Authors: Thomas Berger
He could have sprung up and found a robe, even quickly pulled on pants and dropped a shirt over his head. But why bother? It was easier, and for that matter more amusing, to become invisible. His intention was sooner or later to wander out and, unseen, identify the purpose of his visitor, should the repair or adjustment, if such it was, leave more problems than it had answered, or if the roach poison had been distributed near an open box of cornflakes.
He inserted his feet into the rubber sandals that served as bedroom slippers and shuffled into the living room. Glen the super was there all right, but it was unlikely that his companion had a role in the maintenance of the building: the sluttish teenaged Todvik girl sprawl-sat on one element of the modular sofa, a cigarette drooping from her sticky red lips.
“You fucker you,” she was saying to Glen, who stood before her in his dark-green super’s clothes, “how much you really holding back for yourself?” When she moved her head the dependent ash on her cigarette almost let go but not quite.
“Be careful with that smoke,” Glen said, putting out a dirty palm as ashtray. “I earn my money: I always got to pick up after you. You won’t flush the toilet, and I’ve found used rubbers on the bedside rug.” He made a face. “Yuck.”
She tapped the ash into his hand. He went to the kitchen and could be heard running the water, presumably flushing his palm. When he returned he brought a fragment of aluminum foil. After fashioning it into a little receptacle, he presented it to Miss Todvik.
She made a face at him. “Where
is
the old bastard?”
“Probably got detained at his place of business.”
“He must make a fortune selling furniture,” said the Todvik girl. “And he can only pay twenty-five?”
Glen shrugged. “Well, business ain’t so good at the moment.”
“Naw,” said she. “The truth is you’re a lying prick. He probably paid you fifty, and you’re taking as much for pimping as I get for doing the dirty work.”
“Now, come on,” said Glen. He looked genuinely hurt, but was probably acting. “I don’t see you getting off your big fat lazy ass and hustling for yourself, and you’re not the kind to join the stable of some nigger with a white suit and a Cadillac and get the shit kicked out of you if you don’t hand all your earnings over. So quit complaining. You can’t say I don’t bring you clean, respectable guys.”
She grimaced. “If there’s anything uglier than a potbellied old man, I don’t know what it could be.”
“How about an old woman?” the super asked resentfully. “I’d hate to see
you
in a couple years. Your tits will be hanging to your knees.”
She shook her head. “What can you expect from a faggot?” She got up. Glen was right: she did seem awfully flabby for such a young woman. She swaggered across to the Early American dry sink that served as liquor cabinet and swung open its doors. “Doesn’t that stingy asshole
ever
buy a bottle of anything?”
“Cunt!” cried Glen. “I’m not queer. I’m getting into half the broads in this building, and you know it. If you don’t think Kinney is paying you enough, then gimme back the money and get out. I’ll find him somebody better-looking, which won’t be hard.”
“You mean you’ll blow him yourself,” said Miss Todvik, trying simultaneously to slam shut both parts of the double door, but the compression of the internal air prevented this from happening, and she kicked the panel on the right.
“Goddammit, didn’t I just say be careful?” shouted Glen.
“Wagner ain’t going to notice. He went around in a dream even before his old lady walked out. I practically rubbed against his dick one time on the elevator, and he never got the idea. No wonder she left.”
“Good riddance,” said Glen. “She had too high an opinion of herself.”
“You mean she wasn’t one of the ones you were balling?” asked the Todvik girl, and added with heavy irony, “
According to yourself, that is.
”
Glen was stung. He pursed his thin lips and said, “Oh, yeah, let me tell you something.”
Wagner moved between them, intending to kick him savagely in the groin if he proceeded to stain Babe’s name. But at that moment the two-toned chime of the doorbell was heard.
“Get in the bedroom and in the sack,” Glen said in a loud whisper. “If he sees you undressing, he’ll think you’re thirty years old.
And put out that motherfucking cigarette.
”
She stuck out her tongue at him, gave him the red-smeared, smoldering butt and the foil ashtray, and went towards the bedroom with an exaggerated, hip-swinging walk.
Wagner had to leap aside, or Glen would have collided with him on the route to answer the chime. The super opened the door on a man who in addition to being the old and protuberant-waisted specimen the girl had foreseen, was also baggy-eyed and pouchy-throated.
