Small Apartments

by Chris Millis

  “Hi,” said Burt through the glass.

  Tommy nodded.

  “I see you’re checking your mail. You live here?”

  Shit, thought Tommy, this guy is a cop. He was beginning to get nervous. He did not want to freak out right there in the breezeway. “What’s the problem,” asked Tommy. “Are you a cop?”

  “No,” chuckled Burt. “I’m a fireman. I just want to ask ya a few questions about your landlord, Mr. Olivetti. Come on out, I won’t bite ya.”

  Tommy’s pulse slowly returned to normal. He stuffed his mail into his green army surplus backpack. “I haven’t seen Mr. Olivetti,” said Tommy. “He’s supposed to come fix my sink. It drips.”

  “Uh huh,” said Burt. “Well I don’t figure he’ll be getting around to that any time soon. He got burned up in a fire at his house last night.”

  Tommy opened the outside door and stepped onto the porch. “Is he all right?” he asked.

  “Nope. He’s dead,” said Burt.

  “Wow,” said Tommy.

  “Yeah. Wow,” said Burt Walnut. “When did you last see your landlord?”

  “Last week. He was here to cut the lawn. I feel bad and everything, but I’m late for work,” said Tommy.

  “Uh huh,” said Burt. “Who else lives here with you, son?”

  Tommy pointed to the windows as he spoke. “There’s a nosy old guy who lives in that apartment named Mr. Allspice. And there’s a weird fat dude who lives in that apartment named Franklin.”

  “What makes the fat fella weird?” asked Burt.

  “For one thing the dude has got this giant horn that he blows at all hours of the day. It’s like one of those Alpine horns that the dudes in the cough drop commercials blow. You haven’t heard anything till you’ve heard that fucking horn blowing through this building. And he’s just, like, I don’t know, a real hermit. Yesterday he wouldn’t even open his door just to hand me a lousy empty pop bottle.”

  “You don’t say,” said Burt as he wrinkled his brow and feigned disbelief. He was giving Tommy an audience for his outrageous stories.

  “Yeah. He made me yank the bottle through the doorway while the security chain was still attached. For whatever reason, that dude did not want anyone looking inside his apartment last night.”

  “What’d you need with an empty pop bottle?”

  “Nothing. I just needed it, that’s all.” Tommy’s ears began to turn red.

  Burt sensed that he had somehow spooked the kid, so he moved on. “About what time was all this nonsense with the pop bottle?” asked Burt.

  “Um, it was almost the end of the seventh Magnum, P.I. episode, so it had to be just before eight o’clock,” said Tommy. “Hey, what’s going to happen to this building now that Mr. Olivetti is gone?”

  “He has a daughter out west who is coming in to settle his affairs. I’m sure she’ll let ya know where things stand with the apartment building and so forth,” said Burt. “Well, I’ve made you late for work. You’d better get going.”

  Tommy Balls hiked his backpack onto his shoulders and walked off towards the 2-4 store. Damn. Burning to death, thought Tommy Balls. That tops the list of ways I don’t want to die. When I go, I hope I’m getting laid and sucking on a fat doobie.

  Burt watched Tommy until he was out of view then turned to look inside Franklin’s window. He cupped his hands around his eyes and pressed his nose against the dusty glass. That’s a mighty small apartment, thought Burt. He noticed the big horn the kid was talking about leaning against an orange vinyl-covered chair. On the table by the window there was a pair of binoculars on top of a pile of newspapers. Burt banged a couple times on the window and an old hound dog popped his head up from behind the coffee table. The dog stretched and made his way over to the window slowly. He blinked his tired eyes up at Burt. One ear was flopped back on top of his head. Burt tapped the glass with his fingernails. “Hey, fella. Ya bite?”

  Burt looked around behind him, then turned back to the window. He placed his fingers on the glass and pushed it up easily. He climbed in, closed the window and gave the dog a few gentle pats on the head. The table by the window looked like a good place to start. Wednesday morning’s Buffalo News local section was folded over to the story about the barn fire at the Olivetti house. Could be a coincidence, thought Burt. He picked up Franklin’s binoculars and looked through them at the yellow building across the street, then laid them back on the table.

