Neighbors

by Thomas Berger

  Enid drew back in what seemed excessive dismay. "As it turns out, we have virtually no food at all." She marched to the stove, carrying the plastic container before her as if it were a crown on a velvet pillow.

  "You can't mean it!"

  Enid stared boldly at him. "I was wrong."

  Keese felt the onset of an awesome despair. But this soon proved to be needless, for the answer could not have been more simple. He punished one of his hands with the other and said: "We'll go out for dinner. Yes!"

  "No," said Enid, turning in curiosity. She had not even yet put down the container of succotash. "The Coachman's closed for renovation."

  "Sometimes," said Keese, ebullient now, "our life is too circumscribed. We are not alone in the vastness of the tundra. We are but four miles from a prize-winning eatery, nationally renowned: La Nourriture, hey?"

  Enid performed a reverse whistle. "Can you be serious?" Now she lowered the plastic box at last. "Are you in some kind of trouble?"

  "What a bizarre question," said Keese. "Would I want to celebrate trouble with a meal costing say twenty dollars a plate?"

  "At the minimum," said Enid. "But you might sooner do that than feed upon a success: I've known you for a long time, my friend."

  Ordinarily he did not mind her applying to him the results of, apparently, an analysis of someone else; indeed, he was often flattered to hear of some trait or taste of which he had ever been innocent (e.g., "you know that hot temper of yours"; "like you, my father doted on stuffed breast of veal"). But her current misjudgment of him seemed to carry a negative implication, and he was made impatient by it.

  "Be that as it may," said he, "if you want to come along to La Nourriture you will go now and get dressed."

  Enid sighed and looked dismally at the container of succotash. "I suppose you won't believe this, but I really don't want to go out."

  Keese felt an alarming focus of heat at the base of his neck, though he wore a knitted shirt with an open collar. He recognized the surge of blood as an anticipation of dining alone with Ramona.

  "You mean you want to stay home, but you have no objections to my going?"

  "That's exactly my point," said Enid. She was quite a handsome woman, better-looking, actually, than when she had been younger, so that it was routine for people to believe she had once been a beauty who was now faded. Naturally, no one made this observation directly to Keese, but he sensed it, and thought it was unfortunate that she did not get her due. She had marvelous breasts, and he was still charmed by her freckles in a certain light. She was—but he caught himself here: he was being grateful to the point of hysteria.

  "I haven't even told you whom I was thinking of entertaining," he said now.

  "Why not let it be a surprise?" suggested his wife, and he agreed, without having any real sense of what she meant, and he went, almost at the jog, back to the living room and rounded the turn from the hallway and said—

  Nothing whatever. The room was empty. Ramona had departed—if indeed she had ever been there. Had his old trick-of-the-eye now moved towards the command of all his faculties?

  He went quickly to the dining room and looked out the window that gave onto the narrowest portion of his own yard and, beyond, the widest segment of the lawn of the house next door. He saw nothing animate for a moment, and then the ubiquitous wolfhound came into view again. The dog seemed to be grazing, like a herbivore. Ramona was nowhere in evidence. Crazy little bitch! She had ruined his Friday evening, perhaps even the whole weekend.

  He wandered disconsolately back to the living room. She had drunk the remainder of the white wine. He possessed nothing more in the way of an alcoholic beverage, and there was only frozen succotash for dinner. His watch assured him that the village market had closed an hour ago and that the liquor store would lock up in half a minute.

  Once again he was asking Why, when without warning a male stranger briskly entered the room. A tall, muscular man with a head of blond curls, he had apparently, without invitation, let himself into Keese's house!

  CHAPTER 2

  FOR an instant Keese considered fetching the poker from the fireplace and beating this intruder to death, but then he stopped trying to impress himself with bluster and realized that he should be seriously indignant about the invasion—unless of course the fellow was some repairman, an electrician or the like, summoned by Enid to perform a technical function. But the mystery was soon dissipated.

  "Hi, Earl," cried the blond giant, and he threw out a hand large as a shovel. Keese was prepared to be maimed by the handshake, but he found that in point of fact the man's grip was reassuringly spongy. "I'm Harry. I imagine Ramona's mentioned me."

  "No doubt," Keese said warily. "You're her?"

  "Sure I am," said Harry, in the airy fashion of someone who has boldly not listened to that to which he is pretending to respond. He looked to be at least six four and had enormous shoulders and an otherwise flat body: not burly, but, uh—Keese searched for the word, which was not one that he liked, because neither the look nor the sound of it seemed to support the meaning, which was essentially an expanded sort of wiriness—rangy: there it was. Keese himself, though not always as stout as now, had always been compact of body, and naturally, for reasons of survival, he preferred his own sort of build, while at the same time despising it.

  He had by no means forgiven Harry for barging in uninvited, but nothing was to be gained by being surly in the face of a fait accompli.

  "Well, Harry, welcome to the end of the road." Not only was this designation another old family saying, but it was less dispiriting than dead end.

  Harry shrugged and said pleasantly: "What's on the menu? I'm famished." He actually brought his two large palms together and abraded them.

