Neighbors: A Novel

by Thomas Berger

  "I commute," Keese said, "and go by there twice a day, to and from the station, and I haven't seen any change in that warehouse."

  "Are you calling me a liar?" Harry asked quietly, his eyes almost closed.

  "Certainly not," said Keese. He cravenly added: "I'm just confessing to a failure of observation."

  "They don't have their sign up yet," Harry said. "You'll see it soon. Cute name: 'Caesar's Garlic Wars.'"

  It was unlikely that he had made that up on the spot, and therefore Keese found it credible. In relief he put himself into a good mood. "Swell. Get some ravioli, huh? I just love those darn things! And stuffed clams—and scampi—"

  Harry lifted his wrist almost to his nose. "Whatever I get, I will first have to get going, Earl."

  "Sure." Keese went into the hall and up the stairs. His car keys were on the dresser. He had scooped them up and was prepared to hasten back downstairs, for believing in the reality of the Italian restaurant had little effect on his assessment of Harry's reliability when alone in a room. But someone wrapped in an oversized bath towel lay on the bed in the gathering twilight of the April evening. He pretended it was Enid, though he knew it was not, and he began to tiptoe out, as if not wishing to disturb her. Whereas his real reason was to play for time: the recumbent figure, apparently naked under the towel, was easily recognized as Ramona.

  He had reached the threshold when, so to speak, the dagger struck him between the shoulder blades: so did he think of her voice, which literally, however, was neither pointed nor keenedged but rather blurred and almost expressionless.

  What he thought he heard her say was: "Are you going out?"

  When he had deciphered these words the worst of his apprehensions were relieved. If she were half-asleep, perhaps he could get away with some soporific mumble in reply, slip downstairs, send her husband off for food, then return and persuade her to dress before Enid discovered her and before Harry returned.

  He murmured a soft, blunt sound that was intended to be reassuring and waited for the result. She made no response and was therefore judged to be asleep. He turned and softly mounted the threshold.

  "I took a bath," Ramona said clearly. "I hope you don't mind. There's a dead rat in the tub over there. I couldn't face cleaning that up."

  "No," Keese said neutrally, "I don't mind." Which was more or less true, but (1) why couldn't she have asked? (2) why the repose? He asked neither of these aloud, however, and once again sought to steal away.

  She persisted. "You'd tell me if you did?"

  "Of course."

  "I took a pill. I'm hyper enough as it is, but moving—"

  "You're taking a little nap?"

  "You do mind, don't you?" Ramona asked accusingly, and suddenly she sat up, the towel falling away from her naked breasts. But her back was to the window, from which furthermore came a failing light that had grown dimmer even as they spoke. Also, amazement affected Keese's vision. For all these reasons he saw no intimate particular of her flesh before she retrieved the edge of the large towel and covered herself again. What was shocking was really the sheer idea of her lying naked on the bed he had shared with Enid for more than a fifth of a century. He had never had another woman in that place—and in fact few in any other. Keese was a romantic; he had never been a lewd man.

  He forced himself to smile. "Harry is just going for Italian food. I imagine you'll be hungry at the end of a long moving day. You'll want to join us downstairs."

  "I'm not all that hungry," said Ramona, "if the truth be known. Physical exercise tires me out, but never gives me an appetite."

  Keese could sense her reluctance to get up. She might well persist in some damnable way, and how could he dislodge her if she did?

  He tried now at least to counterfeit some determination. "I'm sure," he said, "that your absence would be deplored by everybody. So come on down and meet my wife. By the time you're dressed Harry will be back with the food."

  "Why," asked Ramona, "are you so ill at ease at this moment? Are you afraid they'll think we are fucking up here?"

  Keese maintained his composure. "I just thought you'd be ready to come downstairs and join the party."

  She fell back into the supine position and maintained total silence.

  "I didn't mean to offend you," he said helplessly. "Stay here as long as you like." He decided to find Enid, after he gave the car keys to Harry, and put as good a face on it as possible, perhaps insisting that Ramona had fallen ill: one could not in decency oppose the will of a sick person. He bowed out of the bedroom and went down the stairs.

  He was not truly surprised when, from the hall, he saw Harry probing into one of the cubbyholes, or even an upper drawer, of the secretary desk in the corner of the living room. He had feared something of that sort. At the outset he had identified a criminal aura around the man. But Keese was furious. Had he held a loaded shotgun (he believed) he would have discharged it into Harry's wide back, blown a huge gory hole there; being subsequently convicted of manslaughter and sent to prison for ten-to-twenty he would have had to come to terms with the loss of respectability—and also the sexual deviation that was rife behind bars.

  Having gone through this sequence and ended in absurdity, he could make a joke of it. "Harry," he cried in ironic joviality, "are you robbing me?"

  "Looking for a paper and pencil," Harry said impatiently, without turning around. He slammed the little drawer in its slot, and opened the small door in the middle of the superstructure. Enid, who managed the family funds, kept her financial records there: bank statements, recent canceled checks, deposit slips, and the like.

