Criers & Kibitzers, Kibitzers & Criers

by Stanley Elkin

  When the landlord left him he opened the carton and gathered all his money together. In fading light he reviewed the figures he had entered in the pages of an old spiral notebook:

  So, he thought, that was what he was worth. That was the going rate for orphans in a wicked world. Something under $2,500. He took his pencil and crossed out all the nouns on his list. He tore the list carefully from top to bottom and crumpled the half which inventoried his ex-possessions. Then he crumpled the other half.

  He went to the window and pushed aside the loose, broken shade. He opened the window and set both lists on the ledge. He made a ring of his forefinger and thumb and flicked the paper balls into the street. “Look out for Ed Wolfe,” he said softly.

  In six weeks the season changed. The afternoons failed. The steam failed. He was as unafraid of the dark as he had been of the sunlight. He longed for a special grief, to be touched by anguish or terror, but when he saw the others in the street, in the cafeteria, in the theater, in the hallway, on the stairs, at the newsstand, in the basement rushing their fouled linen from basket to machine, he stood, as indifferent to their errand, their appetite, their joy, their greeting, their effort, their curiosity, their grime, as he was to his own. No envy wrenched him, no despair unhoped him, but, gradually, he became restless.

  He began to spend, not recklessly so much as indifferently. At first he was able to recall for weeks what he spent on a given day. It was his way of telling time. Now he had difficulty remembering, and could tell how much his life was costing only by subtracting what he had left from his original two thousand four hundred seventy-nine dollars and three cents. In eleven weeks he had spent six hundred and seventy-seven dollars and thirty-four cents. It was almost three times more than he had planned. He became panicky. He had come to think of his money as his life. Spending it was the abrasion again, the old habit of self-buffing to come to the thing beneath. He could not draw infinitely on his credit. It was limited. Limited. He checked his figures. He had eighteen hundred and one dollars, sixty-nine cents. He warned himself, “Rothschild, child. Rockefeller, feller. Look out, Ed Wolfe. Look out.”

  He argued with his landlord and won a five-dollar reduction in his rent. He was constantly hungry, wore clothes stingily, realized an odd reassurance in his thin pain, his vague fetidness. He surrendered his dimes, his quarters, his half-dollars in a kind of sober anger. In seven more weeks he spent only one hundred and thirty dollars and fifty-one cents. He checked his figures. He had sixteen hundred seventy-one dollars, eighteen cents. He had spent almost twice what he had anticipated. “It’s all right,” he said. “I’ve reversed the trend. I can catch up.” He held the money in his hand. He could smell his soiled underwear. “Nah, nah,” he said. “It’s not enough.”

  It was not enough, it was not enough, it was not enough. He had painted himself into a corner. Death by cul-de-sac. He had nothing left to sell, the born salesman. The born champion, long distance, Ed Wolfe of a salesman lay in his room, winded, wounded, wondering where his next pitch was coming from, at one with the ages.

  He put on his suit, took his sixteen hundred seventy-one dollars and eighteen cents and went down into the street. It was a warm night. He would walk downtown. The ice which just days before had covered the sidewalk was dissolved to slush. In darkness he walked through a thawing, melting world. There was something on the edge of the air, the warm, moist odor of the change of the season. He was touched despite himself. “I’ll take a bus,” he threatened. “I’ll take a bus and close the windows and ride over the wheel.”

  He had dinner and some drinks in a hotel. When he finished he was feeling pretty good. He didn’t want to go back. He looked at the bills thick in his wallet and went over to the desk clerk. “Where’s the action?” he whispered. The clerk looked at him, startled. He went over to the bell captain. “Where’s the action?” he asked and gave the man a dollar. He winked. The man stared at him helplessly.

  “Sir?” the bell captain said, looking at the dollar.

  Ed Wolfe nudged him in his gold buttons. He winked again. “Nice town you got here,” he said expansively. “I’m a salesman, you understand, and this is new territory for me. Now if I were in Beantown or Philly or L.A. or Vegas or Big D or Frisco or Cincy—why, I’d know what was what. I’d be okay, know what I mean?” He winked once more. “Keep the buck, kid,” he said. “Keep it, keep it,” he said, walking off.