  With horror Keese remembered his invitation! "Oh, my God," he said, "yes. Well, I am really humiliated, Harry. I spoke too quickly. Afraid only some frozen succotash's in the larder, you see. And the stores are closed." His failure to consider the French restaurant was not due to active suppression: he had honestly forgotten the project so ecstatically conceived.

  All good feeling (whether bogus or not) receded from Harry's smile. For a moment he could have been on the point of hurling himself at Keese's throat—or at any rate, so Keese felt. Harry's right eye twitched, an ugly sneer was insinuating itself into his lower nose. But then all at once he rose above his apparent disappointment.

  "Well, me bucko," he roared jovially, "then I'll just go and get some takeout."

  Keese smiled. "I can see you just moved out from the city," said he. "We've got no edible takeout in these parts, only the standard burgers and dogs, pizza."

  Harry leaned down and winked, and then he said in an unpleasantly confidential way as if he were making an indecent proposal: "You just leave it to Harry."

  Keese puffed out his lips. "I've lived here for twenty years, but I—"

  "Always more to learn about anything!" cried Harry, and he seized Keese by the crook of the elbow and propelled him across the carpet for a few feet, then slapped him on the rump, in the mode of athletes at moments of high spirit. Keese had never participated in sports since this gesture had come into fashion, and he had never liked seeing it delivered on television, but receiving it was a horror to him.

  Had he known it was coming he might actually have thrown a punch at Harry to forestall him, but again he was confronted by the accomplished fact.

  Harry had unhooked his elbow now and swung around to face him. Keese was aware that Harry would be called handsome by some, perhaps by most, but he himself was never favorably impressed by a prominent aquiline nose (it seemed an impropriety), nor in fact did he much like blond hair on a man, where the objection was usually that, far from being fair, it had turned muddy, perhaps even with a greenish tinge. But Harry's was almost bright; he must touch it up; that seemed even worse.

  "Look here," said Harry, speaking down his chest as if rolling stones from the summit of a hill, "you just let me find the edibles." Again h
e threw out his right hand, which looked larger than ever. Keese could find little reason to shake on this, but anything that would encourage Harry to be on his way was surely to the good. Even though Harry's return might be regarded as inevitable Keese would have some respite, and perhaps he could fashion a style in which better to meet his new neighbor's assault.

  He put his own hand towards Harry's, but Harry frowned and drew away, twitching his fingers at Keese. "I meant money, old chum," he said reproachfully. "If I do the running, you can bloody well pay the tab." He laughed horsily.

  Keese went for the wallet he carried old-fashionedly in the one rear pocket (on every pair of trousers) which could be buttoned. While obviously designed as a deterrent to pocket-picking, in practice (he had read) it was none. The wallet, having been half sat upon for many years, was slightly curved so as to conform to Keese's upper ham. He now plucked out a sheaf of three bills at random: they proved to be two twenties and a ten. In truth he had not bought takeout at home since before Elaine had gone away to college, and in those days ten dollars' worth of deep-fried chicken or superburgers inundated in fragrant garbage would have been enough to feed a regiment.

  But keeping up with the times he chose a twenty and then, so as to err generously, added the ten.

  Harry scowled at the bills when he had received them, and he derided Keese: "Chintzy!"

  Keese disliked being thought mean, but he dreaded the spending of cash. It had become almost a superstition with him to retain folding money, whereas he could be profligate with credit cards. But it was ridiculous that whatever Harry had in mind should cost more than thirty dollars.

  Keese winced, and still held on to his remaining twenty. "You're not going to drive to the city?"

  Harry squinted and said in a tone of tease: "Just don't you worry about old Harry. Hand over that loot."

  Keese seemed to have no other option. He stoically forked over the twenty. Harry showed his teeth at it and then looked up quizzically at Keese. "Whatzis, a two-dollar bill?"

  It was, of course. Keese hadn't seen one for years. He worried that someone had palmed it off on him as a twenty, relying on his probable failure to notice. No doubt he looked a pushover to some people, among them Harry and Ramona.

  He now set his jaw in belligerence and said: "Yeah. If thirty-two bucks isn't enough, then forget it. We'll eat the succotash."

  Harry seemed impressed. He threw up his hands as if in defense, backed up, and said: "O.K., O.K., I didn't personally make the inflation."

  Keese was mollified. "You know, you don't want to be cheap, but you know—" He realized he was apologizing again. He and Harry grinned in each other's faces for a moment.

  Then Harry returned to the attack. "Let's have your car keys, Earl. I'm out of wheels. My fuel pump gave up just as I swung into the drive next door. But lucky it happened there, huh?"

  "Then the only thing that makes sense," Keese said firmly, "is that I go for the food. After all, I'm supposed to be being neighborly to you: you're the guest. Why should you do anything? Just sit down here, and Enid will come in and keep you company. Unfortunately there's nothing to drink, and there won't be an answer to that problem tonight. The liquor store's closed by now and so's the next nearest, over in Allenby. What's your source for the food? Maybe I can talk them into selling me a bottle of wine under the table?"

