A change of gravity

by George V. Higgins

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Shortly after 8:20 on Tuesday morning Merrion raised his right hand to knock on the closed door of Apartment 1 at 1692 Eisenhower Boulevard.

  He could hear Steve Brody inside, talking at normal conversational level. He remembered Larry Lane: "Cheap construction guarantees you know your neighbors, whether you want to or not."

  Brody's voice expressed pain. "Well, but I already told you that, didn't I that I'd do it? I told you yesterday. The thing is, I can't get to it yet, not 'til I get finished with the pump. I got to get the pump fixed first. I got it all taken apart down there now. A big storm comes along and hits us and it could, a hurricane or something; time of year for that, you know, and we do get 'em through here — dumpa lotta water on us 'fore I get it back together, wed be in big trouble. And this's something we don't want to happen. Because, you'll remember, we didn't get to it last summer, like we should've done, and we knew it at the time. So it then came back and bit us, served us right, and we both admitted that. You were saying "No, it'll be all right. It'll go another year, make it through another season."

  And then it didn't, did it.

  "And then so as a result, we then had all that trouble it broke down, the end of March." Brody's voice was becoming louder and his words were coming faster. "All that snow and then the rain should've known we're gonna get that, soon's we didn't fix the pump and then we get the thaw and we had a flood in here. Basement fulla water. Would've ruined the oil burner, I didn't pull it out and lug it up here in the kitchen by the gas stove to dry out. Tenants screaming bloody murder, two whole days without no heat. I am scared to death myself, 'fraid the pipes're gonna freeze 'nd burst; plaster comin' down around our ears. You remember that, don't you? You yelled at me enough, worsen any of the tenants, like it's all my fault or something that it hadda go and rain."

  Merrion tapped two fingertips twice on the door.

  "So anyway, now I'm fixing that." There was a note of firm assurance audible in Brody's voice. "All going to be taken care of, so we wont have to think about that again this year, first time we get snow. I get through with that plus of course whatever else comes up along the way, something has to, never fails, that can't wait a day or so then I'll paint the third floor hall."

  He hesitated. "The hallway on the second floor? No, did that one last year, 'chou 'member? That time in April we had the three vacancies up there all at once; I'm practically going out of my mind here, trying to get all of them painted? We both agreed the time it made good sense to do the hallway, get it done at the same time since it so happened I was working up there anyway."

  Merrion rapped his knuckles three times on the door.

  "And then after I get through with that, the one on the third floor, then the downstairs hall." Brody paused again. When he resumed talking his voice was noticeably louder. "No, doggone it. Will you just listen to me? Just once will you listen what it is I'm trynah tell you? I keep trying to tell you things all the time, and it always seems like I can't get any place, ever make you listen: you can only do one thing at a time, all right? One thing at a time."

  He paused long enough to take a breath. Merrion closed his fist and hit the door. The tone of Brody's voice changed; it took on a conciliatory note. "Because look here now, all right? I'm not sure you actually realize this, but there's a lot of work to do around this place here all the time, a helluva lotta work. Really. Anna people who own the property, you know, that four guys trust? They all live around here. It's not like with Florentine Gardens, say, or Falls Estates, owners're from alia cross the country and never even see the places. Something starts to go those places, you got some time before you really hafta fix it. Owners never see how bad you've let it get, just as long's the checks keep comin'. The four guys on this trust're different, all local. People own this place're here. We cut too many corners, it starts to look rundown, drivin' by they'll see it. Kick us out and hire new management. You and I're outta jobs, or I at least would be. So consequently what that does, it really keeps me hoppin' all the time around here. Day and night it seems like, sometimes.

  This's not a well-built building. It needs a lot of maintenance, just to keep it operating. And that's not allowing for any improvements here, either that's just trying to keep it up, trying to stay even."

  Merrion, now interested, lowered his fist and leaned his left shoulder against the door frame, crossing his arms.

