What Is All This?

by Stephen Dixon

That they told me also. Something like you’ll get no more than you deserve and what’s the going rate. What did they offer you if I can ask?”

  “Doesn’t matter.”

  “How much, though?”

  “Same two thousand they offered two weeks ago.”

  “You’ve been offered two thousand? Then I’m going to get two thousand. Moving costs excluded?”

  “Maximum of three hundred,” he said, “but if it costs less I can’t keep the balance.”

  “Keep? Just watch me try to move for three hundred with all my furniture. ‘Brooklyn,’ I’ll tell the mover, and he’ll laugh in my face.”

  They say anything else about me?”

  That was it. It was sort of like you wasn’t living here in a way.”

  “Not living here? Oh, I’m living here, and they know it full well. Excuse me a second.”

  He strutted into the kitchen, put water in the kettle, and set it on the stove. Gas and electricity and water they still had, thank God, he thought, but only because he was smart enough to contact, after the city didn’t get back to him, a tenants’ protective organization, saying how he thought his unhumanlike landlords were about to shut everything off.

  “You know what especially made me uneasy,” she said when he got back, “was the way they blamed me for pushing back the demolition date. I mean me, I should do that?”

  “Doesn’t bother me none.” He put his cup of tea on a side table and sat down.

  “Yeah, but yak-yak-yak they went on about the extra workers’ costs and that from their own pockets it’s coming.”

  “Don’t believe a word they say.”

  “So from whose pockets does it come from—yours? Mine? I don’t like it.”

  “Forget it. Just tell yourself you’re right.”

  “I tell, I tell, but what good’s it do if my heart still goes out to them some? I know deep down they’re wrong, but like my late husband I always believed business is business, you know? And here they already paid for the property—two brownstones and this building, no less—which must’ve cost them plenty the way this neighborhood’s changing.”

  “Quadruple they’ll get back, those cutthroats.”

  “Maybe. But in a way they’ve acted all right with us and been fair to the other tenants here. I mean, give in a little, Mr. Samuels.”

  “Give in, you ask me?” his voice rising.

  “I didn’t mean it that way.”

  “You have the nerve to ask me to give in?”

  “I told you that’s not what I meant.”

  “Listen, I know exactly what you meant. So if you’re going to be talking like that, better you do it somewhere else.”

  “And somewhere else I will.” She stood up, smashed her lit cigarette into the saucer and started for the door.

  “You should get your head examined if you think I’ll stay in this room another minute with you.”

  “Now what I say?” he said, thinking maybe he was too rough with her this time. He reached for her arm, but she pulled away and grabbed the doorknob.

  “Don’t give me that nicey-nice what’d-I-do? business again—please. For plenty I’ve taken from you—everything from watching you not offer me tea to your hurling insults.”

  “So I got a little temperamental. So everyone does once in a while.”

  “Crazy’s more like it. And when you act like this, I don’t know what else you might try, like those men said.” He stared at her a few seconds and began laughing.

  “Look, you got your hand on the doorknob, so use it. Then take all you can steal from the landlords and get the hell out of here.”

  She muttered something under her breath and tried opening the door. As he continued to laugh at her, she kicked the bottom of the door, unlocked it, and charged out.

  She did just what he expected her to: slammed her front door shut a good five minutes after she’d slammed his, walked noisily through, the hallway and down the stairs. He went to his bedroom window, waiting for her to storm out of the lobby, through the courtyard, and across the street, heading, he was sure, to the drugstore phonebooth a block away. He raised two Venetian blind slats and peered through them just as she came out of the lobby and glanced up at his living room window. She was carrying her mesh shopping bag, a bag of garbage and a bundle of old newspapers—but she wasn’t fooling anyone. First thing she’ll do when she’s away from the building is get rid of all that bogus junk and hustle to the phone to haggle with one of the realty people. Later, when they can’t agree to what she’ll call her final offer—cunningly made much higher than what she expects to get—she’ll tell them to come to her home, where they’ll settle, her knowing all the time the advantage of bargaining in the very apartment they so desperately want.

