Seasons passed. Aunt Dodie invited Mr. Jones to a Memorial Day picnic, a Columbus Day brunch, and a Christmas Day dinner and all had gone well, Mr. Jones assuring her that the sound of rushing water she seemed always to hear was merely the onset of mild tinnitus.
But then, in the spring, came a crisis that defied Mr. Jones and Mr. Norton to find a solution. Mr. Jones had reached that particular age when not only Insomnia crept up on one unawares but also old college classmates. They suddenly seemed to feel that what’s life all about really if not to revisit old pals? Hey, weren’t those the grandest days of our lives and shouldn’t we relive them, etc.? Mr. Jones wasn’t so sure. Nevertheless, there was no getting around it, he had been invited to a reunion of the second tenor section of his college men’s chorus. Mr. Jones was assured that it would not be the same without him. The gathering was to take place in the Scheherazade Room at the Melford Hotel in midtown.
It was an appalling idea, thought Mr. Jones. Unfortunately, straightforward refusal was something he had never gotten the hang of. The roundabout half-truths and evasions that Mr. Jones replied with were ignored. Like a man caught in an evil tunnel of fate, Mr. Jones saw no way out and agreed to meet the men with whom, thirty years ago, he had warbled the second treble line.
“What can we do?” said Mr. Jones. “Can we knock on hotel doors and ask if you can use the bathroom for an hour? I don’t think so.”
“It would be awkward,” said Mr. Norton. “Perhaps we could book a room for the day? I’ll phone the hotel.” Rising, he walked to the hall. When he returned, Mr. Jones could see the news was bad.
“The hotel’s booked solid until the summer.”
Mr. Norton sat down and Mr. Jones poured him another cup of tea. They stirred their tea gloomily.
“I’ve an idea,” said Mr. Norton. “Why must it be a bath I’m sitting in? What’s to say it couldn’t be a bath sitting in me?”
Mr. Jones stopped stirring.
“What I mean is, do you see that teapot there, in front of us on the table, and this teacup? Of course you do, you’re not blind. What if I put this hot tea in me from that pot, and you just kept an eye on that pot? We’ll still be connected by the hot water. When you have dinner with those nice gentlemen, you just order a pot—mind that you order a pot, not a cup— and I’ll order the same, elsewhere in the hotel. We’ll each have a pot of tea in front of us. Different pots, of course. But they will be united by their pottiness. So anytime you feel unsure or panicky, you just get an eyeful of that teapot, and then you might as well be getting an eyeful of me because I’ll be drinking tea at that very moment and you’ll know it!” Mr. Norton smiled through his mustache encouragingly.
“Hmm,” said Mr. Jones. “Stare at the teapot?” He stared at their own teapot, which was colored a sap green with a stripe of coral pink around the lid. “It doesn’t sound quite as effective as you sitting in a hot bath. Will it be as strong, though, I wonder? Let’s give it a test.”
Mr. Jones tapped a finger to his nose.
“Norton, please take your tea to your room right now and shut the door hard.” Mr. Norton took his tea, his paper, and two crackers to his room and pulled the door tightly shut.
Mr. Jones waited for the inevitable feeling of unease to arrive—the simple shutting of Mr. Norton’s door was enough to make Mr. Jones wonder what he had done wrong. He began to sweat gently. His teeth tingled. The skin on the backs of his hands began to tighten and one pinkie twitched.
And then Mr. Jones gazed at the teapot and imagined its warm contents sloshing around inside Mr. Norton’s tublike belly. He was a farmer! Round! A comforting water tower. His thoughts acted like a genie, like a witch’s spell, like a pixie’s charm, and the fear was driven away.
“Norty!” he said.
“It worked!”
Mr. Norton swiftly opened the door, which showed that he had been standing immediately behind it. Anxious about the results, no doubt.
“Just make sure you ask for a teapot,” he said, beaming, “a nice round one.”
On the day of the reunion, Mr. Jones arrived early in the private room and immediately asked for a pot of tea from the very nice attendant. And by the time the sentimental gathering was concluded, which would have reduced Mr. Jones to a quivering jelly unaided, it had been three pots of tea to Mr. Jones, which also left him quivering, but not a jelly and not unhappy.