  The sound of conciliation in Brody's voice became pleading. "And sometimes you know, even though I'm doing that, workin' day and night, it just seems as though it's never gonna be enough. I get so that I start in thinkin': "No, it's no use. It's never gonna be no use. No matter what I ever do, I cannot keep up." But even though I think that, I still keep on trying. Because I know that no matter what I do, if it's the best I can do then my conscience will be clear. And if it isn't all right, Ginny, that's just gonna be too bad, because it's all that I can do." He paused.

  Merrion looked at his watch, grew impatient and rapped twice again.

  "Yeah," Brody said, adding urgency to his tone, "I know that. I realize all that; I hear what you're saying but just listen to me now, all right? There isn't anybody else who if you could get them to come in here on short notice, could do it any better or any faster, either.

  I'm telling you: It's not just me. It's just the way it is, and that's all there is to it. So if I maybe gave you that impression, thinkin' that, something that I might've said or something, well then, I just didn't mean ah all right? Not what I meant to do. Right. Now, no, now look, all right? There's somebody at the door now and I got to answer it. No I don't know who it is. That's why I got to answer it, so I can find out. I can't talk to you no more right now. I got to get the door. Yeah, Ginny, I know: you're worried about it."

  His tone became plaintively soothing. "I understand that, I really do, and I'll take care of it for you. No, I can't tell you when, not right now. Because I can't do that. Look, there's someone at the door. I can't talk no more. I tell you what: I'll call you back. Later on this afternoon. Yeah, this afternoon, soon's I get a chance, after lunch. Good-bye."

  Merrion heard Brody replace the handset hard on its wall hook and say "Jesus Christ, now what?" There were two footsteps and the door opened. "Yeah?" Brody said gruffly. Then he became dismayed and said: "Oh. Mister Merrion. Diddun know it was you."

  "Morning, Steve," Merrion said, 'sorry to bother you."

  "Oh that's okay, Mister Merrion," Brody said, frowning deeply, recomposing himself, 'perfectly all right." He was average-sized, five-ten or so, big-boned, at one-seventy or so, no more than ten or fifteen pounds heavier than he needed to be, but it looked like more; he seemed to carry all the excess flesh as folds of skin on his face and neck and rolls around his waist. He wore his brownish-grey hair long and combed it back in thick strands from the brow of its recession in the front, arranging them in several sebum-heavy strands over his scalp. He wore a clean white tee-shirt and dark-green chino work pants; heavy black shoes with thick welted petroleum-proof soles. He had a snap-ring of keys hooked to the belt-loop just behind the opening of his right-front pocket. He gestured with his right thumb toward the phone behind him. "I was just talkin' onna phone. Ginny over management. She called me up again. She's always calling me up all the time. Every morning, got some new thing on her mind, some new project for me to do. Like she wants to drive me nuts. And then, in addition, she comes over here, two, three, four times a week, see how I'm doin' on something. I don't know what it is with that woman, what she thinks I am."

  "Maybe she's lonely, and hot for your body," Merrion said. "Lookin' for love. Just doesn't know how to say it to you, put it into words."

  Brody grinned and reddened. He had clearly envisioned that possibility, perhaps often. "Nah," he said, 'isn't that. Can't be that. Guy my age, I'm fifty-one years old, and she's what, thirty-two?

  Just a kid. Uh uh, I think what it is is that she doesn't understand how long it takes to do a thing. No idea, you know? No comprehen
sion at all.

  "You get these kids: it's not their fault, but they never did anything with their hands. Spend all their lives shufflin' papers, workin' with figures. Now the computers: hit a key and what they want to do is done. So as a result they got no idea of how long it actually takes to do something. They think when they say it, they want it done, bingo, that's all there is to it. Now it's time to go on to the next thing onna list. "Can't have you standin' around here alia time, doin' nothin', getting' paid for it, you know." And then they laugh, "ha ha," like that at you; like they didn't really mean it, they're only fooling with you.

