“Perhaps,” she said coolly.
“It’s not important,” he said, “I just meant if you’re stopped at a red light in the lane nearest the sidewalk in a cloudburst and I happen by in the same direction with heavy bundles—”
“Listen,” she said, “there could be plenty of people here in a little while. Can we talk?”
He’d forgotten that she’d started to tell him something, and now he waited noncommittally for her to go on.
“I know your car isn’t with you,” she said. “You flew. Of course there’s nothing in the house. Your father ate in restaurants, but I don’t think it would be a good idea for us to go shopping together.”
“Oh?”
“Come on,” she said, “what ‘Oh?’ You know what I’m talking about. What was between your father and me was no big deal. It isn’t as if we slept together. It was a flirtation pure and simple. He was a lonely man and he liked to think we were having some sort of, I don’t know, adventure. It wasn’t vulgar. I didn’t encourage him. I didn’t lead him on. At no time did I lead him on,” she said positively. “You don’t believe me?” He just stared at her, his groin warming like toast. “All right,” she said, “let’s be frank. How much do you know?”
“How much?”
“You’ve been here two days. I’m the person who didn’t let you in yesterday. I believed you when you said you were Phil’s son. I didn’t want you in the apartment till I had a chance to get in here. But damn it, I couldn’t find the key.”
“I want the key returned,” Preminger said icily.
“This is crazy,” she said. “You’ve been alone here two days. A person looks around. He looks for papers, photographs.”
“My father is dead,” he told her. “Do you think I came to ransack the place?”
“No, of course not. This would be a sentimental thing. Look, how much do you know?”
“I don’t know anything,” Preminger said miserably.
“I appreciate your position,” she said. “Don’t think I don’t. Look, I’m sorry. There are letters. Did you happen to see them?”
“No.”
“Could I have a look around? I think they may be in his desk.”
“I’ll do it.”
“Could I come with you?”
“You think I’ll read them?”
“No, of course not. I could help you look. I know what they look like.”
“You mean you’d recognize your writing?”
“That’s right.” She grinned.
“Come on, then,” he said.
She went to the right drawer immediately and removed a pale blue box which she slipped into her handbag. Preminger decided she should suffer. “How do I know those are only your letters in there?”
“They are. He kept them in this box.”
“I’d have to see.”
“They’re innocent,” she said, “there’s nothing in them.”
“I’d have to see.” He spoke like a landlord, feeling the full weight of the law on his side. He could beat her up now, take the letters from her by force. They were his property, as much a part of his legacy as the furniture. She was trespassing, and if she refused to let him see them he could even kill her. He was stunningly in the right, stunningly protected.
“Hand over the box,” said the wise steward, “hand it over by the time I count three or I’ll take it away from you. I know my rights. I don’t even have to count three. Give me the box or I’ll hurt you bad.” She looked at him, shocked, and surrendered it. “You can have your letters back,” he said, “I won’t read them. But first I have to see if there’s anything that doesn’t belong to you.”
“They’re my letters,” she cried, “they’re the letters I wrote him.”
“That’s as may be. If so, you’ll get them back. But there may be wristwatches, jewelry. There may be fountain pens.”
“Paper clips,” she said, “rubber bands around the envelopes.”
It was so. He returned the letters.
“There’s nothing in them,” she said. “It’s a mountain out of a molehill. Read them if you want to.”
“That won’t be necessary.”
“But there’s nothing in them. Just my thoughts, only my thoughts.”
“It’s not important. I don’t have to know anything about it. My father was free to live his own life. You are.”
“I made you think terrible things,” she said, opening the box and pulling an envelope from the stack. “I’ll read one. Does this sound like we were having an affair? Does this sound dirty?”
“Please.”
“You son of a bitch, you listen to this.” She began to read rapidly. Everything was as she said. The letters were her thoughts, letters he might have written a cousin. He understood that on her part at least there was nothing between them. The subject never came up. What came up were the movies she’d seen, how she felt about the war news, where she thought the economy was headed, her hopes for a better world. It was incredible. They lived in the same building, on the same floor, yet the letters could have been written from one pen pal in Australia to another in Alaska.
