hated the job, but he was glad to have a job. For several months he was bored and obstreperous. Then he was laid off.
    Meanwhile, Harold wandered the city to contribute to a guidebook about New York and in spare moments wrote gritty poems in his reporter’s notebook about scraps of garbage on city streets and ill-fed cats and children. He’d been going to C.P. meetings off and on since he’d met Belle Kantor at Union Square. After the meetings, he and Belle lingered over nearly empty cups in the Automat, talking about whether the Soviet Union could carry off socialism or about their own lives. Belle’s thick brown hair wouldn’t stay where she put it, and in her loosening bun and old-fashioned clothes, she looked like Harold’s idea of an idealistic European revolutionary. Her husband was so busy with party business she rarely saw him, but because she was married, Harold and Belle assured each other that they were not in love. They allowed themselves to clasp hands across a table on which drops of cold coffee hardened.
    Sometimes Harold talked about his friendships with other women. He knew Belle disliked this, but she didn’t admit it, and he couldn’t stay away from the subject. Harold didn’t join the party until six years after he met Belle. He wasn’t certain enough or pure