  Franklin’s dog climbed up on the couch and settled in for a nap.

  Burt walked around the cramped room with his thumbs hooked in his pockets. He lifted up the end of the alphorn and gave it a good once-over. He blew a little air through it softly and it made a whiny honk. On the wall above the table was a makeshift shrine to the nation of Switzerland. There was a six-foot by four-foot Swiss flag thumbtacked to the wall covered with postcards, magazine photographs, and dangling Alpine bric-a-brac. Burt studied the items briefly, not quite sure how long he had before Franklin’s return. On Franklin’s twin-sized bed were a grey T-shirt and a pair of tan shorts. He picked them up and smelled them. It was a smell he knew better than any other: smoke. I don’t figure this fella was roasting marshmallows by a campfire last night, thought Burt. I’ll bet dollars to doughnuts he was roasting his landlord in that tool barn.

  Burt gave the dog another pat on the head and left Franklin’s apartment through the door. In the foyer, he collided with a surly, red-faced little man, both arms full of groceries.

  “Are you the new tenant?” asked Mr. Allspice.

  “No sir,” answered Burt Walnut.

  “Are you a friend of this fat clown?” Mr. Allspice asked, motioning towards Franklin’s door with his shiny head.

  “No sir, I ain’t that neither. My name’s Burt Walnut and I’m a Fire Investigator with the Town of Lackawanna. Would you perchance be Mr. Allspice of 2A?”

  “I am he,” said Mr. Allspice.

  “Would you mind if I asked you a few questions,” said Burt with a friendly smile.

  Mr. Allspice made no effort to cloak his annoyance. “Let me put these bags down,” he said as he pushed past Burt and into his apartment. Burt held the door open and followed him in.

  “A Fire Investigator, hmm?” said Mr. Allspice, lighting a cigarette. “Do you have any identification?”

  Burt showed him his gold Town of Lackawanna Fire Investigator’s shield. That seemed to suffice.

  “What’s this all about?” asked Mr. Allspice.

  “I’m regretful to inform you that your landlord Albert Olivetti was killed in a barn fire at his home late last night.”

  Mr. Allspice’s abrasive demeanor softened and he sat down in his chair. “Albert’s dead?” Felix Allspice had rented his apartment from Albert Olivetti for thirteen years. He would not have called them friends, but they were definitely acquaintances.

  After Felix Allspice’s wife died, he sold the house and took the first apartment he looked at. He felt a kinship towards Albert because he too had just lost his wife. As far as the house was concerned, he needed to get away from it. He wanted to forget about the unbearable final months of his wife’s stomach cancer. He wanted to forget the doctors, the Hospice people, and even his own family. There was not a room in his house where he could stand and not hear the echoes of his wife’s agonizing death moans. After his wife passed away, both his sons and his daughter had asked him to move in with their families.

  “This apartment is only temporary,” he had said. “Daddy just needs some time to himself.”

  A year turns into two and on and on, until one day an old fire investigator informs you your landlord is dead and you realize you have been living in the same damned small apartment for thirteen years. Mr. Allspice thought about Albert living alone all those years in his big house. Now he was with his wife. Lucky Albert. He wasn’t a bad sort, thought Felix Allspice. But he did rent to some real losers.

  “Was that fat oaf next door involved?” asked Mr. Allspice.

  “Why do
you ask?” asked Burt.

  “It just wouldn’t surprise me,” said Mr. Allspice. “He is a bad element. He is unclean. His mind is unbalanced, unfocused and impure. He’s miles and miles down the Road to Crazy. Do you know that he blows a giant horn in that apartment? You have never heard such a racket. I ask you, what sort of person takes up a giant mountain horn as a musical instrument? He keeps all hours. I hear him moving things around over there in the middle of the night all the time. Yesterday morning I heard him banging around in there like he was wrestling a bobcat. Last night I heard a commotion out front and went to see why the porch light was off. I found him packing the trunk of his car.”

  “You don’t say,” said Burt. “About what time was that?”

  “Just after ten,” said Mr. Allspice.

  “Pretty late to be packing,” offered Burt.

  Mr. Allspice lit another cigarette and offered one to Burt. He took it.

