There were affectionate cooings from next door. A lump grew in Paul's throat as he thought about the beautiful thing he and Sam were bringing to pass.
"Folks!" said Sam, "that's all I'm gonna say about love and marriage! That's all anybody needs to know! And now, for Mrs. Lemuel K. Harger, from Mr. Harger--I love you! Let's make up and start all over again!" Sam choked up. "Here's Eartha Kitt, and Somebody Bad Stole De Wedding Bell!"
The radio next door went off.
The world lay still.
A purple emotion flooded Paul's being. Childhood dropped away, and he hung, dizzy, on the brink of life, rich, violent, rewarding.
There was movement next door--slow, foot-dragging movement.
"So," said the woman.
"Charlotte--" said the man uneasily. "Honey--I swear."
" 'I love you,' " she said bitterly, " 'let's make up and start all over again.' "
"Baby," said the man desperately, "it's another Lemuel K. Harger. It's got to be!"
"You want your wife back?" she said. "All right--I won't get in her way. She can have you, Lemuel--you jewel beyond price, you."
"She must have called the station," said the man.
"She can have you, you philandering, two-timing, two-bit Lochinvar," she said. "But you won't be in very good condition. "
"Charlotte--put down that gun," said the man. "Don't do anything you'll be sorry for."
"That's all behind me, you worm," she said.
There were three shots.
Paul ran out into the hall, and bumped into the woman as she burst from the Harger apartment. She was a big, blonde woman, all soft and awry, like an unmade bed.
She and Paul screamed at the same time, and then she grabbed him as he started to run.
"You want candy?" she said wildly. "Bicycle?"
"No, thank you," said Paul shrilly. "Not at this time."
"You haven't seen or heard a thing!" she said. "You know what happens to squealers?"
"Yes!" cried Paul.
She dug into her purse, and brought out a perfumed mulch of face tissues, bobbypins and cash. "Here!" she panted. "It's yours! And there's more where that came from, if you keep your mouth shut." She stuffed it into his trousers pocket.
She looked at him fiercely, then fled into the street.
Paul ran back into his apartment, jumped into bed, and pulled the covers up over his head. In the hot, dark cave of the bed, he cried because he and All-Night Sam had helped to kill a man.
A policeman came clumping into the house very soon, and he knocked on both apartment doors with his billyclub.
Numb, Paul crept out of the hot, dark cave, and answered the door. Just as he did, the door across the hall opened, and there stood Mr. Harger, haggard but whole.
"Yes, sir?" said Harger. He was a small, balding man, with a hairline mustache. "Can I help you?"
"The neighbors heard some shots," said the policeman.
"Really?" said Harger urbanely. He dampened his mustache with the tip of his little finger. "How bizarre. I heard nothing." He looked at Paul sharply. "Have you been playing with your father's guns again, young man?"
"Oh, nossir!" said Paul, horrified.
"Where are your folks?" said the policeman to Paul.
"At the movies," said Paul.
"You're all alone?" said the policeman.
"Yessir," said Paul. "It's an adventure."
"I'm sorry I said that about the guns," said Harger. "I certainly would have heard any shots in this house. The walls are thin as paper, and I heard nothing."
Paul looked at him gratefully.
"And you didn't hear any shots, either, kid?" said the policeman.
Before Paul could find an answer, there was a disturbance out on the street. A big, motherly woman was getting out of a taxi-cab and wailing at the top of her lungs. "Lem! Lem, baby."
She barged into the foyer, a suitcase bumping against her leg and tearing her stocking to shreds. She dropped the suitcase, and ran to Harger, throwing her arms around him.
"I got your message, darling," she said, "and I did just what All-Night Sam told me to do. I swallowed my self-respect, and here I am!"
"Rose, Rose, Rose--my little Rose," said Harger. "Don't ever leave me again." They grappled with each other affectionately, and staggered into their apartment.
"Just look at this apartment!" said Mrs. Harger. "Men are just lost without women!" As she closed the door, Paul could see that she was awfully pleased with the mess.
"You sure you didn't hear any shots?" said the policeman to Paul.