  "Well, it just isn't like that, as you and I both know, and I try to tell her that sometimes. "You know when I'm working on a thing and it's gonna take a week, all right? Because I told you it was gonna take that, before I even started. I been on it a day and of course it isn't done. So what're you doin' this now for, already; comin' around and actin' like you still don't understand a day is not a week? You got me thinkin': how can this be? After I went to all the trouble of explaining it to you, tell you what's involved in a thing, I make sure you understand; you tell me you do; and then, boom, like that, you turn around and call me up, the very next day, the day after I started, acting like you don't know the first thing about it and I must be finished now. Tell me you now've got something else for me, I got to get started on right away. I mean: How can you keep doing this to me all the time? This doesn't make any sense."

  "She always tells me she'll stop," Brody said. "Promising me then she wont do it no more; she'll cut it out. She never does, though." He paused and reflected, "She's still a good kid, though; we get along all right."

  The anxiety returned to his voice and his face wrinkled up. "But hey, what's it with you being up here? Something didn't go wrong here or something, I hope? Everything still okay with Mark, up there and everything with him? I didn't hear nothin'. He was doin' okay last I heard. Sounded like he was all right. I know I didn't get no call here. Got my machine on all the time here, too, I'm not in the apartment; somewhere else in the building or something. I know they got my number up there and everything 'cause I gave it to them there when he went in. I didn't get no calls. Kid's still all right up there, isn't he? Nothin' wrong there with Mark?"

  "If there is, I haven't heard about it," Merrion said. "Far's I know, everything's fine."

  Brody's face relaxed. He nodded and smiled. "Okay then," he said, 'that makes it easy. Then what can I do for you, here? Anything else is a cinch, long's it's not those fuckin' drugs again. Anything else I can handle, no problem."

  "It's LeClerc I'm here about," Merrion said. "I'm here to see Janet LeClerc'

  Brody looked puzzled. "Yeah," he said, 'sure. She lives here all right." He grinned again. "But hey, you oughta know that. You're the one put her in here. You told me to give her an apartment if I had one vacant and we did, and I did it, which I was glad to, something I could do for you. Number fourteen. Third floor. You know the building, right? Sure, you used to come here a lot. Back when Larry Lane's still here; you used to come here and see him, number eleven. Jee-zuss he hadda hard time, the poor guy. Anyway, number fourteen: one of our nicer ones. Always gets plenty of sun. Overlookin' the street at the front. All she's gotta do's look out the window, any time she wants, see everything that's going on. She's been here with us almost a year now.

  "Not the best tenant we ever had, no, couldn't go that far for her. But she doesn't cause us much trouble. Rent's always paid on time, anyways; that's always the biggest thing. Course it should be, town's paying it for her; she don't have to pay it herself.

  "But just the same, no matter who's payin', I wish they could all be like that. Not to have that to worry about, ever again on my mind:

  "Well, did so-and-so pay their rent yet, or are we gonna have to go in and throw 'em out onna street?"

  "I'm tellin' you: that is one job I really hate. I'd rather eat something that I knew was gonna make me sick and throw up and maybe break out in a rash, everything like that, 'n I would to hear I'm gonna have to go and put somebody out. And it's almost always the same reason. In some buildings I've been in sometimes have to do it on account of someone making too much noise or not being clean or something; that could happen. But in this building it's almost always been because for some reason they didn't have no money, so I have to go and do it. I don't care what the reason is. It don't make any difference to me. I got my orders and that's what I hafta do: Out in the street; they haven't paid us their rent. Cryin' an' hollerin', weepin' an' wailin', everything like that. Sometimes they wanna fight me. Like this was my idea? I'm the one who made the decision that they're getting' thrown out; this's something I like to do?

  "I'm tellin' you, sir, and I am not kidding you, one little bit: it's an awful part of the job. It's the worst job in the world. At least it's not gonna be that with her."

  His expression changed, becoming avid. "But why then, what is it? Why is it you want to see her7. You think she did something wrong? Like that time when she tried to steal all the old lady's money? She in some new kind ah trouble? Some kind of a problem we should be concerned about here?"

  "I need to talk to her, is all," Merrion said. "There's something I need to see her about. But I've been up there. I went up to fourteen and I knocked on her door and she didn't answer. The TV was on in there. Not loud, but I could hear it. I decide maybe she didn't hear me, knocked again. Good and hard, so she would've had to've heard me.