  “He said he was moving to Switzerland. Switzerland! I told him, good riddance to bad rubbish. That’s why I thought you might be the new tenant. I don’t know whether to believe that fool or not. For four years it’s been like that. Say, you didn’t take my Buffalo News by chance, did you Mr… . what was the name again, some sort of fruit?”

  “Walnut. Burt Walnut. No sir, I didn’t touch your newspaper.”

  “Walnut? That is an unfortunate name. I don’t touch the things myself, break out in hives. Anyway, that fat man-child probably took it—or the dope fiend upstairs. No disrespect to Albert, but he did rent to some real losers. Can you imagine? Moving to Switzerland. That boy has probably never been out of Buffalo!”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” said Burt Walnut, his face obscured by a mist of blue smoke. “I got a feeling he’s at least been as far south as Lackawanna.”

  CHAPTER

  14

  THE DOCTOR IN the mental hospital infirmary had Bernard laid out on a steel table, covered up to his neck by a white bed sheet. Franklin sat on a metal stool beside his brother’s head. They were alone. The smell of Bernard’s dead body was different from the smell of Mr. Olivetti’s, though they had been dead for nearly the exact amount of time. Bernard smelled more … sanitary. Franklin was cold in just a T-shirt, shorts and sandals. This is my brother Bernard, thought Franklin. I am now officially alone in the world.

  “I didn’t know you were sick. Or that you were free to come and go as you pleased,” said Franklin. “Why didn’t you come visit me? Why didn’t you talk to me?” Franklin fiddled with the corner of the sheet that covered his dead brother and rubbed the tender bump on his head.

  “I’ve been busy, too, Bernard. I murdered my landlord. I didn’t mean to do it. How it all began would be funny if it wasn’t so terrible. Mr. Olivetti, that’s my landlord, whom you might have met if you ever visited me, came over yesterday morning and wanted the rent. It was almost a month overdue, like it always is, and I didn’t have it. I never have it. So he wanted me to do the thing for him. The thing he always wants me to do for him.

  “Now Bernard, you know I like girls. I love girls. I loved the girls you used to bring home to our apartment on Ashland. And I especially love teenage girls. I’ve loved them even before I was a teenager, remember? Remember Rebecca DeLeggio from Grover Cleveland Elementary? In high school, when she became your steady girlfriend, you don’t want to know what I did while I was alone and thinking about her in the bubble bath. And Mr. Olivetti must have liked girls too. He was married to one for forty years and they had a daughter together. I don’t know what sort of relationship he had with his wife, but it couldn’t have been much to speak of.

  “Yesterday morning he was in a bad mood and a hurry. He was working on some plumbing or something. He said it was giving him a ‘pain in the balls.’ He didn’t want to argue about the rent, he just wanted me to do my business and be done with it. ‘Hurry it up,’ he said. ‘I have to fix a drip in that pothead’s sink.’ So I did, Bernard. I did. I got down on my knees, pulled out that dirty guinea’s fat cock and worked it like an ice cream cone that was melting in my hands.

  “Do you know what I think about when I’m doing that, Bernard? I’ll bet you could guess. I think about Switzerland. I imagine that what I’m really blowing is my mighty alphorn as I stand atop a rugged Alpine peak overlooking a Swiss lake. The green hills, they stretch out to the mountains. And the mountains, they disappear into the clouds. Bernard, it must be the closest thing to Heaven on earth.

  “Yesterday morning I made a decision. As I knelt on the floor in front of that farting monster, I decided I couldn’t live that way anymore. I decided I had to make a change and I had to make it right away. I have always been afraid that Switzerland could never be the place I dream it is. The real Switzerland—the place—with its people and its buildings and its red dirt could never equal my expectations. It could never resemble the vision I have built in my mind since I was a boy. I know that. I’m not a fool. But whatever it is, whatever reality it has to offer, it’s better than the hell I endure here in Buffalo. I’m a loser, Bernard. A nobody. I’m a fat, forty-one-year-old footnote. I either need to change my circumstances, or get busy dying.

  “So, I made this decision. I decided from that moment on that my life would be different. I mustered all my courage and all my adrenaline and I stood up.

  “Bernard, you will not believe what happened next.