The ball of money in Paul's pocket seemed to swell to the size of a watermelon. "Yessir," he croaked.
The policeman left.
Paul shut his apartment door, shuffled into his bedroom, and collapsed on the bed.
The next voices Paul heard came from his own side of the wall. The voices were sunny--the voices of his mother and father. His mother was singing a nursery rhyme and his father was undressing him.
"Diddle-diddle-dumpling, my son John," piped his mother, "Went to bed with his stockings on. One shoe off, and one shoe on--diddle--diddle--dumpling, my son John."
Paul opened his eyes.
"Hi, big boy," said his father, "you went to sleep with all your clothes on."
"How's my little adventurer?" said his mother.
"O.K.," said Paul sleepily. "How was the show?"
"It wasn't for children, honey," said his mother. "You would have liked the short subject, though. It was all about bears--cunning little cubs."
Paul's father handed her Paul's trousers, and she shook them out, and hung them neatly on the back of a chair by the bed. She patted them smooth, and felt the ball of money in the pocket. "Little boys' pockets!" she said, delighted. "Full of childhood's mysteries. An enchanted frog? A magic pocketknife from a fairy princess?" She caressed the lump.
"He's not a little boy--he's a big boy," said Paul's father. "And he's too old to be thinking about fairy princesses."
Paul's mother held up her hands. "Don't rush it, don't rush it. When I saw him asleep there, I realized all over again how dreadfully short childhood is." She reached into the pocket and sighed wistfully. "Little boys are so hard on clothes--especially pockets."
She brought out the ball and held it under Paul's nose. "Now, would you mind telling Mommy what we have here?" she said gaily.
The ball bloomed like a frowzy chrysanthemum, with ones, fives, tens, twenties, and lipstick-stained Kleenex for petals. And rising from it, befuddling Paul's young mind was the pungent musk of perfume.
Paul's father sniffed the air. "What's that smell?" he said.
Paul's mother rolled her eyes. "Tabu," she said.
(1955)
MORE STATELY MANSIONS
WE'VE KNOWN the McClellans, Grace and George, for about two years now. They were the first neighbors to call on us and welcome us to the village.
I expected that initial conversation to lag uncomfortably after the first pleasantries, but not at all. Grace, her eyes quick and bright as a sparrow's, found subject matter enough to keep her talking for hours.
"You know," she said excitedly, "your living room could be a perfect dream! Couldn't it, George? Can't you see it?"
"Yup," said her husband. "Nice, all right."
"Just tear out all this white-painted woodwork," Grace said, her eyes narrowing. "Panel it all in knotty pine wiped with linseed oil with a little umber added. Cover the couch in lipstick red--red red. Know what I mean?"
"Red?" said Anne, my wife.
"Red! Don't be afraid of color."
"I'll try not to be," Anne said.
"And just cover the whole wall there, those two ugly little windows and all, with bottle-green curtains. Can't you see it? It'd be almost exactly like that problem living room in the February Better House and Garden. You remember that, of course."
"I must have missed that," said Anne. The month was August.
"Or was it Good Homelife, George?" Grace said.
"Don't remember offhand," said George.
"Well, I can look it up in my files and put my hand right on it." Grace stood up suddenly, and, uninvited, started a tour through the rest of the house.
She went from room to room, consigning a piece of furniture to the Salvation Army, detecting a fraudulent antique, shrugging partitions out of existence, and pacing off a chartreuse, wall-to-wall carpet we would have to order before we did another thing. "Start with the carpet," she said firmly, "and build from there. It'll pull your whole downstairs together if you build from the carpet."
"Um," said Anne.
"I hope you saw Nineteen Basic Carpet Errors in the June Home Beautiful."
"Oh yes, yes indeed," Anne said.
"Good. Then I don't have to tell you how wrong you can go, not building from the carpet. George--Oh, he's still in the living room."
I caught a glimpse of George on the living-room couch, lost in his own thoughts. He straightened up and smiled.
I followed Grace, trying to change the subject. "Let's see, you are on our north side. Who's to our south?"
