Women and Men

by Joseph McElroy

  But the other morning the man was definitely calling from a home phone, Linda said. Bach was playing in the background, or a reasonable facsimile, and it got a lot louder for a moment, as if someone was turning the wrong dial.

  "Or someone picked up a phone extension right by the speaker," said John.

  "He’s staying in touch, I guess."

  "With his old place or with you?"

  "Maybe New Mexico will come to him," said Linda.

  "I’d rather he went there," said John.

  "But there would go my Departed Tenant out the window."

  A week later, when John stopped at the all-night cafe on his way home, he was observed closely, provocatively, by a familiar man for whom the woman was pouring a cup of coffee when John came in. The man seemed tired. He was about John’s age, but his uneven, stubbly beard made him look older— maybe younger, too. He wore a broad-brimmed, high-crowned western hat and a white woolen parka that was extremely dirty. Except for a scar-like crease along his cheek above his beard, as if he had slept in a trench for days, his appearance agreed with Linda’s description of the Departed Tenant. The woman kidded John about being late, as if she kept track of him. She didn’t seem to know the fellow in the hat. It came to him, like the sudden leisure of insight, that the most powerful way for you to shadow anyone would be to have him follow you. The woman again said he was late, and she smiled at him. She had on a heavy, jacket-like sweater with a heavy, rolled collar of the same thick black wool coming up behind her neck under her rough, dark hair. He returned the renewed glance of the guy in the hat and was going to ask him what was on his mind, when he stood up and put some change beside his full cup. He had big hands that had knocked around and worked and seemed at rest and seemed the only thing certain about him. He moved past John to get to the door, and John smelled paint and something else milder to do with work. The woman plucked some muffins out from under the grill, talking over her shoulder to a broad-shouldered little man on the next stool whose every movement John could feel. The man was smoking a cigarette; he was not going anywhere. John sat for almost an hour and bought an early newspaper. The phone rang as the woman poured scrambled eggs into a small black frying pan. He paid for two coffees and left.

  John filled Linda in on her new neighborhood. A mugger had been going around spraying Sentinel in the eyes of women late at night, as if they were attacking him. They couldn’t remember what he looked like afterward. John had learned about this in a cafe a block beyond the public school one afternoon. Two men on a draped staging were steaming the front of a town house across the street. It had been a rooming house for decades and was being gutted. A woman in a wheelchair had entered the cafe talking not quite to herself, and she stopped at his table by the window and cheerfully called for her cup of tea. She wore dark glasses and had a streak of green through her dyed brown hair. She had been talking when she came in, and she divided herself between calling like a deaf person to the nodding Oriental behind the counter and quietly telling John what this counterman, Ralph, was thinking. A fat boy in a painter’s cap wearing white overalls with white paint stains on them looked up from his magazine and said, "Nirma was reminding Ralph of all the crazy no-goods who had lived in that block and in that brownstone they were looking at across the street; her husband was contractor for the extensive work being done on the house; it had been bought by two men who designed ladies’ shoes." Finally, John asked the man, Ralph, behind the counter if all Nirma said was true, but Nirma had apparently concluded the conversation, because, turning her wheelchair around, she rolled to the door and then was helped out by the boy in overalls, who had gotten up from the counter to leave with her.

  "I know her husband," said Linda that night. "He’s the local locksmith. What were you doing here in the middle of the afternoon?" They got in bed and Linda turned off the light.

  "Becoming a degenerate, of course."

  Well, it was about time, she said, and got on top of him and pinned him. As a matter of fact, Nirma’s husband was a licensed electrician, did moving, and had a free-floating crew of guys working for him.

  "One of them helped to float his wife out of there this afternoon," said John.

  Linda laughed, and murmured, "She don’t need no help, honey." There was something in the words, something missing.

  "Hard to believe that’s his wife," John said.