  But she didn't come to the door that time, either. So that raised another possibility: maybe she did hear me; she just doesn't want to see me. Got a guest in her apartment, like I just told her Saturday she was not to do. And so that's when I decided I'd come down here, and see if you knew where she was."

  "She's usually up there, this time of day," Brody said doubtfully, looking at his watch. "This's when she's got the news on. Now it's not that I'm watching her alia time now, I wouldn't want you to think that, but this time of day is when I'm getting started, going to work on what I got to do. And so I'm around the place inna morning, upstairs or down. Or on my way down to the basement, all right? Like I was on my way today, when Ginny called up. You move around like that in the building every day, you get so you know where most of the people usually are. And this time of day she's generally in her apartment."

  "Yeah, well, that's what I thought," Merrion said, "TV going and so forth. But then when I knocked again, and she still didn't come, I wasn't sure. Does she leave the TV on, if she happens to go out?

  Because she told me she goes to the store in the morning to get cigarettes."

  Brody nodded vigorously as Merrion talked. "Uh huh," he said, 'every day. Faithful as clockwork, you can depend on it. Winter; summer; hot or cold; raining; snowing; I don't care: by ten A.M. she's down the stairs and out the door, on her way down to Dineen's. Raining or something? Doesn't make any difference to her. She's got her little plastic hat on, one of those folding plastic hats they used to give out in banks and dry cleaners always wears one of those. Inna wintertime, her boots and coat and scarf on, so forth, all bundled up, keep her all nice and warm. Like the mailmen, you know? Whatever it takes. Janet's going out, and that's just all there is to it. She's got her routine she follows, regular rounds every day."

  "But not this early," Merrion said, 'she doesn't go this early."

  "Nope," Brody said firmly. This'd still be too early for her. Janet by now'd be just about up. Sittin' in her bathrobe in front ah the TV there. Drinkin' her coffee; tellin' everybody off, says something that she doesn't like on the television: "Yah that's what you say, always givin' us your stuff. Liar, liar, pants on fire. Bullshit." Talks back to it all the time. Oh, she gets all upset at them. I've been up there, working on the third floor, and I've heard her inside sayin' all that stuff. Very emotional.

  "Assuming of course she got to bed last night; made it in the bedroom and then actually got into bed. Didn't go to sleep there in her chair, front of the TV; wake up still in front of it, still on, sa
me place inna morning."

  "She does that," Merrion said.

  "Now and then, she does," Brody said. "She used to, at least.

  Sometimes I guess she must've been sleeping so heavy she went to the bathroom in her chair, couldn't even get herself up to go in the bathroom and do that. "Cause there's stains on it. You can see them if you're in there, and she isn't sittin' in it.

  "See, the reason I know this stuff is because the people under her and the ones next to her, the next apartment, they complained to me sometimes about the TV bein' too loud and goin' all night. That would mean I would have to go in there and speak to her, and find out what was goin' on. Didn't happen all that much, maybe four, five times, but it did happen. Go up there and knock on her door, and… this wasn't something I look forward to, you know? It's not like I enjoy it. But she didn't wanna believe that. She thought this was all my idea, to hassle her and make her feel bad, and it wasn't that at all. I tried to explain that to her, make sure she understood that it was nothing personal, involved.

  "See, what I was assuming was that she was probably drinking, passed out in the chair with the television on. There was a lot of bottles I would see that she'd been putting out when she put her rubbish out, you know? That was mostly what her rubbish was — bottles. Newspapers, one or two magazines, cartons from frozen food dinners, which I guess she mostly lives on. Cereal boxes and that kind of stuff. But most of what she was throwing out that you would see when they emptied the barrels was liquor bottles, vodka and rum sometimes she didn't put the cover back on, and I would see what she put in. But you still would've known; you could hear them empty her barrel because the bottles made a lot of noise, bangin' and crashin' all over the place.

  "But I was used to it. It wasn't like this was something new, you know? We've had other tenants here who've had that problem, and it's really not that uncommon. People living alone: they don't have much to do with themselves. Get lonely, start drinking too much. It isn't a good thing for them, but they don't stop; I guess they get accustomed to it.