Grace held up her hands. "Oh! You haven't met them-- the Jenkinses. George," she called, "they want to know about the Jenkinses." From her voice, I gathered that our southerly neighbors were sort of lovable beachcombers.
"Now, Grace, they're nice enough people," George said.
"Oooh, George," Grace said, "you know how the Jenkinses are. Yes, they're nice, but ..." She laughed and shook her head.
"But what?" I said. The possibilities raced through my mind. Nudists? Heroin addicts? Anarchists? Hamster raisers?
"In 1945 they moved in," Grace said, "and right off the bat they bought two beautiful Hitchcock chairs, and ..." This time she sighed and shrugged.
"And what?" I demanded. And spilled India ink on them? And found a bundle of thousand-dollar bills rolled up in a hollow leg?
"And that's all," Grace said. "They just stopped right there."
"How's that?" said Anne.
"Don't you see? They started out beautifully with those two chairs; then they just petered out."
"Oh," said Anne slowly. "I see--a flash in the pan. So that's what's wrong with the Jenkinses. Aha!"
"Fie on the Jenkinses," I said.
Grace didn't hear me. She was patrolling between the living room and dining room, and I noticed that every time she entered or left the living room, she made a jog in her course, always at exactly the same place. Curious, I went over to the spot she avoided, and bounced up and down a couple of times to see if the floor was unsound at that point, or what.
In she came again, and she looked at me with surprise. "Oh!"
"Did I do something wrong?" I asked.
"I just didn't expect to find you there."
"Sorry."
"That's where the cobbler's bench goes, you know."
I stepped aside, and watched uncomfortably as she bent over the phantom cobbler's bench. I think it was then that she first alarmed me, made me feel a little less like laughing.
"With one or two little nail drawers open, and ivy growing out of them," she explained. "Cute?" She stepped around it, being careful not to bark her shins, and went up the stairs to the second floor. "Do you mind if I have a look around up here?" she asked gaily.
"Go right ahead," said Anne.
George had gotten up off the sofa. He stood looking up the stairs for a minute; then he held up his empty highball glass. "Mind if I have another?"
"Say, I'm sorry, George. We haven't been taking very good care of you. You bet. Help yourself The bottle's there in the dining room."
He went straight to it, and poured himself a good inch and a half of whisky in the bottom of the tumbler.
"The tile in this bathroom is all wrong for your towels, of course," Grace said from upstairs.
Anne, who had padded after her like a housemaid, agreed bleakly. "Of course."
George lifted his glass, winked, and drained it. "Don't let her throw you," he said. "Just her way of talking. Got a damn' nice house here. I like it, and so does she."
"Thanks, George. That's nice of you."
Anne and Grace came downstairs again, Anne looking quite bushed. "Oh, you men!" Grace said. "You just think we're silly, don't you?" She smiled companionably at Anne. "They just don't understand what interests women. What were you two talking about while we were having such a good time?"
"I was telling him he ought to wallpaper his trees and make chintz curtains for his keyholes," George said.
"Mmmmm," said Grace. "Well, time to go home, dear."
She paused outside the front door. "Nice basic lines to this door," she said. "That gingerbread will come right off, if you get a chisel under it. And you can lighten it by rubbing on white paint, then rubbing it off again right away. It'll look more like you."
"You've been awfully helpful," said Anne.
"Well, it's a dandy house the way it is," George said.
"I swear," Grace said, "I'll never understand how so many artists are men. No man I ever met had a grain of artistic temperament in him."
"Bushwa," said George quietly. And then he surprised me. The glance he gave Grace was affectionate and possessive.
"It is a dull little dump, I guess," said Anne gloomily, after the McClellans had left.
"Oh, listen--it's a swell house."
"I guess. But it needs so much done to it. I didn't realize. Golly, their place must be something. They've been in it for five years, she said. You can imagine what she could do to a place in five years--everything right, right down to the last nailhead."
"It isn't much from the outside. Anyway, Anne, this isn't like you."
She shook her head, as though to wake herself up. "It isn't, is it? Never in my life have I had the slightest interest in keeping up with the neighbors. But there's something about that woman."
