Harlan Ellison - No Doors, No Windows

But fifty dollars was the end of the universe.

Mr. Huggerson let the slip of paper fall from his fingers. It slid though the air and landed atop last evening’s newspaper. It lay beside the check, drawn on the Western State Security & Trust.

Mr. Huggerson ran a shaking hand up his face. He could feel the wrinkles that rolled up from his thin chin and made shaving so difficult these days. He had the terrible, overpowering feeling that he was a chipmunk on a treadmill.

It was, of course, impossible to try and live on ten dollars a month for food and cleaning and the newspaper. Since he could not talk the grocery or the dry cleaner or the fellow in the newsstand into cutting the price of their respective wares, there was only one way out.

He would have to go to Harry Troyden and ask him to lower the rent on the room.

The room was on the side of the building facing the street; and though grit came in through the open summer windows, still, the breeze and the sun did the same, and Mr. Huggerson was willing to suffer the one to obtain the others. He had a bed that was not too hard and not too soft, though it was built on a low metal frame and squeaked hideously during Mr. Huggerson’s nightly coughing fits. But even that inconvenience had its advantages: when Bonheim or Zeckhauser heard the noise, they came to see if their old friend was all right, and then would follow some quiet, pleasant, late-night reminiscing.

In addition, there was a table, an imitation fireplace that had been built when Troyden’s was a fashionable apartment house in the Twenties, an easy chair much the worse for many tenants having taken their ease in it, and a low bookshelf that contained four books: a Gideon bible, a copy of Dreiser’s “Chains,” Zane Grey’s “Under The Tonto Rim” and the Fall 1948 edition of the Reader’s Digest Condensed Books.

It was a familiar room, a warm room for Mr. Huggerson; all the universe he needed.

True, it was well worth the ten dollars per week he paid for its use, and the use of the bathroom down the hall, but he would have to go to Harry Troyden, and make him lower the rent. It was the only way.

The decision had not come to Mr. Huggerson in an incendiary fashion; he had considered it for two days, since first reading Ralph’s letter. Had he not been a proud man, seeking respect and peace in these final years, he would have packed up and moved to another — cheaper — rooming house. (If such a miracle existed in these days of spiraling inflation. My God, a 13¢ loaf of bread cost 49¢ today! How could any small market stay in business? Impossible!) But eight years in this room, with his friends about him, had brought a slightly vegetable aspect to his life. To move now would be the end; he knew he would die inside a month, should his roots be torn free of even such poor soil as Troyden’s had been.

So he knew, after two days of contemplating every possibility, that he must go to Harry Troyden’s room on the third floor, and discuss with him the lowering of the rent to meet the reduced finances allocated to Mr. Huggerson. But first, he had to summon his strength.

He spoke to Mr. Zeckhauser over that evening’s chess match in the other’s room on the first floor.

“I heard from my son, Ralph, the other day.” He opened the conversation in a distant fashion.

“Ah-hm.” Mr. Zeckhauser bent his buglenose to the chessboard; he was a serious player. Every game was a life and death struggle; victory meant freedom of breath and the head held high; defeat meant momentary but painful oblivion. “Ah-hm.”

“He, uh, says money is very tight in California,” Mr. Huggerson said, pointedly. It was his move. He interposed, blocking Mr. Zeckhauser’s attempt to yoke two pieces.

Zeckhauser looked up, his rheumy eyes settling on a point between Mr. Huggerson’s thin, wrinkled, half-shaven chin and the knot of the wide, flowered tie. He disapproved of that tie — holdover that it was from the Forties — but he had made a point of concealing his distaste out of respect and friendship for Mr. Huggerson. But conversation during a chess game was another matter.

He sat back on the bed and folded his veined hands across his wide stomach.

“What is the matter this evening, Mr. Huggerson? You seem singularly distracted. Is there some problem with which I can be of service?”

Mr. Huggerson pulled at his nose in confusion; he had not expected such perceptiveness so quickly.

“Well, sir, I do have a bit of a problem … I find myself in a singular quandary.” He had picked up many of the flowery speech habits affected by Mr. Zeckhauser. And he looked up to Mr. Zeckhauser, for that worthy rented the ne plus ultra of Troyden’s rooms, the fabulous fourteen-dollar-a-week extra large room with private bath; the only one of its kind in the building, located on the first floor. Each of the other twenty-seven men in the flophouse coveted that room — Mr. Huggerson no less than any of them — and it was only because of his investments from pre-bankruptcy days in the garment district that Mr. Zeckhauser was able to afford the room, thus lending him superior status in their ranks. He was, in fact, the elder statesman of the group, the oracle to whom all problems were eventually brought, a garment center Solomon without portfolio.

“Is it your boy, Ralph?” Mr. Zeckhauser always probed adroitly.

Mr. Huggerson looked down at the board and nodded back and forth, just the way Mr. Horowitz did when he dovened over his nightly prayers. “Yes, Ralph has, well, run afoul of some business difficulties, and was forced to cut down my check. I don’t think … that is, I’m not sure I can manage here with what he sent.”

Mr. Zeckhauser puffed out his thick lips knowingly. “Ah-hm. And —?”

“Well, sir, I was merely considering the possibility that Mr. Troyden might consider lowering my rent.”

The plump Mr. Zeckhauser pushed away the straight-backed chair on which the chess board rested, and stood up. He clasped both hands behind his back, thrust his round little belly out, and paced the room. It was indeed spacious enough for heroic pacing. Mr. Huggerson envied the living space.

“You now pay ten dollars the week, Mr. Huggerson. Is that not so, sir?”

Mr. Huggerson admitted it was so.

“To what do you wish Mr. Troyden to reduce your rent?”

Mr. Huggerson had given that problem a great deal of careful thought. He could pull in his belt a bit on his weekly expenditures, but since they were virtually nonexistent already, he could not trim too much. He had been doing satisfactorily on thirty dollars, after rent. Now if Harry Troyden would settle for six dollars per week, that would be twenty-four dollars; leaving him twenty-six on which to live. Only a four-dollar cutback, as Mr. Zeckhauser would phrase it. He could stop having his underwear and socks done at the laundry, wash them himself — though the water would certainly affect his arthritic fingers — and do very nicely. If Mr. Troyden would settle for six dollars a week.

He conveyed his reasoning to Mr. Zeckhauser.

“Sir, as we say in the garment industry, ‘You are in a serious bind.’ I would suggest a great deal of thought on the matter before ever speaking to our worthy landlord.”

This was no help whatsoever.

They resumed the game; Mr. Huggerson’s opinion of Mr. Zeckhauser’s opinions was greatly reduced.

However, later in the game, the plumper of the two dropped a bit of gossip that resolved Mr. Huggerson to see Troyden at once.

“I overheard Troyden with his son, that Oscar or Oswald or whatever his name is, this afternoon. They were discussing raising rents here. I was, of course, appalled at the mere mention, and was pleased to hear it had not gone beyond the conjecture stage. But then, one never knows.