While stepping across the threshold he asked, “And the young lady? Has she arrived?” He removed his felt hat and held it respectfully against the chest of his topcoat.
“Don’t you worry about that,” Glen said. He jerked a green shoulder in the direction of the bedroom. “She’s waiting for you, hot as a firecracker.”
The comment did not please the old man. He frowned. “She’s just a young girl like you promised? I didn’t pay you no hundred bucks for some worn-out old bag from off the street.”
Glen put a finger to his own lips and lowered his voice. “Let’s not talk business details now, Mr. Kinney. Get in there and go to town. She’s just a little schoolkid.”
The only attractive expression available to a man of Kinney’s age was the paternal, but in reaction to Glen’s promise his was hardly that. He all but showed his tongue as he hastened down the short hallway and into the bedroom.
Wagner followed in stupefied horror: he had no idea of what to do.
The Todvik girl had moved quickly. Her clothes were in a heap on the bedside chair, and she was sitting up in bed, propped by both Babe’s pillow and Wagner’s, the sheets and blankets lately vacated by Wagner drawn up to just below her large, spongy breasts. Though having surrendered the cigarette to Glen, she already had another in her sticky mouth. She now withdrew it so as, with lips in fake-prudish compression, mockingly to chide her superannuated customer.
“Why, Mr. Kinney! Ain’t you the dirty old man!”
Kinney stopped just inside the doorway, still in his overcoat and holding his hat as if during the unfurling of the flag.
“Polly Todvik,” said he, with a disapproval of his own, and not sounding as though it were mock, “what are you doing, smoking like that, at your age? I should tell your daddy!”
Polly shrieked more in amusement than in indignation, “Why, you old fuck you!”
Kinney shouted, spraying spittle, “Me? I come here to measure for the new bedroom set, you dirty little pig-girl.” He whipped a tape measure from the pocket of his coat. “Filthy little hoor, don’t you stick your naked boobies out at me! You cover up, you little tramp, and take away the smoke from out your mouth.” He was thrusting a forefinger at her now, jabbing the air to make repeated points.
Glen ran in from the living room, Wagner stepping aside just in time. “Why you giving Mr. Kinney trouble?” he shouted at Polly. “Sorry, Mr. Kinney.” He turned solicitously to the old furniture merchant. “You just go ahead and get your clothes off. She’ll do what she’s told. She’s just being temperamental, you know? She’s just a dumb kid.”
Kinney’s face was colorless, except for his lips, which looked blue. “Oh, yeah?” he shouted. “What you got going here for yourself, you criminal, a hoorhouse? I only come about some furniture. You think you can shake me down, you two pieces of turd? I’ll see you in jail!” The hand holding the hat was now crushing it against his heaving left breast. He was gasping for breath.
“Jesus sake,” cried Glen. “You having a heart attack?” He called to Polly, “C’mon, we got to get him outside before he dies here.”
She sprang naked from bed to take Kinney’s left arm, or rather to try to pry it away from his chest, for the old man resisted her strenuously.
Wagner moved to stamp out the burning cigarette Polly had dropped on the rug.
Glen was shouting in Kinney’s face, “You got pills?”
Kinney’s response was a munching movement, which was eventually proved to be a gathering of saliva when he spat into Glen’s face.
“Shit,” said the super, “now he’s frothing at the mouth.” He leaned over and wiped his cheek on Kinney’s shoulder, then sought to take the old man’s other arm.
But the merchant pulled it free and slapped the side of Polly’s head. “Get off’n me, you dirty slut.”
Glen was still obsessed with the need to remove Kinney from the premises. “We got to get him inna hall. Then he could of died for any reason. Nothing to connect him with us.”
“He ain’t dying,” screamed Polly. “He’s beating me up.” She kicked Kinney with her bare foot. “You old cocksucker!”
“Are you insane?” shouted Glen. “Going to kill him here?” He was trying without success to draw Kinney out the bedroom door, but whether or not the old man was dying, he was not cooperating in the effort. Indeed, he was fighting more savagely than ever.
Wagner feared that at any moment now someone might damage what was left of his possessions. Of course at this point he could have made what would seem to be a supernatural intervention: could have said something from thin air, taken them one by one by the scruff of the neck and the seat of the pants in a frog-march to the front door, for though Glen was young and fit, Wagner would have had an advantage that might have stunned a giant. But he was not yet ready so to challenge the natural state of affairs, and anyway the purpose here was to get rid of all three intruders in the neatest and most decisive manner, not to provide further complications that might, by inspiring wonder, delay the general exit.
