Other people

by Sol Stein

  Grace looked at me, not saying anything.

  "Don't just stand there," I said. "Please make that call."

  Grace returned with overcast on her face. Miss Widmer said she couldn't miss work, but she'd send the lease over to Miltmac by messenger addressed to me.

  A jury consisting of strangers is easier to persuade.

  "Please tell Miss Widmer that it's too risky sending the original to their offices, to photocopy it first and send the copy. Oh, and also tell her it might accomplish our purpose better if she was there in person, but I'll understand if she's too busy."

  I stared out of the window. I'd had enough doodling.

  I heard Grace's voice over my shoulder. "Miss Widmer says she'll take the day off. She'll be there."

  Would you know my heart was sputtering like a chainsaw engine? Instead of an appointment with a landlord, I felt like I had a clandestine assignation with a woman I wasn't supposed to see.

  Miltmac's office was on the third floor of an Eighth Avenue building that had a porn bookshop at street level and a massage parlor on the second floor. Francine would love this.

  She was already there when I arrived. The seven or eight other people in the anteroom all looked like New York messengers, pimply teenagers, middle-aged spastics, and ancient mariners. Francine was standing. There were no more chairs when she arrived and no one had bothered to offer her a seat.

  I had no alternative but to go up to her and apologize for the place and the circumstance.

  "I didn't know," I said.

  She said, "Hello," and nothing else.

  Two sticks standing.

  One of the doors off the anteroom opened, and somebody beckoned one of the messengers. The kid went in. I wondered how long we'd have to wait. It was five minutes after ten.

  When the second door opened, it was for us. The man waving a hand at us was a tall very thin sallow-cheeked man of at least sixty-five or seventy. He was too old to be named after Herbert Hoover. "I'm Hoover," he said, pointing to himself. "Who's the lady?"

  "My client. Miss Francine Widmer."

  "Pleased to meetcha," said Hoover, offering us two straight-backed wooden chairs near his desk. There was a little American flag on a stand on his desk. Behind his desk hung a faintly tinted picture of Franklin D. Roosevelt.

  "Where's your gorilla?" I asked,

  "I talked to Jason. He says you're supposed to be a real hotshot in Westchester. I need a lawyer up there sometimes."

  I said nothing.

  "That was a question," Hoover said.

  "My client list is full, Mr. Hoover."

  He looked at me as if I was crazy to turn down his bribe, looked at Francine, who was examining the fingernails of her left hand, shrugged his skeletal shoulders, got up, and stick-walked to the door. "Be right back," he said.

  I wondered what he was up to.

  I glanced over at Francine. Her face was sad and beautiful. She reminded me of the Modigliani. Of someone I once knew.

  I coughed just enough to attract her attention. "Remember," I said, "the main point is to get out of the lease."

  "Thank you," she said, "for telling me what the main point is."

  Reach over and touch her hand? She might as well have been on another planet. Was that how I seemed to her now?

  Hoover came clacking back into the room. Heel taps.

  "You," he said to Francine, "are the lady who got raped in the second floor west in number twelve, right?"

  Francine did not answer him. Would she look to me to answer?

  Hoover glanced at me. "Is she?"

  I nodded.

  He glanced back at Francine.

  "All right." He turned to me. "The only time I see tenants, they want the same thing. How much is it worth to you to get out of that lease?"

  "How much is it worth to you, Mr. Hoover, not to have me talk to my friends in White Plains about your unsafe buildings?"

  "I got no violations. I don't work that way."

  "You'll have to get rid of Jason after you pay his trespassing fine."

  "I ain't paying no fines for nobody."

  "You know he won't pay. He'll skip."

  "Mr. Thomassy, finding a super who don't steal, don't drink all day, and doesn't need to call an eighteen-dollar-an-hour plumber or electrician for every little thing that comes up is very difficult. Jason is a good boy. He tells me…" Hoover looked over at Francine. "He tells me this fellow Koslak invited him for what he thought was a free ride. He wasn't interested in no one who wasn't interested. Everybody knows he's got all the ass — excuse me, miss — he wants in those three buildings."

  I could see the color rise in Francine's face. She looked angry and exceptionally beautiful. I wanted to say to her Be patient, Hoover is the way the world is, we need to deal with him together.

  "Mr. Hoover," I said, hoping my voice didn't betray what I felt, "do you think your tenants approve of your superintendent's activities?"

  "They love it."

  "Do their husbands?"

  "What're you getting at, mister?"

