“It’s all right. Liesl’s safe. We’re firing Lamprey Oil and hiring someone else. There’s talk of a lawsuit to address the building’s pain and suffering.”
“Poor Liesl,” said Victoria, giving Oskar a big hug around the middle and then skipping down the hall.
•
One week later, Oskar and Victoria were looking over diagrams of the city’s water mains, when a loud banging at his office door made them jump. Oskar opened the door carefully, revealing Mr. Sherman in a Hawaiian shirt, lime green bathing trunks, and purple flip-flops.
Mr. Sherman said, “Have you spent any time in my living room lately? It’s like a microwave set to eleven! It’s a toaster set on burn! A roaster set to kill! What am I, Kung Pao chicken? My new roommate is a flamingo! Can’t you turn the heat down a little?”
Hot Water
MR. JONES set down his book quietly on the coffee table and placed his hands in his lap.
He said, “Well, I’m off to bed then.” Getting up and moving to the hallway, he paused. “Ah,” he said, “you’ll be able to stop in?”
“As soon as you’ve brushed your teeth and put on your pj’s and so forth, I’ll be at your bedside to see to things.”
Mr. Jones and Mr. Norton—it was Mr. Norton who had answered—lived in a corner, two-bedroom apartment on the fourth floor at the back of our building. They had been there many years, and theirs was a very happy companionship. Mr. Jones and Mr. Norton suited each other. They were good for each other. They were settled.
This is not to say that they didn’t have their difficulties. Mr. Jones was a nervous and fretful person. And, like so many of us as we get older, Mr. Jones began to sleep badly. He was plagued by lack of sleep, a malady that had been familiar to him in his childhood but was all but forgotten in his early active years. A mind that used to be thoroughly exhausted by the events of the day, now found time in the evenings to roam in all the worst dark corners of speculation, remorse, and worry, tormenting its owner with a sleeplessness that might last for days.
Insomnia became Mr. Jones’s exquisite torturer. Did Insomnia detect, during the course of a night, a notion in Mr. Jones to get up, fix himself a cup of tea, and watch a little television? Immediately Insomnia advised Mr. Jones to give it just ten more minutes. Insomnia went on to remind Mr. Jones that it was essential, essential, that he get his rest, that he sleep now, because tomorrow was going to be a big day, requiring all of Mr. Jones’s strength. Insomnia assured Mr. Jones that he must try with all of his might to sleep.
And Insomnia chuckled to itself while, instead of finding sleep, Mr. Jones returned to the time of his childhood, when, lying in his bed alone, he listened for the sounds of his family making its way one by one to bed: his older brother turning down his radio and sleeping; his mother putting away her handwork, walking stealthily but not inaudibly past his door to her bed, and sleeping; and finally his father switching off the television and shuffling down the hall to his own bed and sleeping.
And Mr. Jones remembered the moment of greatest terror arriving: Everyone in the house but he, himself, slept. They were gone to another world. Mr. Jones remembered how he was left alone to contemplate the points of dark color that swirled in a soft cyclone around his room, whether his eyes were open or closed. And the smell of the night air, and the touch of the bedclothes, and the sound of distant trucks on the roadways, always driving. That the drivers of those trucks were also awake was of no comfort to Mr. Jones. Quite the contrary, it was merely further proof, if Mr. Jones needed it, that adult life was a brutish and hellish one, forcing men and women from their warm beds to satisfy the needs of others. That this harsh world awaited him was a thing that few children, certainly not he, ever quite forgot.
And so the night was spent.
Mr. Jones rose the next day sick to his stomach, dizzy, and distraught, with his ears burning strangely, and without even memories of late-night television to comfort him.
But now things were different because Mr. Norton had agreed to sit with him.
“Thank you, Norton,” said Mr. Jones.
And so they had arranged it each evening.
For instance, if you were in attendance at one of the delightful dinner parties Mr. Jones and Mr. Norton often hosted, even before Mr. Norton had gathered your coats for you and walked you to the elevator, he had always promised Mr. Jones that he would be at his bedside shortly.
“We’ll just finish this round, and then I’ll be in directly,” Mr. Norton might say.