  “As I rose to my feet, Mr. Olivetti rocked backwards and, like a catapult, threw his head forward and sneezed. He sneezed! His fat chin struck me square in the middle of my head. It was like I’d been walloped with a Louisville Slugger. I fell straight backwards onto my rear. I was seeing tiny star-bursts and a rainbow of spots. The collision sent Mr. Olivetti spinning around on his toes until he collapsed onto his back in front of me. His mouth was full of blood and he was mumbling curses at me in Italian. I could tell he was in a lot of pain.

  “I scrambled to my knees beside him, ‘Are you all right?’ I said. His speech was laboured. He was having trouble moving his jaw, and spit out what looked like a tooth. ‘I can’t move my arms or legs,’ he mumbled. There was panic in his eyes. ‘What the fuck did you do? You fat fairy. What have you done to me?’

  “I said I was sorry, over and over again—’I’m sorry, it was an accident. It’s just that I made this decision and …’

  “Then his voice took on this sinister tone. ‘You’re fucked you sonofabitch. I hope you know that. You’re not getting away with this. If I die, you’re going to fucking fry.’ He was staring right at me, Bernard. Then he began coughing and gasping for each breath. ‘Sweet Jesus what did you do to me?’ he said. ‘I’m not going to die—not yet. I can’t let you get away with this. I’m going to start screaming until that old buzzard next door comes over to find out what’s going on. You’re going to jail, you cocksucker. You’re going to be sucking cocks for the rest of your miserable life.’ Mr. Olivetti started laughing and coughing. He wore a tremendous grin as he considered my fate. Laughing and coughing. It was horrible, Bernard.

  “I turned away from him. I couldn’t bear to look at him. I knew what I had to do. I picked up my alphorn by the skinny end and twisted my clenched fists tighter and tighter around the boned wood. I didn’t believe I could do it. I thought about how many times I would have to hit him before he would be dead. I couldn’t bear the thought of it, but I knew I had to kill him, Bernard. I had no other choice.

  “The coughing and laughing stopped. I loosened my grip on the alphorn and turned back towards Mr. Olivetti. He was dead. You should have seen the frozen look on his face, Bernard. He was grinning ear-to-ear and his eyes were as big as dinner plates. His last worldly thought was painted on his face: the thought of me going to jail for the rest of my life.”

  Franklin chuckled at the memory of it. Then he laughed some more. Then he buried his head in his brother’s chest and cried like a baby.

  He sobbed for several minutes. When he was finished he wiped his eyes and nose on the sleeve of his T-shirt, removed the
white #10 envelope from his pocket, and tore it open. Onto Bernard’s chest he dumped three fingernail clippings and a small metal key with a rubber grip. He picked up the key and examined it from the end of his nose. It looked like a roller skate key.

  “More surprises, Bernard?”

  The key had a number engraved inside the window of the rubber grip, 131. It’s not a safe-deposit box key, thought Franklin. It’s too big and garish for that. Maybe it’s a locker key. He tried mentally sliding the key into an assortment of lockers: the airport, the train station, the bus depot, the YMCA. Christ, it could be the key to a locker just about anywhere “What is this, Bernard? This is what you left for me? A guessing game?”

  He sat twirling the miniature key between his stubby fingers. “The bowling alley,” said Franklin, nodding his head. The nearest bowling alley was only two blocks north of the Psychiatric Centre on Elmwood Avenue. Franklin recalled Sally Baker saying that Bernard took a walk every morning and returned at lunchtime. Bernard loved to bowl. With a bowling alley so close it was a good guess that that was where he spent his mornings. “What have you got stashed down at the bowling alley, Bernard?”

  CHAPTER

  15

  IT WAS A SLOW Wednesday afternoon at the We-Never-Close, Open 24 Hours convenience store and Tommy Balls’ high had worn off. He was sitting on a stool behind the counter, eating free beef jerky and scratching off instant lottery tickets, two of the job’s few perks. Tommy reached inside his backpack and pulled out the paperback copy of Am I Crazy? by Dr. Sage Mennox. The inscription on the title page read: For Thomas, May you find wisdom in these pages and forever avoid the Road to Crazy. Mom. He fanned through it several times, stopping at random pages to read: