- When Neil arrives at the Patimkins's house, Julie and Brenda excitedly announce that Ron and Harriet are getting married on Labor Day. Harriet will arrive next week.
- Ron is going to start working for Mr. Patimkin in the family business. He'll start at the bottom and work his way up.
- At dinner Ron is talking about the son he and Harriet are going to have.
- Julie wants Harriet to sleep in her room.
- Mrs. Patimkin says no, that Harriet will be sleeping in the guest room.
- Then she glances at Neil, remembers he's in the guest room, and changes her mind.
- Upstairs after dinner, Neil asks Brenda if he can spend the night in her bed and sneak back to the guestroom early in the morning.
- Neil is afraid he'll be imposing by staying a whole week.
- After Harriet comes in, says Brenda, nobody will pay any attention to them; Neil will be able to stay for three extra weeks.
- Neil asks if Brenda would like that, and she says she would.
- While Neil is getting settled in the guest room, Ron comes in and hangs out with him.
- Neil congratulates him on his engagement.
- Ron doesn't have much to say to Neil. Soon he asks Neil if he "knows anything about music" (5.97). Neil says he knows a few things.
- Ron offers to let him use his "phonograph" (record player) (5.49).
- Neil says that would be good.
- Ron says he really likes music, and offers to let Neil listen to his "Columbus record" (5.51).
- He hears Brenda, Julie, and Mrs. Patimkin downstairs. Then he hears Brenda and her mother start fighting.
- Mrs. Patimkin is accusing Brenda of being lazy around the house and of not working for any of her own money. She's mad because Neil was invited without her permission and is going to be a burden.
- Brenda is saying that they're rich and have a maid. She doesn't understand why she should work or help around the house.
- Soon Brenda is crying; Julie laughs at her.
- In Neil's room, Brenda is really upset. The rest of the family left to visit friends.
- Neil asks if he should leave.
- Brenda says her mother is just acting funny because Ron is getting married.
- Neil notices that fall is in the air, and it reminds him that Brenda's leaving for school soon.
- Brenda opens a door in the guest room, which Neil had thought was a closet.
- It's full of the family's old furniture from when they lived in Newark.
- Brenda is crawling on the floor in the dust; Neil is a little perturbed.
- Apparently Brenda's father had at one point hidden three hundred dollars somewhere in the room.
- When she was around nine, Julie's age, he showed it to Brenda and said if something "happened to him" (5.96) she should come and get it.
- Now it seems to be missing.
- Brenda used to come up and look at it often. Her father never talked about it again.
- She thinks he must have taken it because he thought she'd never need it.
- He asks her why she needed it now.
- She'd planned to tear the bills to shreds and then put them in Mrs. Patimkin's purse.
- Neil says he would have stopped her.
- She says she want him to "make love" to her on the dusty couch.
- He does what she wants.
- In the morning, Brenda makes Neil eat grapefruit for breakfast and then go running, racing in fact, to see who has the fastest mile.
- This becomes the morning routine.
- At night Neil and Brenda each read in their own rooms until Ron goes to bed.
- First Ron would brush his teeth, then Neil would brush his.
- Neil can hear Ron's music coming from his room, usually Mantovani.
- One night, a few days before Harriet's arrival, Neil hears what must be the Columbus record Ron was talking about before.
- He can't hear it all that well, but thinks the lyrics include "goodbye, Columbus…goodbye…" (5.142).
- Early one morning, when he's still in Brenda's room, he dreams that he and the boy from the library are on an old ship. They are the only two on board. Neil is the captain and the boy is his first mate.
- First Neil and the boy are docked on a beautiful island in the Pacific Ocean.
- Gorgeous, naked black women are visible on the beach, standing still. It's nice.
- But then the boat that Neil and the boy are on starts to move. The women are moving, too, running down the beach tossing leis at them and saying "goodbye, Columbus…goodbye…" (5.143).
- Neil and the boy don't want to be going. The boy blames Neil. Neil says it's the boy's fault, because he never got his library card.
- All the shapes and sizes in the dream are strange, and this helps Neil wake up. When he does, he doesn't want to stop holding Brenda and Ron nearly catches them. Ron is going to work—his first day at "Patimkin Kitchen and Bathroom Sinks" (5.143).