She read through three of them before stopping. She showed him the formal signature: Evelyn Riker. “It was an outlet,” she cried. “It was only an outlet.”
Preminger was confused. “But you have his key.”
“He wanted me to have it. He insisted. That was his outlet, that a woman have a key to his apartment. Do you think I ever used it?”
“Jesus.”
“What was so terrible? As long as I had it he could fantasize that I might use it. It was innocent. We talked by the pool. I wrote him letters. He gave me his key. Nothing happened. I can’t help what people think.”
“I’m sorry I bullied you.”
“How could you know what to think?”
The doorbell rang.
“They thought we were mixed up together,” she said, looking toward the door.
“I better get that.”
“I wanted to be gone when they came. I handled it badly. I can’t think straight. In the letters I’m composed, organized. On my feet I can’t think straight. They shouldn’t see me here.”
“Do you want me to hide you?” Preminger asked. “If you want me to hide you I will.”
“There are only three floor plans. We know each other’s layouts. If the hall toilet was occupied they’d come use the one off the master bedroom and find me.”
“I don’t have to answer it. Then, after they’ve gone, you could wait a few minutes and slip out.”
“Answer it,” she said, “answer it. This is terrible for you. Phil dead and so much crazy excitement. Answer it or I’ll bust.” They left the bedroom together.
It was two men from Ashkenaz Delicatessen delivering trays, two enormous platters round as old shields.
“I didn’t order this stuff,” Preminger told them. One of the men, his tray before his belly like a cigarette girl, shrugged. “It’s a mistake,” Preminger insisted. “Who asked for all this?”
“It’s paid for, Mister,” the other one said, and again Preminger had a sudden sense of theater, of being on stage, his every step back from the advancing food a piece of alarmed comic business, of conventional blocking in farce. Crazily he felt an overwhelming fondness for the two men, their brusque man-in-the-street manners, their stolid cabby character; he found himself extrapolating their fidelity to their wives, their love of kids, their goofy loyalty to the White Sox. Putting himself in their shoes he thought he understood their surprise at the queer scene—Evelyn still suspiciously sniffing in the corner, his own bare feet, the box of letters, the odd look of the living room, lived in for two days but somehow not as mussed as it should have been, as though the real action had to be going on in the bedroom. Since they worked for a delicatessen they would even have taken in the significance of the vacant cardboard mourner’s bench. He had an urgent impulse to behave for them, to rectify their faulty impression. They would know his tourist c
ondition, the unsavory quality of displaced person he gave off, and would have sniffed out all the willful bad timing of his lousy choices. He wanted these decent men in his corner, and would have bent over backwards to demonstrate his piety for them, as he always did in the face of another’s.
“It’s all right,” he said. “Good friends have sent it. We’re in mourning here. Deep sorrow has visited this place. I’m not able to go out. My father passed away suddenly. I’m his only son. Everything looks delicious.” The men remained impassive, and he wondered if he ought to tip them. No, he decided, guys like this can’t be bought. They asked for a ten-dollar deposit on the trays and left.
Evelyn had stopped whimpering; without his noticing she had performed some invisible toilet and reapplied make-up which had smeared when she was crying, her hair and clothes made neat and fresh, the hospital corners of appearance. Unrecovered himself—he still thought of their scene as a debauch—and sick of his sideburns and immodest flash (how should he dress? What was the apparel of his station? where could he get trousers with cuffs, white long-sleeved shirts, correct ties?) he sought to make amends.