  He stood at the window till she returned, a celery stalk and packaged bread sticking out of the mesh bag filled with groceries. A costly trick to fool him, he thought, and look how it worked. He waited behind his door, listening till she was upstairs and in her apartment, and then went back to the window. He stayed there for more than two hours—even moved a chair to it so he could sit on it—and was surprised, by the time his dinner hour rolled around, that the realty people hadn’t shown up.

  Four days later Bert saw the three men enter the building, and then heard them climb the cracked green linoleum steps leading to the third floor. He stood by the door as they walked down the hallway, one of them, apparently wearing metal plates on the heels of his shoes, clicking along like a tap dancer. They stopped at Anna’s door and rang the bell. She let them in, and in an hour showed them out. Thank you very much, and good day, gentlemen,” she said, and one of the men: “And thank you for tea, Mrs. Kornman.” Bert expected the men to ring his bell next, since after disposing of her they’d naturally think he could be had for the same price that very afternoon, but they went down the stairs.

  He rushed to the window and opened it a little, hoping to catch something in their expressions and movements and what they were saying that’d give him an idea of how they accepted her last offer, which would help him decide what his should be before they ultimately forced him to leave. All he saw were their secret, lineless faces—no smiles or looks of disappointment—and the creased tops of two of the men’s hats, and the third man’s black slicked-down skull, since this fellow was holding his fedora and combing the hair above his ears. All three talked softly, moved swiftly, and carried briefcases under their arms. Then the hatless man stopped as the other two walked on, slid the comb into his coat’s breast pocket, carefully placed the hat on his head, and grabbed the briefcase by its collapsible handle, letting it dangle at his side. He ran to catch up with the others, who were waiting at the curb, and all three walked silently side by side, crossed the street, and headed downtown.

  Bert waited for Anna to knock on his door—certain she was the type who’d want to boast to him about how much she’d shrewdly extorted from the company. She never came, so three hours later, after he tramped up the second flight of stairs with the evening newspaper, thinking she’d hear him and throw open her door, he rang her bell.

  “Yes? Who is it?” after he rang a fourth time.

  “Bert,” he said, thinking, Who else could it be, you liar.

  “Who, please?”

  “Bert Samuels, from the third floor. Remember me?”

  “Just a moment.”

  “Just a moment?” he said under his breath. Why, she should be hung upside down by her toes, the ugly witch, he thought, picturing her waiting behind the door, smoking a cigarette or filing her nails.

  She opened the door, seeming to withdraw her halting smile just as soon as she gave it. “Would you like to come in? Though why I should be so polite to you after your treatment of me the other day, I don’t know.”

  “I’m fine here, thanks.”

  “Have it your own way.” She flipped an unlit cigarette out of her hand, almost like a magician pulling something from his sleeve, stuck it between her lips, and tried to light it
with a silver table lighter.

  “Needs fuel.” She put the lighter and cigarette on a little table by the door and searched her housecoat for matches.

  Bert forced a smile. “Say, I saw those fellows leave before and wanted to know if they had anything new to say about me.”

  “You? Nothing much. Why should they?”

  “Oh, stop it. They must’ve said something.”

  “Only about me. They offered—you know: like they always offer.”

  “So come on; what happened?”

  “What happened, what?”

  The money, the money! How much you finally take to leave?”

  “You think I took? Is that what you’re driving at all this time?”

  “Look, I’m nobody’s fool. All along I knew you were holding out and using me just to get more cash from them.”

  “What, are you altogether insane?”

  “Goddamnit, I saw you myself running to the drugstore to phone them. Thursday—right? Yeah, Thursday late.”

  “To dump garbage and for my groceries I went for Thursday. Always Thursday the groceries. Friday’s too crowded, and Saturday’s my holy day. I eat and throw my trash out, you know, no matter how some people live.”