  In the lobby a man sat in a deep chair, The Wall Street Journal opened wide across his face. “Where’s the action?” Ed Wolfe said, peering over the top of the paper into the crown of the man’s hat.

  “What’s that?” the man asked.

  Ed Wolfe, surprised, saw that the man was a Negro.

  “What’s that?” the man repeated, vaguely nervous. Embarrassed, Ed Wolfe watched him guiltily, as though he had been caught in an act of bigotry.

  “I thought you were someone else,” he said lamely. The man smiled and lifted the paper to his face. Ed Wolfe stood before the opened paper, conscious of mildly teetering. He felt lousy, awkward, complicatedly irritated and ashamed, the mere act of hurting someone’s feelings suddenly the most that could be held against him. It came to him how completely he had failed to make himself felt. “Look out for Ed Wolfe, indeed,” he said aloud. The man lowered his paper. “Some of my best friends are Comanches,” Ed Wolfe said. “Can I buy you a drink?”

  “No,” the man said.

  “Resistance, eh?” Ed Wolfe said. “That’s good. Resistance is good. A deal closed without resistance is no deal. Let me introduce myself. I’m Ed Wolfe. What’s your name?

  “Please, I’m not bothering anybody. Leave me alone.”

  “Why?” Ed Wolfe asked.

  The man stared at him and Ed Wolfe sat suddenly down beside him. “I won’t press it,” he said generously. “Where’s the action? Where is it? Fold the paper, man. You’re playing somebody else’s gig.” He leaned across the space between them and took the man by the arm. He pulled at him gently, awed by his own boldness. It was the first time since he had shaken hands with La Meck that he had touched anyone physically. What he was risking surprised and puzzled him. In all those months to have touched only two people, to have touched even two people! To feel their life, even, as now, through the unyielding wool of clothing, was disturbing. He was unused to it, frightened and oddly moved. Bewildered, the man looked at Ed Wolfe timidly and allowed himself to be taken toward the cocktail lounge.

  They took a table near the bar. There, in the alcoholic dark, within earshot of the easy banter of the regulars, Ed Wolfe seated the Negro and then himself. He looked around the room and listened for a moment, then turned back to the Negro. Smoothly boozy, he pledged the man’s health when the girl brought their drinks. He drank stolidly, abstractedly. Coming to life briefly, he indicated the men and women around them, their suntans apparent even in the dark. “Pilots,” he said. “All of them. Airline pilots. The girls are all stewardesses and the pilots lay them.” He ordered more drinks. He did not like liquor, and liberally poured ginger ale into his bourbon. He ordered more drinks and forgot the ginger ale. “Goyim,” he said. “White goyim. American goyim.” He stared at the Negro. He leaned across the table. “Little Orphan Annie, what the hell kind of an orphan is that with all her millions and her white American goyim friends to bail her out?”

  He watched them narrowly, drunkenly. He had seen them before—in good motels, in airports, in bars—and he wondered about them, seeing them, he supposed, as Negroes or children of the poor must have seen him when he had sometimes driven his car through slums.They were removed, aloof—he meant it—a different breed. He turned and saw the Negro, and could not think for a moment what the man was doing there. The Negro slouched in his chair, his great white eyes hooded. “You want to hang around here?” Ed Wolfe asked him.

  “It’s your party,” the man said.

  “Then let’s go some place else,” Ed Wolfe said. “I get nervous here.”

  “I know a pla
ce,” the Negro said.

  “You know a place. You’re a stranger here.”

  “No, man,” the Negro said. “This is my home town. I come down here sometimes just to sit in the lobby and read the newspapers. It looks good, you know what I mean? It looks good for the race.”

  “The Wall Street Journal? You’re kidding Ed Wolfe. Watch that. ”

  “No,” the Negro said. “Honest.”

  “I’ll be damned,” Ed Wolfe said. “I come for the same reasons.”

  “Yeah,” the Negro said. “No shit?”

  “Sure, the same reasons.” He laughed. “Let’s get out of here.” He tried to stand, but fell back again in his chair. “Hey, help me up,” he said loudly. The Negro got up and came around to Ed Wolfe’s side of the table. Leaning over, he raised him to his feet. Some of the others in the room looked at them curiously. “It’s all right,” Ed Wolfe said. “He’s my man. I take him with me everywhere. It looks good for the race.” With their arms around each other’s shoulders they stumbled out of the bar and through the lobby.