  Harry found the stub of a checkbook and riffled through it negligently, but focused in keenly on the last page. "Three hundred and twenty-seven dollars?" he asked incredulously. "Is that all you had at the end of February?"

  Keese had now been pushed too far. He marched across the room, snatched the check stubs from Harry, and returned them to the cabinet and closed its door. Harry loomed above him, but offered no resistance. Neither was he apologetic. Indeed he leaned around Keese and would have probed further into the desk.

  "Get away from there," Keese commanded him. "Stay away from my private files."

  Harry shrugged and moved across the room. "I still don't have a paper and pencil," he said stoically.

  "Why do you need writing materials?" Keese asked. "I thought you were going for Italian food?"

  "To write down the order, for God's sake," said Harry in wincing exasperation. "You named five or six things before. This is likely to be complicated."

  Keese said: "Why not make it absolutely simple: spaghetti and meatballs, green salad. Enough for all, period. Jug of red wine, if possible. Or a whatchumacallit of Chianti, you know." He finally remembered, with no help from Harry. "A fiasco." He expected the obvious pun to be made of this, but Harry apparently never did the expected.

  "No minestrone?"

  "None for me," Keese said solemnly. "Get what you want for yourself and—" He found that he could not mention Ramona's name with a straight face; he felt a growing grimace as he approached the moment for it, and he turned away.

  "O.K.," Harry said, "the only thing that is not simple is how I'm going to get to the restaurant."

  "I agreed that you could use my car," said Keese.

  "Then how can I get it started?" Harry said this between his teeth.

  "Oh, sorry! Here are the keys."

  Harry lost no time in departing. He slammed the front door and, too short a time afterwards, could be heard to make the engine roar horribly as he put Keese's car in motion. At the turn from the driveway into the road he evoked from the tires a scream which had no precedent.

  Keese's nerves by now were so taut that he had the illusion that his belly was a stringed instrument, like a zither, and could have been strummed. He was about to search for Enid when she appeared by her own devices.

  "There really is nothing in the house but that succotash," said she. "That's not a hoax." Enid quit
e sensibly washed the gray from her hair, but quite as reasonably did not seek to reproduce the flaming red hair of her youth. She was now of a subdued auburn hue of head. Perhaps because of Ramona's presence in the house Keese found himself looking at his wife for the first time in years. Enid was altogether more pleasing to him than the younger woman.

  "That's solved," he told her now. "Italian food is on the way." He withheld the information as to who was fetching it, expecting her naturally to ask.

  Instead she clapped her hands and said: "Gee, that's perfect. Antipasto and chicken cacciatore is my vote. What a great idea!"

  "Sorry," said Keese, "it's already on its way and is merely spaghetti and meatballs, I'm afraid."

  She made a hideous face at an oval scatter rug. She said: "Carbohydrates are precisely what I don't need. I think I'll take this opportunity to diet. I'll go to bed without my supper."

  "Enid," he said, but she was already on the bottom stair. He shouted: "Enid. I have to explain! This is very strange, but—You see, it's—Look, why don't I call the restaurant and tell them to include antipasto and cacciatore in the order? What could be simpler?" He had been too rattled to think of that immediately. In fact, the idea of spaghetti was suddenly loathsome to him. He would change the entire order. Beneath this resolution was something he had repressed: a suspicion that Harry had not gone to the restaurant, but had rather stolen his car. Actually, Keese had not wanted to determine that as yet. Obviously it must be accepted at some time, if true, but this moment would have been too soon had not Enid rejected the existing menu.

  He had now got the nerve he required, and he went to the nearest telephone, that which was to be found in the understairs niche in the hallway, dialed what he still knew as Information though the telephone company had given it a new designation, and asked for the number of Caesar's Garlic Wars, feeling preposterous as he pronounced the name though he was certainly not to be blamed for it.

  His fears here were needless. The operator had a heavy accent, probably Hispanic ("Seize Her Golliwogs?"), and it was doubtful that she detected the pun, and anyway the natural sullenness of her voice suggested the kind of solipsism that would be impervious to elements that were beside the point.

  She was back in a few seconds with the announcement that if such an establishment existed it was without a telephone.

  "Might it be," asked Keese, "on a separate list of new numbers kept apart from the main one? Not yet added to the general index? It is very new."

  "Barry New?" said the operator.

  Keese thanked her kindly and hung up. Confessing to Enid that he had no means by which to supply her order was worse for him than reflecting on the theft of his car, which after all was insured. And Enid was still standing at the bottom of the stairs. He wondered where to send her; not to the second floor, certainly. Nor did he want her to stay here and listen to his subsequent phone calls: he had a bright idea and intended to re-ring Information; if that didn't work, he would dial the police and report his stolen car.

  It was Enid herself who solved his problem. Though having apparently listened to his side of the dialogue with the operator, she assumed he had been successful in his quest.

  "Fine," said she and turned into the route towards the kitchen. "I'll set the table." She set off briskly.