Instead he made promises. “Harris wants to buy the place. He offers a ridiculous figure. But I’m not holding out for more. Even if I let him cheat me it would mean more money than I ever had in my life. The money isn’t in it. I mean to live here. I can do my dissertation on the kitchen table, use the place like an office. Most of the books I need are in Missoula, but I’m sending for them. Maybe I’ll fly out and drive back with the stuff. What I don’t have I can get from inter-library loan. As soon as this sitting shivah is over I’ll get organized. The job market’s terrible now—that’s why I’m taking my time. Actually, that might even work in my favor, be a blessing in disguise. If I don’t rush the thesis it could be publishable. Either way, conditions can’t stay like this forever; something has to give. Then, when I’ve got my doctorate I’ll get a job right here in Chicago. Northwestern, the U of C, Loyola, Marquette—there are plenty of good places. Roosevelt or even Wright Junior College. If I concentrate just on those I should be able to get something.”
“What do you owe me? Not even an explanation.”
He didn’t hear her. He was speaking for the record. “Then, when my life is normal again, when it’s routine and respectable, I’ll start looking around for a girl. We’ll get married, have a kid, live right here on the North Side. I appreciate that I’m starting late. Things are ass-backwards in my life, but I can catch up if I stick with it. I’ve got the house, the furniture, all I have to do is grow into what’s already here. Gee, I’m a pioneer in reverse.”
“I wish you every good luck. Like Pat O’Brien’s toast on television. ‘May the wind always be at your back.’ ” She giggled. “That would be like standing in a draft.”
He looked closely at her. “This sounds pretty lame to you? Like someone terminal making plans? People have no faith in other people’s second chances and fresh starts. Things by their nature seem irrevocable. Habit has a full nelson on us, we think. I hear some two-pack-a-day guy, a real cougher, say he’s quitting on New Year’s or on his birthday, or maybe he throws the cigarette away right in front of me, grinds it out in the ashtray and swears it’s his last, and I know he’s just kidding himself. How’s it any different for me? Is that what you think? What are you, an actuary? I know the odds. I want to tell you something. I’m pretty bouncy, I’ve come through before this, I’ve got powers of recuperation pinned on me like a kid’s mittens. I had a heart attack when I was thirty-three. It was a close shave and I thought I was a goner, but here I am.” He held up his hand. “Present.” She had jumped back when he raised his arm. “What did you think I was talking about, climbing Everest? Do I sound like William the Conqueror? Somebody who wants a screen test? I’m talking about ordinary life, H-O scale.”
“Listen,” she said, “I’d better get going.” She started toward the door.
“Gee, who’s going to help me eat all this stuff?”
“Oh, there’ll be plenty of people. I’ll come back later too.”
He stood in the doorway as she passed through and watched her as she walked down the hall. She was almost out of sight, at the point where the corridor turned, when he called after her.
“He gave you presents, didn’t he? He pissed it all away, my inheritance.”
Most of the food disappeared that evening, and all of it was gone by the following afternoon. It had been sent, it turned out, by the Harris Towers Emergency Fund Committee. One of his visitors explained that each month a portion of their maintenance money was shunted into the fund. His guests, who had after all paid for it, were not in the least shy about digging in. Only Preminger, aware of the back maintenance his father owed when he died, felt a freeloader, chewing guiltily and at last preferring to wait until his visitors left before eating anything more. Later he picked ravenously from the marvelous tiered wheel of corned beef and pastrami and sliced turkey laid out like a card trick, his fork flying, occasionally puncturing the bronze-colored cellophane which covered the meats. There were buckets of potato salad tucked away on the trays, logjams of pickles and cartons of coleslaw like a moist confetti. Some women had made coffee, serving it directly from Harris Towers Common Room urns, stainless steel and as large as the equipment in restaurants. They poured it into Styrofoam cups which they took from stacks that rose in high towers like Miami hotels.