What did Mr. Norton do at Mr. Jones’s bedside? Nothing really. He merely sat. He was simply present. He was the face, the body, the hand, the refutation of Mr. Jones’s “I am alone.” Mr. Norton was the one, and not the zero, that otherwise faced Mr. Jones.
Unfortunately—and here is the blemish in this otherwise idyllic picture—when one man’s want is met, when the need is supplied, when the one obliterates the zero, it is all very well for him who receives. But life for the one who provides can get a little boring.
To sit night upon night in a darkened room, admittedly next to someone you love very much, but still, to sit for twenty minutes with only your thoughts for entertainment, thoughts that tended to turn again and again to questions like “Is he asleep yet?” or “Can I get up now?” or “If I stand up at this point, will my rustling wake my friend, sending me back to square one in this game?” or even “Will I have missed the ending to Star Trek: Deep Space Nine?” Far from entertaining, these thoughts can be a small torture themselves.
“Jonesy,” said Mr. Norton, on that night, sitting in the chair next to Mr. Jones.
“Yes, Norty,” said Mr. Jones, arranging his bedclothes. “Jonesy,” said Mr. Norton again. “You know I like to sit with you like this every night, here next to you in this chair.”
“Yes, Norty, for which I’m ever thankful.”
“And I’m most glad to do it, and am so thankful that you’re thankful.”
“I’m glad.”
“I’m glad you’re glad. Still . . .” Mr. Norton hesitated. He rubbed his mustache. “I’ve been thinking. I know you like to have me nearby whenever you are falling asleep.”
“Yes.”
“Here’s what I thought.” Mr. Norton arranged himself more comfortably on the chair. The bit of light coming in from the hallway picked out his eyebrows, the end of his round nose, and his mustache. He said, “Do you see the wall there, just on the other side of your bed?”
“Why, yes. Yes, of course.”
“Well, just on the other side of that wall is our bathroom.”
“Really?”
“Yes. And what’s more. Right next to the wall on the other side there is our bathtub.”
“No kidding.”
“What about instead of me sitting here in this chair in the dark, how about I sit in the warm bathtub over there having a soak? I won’t be any farther away from you than I am when I’m sitting in this chair here.” (And I’ll be able to give my toes a scrub or read the sports section, thought Mr. Norton).
“You mean, instead of you sitting in the chair here, you’ll sit in the tub there.”
“Exactly.”
“But I won’t be able to see you.”
“Well, no. But you can’t really see me now either, can you? It’s dark after all. You just know I’m here.”
Mr. Jones was silent.
“And you’ll be able to see the wall. You’ll know I can see the same wall, just from the other side. We’ll both be looking at the same single wall. You on this side. Me on that side. Which means I’ll still be right next to you. What do you say?”
After a little more discussion, and some almost hidden sighs from Mr. Jones, Mr. Jones and Mr. Norton decided to give it a try the next evening.
That night, Mr. Norton stopped at the doorway of Mr. Jones’s room on his way to the tub.
“Well,” he said, “I’ve got my brush and my bar of oatmeal soap, and I’m off to the bath. I think you can hear the water running, can’t y
ou?”
“Yes, I can,” said Mr. Jones.
“So everything seems all right. All right?”
“Everything is all right, Norty. Right as rain,” said Mr. Jones, bravely.
And so it proved to be. Mr. Jones was sound asleep before Mr. Norton had even turned off the hot-water tap. The next morning they had both woken refreshed and Mr. Jones announced that he had rarely slept better. Mr. Norton said that he had thoroughly enjoyed his bath, taking the pumice to his heels and elbows, contemplating the weaknesses in the Yankees’ middle roster, and even quoting favorite lines of poetry to no one but his toes:
what Eden is there for the lapsed
but hot water
snug in its caul
The experiment was a success.
A month later it was Mr. Jones who had an idea. “You know, Norty, I am not what you would call a robust person.”
The cracker ascending to Mr. Norton’s mouth halted halfway there.
“I am a nervous person,” said Mr. Jones.
Mr. Norton bit the cracker, now arrived. “Would you say that?” he mumbled, his mouth full.
“I would. And furthermore, few things make me more nervous and even less robust than visiting my aunt Dodie in New Jersey.”
“I see,” said Mr. Norton, swallowing. “A question: Are you merely stating the condition of things today? Or is there something more? Is it the case, perhaps, that your aunt Dodie has invited you to have tea with her in Maplefield?”
“Norton, you know me well. Yes, you have it exactly.” Mr. Jones smoothed a napkin. “Here’s my idea. Aunt Dodie is sure to serve me tea in the backyard. The mosquitoes haven’t been bad this year, I’m sure her marigolds are blooming. And she’ll want to talk about the neighbors, which she can do more effectively if she can point out their houses.”
Mr. Norton raised his eyebrows and inclined his round head.
“What if, while I’m having tea with Aunt Dodie in the backyard, you took a bath upstairs in her bathroom?”
Mr. Norton bit another cracker.
“I don’t know which window, when seen from the backyard, is the bathroom window exactly, but I know it’s one of them. And I could just look at the back of the house. Knowing that you were in there having a soak would make all the difference.”
Mr. Norton used his napkin to brush off the crumbs gathered on the bottom of his mustache, and then swept these from the table into the palm of his hand.
“How would you get me in? You know your aunt Dodie doesn’t like me.”
“I know. We’ll have to sneak you in somehow. I suggest you hide in the bushes next to the front of the house. Then when Aunt Dodie is making the tea, I’ll let you in and you can shoot up the front stairs.”
“Yes, that could work,” said Mr. Norton.
A week later they arrived at Aunt Dodie’s house at the appointed hour. There had been some concern as to the possibility that Aunt Dodie might be waiting at the picture window, monitoring the sidewalk, so Mr. Jones had approached first alone, walking up the short front walk. Though he had not seen her at the window, still he waited at the door for a minute before motioning to Mr. Norton to join him—that is, to join him not on the doorstep but next to the doorstep in the bushes.
Mr. Jones rang the bell.
After a bit of shuffling from within, the door was opened and Aunt Dodie’s small grizzled head appeared behind the storm door, which she opened a crack.
“Quick, come in,” she said. “I don’t like to stand at the door. For all I know there might be a strange man in the bushes.”
Mr. Jones very nearly replied, “And what a man he is!”— which goes to show you that Mr. Jones’s robustness had been boosted to nearly dangerous levels by the nights of good rest. Mr. Jones’s natural prudence prevailed and he said, “You’re so right, Aunt Dodie.”
“I don’t know if I’m right or wrong. I only know what I feel.” Aunt Dodie raised her chin and cocked her cheek.
For a dreadful moment, Mr. Jones was unable to move, having no idea whether his aunt Dodie was demonstrating that she defied the world or was proffering her cheek to be kissed by her nephew.
Perhaps it was both.
At any rate, the dreadful moment passed, and Mr. Jones kissed her cheek.
“I thought we’d have our tea in the backyard,” said Aunt Dodie, turning away. “I only need to assemble the things in the kitchen.”
“Terrific,” said Mr. Jones. “I’ll be with you in a snap. I just need to tie my shoelace. Or something.” Watching the old lady until she was safely in the kitchen, Mr. Jones stepped silently to the front door.
“Quick!” he whispered to the bushes.
Mr. Norton emerged, wiping the clinging brown fitzer branchlets from his sport coat with one hand, holding his bath brush, oatmeal soap, and towel in the other.
“The bathroom is the second door on the left,” said Mr. Jones, as Mr. Norton swept gracefully up the stairs. Mr. Jones’s robustness ticked slightly higher watching Mr. Norton. Though his physique was more farmer than ballet master, Mr. Norton moved with great poise.
“This is marvelous,” said Mr. Jones, setting down the tea tray on the enameled table in the backyard under the little maple.
Aunt Dodie seated herself, with Mr. Jones’s help, arranged her utensils to her liking as Mr. Jones himself sat down, and said, “I’m glad to see living in New York City hasn’t completely spoiled you.”
“Thank you, Aunt Dodie.”
“You aren’t entirely ruined.”
“I hope not, Aunt Dodie.”
“You may make something of yourself yet.”
“I’m almost sure of it, Aunt Dodie.”
There was silence then, apart from the tweet of a suburban bird and a distant siren.
Aunt Dodie opened her mouth to say one thing, but then her head shot to the left and she said another. “What’s that? What’s that? Do you hear water running?”
“Water?”
“Water! Water running! And it’s coming from my house!” And Aunt Dodie slapped the metal table.
Mr. Jones’s mind raced. His aunt’s suspicion rattled him to such an extent that he had a terrible urge to confess all. He nearly blurted out that there was now no longer a strange man in her bushes but one in her bathroom.
Instead of this thought, Mr. Jones glanced at the back of the house, and remembered Mr. Norton’s bath brush, oatmeal soap, and towel, and he said, “Why, Aunt Dodie, I believe I saw your neighbor watering his lawn just now, and a lot of water it was.”
“Oh?”
“I’m sure that’s it.”
“There, it’s gone.” Aunt Dodie sniffed.
Mr. Jones began relating the first of a couple of prepared stories about his cousin Jimmy—on his father’s side, no relation to Aunt Dodie, making it all right—which she thoroughly enjoyed. Mr. Jones continued to run the conversation, buoyed by regular glances to the back of the house, reassured that, somewhere within, Mr. Norton was scrubbing his knees.
Occasionally, Aunt Dodie tried to take control of the conversation with a “But I thought you,” and a couple of “Well, perhaps I’m too old to understand, but”s. Still Mr. Jones remained firmly in charge until he placed his teacup down softly in its saucer, then both cup and saucer on the table, and stood, saying, “Excuse me, I need to go to the loo.”
Mr. Jones felt tremendously well as he strode away. Even his aunt Dodie’s muttered “Always did have a weak bladder” couldn’t dampen his feelings.
He pushed his head in at the bathroom door. Mr. Norton’s musical voice was softly intoning:
O for a beaker full of the warm South,
Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene . . .
“How’s it going?” said Mr. Norton, putting down the bath brush.
“Couldn’t be better. But I think I’d like to go now. I don’t want to push my luck.”
“Right you are. I shall rinse, dry, dress, and meet you at the bus stop in fifteen minutes.”
“Thank you, Norton.”
Returned to the backyard, Mr. Jones sat down, heaving a great sigh. “This is the life!” he said. “Look at everything you have.” He waved his hands a bit. “Marigolds, fascinating neighbors, and hardly a mosquito.” He shooed one of the few from the sugar bowl. “I wish I didn’t have to leave.”
As Mr. Jones brought in the things from the backyard and helped Aunt Dodie in loading the dishwasher, she seemed distracted—disappointed even—perhaps feeling cheated by the disappearance of the nervous nephew she had anticipated.
“What’s gotten into you anyway?” she said, at last. “You’re different.”
“Am I?” said Mr. Jones with a giggle. “Well, different or not, I must be going.”
Standing at the front door, Aunt Dodie was this time unmistakable in her movements: She only stuck out her chin.
On the bus ride back to Manhattan, Mr. Jones was nearly giddy, his glee at having bested his formidable aunt practically raising him off his seat. “And how was your bath?” he said at last.
“It was very fine,” said Mr. Norton, turning from his examination of the New Jersey landscape. “I had a little trouble with the hot-water control at first, but that was soon sorted. I admired your aunt Dodie’s bath salts. Didn’t take any! No, sir. But I admired them.”
“You let me know the brand names,” said Mr. Jones, tapping Mr. Norton’s thigh. “I’ll get you ten bottles.”
•
Their New Jersey high emboldened them to tackle other challenges.
A dentist appointment had been a bit of a stumper at first. After days of fret and worry, it was Mr. Norton who remembered that his old college maintained a health club that stood just down the block and across the street from the dentist’s office. He would inquire as to its bathing facilities.
It had them. And, more important, it boasted a hot-water pool. And so, by keeping one eye open, and as long as the dental hygienist wasn’t standing in the way of the window, Mr. Jones could just see the top of the building where Mr. Norton sat serenely in hot water. That and the novocaine had gotten Mr. Jones through.
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