  Keese believed it likely that she was still not aware that other persons had been in the house; and now she assumed that the food would be delivered by the restaurant for just the two of them and they would eat it together at the kitchen table. All the same he found himself in a kind of paralytic state as to disabusing her, though he could function efficiently enough in all other areas.

  As soon as she disappeared he dialed Information again, having got the suspicion that the señorita might have looked up "Caesar's" under S.

  And it seemed he was not wrong to try again. The new operator, a flat-voiced soprano, found the number quickly.

  Keese dialed it. Another neutral voice, male, came on the wire and identified the restaurant.

  "Uh-huh," said Keese, and he apologized in advance for what he must ask. Then he described Harry and said that if he were not there already he would arrive soon, and gave the corrected order.

  "Please," said the voice of Caesar's, "we will open next week. We're still closed."

  Keese refused to despair. "But my friend doesn't know that. He'll try to get in now, because he thinks you're open for business. When he gets there, please tell him—" But what? If the place was closed, then no talk of its menu would be meaningful. "Tell him, tell him to come on back, and we'll think up something else."

  "I won't see him, sir," said the voice. "I'm alone here, upstairs in the back, and I won't even hear him if he comes." With gracious regrets he hung up.

  Now Keese was in a quandary. It was certainly too soon to call the police. Harry might be at Caesar's, fruitlessly pounding on the front door. On the other hand, with full knowledge of the restaurant's schedule he might have stolen the car, counting on Keese's being in a state of confusion at this point and so gaining a head start on his escape. By the time it was established that he had stolen the vehicle, he would be miles away. But how rotten if, deciding that Harry had hoodwinked him, Keese sent the police in pursuit: were he in error in believing his new neighbor a car thief, he would never live it down, with Harry just next door.

  He now thought about the situation in this new way: if Harry were truly his neighbor he would scarcely steal the car—unless of course he were insane. Perhaps he was an impostor—and if Harry was one, then it followed that Ramona must be one too, for Harry had mentioned her. And though she had not mentioned Harry, Keese had told her that Harry was downstairs and she had not asked for an identification. Therefore they were, Ramona and the tall blond fellow, in this together. So much was established. It would be useless then to go upstairs and question Ramona about Harry: they would necessarily be in cahoots on any kind of mischief.

  But someone had newly moved in next door: Enid had seen the van being unloaded, a process that had taken most of the day.

  Keese decided on a bold stroke. He would walk across to the house next door and see whether anyone was there at the moment. If they were not, he believed that he might gain entrance in some fashion and search for something that would identify the new tenants. If they were Harry and Ramona, then no harm would be done. Harry had his car and Ramona was in possession of his bedroom: examining their house would seem no more than that. If on the other hand someone else had taken the place and was in residence at the moment, Keese pretty much had the goods on Harry. If the new people had gone out to eat somewhere, he had a stickier problem: he must find, amidst their lately deposited possessions, evidence of their identity. And of course it would be dreadful if he were caught at it: he might be taken for a common burglar and brained by an enraged householder wielding some domestic object drafted into service as a makeshift bludgeon. (Again by means of extravagant fancies he was trying to forestall disaster.)

  He let himself quietly out the front door. The evening was now going decisively towards night, as if to compensate for its hesitancy at the outset: Keese was always sensible of that effect. He stole around the side of his house. He saw a ghostly blur and heard the muffled sound of a running soft-footed quadruped: that damned wolfhound again! Why did it persistently lurk there? The idea of stepping on its stool in the growing darkness was repulsive to him. He decided to give it a scare. Dogs remembered to avoid places where they had been given disagreeable impressions. Keese was not cruel to animals. He planned merely to wave his arms and hoot, at most to shy a stone with purposely bad aim; sometimes a beast got the idea by merely seeing a hand reaching towards the ground.

  He turned another corner and saw the rear of his house. The wolfhound was waiting at the back door, and as Keese watched, Enid came to the door and flung to it what looked very like a large piece of meat! He shrank back into the shadows. This was bizarre. Only frozen succotash in the larder, eh? It was almost as if he had seen his
wife in an intimate situation with another man—not in bed, perhaps, but sitting en famille in the living room, the fellow in his shirt sleeves and socks.

  Ramona had not admitted owning the dog. Did it then belong to Enid? If so, why had she concealed the fact? He was by no means averse in principle to keeping pets. In practice the matter had never come up between the two of them since they had been alone and Elaine had taken her cat to college with her, where she managed illegally to maintain it throughout three years of dormitories before it died of natural causes.

  Keese decided to find the proper moment to speak to Enid of this matter, and now he turned towards the house next door, which had manifestly been designed by an architect of the eclectic school some fifty years before, at which time it had been surrounded by true "country," and if the owner had believed himself something of a squire he was given some justification by the absence of any other dwellings throughout the two miles from the center of the village. This state of affairs had changed, though the neighborhood was far from becoming a "development," as it was unjustly called sometimes by those who lived there longer than the latest comer.