Many of his callers were people he recognized neither from the chapel the evening before nor the funeral that morning, and he began to have a sense of the vast population that lived in Harris Towers. A few of them had peculiar names, queer portmanteau conversions of their children’s given names, now legally their own, and contrived in a strange incest from the small businesses and manufactories they had lent them to and had now, pleased with their oddly circular memorials, taken back. There was a Wil-Marg (belts) and a Freddy-Lou (blouses). There was a Rob-Roy. Some of the people were quite old, but not as many as he had expected, and though he was younger by several years than the youngest there, they seemed only a fraction of a generation up on him, and the deference these showed to those who were clearly along in years somehow reduced the difference in their ages even more.
He phrased this delicately as he could to one of his guests. “I know,” the man said, “most people think a place like this is some kind of Sun City, but I’ll tell you something. We haven’t even got an emergency room on the premises. A lot of condominiums do, you know. With a twenty-four-hour duty nurse, oxygen, the red telephones, everything. Harris Towers is a condominium with a difference. The clientele’s very active. Seventy-two percent of us are still in business.” Preminger, his retired father’s substitute, was glad he did not drag down the average. “We’ve got our Golden Agers, but so far they’re definitely in the minority. And very few vegetables, very few.” He touched Preminger’s arm. “Still,” he said, “glad to have you aboard. Always use new blood.”
In the next few days the weather turned very hot, and the central air conditioning, taxed to the limit, could barely cope. Taking his bench with him, Preminger moved his mourning out onto the balcony to try to catch a fresh breeze; there, facing southeast, he could see Chicago’s skyline, the tall apartments of Lake Shore Drive, downtown, Hancock’s startling skyscraper. But the heat was absurd, absolute. He stood at the railing and stared down into the cool turquoise of the swimming pool, then and there abandoning his shivah.
He had no bathing suit, of course, and walked to the shopping center to buy one. At the entrance to the pool the lifeguard turned him back. “I’m sorry,” he said, “but the pool is reserved for the exclusive use of residents and their guests.”
“I’m a resident.”
The boy took out a mimeographed list. “Your name, sir?”
“Marshall Preminger.”
“Oh,” he said, setting his list aside, “are you related to Mr. Preminger?”
“I’m his son. I live here now.”
“Sir, I’m not
doubting your word, but you see in this building the residents all wear blue wristbands. Like the one that woman has on.” He pointed to a sort of strap, rather like a garter or the tag worn by patients in hospitals. Other people wore yellow or red bands, but everybody seemed to have one.
“I see other colors too.”
“The yellow bands are for guests. It’s a code. In this building the guests wear yellow. The red is for visiting residents from another building. In their own pools they might wear yellow bands and the guests would wear blue or red, and their guests yellow.”
“I don’t have a blue band.”
“Sir, all residents are issued a resident band plus two visiting resident and three guest bands.”
“I don’t have any.”
“Sir, your father…I was sorry to hear about what happened. I was teaching him to dive. I saw him do a terrific jack-knife, and the next day he was dead. Your father never swam without his blue band. Did you look around the apartment?” Preminger shook his head. “That might be a good idea. I’m sure you’ll find them.”
“I’m certain I will. I’ll look for them as soon as I go upstairs.”
“Sir,” the lifeguard said, “these rules were set up by the residents themselves. I haven’t the authority to suspend them.” He lowered his voice and spoke confidentially. “Sir, people are watching. You’re putting me on the spot. Could you look for the bands now? As a favor to me?”
Preminger shrugged, went back up to the apartment and searched high and low. When he couldn’t find them and called the office, they told him that no bands had been turned in. They suggested he look for different colored bands and swim as a visiting resident in one of the other pools. He returned to the pool and, brushing past the lifeguard, jumped into the water. He felt people staring at his naked wrists. It was as if he were skinny-dipping.
“Hey,” a fat woman called roughly. “Hey, you!” Preminger continued to swim. The heavy woman went over to the lifeguard and spoke to him and the lifeguard blew his whistle listlessly. Ignoring him, Preminger swam on. The lifeguard, looking sheepish, returned to his post, but the woman followed him and the boy, nodding miserably and setting his pith helmet on the seat beside him, jumped into the water and swam after Preminger.
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