In the dining room on the first floor of the hotel, Mr. Norton too had his pot of tea, along with a steak frites and the paper.
The teapot scheme soon worked so well that Mr. Norton no longer took a bath each night but fixed himself a pot of tea instead. It was not long before Mr. Jones never left the apartment without one of their small teapots bundled up in his bag.
Years later on a winter night, as the freezing rain lashed their living-room window, Mr. Jones and Mr. Norton again sat at the table with their tea. Mr. Norton snorted from time to time from behind the sports section. Mr. Jones laid out a game of solitaire, one of the large two-pack games he liked.
Placing a black ten–red nine–black eight combination on a red jack, he said, “Norty, what will I do if you’re ever no longer here?”
Mr. Norton looked around the paper. “Oh, pooh,” he said.
“No, I’m serious. What if it proves to be true that I can’t live without you?”
Mr. Norton put the paper down. “Nonsense!”
“But where will I find the strength to go on without you?”
“There will always be hot water snug in its caul. In this case, tea.”
Mr. Jones and Mr. Norton lifted their fine china cups to each other, the ones with the little birds painted on them in blue and white, and drank.
The Doorman’s Repose
MR. BUNCHLEY sat at a small table at the back of a long, narrow tavern. The Doorman’s Repose was where building attendants of all kinds liked to take their ease after hours. It was the end of a hot summer day. A glass of Chardonnay and a plate of English crackers stood in front of Mr. Bunchley. Trying without success to bend his concentration to the book— about the care of zinnias—that lay open on the table next to the crackers, Mr. Bunchley was distracted by the loud discussion going on at the bar.
“I tell you,” said a man in a gray uniform with pale yellow stripes, “this is a city of a hundred, no, a thousand, no, make it ten thousand separate and completely disconnected circles of people. They’re like tops all spinning. But nobody ever touches nobody else. Everybody lives in their own tiny world with other people just like themselves.”
“You said it,” said the man’s neighbor, whose uniform was blue and featured gold epaulettes.
“Nobody knows nobody else. Everybody in their own little world. You’re here. I’m there. He’s over there. We may live in the same building, but it’s like we’re on different planets!”
“You said it!” And the fringes on the gold epaulettes bounced a little up and down.
Not wanting to stay silent anymore, Mr. Bunchley closed his book and tucked it under his arm. Lifting his glass, plate, and himself from his spot at the table, he moved to the bar.
“Excuse me,” said Mr. Bunchley, “you didn’t say it.”
“What do you mean, I didn’t say it?” said the one in gray.
“At least, what you said had no basis in fact,” said Mr. Bunchley. He arranged himself on a stool.
“What do you mean?” said the one in blue.
“Yeah, what do you mean?” said the one in gray.
“I mean simply this. This city is more interconnected than the loops of yarn in your grandmother’s sweater. Pull on one thread, undo one loop, and the whole thing unravels. Each loop loops around the one above, is held by the loops to left and right, and is itself looped around by the one below. The only things fixed are the knots at the first and the last. So it is with our city. I can think of a hundred instances. The story of Mrs. Sleeplater’s glasses comes to mind. It was like this—”
“Here!” said the one in gray.
“If you’re going to tell one of your stories, I need a pint.” He motioned to the barman.
“What I mean,” said Mr. Bunchley, pausing for a moment to have a sip of his wine, “is that we are all of us, as a people, interconnected.”
“No, we aren’t.”
“Here’s what I mean,” continued Mr. Bunchley. “You, Mr. Macadam,” he said, addressing the one in gray, “and you, Mr. Wissel,” addressing the one in blue, “and I, as doormen, are notably connected to all walks of life, high and low, weak and strong, rich and poor, young and old. From the Wall Street banker, to the garbage collector. From the lady in the penthouse, to the hobo on the corner bench. We doormen are not unlike the hub of a great wheel. The connecting spokes run from us out to the rim in all directions.”
“Yeah, sure,” said Mr. Macadam, “but that still don’t mean nothing. We’re the hub, like you said, the axle.”
“Yes, Mr. Macadam, but I prefer hub,” said Mr. Bunchley. He put down his glass.