  “Anna, I know what you did, so why bother arguing? I didn’t come here for that.”

  Then what is it you came for? The first day since last week I speak to them is today—today; but did I expect them? I didn’t. They drop in from nowhere, no letter, just unannounced, and now I think I’m glad they did.”

  “Glady for the money you mean.”

  “Money? What’s money to me? Enough I got without theirs. To you, maybe—to a stingy hoarding old man like yourself it’s the world—but to me? Pride’s more important. It’s living here, you, always insulting me like I’m an animal, that’ll make up my mind fast. So I’ll tell you, Mr. Samuels, before I only got excited and threatened to go, but now, don’t tempt me into really going.”

  “So you’re leaving this week then, right?”

  “I wasn’t leaving no time till you helped me decide this very moment. Now I’m going to call them tomorrow morning and say that anything they want to give me is good enough just as long as they take me away from this madhouse.”

  He didn’t believe a word she said. All he wanted was for her to admit she sold out—just that simple satisfaction—and also to know what amount she sold out for, since besides using the figure for his own bargaining purposes it’ll give him an opportunity to tell her what a monkey they made out of her. But she’d turned around, ignoring him and appearing to be deep in thought, and then said “You’ll have to excuse me, but I got a lot of packing to do and might as well start it now, so if that’s all you got to say, goodbye.”

  There are some other things I’d like to speak over with you before you go, would you mind?”

  “I don’t know what other things, but if you do come in, please leave the front door open.” She motioned him inside, and after flitting around the apartment a few minutes, opening closets and drawers and pushing a couple of empty boxes to the middle of the floor, she started refolding the sweaters that had been neatly crammed inside the television console cabinet.

  “Go right ahead,” he said. “Just don’t even think I’m here. Mind if I sit?” She nodded, and he sat down and watched her build a pile of sweaters two feet high. She went into the bedroom, came out in a dress a minute later with the three sweaters she’d had on underneath her housecoat, and added these to the pile.

  “When they were here they said I could have a one-bedroom in Queens, not Brooklyn,” she said, “—a building they got a big interest in and which they said is newer and in better condition than this one, though not so near a market. I think I’ll take it anyway—temporarily. I mean with my legs acting up again it’d be a nuisance looking for a Manhattan place just now.”

  “Sure, sure.”

  “You still don’t believe me? Mrs. Scarlisi—you remember, nobody I was friendly with, but from apartment 45? She’s there, and they told me she likes the neighborhood very much except for that market problem. So she takes the bus when she doesn’t want to walk, and though they don’t come regularly like our buses, they’re regular enough. I think I’ll call her later.”

  “Just stop with the talk and tell me how much you got, all right?”

  “Got I didn’t get. All they said was it’d be a tidy sum if I decided to leave.”

  “How much a tidy sum?”

  “Five hundred for the moving costs, and I can keep the balance what I don’t pay the movers, fair?”

  “Sounds fair. But for the last holdouts they got good reasons for being big sports.”

  “Didn’t I tell you last week they were fair people?” She went into the bedroom and returned with a suitcase and some dresses. She started folding the dresses and putting them in the suitcase.

  “When did they say they’d be back to see me?”

  “Like I said before, they really didn’t mention you.”

  “Not even if I was also ready to move or not?”

  “Not even if you was still living here.” She clasped the suitcase shut.

  “Yeah, I’ll bet. Anyway,” just as she was about to protest, “what’d you finally get for signing away your rights to this apartment?”

  “For the last time: I signed nothing; they only offered.”

  “All right, all right, but try telling me they gave you more than two thousand.”

  They offered a lot more.”

  “Twenty-five hundred?”

  “A little less.”

  “A little less? You took less?”

  “Less they said they’ll offer than twenty-five hundred, but it’s still more than I ever thought they’d offer, so for me it’s plenty.”

