The Woman Downstairs Lyrics - Through The Trees - Handsome Family

Chicago is where the woman downstairs 

Starved herself to death last summer 

Her boyfriend Ted ate hot dogs and wept 

With the gray rats out on the fire escape 

In a thrift store chair I drank cases of beer 

And dreamed of laying down on the L tracks 

The trains roared by under smoke-gray skies 

Lake Michigan rose and fell like a bird 

And when the wind screamed up Ashland Avenue 

The corner bars were full by noon 

And the old stew bums sliding down their stools 

Ate boiled eggs and fed beer to the dogs 

The woman downstairs lost all her hair 

And wore a beret in the laundry room 

I borrowed her soap and bought her a Coke 

But she left it on a dryer 

She died in June weighing eighty two 

Her boyfriend went back to New York 

The cops wandered through her dusty rooms 

One of them stole her TV 

And when the wind screamed up Ashland Avenue 

The corner bars were full by noon 

And the old stew bums sliding down their stools 

Ate boiled eggs and fed beer to the dogs