  "I can't permit that, Earl," said Harry, with a strange look in his eye. "If I let you pay for the grub, brother, then I'm going to fetch it." Again he seemed to be on the verge of committing a violent act, and he was certainly large enough to make it ugly. Only at such times was Keese afraid of him. But Harry weakened the force of his physical threat by his next speech, which relied on spite for its effect. "I just won't tell you where my source is!"

  Keese decided he was but a big harmless fellow. He raised his hands as though he were being held up and told Harry: "We'll go together. I'll get my keys." He started towards the staircase in the hallway, but a muffled sound came from behind him, a kind of strangulated raspberry, not quite a full-fledged lip-fart, but it was bizarre enough to cause Keese to turn.

  Harry however was not caught with contorted mouth (had he actually, outrageously, broken real wind?). Whatever, he soon distracted Keese with a display of wounded feelings. "Think I'd steal your car, is that it? Well, sir, if—" He seemed to have lost his breath again, and he sought it with a gasp that probably explained the earlier sound. "I'm sorry I brought up the matter. Forget it, fellow!" He sank his incisors into his lip, though that might have been an illusion, for no blood welled up. His jaw-joints were surging.

  Keese was back in the soup with regard to Harry. He believed him unbalanced, a dangerous state in one so large, who merely by falling could destroy much.

  "No offense intended," he hastened to say. "Certainly I wasn't implying you would steal my car."

  "I say you were," Harry insisted stridently.

  Keese realized at this point that he should terminate their association, but he was not sufficiently deft, he feared, to do so without incurring Harry's resentment. And to have an outright enemy as one's nearest neighbor, when one lived at the termination of a dead-end road, with only a wooded hollow beyond, a weed-field across the street, was unthinkable. For example, Harry could effectively impede Keese's egress by car at any time he so decided—and pretend, if the police were called, to have done so accidentally: it was not a thing that could easily be proved. Keese was in fact defenseless against any form of revenge that a demented adversary might choose.

  "I wasn't accusing you of anything," he assured his neighbor, and added a supposedly amiable chide: "And speaking of offense, I'll take my own if you insist on feeling wounded. I'll get the car keys." He would, then, let Harry drive his automobile away, but he balked at the thought of leaving him alone in the living room, a place that somehow seemed more seriously vulnerable, owing to its very immobility. "Come along and meet Enid." He feinted towards the kitchen, but he failed to stir Harry.

  "I'll just hang on here," said the big fellow. He sauntered to a wing chair that was probably sturdy enough to withstand his attack, but Keese winced as he watched Harry fall into it and heard the asthmatic gasp of stuffing and muffled shriek of articulated wood.

  Keese then decided to fetch Enid and have her stand guard in the living room while he went upstairs. He saw no irony in this: not only was Enid more durable than the furniture, but for some reason, perhaps his impression of Ramona, Keese doubted that Harry was dangerous to women.

  He started for the kitchen, but stopped again at the sound of Harry's protest. "Where do you think you're going?"

  Keese could not bring himself to confess: to fetch my wife so that she can keep an eye on you. It did not occur to him to explain in the flattering way, i.e., to assure Harry that Enid would be charmed to meet him. Instead he lied in panic.

  "To get my car keys."

  "You don't carry them on you?"

  Was Harry making this an accusation? Keese said: "Not at all times."

  Harry flashed his full grin, which on a face that large was ingratiating. "No quick getaways for you, then? You stand your ground and face the music."

  Keese was somewhat embarrassed by the honorific platitudes. "That's putting the best face on it. Maybe I'm just lazy." He regretted having said that, for Harry's grin turned sardonic as he watched.

  "You still don't trust me, do you?" the large man asked. He hurled himself up from the wing chair. "I have a feeling that if you go around the corner you might climb out a window or something. All I'm asking is that loan of your car to go get food for us all, for God's sake. I'm not going to use it to rob a bank. I'm hardly going to sell it! And for that matter, where could I at this time of day?"

  Keese was embarrassed to hear the situation put in these terms, and he tried to alleviate the feeling by taking the initiative from Harry. He asked suspiciously: "What I still don't understand is precisely where you intend to get the food? Really. I'm an old hand in these parts, and I don
't know of—"

  He was interrupted. In a wounded tone Harry said: "Just because I'm the new man on the block here doesn't mean that I don't know this area or that I have no resources locally."

  Keese shrugged. "O.K., I'm sorry if I hurt your feelings." On Harry's example he grew bolder. "But you have a way of avoiding detail."

  "Because of fear, do you think?" asked Harry. "Are you saying that I don't dare reveal my plans because I'm yellow?"

  Keese was amazed. "What's fear got to do with naming a restaurant, for God's sake?" The tension had built up in him. He tried to laugh it loose. "Do you realize that we're two grown men, two neighbors who hardly know each other, and we are arguing about nothing? How did this begin, anyway?"

  Harry sat down in the wing chair again, this time with less impact. "If you want to know," he said sighing, "it's a new place, just opened, just beyond town, where the warehouse was, on the other side of the railroad station. Italian."