  “Because you don’t know better, that’s why. And then taking so little you ruined my chances of getting much more. For what you get: twenty-two hundred? Maybe twenty-three? Why, four thousand clear before the five hundred moving costs you should’ve got, or a stupid fool like yourself I’ve never seen before. Goddamn you,” he yelled, “you screwed up everything, and he kicked a hole in one of the empty boxes and kept kicking the box till it was across the room. He walked in circles around the room, slapping his forehead and wringing his hands and saying “What could’ve possessed me? Why’d I ever trust her? What am I to do now? All this time here for practically peanuts, peanuts,” and flopped down in the easy chair and pounded the chair arms with his fists and shouted toward the ceiling “Moron, absolute moron, I’d like to tear off her rotten hide,” and shook his head back and forth several times and then leaned forward with his hands in his hair and shut his eyes.

  When he’d simmered down a couple of minutes later, she was no longer in the room, her suitcase was gone, and the bedroom door was closed. She has to be in there, he thought, because if she went past him out the apartment he thinks he would have heard her. He sat up and calmly waited for her to come out. If it takes till tomorrow, he’ll wait, he thought, though before that he’ll shut the front door. He’s going to apologize, say something about being unable to explain exactly what took hold of him just now, but he’s definitely sorry, as sorry as a man could be. After rewinning her confidence, or a good part of it, he’ll very politely ask her to hold out against the landlords with him for just two weeks more. She didn’t sign anything, he’ll say, so in that regard they’re in luck. After two weeks, they’ll each be a cinch to get four thousand clear and the five hundred moving costs they promised her, plus a freshly painted three-room West Side apartment, a new demand he just came up with—so the hell with the long bus rides in Queens; there’ll be good markets and services right up her block. After all, he’ll point out, doesn’t she owe him at least this extra stay in the building, for in a way it’s actually she who made him so upset before when she misled him into believing she signed the relocation agreement. And then who knows: the realty people might get so panicky after two weeks that the two of them could even pull in mor
e than four thousand—maybe even five thousand, five and a half. The last figures will knock her right off her feet, he thought, and be what he needs to have her go in with him.

  The bedroom door shot open, just as he was going over the pitch he’d give her. Anna, lugging the suitcase and dressed in a moth-eaten Persian lamb coat with this veiled black hat pushed down on her forehead and hiding most of her face, hurried by him before he could say anything but “Wait.” She went out the front door, down the hall, and hobbled down the stairs. He ran to his living room window, raised the blinds all the way and saw her trudging lopsidedly through the courtyard. This time she didn’t look up at his window, though he had opened it so he could stick his head out and was prepared to smile and wave and even plead with her.

  What Is All This?

  BOOK THREE

  CONTAC

  MEET THE NATIVES

  WHO HE?

  FOR A QUIET ENGLISH SUNDAY

  SEX

  THE KILLER

  A HOME AWAY FROM HOME

  PALE CHEEKS OF A BUTCHER’S BOY

  UP AND DOWN THE DROSSELGASSE

  AN ACCURATE ACCOUNT

  YO-YO

  NO KNOCKS

  WALT

  IN MEMORIAM

  CONTAC.

  He was in the local Fairway, buying groceries for dinner tonight. A few hours ago he and his wife and her son returned from Lake Tahoe a day sooner than they’d planned. It had become too expensive for them and Ginny had caught a bad cold there. Just before he left the house he asked what she’d like for dinner tonight and she said “Something soft and simple; I also have cramps. You decide, Rod—you know food better,” so he decided the softest and simplest meal they could afford was meatloaf and yams. He’d make them after giving Jess hot cereal and toast and while Ginny continued to sweat out her cold in bed.

  He got two medium-sized onions out of a bin. They were going for four pounds for twenty-nine cents—a good buy; they wouldn’t come to more than five or six cents. The mushrooms he usually chopped up and put in the loaf he’d skip tonight. Even though they were on sale, sixty-nine a pound was still too high, considering how much money he had on him.