  "You haven’t seen him," came the words in the dark, and here it was again, a quizzical harshness as clear as the touch that accompanied the words. Then her touch became as light and hard as ever. She could bear down on his head to massage the hair by its roots off his brain in the dark room; meanwhile, some soft spot around his stomach found another touch of hers so light-fingered it was hairlike and, growing here and there all over his body, felt good.

  Languorously, softly, and so slowly that he heard his lips part, he asked if there had been further word from the Departed Tenant. She moved her hands and clasped him in her arms. (He could put his hands over her eyes when she was playing the piano and she would go on playing.) Yes, she said, to tell the truth, she had heard from the Departed Tenant, again calling to say that he would be glad to fix her bathroom window himself; the super, according to the Departed Tenant, was a nice guy but he didn’t do spit, and he wasn’t there a whole lot, because he had two other buildings, if not three, because he needed the cash flow, y’know. John could hear the very voice of the man. But the completeness of Linda’s love at this moment made the intentions of the Departed Tenant only a passing mystery, like her humor. For her humor had taken a turn. It sounded like a private joke that might be with John or against him.

  Was she getting ready to turn away from him? Not possible. The next evening she told an odd story or two about the neighborhood, and the way she talked seemed unlike her; she sounded as if she were making up what she told him, but she wasn’t.

  Nothing like getting to know your new neighborhood. Well, now, she said, an unusual body had been hidden on the canvas-draped staging that the men had been using to work on the brownstone. John asked what was unusual about it. Oh, it turned out to be only sleeping, she said. He asked if it had all its limbs. As far as they could tell, she guessed; it didn’t breathe for quite a while, but it must have been saving its breath, because it was quite a presentable body and finally it decided to breathe. And move on? he asked, in the living room, hearing her in the kitchen. It was one of those no-goods the locksmith’s wife gave tidings of, said Linda.

  "Some Departed Tenant," John said.

  "Not mine," she said from the kitchen.

  "Yours hasn’t departed," said John.

  "Any day now," came the answer, as the refrigerator opened and closed.

  "He calls when I’m not here," said John, sitting down at the piano. "It’s uncanny: he only calls when I’m not around."

  Linda pounded something. "I told him enough was enough, I was going to speak to you."

  "In this day and age you said that?" said John. But Linda said that she had said a bit more than that, actually. She had said John had a temper.

  "He misses this place," said John, and played the first notes of a song which were also the first six notes of a scale. "And for a Departed Tenant who’s sticking around, that’s heavy."

  Linda came out into the living room to smile at him. She had an apron on over her bluejeans, and he knew there was a joint in her apron pocket, because he had felt it there not long ago. Lately he wasn’t sure what was going on. She gave him some respectful warmth that he didn’t quite know what to do with, because it was as close as his body and as separate as his clothes, as if he had a new authority that still wasn’t power. He just wasn’t sure what was going on.

  She had a hammer in her hand. She was going to staple in the wiring for a second set of stereo speakers in the bedroom; dinner could be ready in ten minutes whenever they wanted it. John said he would staple the wiring, but Linda said he didn’t have to, and they sat down and smoked instead. He read her mind and asked her
if she loved him. She said that was her line, why had he said it, what did he mean? He said very very softly and, he thought, humorously, "Oh shut up." She didn’t quite love it, he saw.

  The next night they went to the Spanish restaurant for dinner. He was going away the following afternoon. They finished a bottle of wine, bickering a bit over whether they were splitting the check or not, then speculating whether the shrimp and mussels and the pale rings of squid came from the fish market next door, and then arguing about which way the neon guitar was pointing. He had reached for his wallet and paused, distracted, his fingers in the inside pocket of his jacket. She laughed in a more silly, distantly silly, way than he had heard her laugh before. She said if he would let her pay her share of the check she would let him pay half the rent. This set her off again; it was more than giggling; the tears shook themselves out, laughter tears—his grin got fixed—and when she calmed down she asked him like a little girl did he have to go to Houston? Couldn’t he put her in his pocket and take her along? Couldn’t he put off the trip?

  Oh, he really couldn’t, he said, laughing with her.