  In the street Ed Wolfe leaned against the building, and the Negro hailed a cab, the dark left hand shooting up boldly, the long black body stretching forward, raised on tiptoes, the head turned sharply along the left shoulder. Ed Wolfe knew that he had never done it before. The Negro came up beside him and guided Ed Wolfe toward the curb. Holding the door open, he shoved him into the cab with his left hand. Ed Wolfe lurched against the cushioned seat awkwardly. The Negro gave the driver an address and the cab moved off. Ed Wolfe reached for the window handle and rolled it down rapidly. He shoved his head out the window of the taxi and smiled and waved at the people along the curb.

  “Hey, man, close the window,” the Negro said after a moment. “Close the window. The cops, the cops.”

  Ed Wolfe laid his head on the edge of the taxi window and looked up at the Negro, who was leaning over him, smiling; he seemed to be trying to tell him something.

  “Where we going, man?” Ed Wolfe asked.

  “We’re there,” the Negro said, sliding along the seat toward the door.

  “One ninety-five,” the driver said.

  “It’s your party,” Ed Wolfe told the Negro, waving away responsibility.

  The Negro looked disappointed, but reached into his pocket.

  Did he see what I had on me? Ed Wolfe wondered anxiously. Jerk, drunk, you’ll be rolled. They’ll cut your throat and leave your skin in an alley. Be careful.

  “Come on, Ed,” the Negro said. He took Ed Wolfe by the arm and got him out of the taxi.

  Fake. Fake, Ed Wolfe thought. Murderer. Nigger. Razor man.

  The Negro pulled him toward a doorway. “You’ll meet my friends,” he said.

  “Yeah, yeah,” Ed Wolfe said. “I’ve heard so much about them.”

  “Hold it a second,” the Negro said. He went up to the window and pressed his ear against the opaque glass.

  Ed Wolfe watched him without making a move.

  “Here’s the place,” the Negro said proudly.

  “Sure,” Ed Wolfe said. “Sure it is.”

  “Come on, man,” the Negro urged him.

  “I’m coming, I’m coming,” Ed Wolfe said. “But my head is bending low,” he mumbled.

  The Negro took out a ring of keys, selected one and put it in the door. Ed Wolfe followed him through.

  “Hey, Oliver,” somebody called. “Hey, baby, it’s Oliver. Oliver looks good. He looks good.”

  “Hello, Mopiani,” the Negro said to a short black man.

  “How is stuff, Oliver?” Mopiani said to him.

  “How’s the market?” a man next to Mopiani asked, with a laugh.

  “Ain’t no mahket, baby. It’s a sto’,” somebody else said.

  A woman stopped, looked at Ed Wolfe for a moment, and asked, “Who’s the ofay, Oliver?”

  “That’s Oliver’s broker, baby.”

  “Oliver’s broker looks good,” Mopiani said. “He looks good.”

  “This is my friend, Mr. Ed Wolfe,” Oliver told them.

  “Hey there,” Mopiani said.

  “Charmed,” Ed Wolfe said.

  “How’s it going, man,” a Negro said indifferently.

  “Delighted,” Ed Wolfe said.

  He let Oliver lead him to a table.

  “I’ll get the drinks, Ed,” Oliver said, leaving him.

  Ed Wolfe looked at the room glumly. People were drinking steadily, gaily. They kept their bottles under their chairs in paper bags. He watched a man take a bag from beneath his chair, raise it and twist the open end of the bag carefully around the neck of the bottle so that it resembled a bottle of champagne swaddled in its toweling. The man poured liquor into his glass grandly. At the dark far end of the room some musicians were playing and three or four couples danced dreamily in front of them. He watched the musicians closely and was vaguely reminded of the airline pilots.

  In a few minutes Oliver returned with a paper bag and some glasses. A girl was with him. “Mary Roberta, Ed Wolfe,” he said, very pleased. Ed Wolfe stood up clumsily and the girl nodded.

  “No more ice,” Oliver explained.

  “What the hell,” Ed Wolfe said.

  Mary Roberta sat down and Oliver pushed her chair up to the table. She sat with her hands in her lap and Oliver pushed her as though she were a cripple.

  “Real nice little place here, Ollie,” Ed Wolfe said.