The problem was one for which Wagner could find no help in experience. All the same, in a trice he had let himself silently out of the apartment into the hallway, where he banged on his own door and in a simulated voice of loud and heavy authority, cried, “
This is the police. You in there, quiet down.
”
After a moment Glen answered. “Sorry, officer. We was just arguin’ about furniture.”
“
Just keep it down
,” said Wagner.
When enough time had elapsed for the policeman to have left, the door opened to emit Kinney, who appeared to have recovered to the degree that he could leave under his own power. He continued to shake his hatted head and murmur bitterly as he went down the hall to the elevator.
Wagner had caught the door before it closed and slipped in. Glen and a fully dressed Polly stood nearby.
“You stupid cunt,” Glen was saying. “Whyn’t you tell me you knew the old bastard so well?”
“What difference would that of made?” she asked indignantly. “He wanted a young girl. So he recognized the one he got! I used to play on the sidewalk outside his store when I was a little kid.”
Glen scowled at her. “You don’t have any feelings at all. Something’s wrong with you.”
“I’m not a fucking crook like
you
,” Polly said. “That was more than five bucks you added to my money when we gave it back.”
“Yeah, well, the pity was we had to give him a refund.” He threw his thumb at the door. “Go ahead, you first.”
“
I
wouldn’t have returned the money, it been up to me,” she said. “He wasn’t in no position to tell, with what we got on him, looking for a young girl to ball.”
“What you don’t know is he gives cops a discount on furniture. He could put them onto us, see, and who’d they believe?”
Polly cocked her hip and slapped the substantial right buttock. “You don’t think a cop’d like some of this?”
“Get going,” Glen said with disgust. “You got an exaggerated idea of your charms. Cops can fuck anybody they want.”
He waited until a few minutes after Polly’s departure to make his own. After Glen had left, Wagner went on a tour of inspection and found that the bed had been neatly remade and the cigarette butt removed from the rug, leaving only a little place of charring. This cleanup was not however sufficient to mollify him. Glen had obviously made previous use of the apartment as a brothel, perhaps even while Babe lived there. And what was perhaps worse, the wretched super knew very well, as did the sluttish Polly, that the Wagners were separated, and if Glen knew, so did the entire body of tenants, which among other things meant that the comment of Max the doorman, the evening before, had been not innocent but knowingly malicious.
Indeed it must be the case that he was being secretly jeered at by many, including the attractive young women whom simply as a matter of male pride he especially did not want privy to his shame, Ellen Mackintosh and Debbie Fong.
It was almost noon before the telephone rang. Why Jackie had waited so long was a mystery. In any event he would have his alibi for not answering. He showered and dressed and left the apartment to go to the doctor. He now had more reason than ever not to be seen, and therefore he made himself invisible just before stepping out the door.
W
AGNER MET NO ONE IN
the elevator, but a stout woman took up most of the space in the mailbox-alcove off the lobby, and finding a sizable quantity of enclosures in her box, she stayed there to peruse each.
When he was finally able to reach his own mail, and become visible in order to read it, he found he had received none that bore a stamp, but already there was another pink envelope from Sandra, this one so pungently scented as to perfume the entire nook.
Darling—
Silly me, I tried to phone you about 11:30 today. Don’t know what it’s like to have a man who earns a living!!! Darn, should have gotten your office no., don’t even know name of your company. ... I got to work til 8 tonite, so hope you can wait for a late dinner. Pick me up at the hotel, please. That’s the Tally Ho English Lounge, remember, not the Montezuma Room which is on the same floor, other end, easy to mix up, but remember I play harp and not the marimba!
Your my boy,
S
Wagner could not believe he had given the woman any reason whatever to assume he would be dining with her tonight. His parting from her had naturally been genial but no more: the confident implication of the note was that they had established a permanent arrangement very like marriage. He could not allow her to labor under such a erroneous assumption. Remaining visible, he rode a bus to his doctor’s block. Before going into the building he stopped at an outdoor telephone and tried to get Sandra’s number from Information. It turned out to be unlisted. He would have to reach her later at the Hotel Pierce.