  What, not till sunrise, my darling? she said.

  Oh, certainly till sunrise; maybe the Departed Tenant would call.

  Oh, he never, never would call when John was there. The giggling began again.

  Man sounded like the refrigerator light. There only if you opened the door.

  She never opened any door for that creep .

  Didn’t favor degenerates?

  A select few only, she said (as a microphone got touched); degenerates could be fun even when they were not very observant.

  The waiter came back with the change.

  Did she mean degenerates who forgot which way la guitarra pointed?

  Since he insisted.

  Well, there she was definitely wrong, so they rose to go out and look at the sign and settle the issue.

  The tip lay in the waiter’s little oblong change tray. The waiter gave out menus at another table and turned his head to say goodnight. But now, without warning, the live music began with a beat of chords. A smiling man and woman in black now struck such a proud, harsh dance out of their instruments that John didn’t quite identify what was odd about the couple. He took Linda’s hand and with his other hand on the small of her back drew close, and they swayed for a few moments and turned and turned again under the tolerant eye of a couple who were eating their meal a few feet away, until a waiter approached with what looked like dinner for half a dozen people, and that was that, as far as the dancing was concerned. John looked back at the guitar players, who were still smiling, and it was not until he and Linda got back to her place that they realized they had neglected to look at the sign. She said it didn’t matter, which made him wonder if that had been after all the thing degenerates weren’t observant about.

  "Anyway, I did notice that the woman was left-handed," said John.

  "I think it was the man," said Linda, hanging up her coat.

  "No, he was on our right."

  "Oh, you re right," she said shortly.

  "What?"

  "You win, friend," she said. He couldn’t believe it, but she walked away irritated. He thought of leaving; he thought of the elevator coming up to meet him and of the crazy sign by the button panel that said, "After u P.M. Return Elevator to First Floor."

  "Hey, wait a minute," he called after Linda. But then he kept whatever it was to himself. He remembered the guitars were pointing toward each other, and the man was on their right, therefore fingering with his right hand and strumming with his left.

  Had Linda been getting along with John even at the restaurant? He was deciding whether he liked all this, when the phone rang and he stayed where he was. If you fingered with your right hand, then you were a left-handed guitarist. So why had Linda said, "You win"?

  He heard her say in the bedroom, "You’re not my friend, but I will say goodbye. Please don’t call any more, O.K.?"

  John felt the very slightly delayed "O.K.?" in his heart. "Just don’t call," said Linda in the bedroom, but he didn’t hear the phone go down. Then he did.

  "Just tell him not to phone," John said.

  "I did."

  "You were a bit polite. You said, ‘Please don’t call any more’ and then you added ‘O.K.?’ like you were asking permission."

  John went and looked at her. She was sitting on the bed. "Listen," she said, "he hung up on me."

  "He should be apprehended if he hangs up on you," said John. "We should call the authorities."

  Linda went past him into the living room, into the kitchen. She came out again and went and sat at her piano, her shoulders slumped. She got up and took something from the top of the piano and brought it to him; it was a color photograph of herself. She said, gently, that he hadn’t seen it, which gave him a shiver, because she didn’t know he had another one just like it in his pocket. It was a Polaroid—with that flat accuracy that looked too accurate. She was always beautiful, but here she looked as if she were hanging around waiting to be photographed for a commercial. His arm went around her shoulders. They stood there admiring her picture—anyway, he was admiring it. She was in her office at the radio station, and behind her was a blurred chart that, he knew, showed what music was going to be played during the next two or three months. In her posed composure, in some sign in her eyes and the set of her face, John felt that she wasn’t making as much money as the person taking the picture. What was she saying in showing him this Polaroid photograph here, now, at this awkward point?