  "If this trespassing matter gets into the papers, Mr. Hoover, you'll have to get rid of Jason. Or we can arrange for Miss Widmer to move, and leave Jason to you."

  "Look, Mr. Thomassy. I ain't an unreasonable sort of person. I'll let her out of her lease for an even thousand."

  "That's outrageous!" said Francine.

  I touched her hand, only for a second. I was afraid she would get up and leave.

  "It's less than six months' rent," said Hoover.

  "Mr. Hoover," I said, "I have no intention of my client paying anything to get out of an apartment that's proved dangerous for her to live in. Moreover—" I leaned forward across the desk— "I expect you to pay for Miss Widmer's moving expenses."

  "You got some nerve." The broken capillaries in his face were suddenly visible.

  "Francine," I said, "would you mind stepping out into the waiting room for a minute or two? There's something I'd like to discuss with Mr. Hoover in private."

  I wanted her to stay, but the fact of her leaving the room heightened the value of what I was about to try.

  The door closed behind her. I hoped she would be okay in that waiting room full of drifters.

  "Mr. Hoover," I said, but he cut me off.

  "You just listen a minute," he said. "You think you got me by the short hairs? I've never let anyone out of a lease without a settlement and I'm not about to start now. Pay for her moving? You gotta be nuts, mister."

  I remained silent.

  "Say something!"

  "I was waiting for you to calm down a bit. Mr. Hoover, I don't care how you make a living, what other businesses you own, like this one, or the massage parlor downstairs, or the street-floor store, you can do anything you please."

  "You're damn right, mister."

  I thought I heard him mumble something else.

  "I didn't hear you," I said.

  He thought just a second whether he should repeat what he mumbled, then he said, "I could have you taken care of, busybody."

  "It'd cost you more than a thousand."

  "I got people on my payroll."

  "Whoever you got would have to stand in a long line of people who have threatened me, Mr. Hoover, I just want you to dial this number."

  I wrote the Westchester number down on his pad.

  "I'm not making no phone calls for nobody."

  "That's the Westchester District Attorney's office, Mr. Hoover. His name is Gary Cunham. Just ask for him. Say George Thomassy is calling."

  "You're bluffing."

  "I don't bluff. That's why I asked you to place the call."

  "What's he got to do with anything?"

  "Mr. Cunham has a special interest in Miss Widmer's case. What he doesn't know is that the building she was raped in is part of the Miltmac smut empire. He's sworn to keep that kind of thing out of Westchester."

  "We don't operate anything like that in Westchester."

  "You just convin
ce Mr. Gunham of that. Maybe he won't like the idea of the connection to your New York operations. Try him. I'll pay for the call."

  I plunked two quarters down on his desk.

  "You think you're smart, don'tcha?" said Hoover. "You want me to tear up that lease without any payment for the loss we'll suffer? You're crazy."

  "You won't suffer any loss. She's paid through the month. There hasn't been an empty apartment in that price range up there in years. Your rental income won't skip a beat. You were just trying to steal a thousand from her and I'm stopping you, that's all."

  "I'm not going to pay for her moving expenses!"

  "Just to show you I'm not unreasonable," I said, "I'll settle for the cancellation if you'll sign these papers now."

  I handed him the short document I had brought with me.

  He skimmed it quickly. "I've got to show this to my lawyer."

  "Then call Gunham."

  "I don't make a move without my lawyer."

  "It's in simple English, Mr. Hoover. You've seen that kind of release before."

  "I ain't never released nobody, not in forty years."

  "There's a time to begin anything. Want to borrow my pen?"

  "What about the trespass?"

  "You really want to keep Jason?"

  "You're damned right."

  "I'll talk to the lady. I'll use my best efforts. If you sign. I'll also need your check for the deposit on the lease."

  "You're a real son of a bitch, mister."

  I picked the release form up and started to put it back into my breast pocket.

  "How do I know you're not bluffing?"

  "Make the call," I shouted at him.

  He looked at his pad where I had written the number. Then he picked up his phone and dialed the number. I guess whatever they say when you reach Cunham's office convinced him. He hung up, rubbed his chin, then motioned for the piece of paper back. I watched him sign it, put it in my pocket. I watched him make out the check for the deposit. I took it, waved goodbye at him so that I wouldn't have to shake his hand, went quickly out to the reception room. For a moment I felt panic, I couldn't see Francine. "Where is she?" I said to the receptionist. "Where did she go?"

  "In the ladies' room."

  George Thomassy, get a hold of yourself.

  When she came back in, she returned the ladies' room key to the receptionist, then said to me, "What happened with Mr. Hoover?"

  I pulled the release out of my pocket. "You're free to move," I said.

  You are free to move.

  "Did you beat him up?" she asked.

  "In my fashion. No violence. He's a dirty old man." Like me.

  "George?"

  "Yup." Yup? You'd think I was a nervous kid.

  "You've been helpful to me."

  I nodded.

  "Really helpful. All along."

  Risk rebuff. "Francine?"

  She waited.

  "I didn't know how long this would take, so I told Grace not to expect me back at any particular time if at all. I have a mildly crazy idea."

  She waited.

  Help me.

  "What's your idea?"

  "Since you took the day off — listen, how long since you've been to the Bronx Zoo?"

  "Long time."

  "Me, too. Why don't we stop there on the way to Westchester. What do you think?"

  "You want to look at all of the bachelor animals who've accepted their fate?"

  "What does that mean?" I asked. Was she saying yes? Yes to what?

  She said, "There's something pathetic about the acceptance of a cage. Or the free-roaming ones who don't try to jump the moat."

  I told her I'd lead our two-car caravan to the zoo.

  "I've seen you drive. I won't be able to keep up with you."

  "I'll watch you in my rear-view mirror."

  "Thanks."

  My mind wasn't on driving. Somehow our little convoy made it to the zoo without mishap. We had hot dogs and beer, got bone weary walking in a determination to see everything there was to see and smell of the animal kingdom that day. Later, we plunked ourselves down on a bench, stretching our tired legs in front of us, to watch the other people, odd as the animals, pass before us.

  Finally, Francine said, "Where do we go from here?"

  I have sometimes thought that the people I know are each individual parts of a jigsaw puzzle that never quite gets put together into a picture that makes sense. But at that moment, it seemed that the two pieces juxtaposed on the park bench might just possibly fit together.

  We had arranged to dispose of her apartment, if not of all of its memories. It seemed natural to go to my place.

  When we were inside and the door was closed, I turned the cylinder lock.

  "Expecting anyone else?" she asked.

  "Not today." I watched her admirable back as she ambled over to the bookshelves on the opposite side of the room. "Looking for something to read?"

  "No," she said, turning toward me. "You look like a nervous school-boy. I thought you're used to stress, counselor."

  "Not this kind."

  "What kind?" she said.

  "Us."

  Francine twined her fingers into a bridge. She was fifteen feet away when she looked up from her hands and said, "Why don't you take your clothes off?"

  I remembered my first experience with a girl, I can't remember her name but I see her as she looked then, pleading with me not to undress her, bargaining for the blouse and the brassiere only, not the blue jeans, not the panties, as if it was the clothes and not the body that was at issue, two awkward kids ending up half undressed doing something or other that was supposed to be sex, worried about what she would think of me, she undoubtedly worried about what I would think of her, worried that somebody would see us, catch us, punish us for ducking the parental admonition never to remove your clothes in the presence of someone of the opposite sex. How many grown-up couples for how many centuries fornicated with nightclothes on in the dark? It wasn't dark any more.

  "You'll be more comfortable," she said, unbuttoning her blouse. Her fingers across the room affected me. I could feel the muscles of my buttocks tighten.

  As she slipped from her blouse, she said, "It isn't as if we're a one-night stand."

  Her breasts were beautiful because she was beautiful.

  "You're very quiet for you," she said, slipping out of her skirt.

  "What are we?" I asked.

  She kicked her shoes off.

  "I hope a little bit in love," she said.

  "Yes, but what are we?"

  Her expression deemed my question unnecessary. I thought she would turn her back to me as she slid her pantyhose down and pulled them off, but she faced me as if what she was doing was perfectly natural, which it might have been if I hadn't lived, like all men of my vintage, at the end of the age of embarrassment.

  "I guess," she said at last, "we're somewhere between a one-night stand and a relationship that might last a bit. Who knows? Do you lawyers need a contract for everything? Take your damn clothes off!"

  I felt like an idiot standing there. Quickly, I went over and put my arms around her. Her skin felt hot. I had trained myself for two decades to speak with precision and care, not to let words slip, and here I was suddenly saying, "I love you," and kissing her.

  Hers didn't feel like the mouth of another person.

  When, for breath, she pulled away, she said, "Your suit's scratchy."

  And so George Thomassy, who like his precursors in Eden was taught that nakedness was shameful, with deliberate speed flung off his clothes and led Francine Widmer into his no longer private bedroom.

 

 

 
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