“Hub, then,” said Mr. Macadam. “Let me finish. Sure, we’re at the center. Sure, we know everything and everybody.”
“And keep the whole thing turning,” said Mr. Wissel, smiling at his cleverness. “Couldn’t turn without us.”
“Right,” said Mr. Macadam, “but that still don’t mean everybody else ain’t disconnected. Disconnected. Dis is what I’m saying.”
“Ah, but don’t you see?” said Mr. Bunchley. “The wheel only turns because the rim is itself connected.” Mr. Bunchley bit vigorously into a cracker.
He chewed for a bit and then said, “I propose a wager. A bet. If I can show you that twelve city residents, from twelve separate circles, as you call them, have made a connection with each other, one after the other, in twelve hours, will you buy me a cup of tea?”
“And if you don’t?” said Mr. Macadam.
“I’ll buy you both one of those brown beverages you’re consuming so heartily.”
“Done,” said Mr. Macadam. “But how are you going to do it?”
“Well, first let’s agree on what having a connection means. I propose a definition. A connection is made when at least one party would feel the lack of the other.”
“Huh?” said Mr. Macadam.
“I mean, two or more individuals are connected when they have an effect on each other. It’s simple. Look. You and I and Mr. Wissel are connected.”
“Sure, but we know each other.”
“Yes, of course. And if we didn’t know each other, our lives would be different. Am I right?”
“Why, I guess that’s so,” said Mr. Wissel.
“I would miss you if you left,” said Mr. Bunchley. “My life would be different if I hadn’t met you. If not for our connection, Mr. Macadam, I would never know when the Super Bowl takes place and as a result would wonder where everyone was. Why the lobby was so deserted.”
Mr. Macadam frowned but nodded.
“And if I wasn’t connected to you, Mr. Wissel, I would never have learned of the hatter on Fifth Avenue, who has ever since I entered his establishment served me so well. Without our connection, my hats would be demonstrably shabbier. You see? And I am always most grateful for this, by the way. Thank you, again, Mr. Wissel.”
“You are most welcome,” said Mr. Wissel.
“The definition, for our purposes then, is that a connection exists when its absence would be felt. All right?”
“All right,” said Mr. Macadam.
“Fine. Agreed. Let me begin.”
“Hold it,” said Mr. Macadam. He took a long draft of his beer, replaced the glass on the coaster, then wiped his mouth with a white handkerchief. “Connections, effects, feelings, fine. Whatever. But how do we know? Who’s going to referee this? Who’s going to establish the facts? The real jam, the honest to Pete of the situation. How will we know you aren’t making it all up?”
“I suggest that Mr. Wissel be the referee. He has been a doorman for twenty-two years. He knows a great deal. I just mentioned his knowledge of hatters. I leave it to Mr. Wissel to judge my story. Fair enough?”
Mr. Wissel sat a little straighter and raised his bushy eyebrows at Mr. Macadam.
“Fair enough, then,” said Mr. Macadam, “if it’ll make you happy. But I’ll be listening closely for any baloney.”
“There will be no baloney. There will be twelve people, twelve connections, in twelve hours,” said Mr. Bunchley.
Mr. Bunchley adjusted his plumpish thighs on the barstool. “I believe it was Mr. E. M. Forster who said, ‘Only connect.’ Was it not? And as Mr. Forster would be the first person, I think, to agree that a connection can only be shown through a properly told story—I stress properly told—some of the details of what I have to say, the dialogue and so forth, might be, let’s say, made up by myself. But only, I stress, in service to the truth of the story. Mr. Wissel, you are a well-read man. You have read your Dickens. You have read your New York Times Sunday edition. You know what is true and what is not. Again, I turn to you to referee.”
Mr. Macadam crossed his arms and gave Mr. Wissel a sour look, but said nothing.
•
We will begin the contest at a quarter to nine in the morning (said Mr. Bunchley) for at precisely that time yesterday, Mrs. J. G. Sleeplater concludes that she has lost her glasses and that she will never find them again.
The evening before, in fact, she was sketching out this hypothesis on a provisional basis. She said to me, “Mr. Bunchley, have you perchance seen my glasses? I can’t find them anywhere. I am beginning to think that they are gone for good.”
I responded in the negative—naturally, by the way, any connections between me and the subjects of this story do not count in our tally.
(“Naturally,” said Mr. Macadam.)
Back to yesterday morning. “My glasses, they’re gone!” Mrs. J. G. Sleeplater wails. It is now roughly ten minutes to nine. At this point she is wailing so loudly that she attracts the attention of Alehandro, the man standing on the scaffold eighteen floors up and just outside Mrs. J. G. Sleeplater’s window.
Alehandro is a good-hearted young man from Costa Rica— he once commented on the beauty of my carnations. Espléndido, was, I think, his exact remark. Now, even though he is standing on a platform wobbling hundreds of feet in the air, a situation that in most people would focus the attention strictly on personal survival, Alehandro, seeing another person in difficulties, wants to help.
“Señora, señora,” he says.
“Who’s that?” says Mrs. J. G. Sleeplater, and she goes to the window.
“It is I, Alehandro, repairing your crumbling masonry.”
“Never mind my masonry,” she says, and she slides open the window a little. “How can I help you? Do you need to use the loo? Like a glass of water? Run out of sunscreen?”
“It is I who can help you, señora!” says Alehandro. “Your glasses, they are here behind the green vase on the dresser. I can see them because they are in between the green vase and the window. I can see them from out here. You can’t see them from in there. You see, señora?”
Mrs. J. G. Sleeplater goes to the dresser, shifts the green vase, and shouts, “Eureka! My glasses!”
She places them on her nose and, peering through them, looks closely at the young man who has helped her.
“What did you say your name was?” she says.
“Alehandro, señora,” he says.
“Thank you, Alehandro. These glasses are essential. I’ll need them tonight when I give my weekly knitting lesson to Victoria.”
“Muy bien, señora,” says Alehandro.
(“That’s one connection between two separate circles. Are we agreed, Mr. Wissel?”
“Perfectly agreed, Mr. Bunchley.”)
A short time later, Alehandro unhooks his safety harness from the scaffolding railing and climbs over the parapet, having raised the platform to the roof. He takes the long slow ride down in Elevator Number Two. He’s on his way to get his morning cup of coffee at the corner deli. He alwa
ys goes to the U Like Deli.
Yoshi, the granddaughter of the owner, makes the café con leche the way Alehandro likes it and already has one ready for him when he gets there.
“Cómo estás?” she says.
“I’ll tell you a thing,” he says. “If I ever build a house, it will be one story high. Not two. Not three. Just one. And even that story will be short.”
“Poor Alehandro,” says Yoshi, and she hands him his drink. “Take a break. Drink coffee. Feel better. And now you’ll have to excuse me because I have to take a delivery to Mr. Sherman.”
(“That’s two,” said Mr. Wissel.
“What time are we at?” said Mr. Macadam.
“Approximately a quarter after eleven,” said Mr. Bunchley.
“That means you got nine and a half hours to do ten more,” said Mr. Macadam with a confident smile.
“Okay,” said Mr. Bunchley.)
Yoshi walks the few steps to 777 Garden Avenue carrying a yellow plastic bag printed with the U Like Deli logo, a large U and a smaller LIKE in bold blue letters. The bag contains three tins of Spam, one can of condensed milk, one big box of Lipton tea, and a banana.
(“I’ll tell you how I know what was in the bag,” said Mr. Bunchley. “Yoshi always tells me when Mr. Sherman has asked for anything unusual. Two extra tins of Spam. Frankly, that’s not good. It indicates to me, his doorman, that he, Mr. Sherman, is once again convinced that there will be some kind of end-of-the-world event soon. Anyway, I mustn’t wander from my story.”)
Mr. Sherman opens his door to Yoshi and says, “Ah, the Spam. Good to have Spam. Put it anywhere.”
Yoshi puts the bag on Mr. Sherman’s kitchen counter and says, “Is there anything special for tomorrow?”
“I think I’ll up the Spam order. Make it four tins of Spam. I don’t like what’s happening in Australia. Bad signs in Sydney. Malfeasance in Melbourne. Perils in Perth. The island continent could go up any minute in a great big blue ball of fire and ashes. But when it does, I’ll be ready. I’ve got enough Spam to last me a year.”
The Doorman's Repose Page 13