  It was as if they were in bed, quiet with their shared secrets. But they couldn’t get there for the time being. They were mad at each other, but he had his arm around her, and she must know he was breathing the fine odor of her face. Linda had a mole under her eye high on one cheek, and in the picture it looked like a perfectly applied beauty spot. Her dark-red turtleneck sweater with the silver horse he had given her pinned on the side seemed as permanent as the camera’s light. Didn’t he want to go to bed with her? He didn’t know how she felt. But elsewhere, apart from the phone calls and the restaurant and anything bad in the past, they did always want to love each other; they always had wanted to.

  Linda was looking at him as he stared at the photograph.

  A woman knows how to wait, he had told Harry. You said it, replied his friend, but she’s a beautiful girl, so look out—someone else will marry her if you don’t.

  What about her marrying them?

  Sure, sure, that could happen, too. Let’s set a definite date for a weekend.

  The Polaroid held them there, in the middle of Linda’s living room. She said the picture really captured her; she joked about the dumb look on her face. What she then broke to him quietly, while they looked at the photograph, was that the Departed Tenant had not only not finally departed but had visited this apartment recently at least twice, she thought.

  He what? But the lock had been changed. What did he get?

  Well, actually, he left something.

  Linda went to the loft bed that she hadn’t yet decided what to do with. She reached up and put her hand on a quilt folded at the foot of the bed. She lifted a corner of it—diamond-checked, dull green and white, with ribbons sticking out here and there.

  What had he left the second time? Had he improved on the quilt? Was he getting ready to move back in?

  Linda didn’t think that was funny. She had asked the super with his perpetual dark glasses if he had let the former tenant in, and he had opened his mouth wide; he seemed mad at her suggesting such a thing, but he was the sinister one—he smiled all the time. John said maybe he was remembering what Linda had said getting out of the elevator: ‘7’ra the sinister one. He heard you call me a murderer."

  Linda shrugged. She had asked about the Departed Tenant. The super said there had been four of them, sometimes more; he would see someone he never saw coming in downstairs and would know they were going to that apartment. One girl was a waitress at the rock club next to
the church; one of them made jewelry out of junk and sold it in the street. There was a tall girl from upstate who had a bicycle and drove a cab sometimes. Two of the boys were housepainters, carpenters—when they worked. Then for a while there was just him and the girl with the bike. The super would see them with their groceries, and once, when he was putting out the trash, he looked up and saw the two of them at the window of the apartment. Then lately there was just him, the super was a hundred percent certain. He’d seen him the other day. He was waiting for a friend of his who was working on that brownstone that was being redone. The super would speak to him if he saw him again.

  John asked if Linda had told the super about the bathroom window.

  Oh, he had fixed it; and incidentally, there was no way the Departed Tenant could have gotten in through a window five floors above an alley, no fire escape, no ledges to speak of—

  And carrying a quilt!

  And carrying a quilt. To lay folded on the loft bed that he had made a point of saying he was giving to Linda, which was worth something to the room beyond the three hours’ labor and the lumber that went into it. He wasn’t going to make her pay for the loft bed and he wasn’t going to take it down.

  But he came a second time.

  This time he took something.

  It was getting later, and Houston seemed not so far away as the airport John had to get to tomorrow afternoon to fly to Houston. Houston was why they had had dinner at the Spanish restaurant tonight. The quilt was in his hand, the bed just above eye level; Linda was looking at him, the window behind her.

  The Departed Tenant had taken two things, as a matter of fact.

  John was asking just when was this second visit, but in his thoughts he put the last couple of weeks together—himself the least vivid neighbor in these places where the man with the crease on his cheekbone got up and left, and he sat down in front of the other man’s coffee, so that a woman with improbable blue eyes could tell John a couple of times that he was late, and take the coffee away, and another woman, with amber eyes, could look at him with concerned anger, he thought, while he looked at her photograph with some anguish against his heart. She had said, "O.K.?," as if to ask leave of the Departed Tenant, who had apparently been breaking into this pad of hers, where not only had the piano that had been in the old bedroom moved into the new living room but there was a bed high off the floor as well, and now a quilt. He didn’t like hearing her talk to the guy, but as for his real anguish, it wasn’t here in this place; John had left it somewhere else.