  “Oh, it’s just the club,” Oliver said.

  “Real nice,” Ed Wolfe said.

  Oliver opened the bottle, then poured liquor into their glasses and put the paper bag under his chair. Oliver raised his glass. Ed Wolfe touched it lamely with his own and leaned back, drinking. When he put it down empty, Oliver filled it again from the paper bag. Ed Wolfe drank sluggishly, like one falling asleep, and listened, numbed, to Oliver and the girl. His glass never seemed to be empty any more. He drank steadily, but the liquor seemed to remain at the same level in the glass. He was conscious that someone else had joined them at the table. “Oliver’s broker looks good,” he heard somebody say. Mopiani. Warm and drowsy and gently detached, he listened, feeling as he had in barbershops, having his hair cut, conscious of the barber, unseen behind him, touching his hair and scalp with his warm fingers. “You see, Bert? He looks good,” Mopiani was saying.

  With great effort Ed Wolfe shifted in his chair, turning to the girl.

  “Thought you were giving out on us, Ed,” Oliver said. “That’s it. That’s it.”

  The girl sat with her hands folded in her lap.

  “Mary Roberta,” Ed Wolfe said.

  “Uh huh,” the girl said.

  “Mary Roberta.”

  “Yes,” the girl said. “That’s right.”

  “You want to dance?” Ed Wolfe asked.

  “All right,” she said. “I guess so.”

  “That’s it, that’s it,” Oliver said. “Stir yourself.”

  Ed Wolfe rose clumsily, cautiously, like one standing in a stalled Ferris wheel, and went around behind her chair, pulling it far back from the table with the girl in it. He took her warm, bare arm and moved toward the dancers. Mopiani passed them with a bottle. “Looks good, looks good,” Mopiani said approvingly. He pulled her against him to let Mopiani pass, tightening the grip of his pale hand on her brown arm. A muscle leaped beneath the girl’s smooth skin, filling his palm. At the edge of the dance floor he leaned forward into the girl’s arms and they moved slowly, thickly across the floor. He held the girl close, conscious of her weight, the life beneath her body, just under her skin. Sick, he remembered a jumping bean he had held once in his palm, awed and frightened by the invisible life, jerking and hysterical, inside the stony shell. The girl moved with him in the music, Ed Wolfe astonished by the burden of her life. He stumbled away from her deliberately. Grinning, he moved un-gently back against her. “Look out for Ed Wolfe,” he crooned.

  The girl stiffened and held him away from her, dancing self-consciously. Brooding, Ed Wolfe tried to conc
entrate on the lost rhythm. They danced in silence for a while.

  “What do you do?” she asked him finally.

  “I’m a salesman,” he told her gloomily.

  “Door to door?”

  “Floor to ceiling. Wall to wall.”

  “Too much,” she said.

  “I’m a pusher,” he said, suddenly angry. She looked frightened. “But I’m not hooked myself. It’s a weakness in my character. I can’t get hooked. Ach, what would you goyim know about it?”

  “Take it easy,” she said. “What’s the matter with you? Do you want to sit down?”

  “I can’t push sitting down,” he said.

  “Hey,” she said, “don’t talk so loud.”

  “Boy,” he said, “you black Protestants. What’s that song you people sing?”

  “Come on,” she said.

  “Sometimes I feel like a motherless child,” he sang roughly. The other dancers watched him nervously. “That’s our national anthem, man,” he said to a couple that had stopped dancing to look at him. “That’s our song, sweethearts,” he said, looking around him. “All right, mine then. I’m an orphan.”

  “Oh, come on,” the girl said, exasperated, “an orphan. A grown man.”

  He pulled away from her. The band stopped playing. “Hell,” he said loudly, “from the beginning. Orphan. Bachelor. Widower. Only child. All my names scorn me. I’m a survivor. I’m a goddamned survivor, that’s what.” The other couples crowded around him now. People got up from their tables. He could see them, on tiptoes, stretching their necks over the heads of the dancers. No, he thought. No, no. Detachment and caution. The La Meck Plan. They’ll kill you. They’ll kill you and kill you. He edged away from them, moving carefully backward against the bandstand. People pushed forward onto the dance floor to watch him. He could hear their questions, could see heads darting from behind backs and suddenly appearing over shoulders as they strained to get a look at him.