"To hell with her! Let's throw in our lot with the Jenkinses."
Anne laughed. Grace's spell was wearing off. "Are you mad? Be friends with those two-chair people, those quitters?"
"Well, we'd make our friendship contingent on their getting a new couch to go with the chairs."
"And not any couch, but the right couch."
"If they want to be friends of ours, they mustn't be afraid of color, and they'd better build from the carpet."
"That goes without saying," said Anne crisply.
But it was a long time before we found leisure for more than a nod at the Jenkinses. Grace McClellan spent most of her waking hours at our house. Almost every morning, as I was leaving for work, she would stagger into our house under a load of home magazines and insist that Anne pore over them with her in search of just the right solutions for our particular problem house.
"They must be awfully rich," Anne said at dinner one night.
"I don't think so," I said. "George has a little leather-goods store that you hardly ever see anybody in."
"Well, then every cent must go into the house."
"That I can believe. But what makes you think they're rich?"
"To hear that woman talk, you'd think money was nothing! Without batting an eyelash, she talks about ten-dollar-a-yard floor-to-ceiling draperies, says fixing up the kitchen shouldn't cost more than a lousy fifteen hundred dollars--without the fieldstone fireplace, of course."
"What's a kitchen without a fieldstone fireplace?"
"And a circular couch."
"Isn't there some way you can keep her away, Anne? She's wearing you out. Can't you just tell her you're too busy to see her?"
"I haven't the heart, she's so kind and friendly and lonely," said Anne helplessly. "Besides, there's no getting through to her. She doesn't hear what I say. Her head is just crammed full of blueprints, cloth, furniture, wallpaper, and paint."
"Change the subject."
"Change the course of the Mississippi! Talk about politics, and she talks about remodeling the White House; talk about dogs, and she talks about doghouses."
The telephon
e rang, and I answered it. It was Grace McClellan. "Yes, Grace?"
"You're in the office-furniture business, aren't you?"
"That's right."
"Do you ever get old filing cabinets in trade?"
"Yes. I don't like to, but sometimes I have to take them."
"Could you let me have one?"
I thought a minute. I had an old wooden wreck I was about to haul to the dump. I told her about it.
"Oh, that'll be divine! There's an article in last month's Better House about what to do with old filing cabinets. You can make them just darling by wallpapering them, then putting a coat of clear shellac over the paper. Can't you just see it?"
"Yep. Darling, all right. I'll bring it out tomorrow night."
"That's awfully nice of you. I wonder if you and Anne couldn't drop in for a drink then."
I accepted and hung up. "Well, the time has come," I said. "Marie Antoinette has finally invited us to have a look at Versailles. "
"I'm afraid," Anne said. "It's going to make our home look so sad."
"There's more to life than decorating."
"I know, I know. I just wish you'd stay home in the daytime and keep telling me that while she's here."
The next evening, I drove the pickup truck home instead of my car, so I could deliver the old filing cabinet to Grace. Anne was already inside the McClellan house, and George came out to give me a hand.
The cabinet was an old-fashioned oak monster, and, with all the sweating and grunting, I didn't really pay much attention to the house until we'd put down our burden in the front hall.
The first thing I noticed was that there were already two dilapidated filing cabinets in the hall, ungraced by wallpaper or clear shellac. I looked into the living room. Anne was sitting on the couch with a queer smile on her face. The couch springs had burst through the bottom and were resting nakedly on the floor. The chief illumination came from a single light bulb in a cobwebbed chandelier with sockets for six. An electric extension cord, patched with friction tape, hung from another of the sockets and led to an iron on an ironing board in the middle of the living room.
A small throw rug, the type generally seen in bathrooms, was the only floor covering, and the planks of the floor were scarred and dull from long neglect. Dust and cobwebs were everywhere, and the windows were dirty. The only sign of order or opulence was on the coffee table, where dozens of fat, slick decoration magazines were spread out like a fan.
George was nervous and more taciturn than usual, and I gathered that he was uneasy about having us in. After mixing us drinks, he sat down and maintained a fidgeting silence.