Stephen Dixon - What Is All This? - Uncollected Stories

“Don’t give me that nicey-nice what’d-I-do? business again — please. For plenty I’ve taken from you — everything from watching you not offer me tea to your hurling insults.”

“So I got a little temperamental. So everyone does once in a while.”

“Crazy’s more like it. And when you act like this, I don’t know what else you might try, like those men said.” He stared at her a few seconds and began laughing.

“Look, you got your hand on the doorknob, so use it. Then take all you can steal from the landlords and get the hell out of here.”

She muttered something under her breath and tried opening the door. As he continued to laugh at her, she kicked the bottom of the door, unlocked it, and charged out.

She did just what he expected her to: slammed her front door shut a good five minutes after she’d slammed his, walked noisily through, the hallway and down the stairs. He went to his bedroom window, waiting for her to storm out of the lobby, through the courtyard, and across the street, heading, he was sure, to the drugstore phonebooth a block away. He raised two Venetian blind slats and peered through them just as she came out of the lobby and glanced up at his living room window. She was carrying her mesh shopping bag, a bag of garbage and a bundle of old newspapers — but she wasn’t fooling anyone. First thing she’ll do when she’s away from the building is get rid of all that bogus junk and hustle to the phone to haggle with one of the realty people. Later, when they can’t agree to what she’ll call her final offer — cunningly made much higher than what she expects to get — she’ll tell them to come to her home, where they’ll settle, her knowing all the time the advantage of bargaining in the very apartment they so desperately want.

He stood at the window till she returned, a celery stalk and packaged bread sticking out of the mesh bag filled with groceries. A costly trick to fool him, he thought, and look how it worked. He waited behind his door, listening till she was upstairs and in her apartment, and then went back to the window. He stayed there for more than two hours — even moved a chair to it so he could sit on it — and was surprised, by the time his dinner hour rolled around, that the realty people hadn’t shown up.

Four days later Bert saw the three men enter the building, and then heard them climb the cracked green linoleum steps leading to the third floor. He stood by the door as they walked down the hallway, one of them, apparently wearing metal plates on the heels of his shoes, clicking along like a tap dancer. They stopped at Anna’s door and rang the bell. She let them in, and in an hour showed them out. Thank you very much, and good day, gentlemen,” she said, and one of the men: “And thank you for tea, Mrs. Kornman.” Bert expected the men to ring his bell next, since after disposing of her they’d naturally think he could be had for the same price that very afternoon, but they went down the stairs.

He rushed to the window and opened it a little, hoping to catch something in their expressions and movements and what they were saying that’d give him an idea of how they accepted her last offer, which would help him decide what his should be before they ultimately forced him to leave. All he saw were their secret, lineless faces — no smiles or looks of disappointment — and the creased tops of two of the men’s hats, and the third man’s black slicked-down skull, since this fellow was holding his fedora and combing the hair above his ears. All three talked softly, moved swiftly, and carried briefcases under their arms. Then the hatless man stopped as the other two walked on, slid the comb into his coat’s breast pocket, carefully placed the hat on his head, and grabbed the briefcase by its collapsible handle, letting it dangle at his side. He ran to catch up with the others, who were waiting at the curb, and all three walked silently side by side, crossed the street, and headed downtown.

Bert waited for Anna to knock on his door — certain she was the type who’d want to boast to him about how much she’d shrewdly extorted from the company. She never came, so three hours later, after he tramped up the second flight of stairs with the evening newspaper, thinking she’d hear him and throw open her door, he rang her bell.

“Yes? Who is it?” after he rang a fourth time.

“Bert,” he said, thinking, Who else could it be, you liar.

“Who, please?”

“Bert Samuels, from the third floor. Remember me?”

“Just a moment.”

“Just a moment?” he said under his breath. Why, she should be hung upside down by her toes, the ugly witch, he thought, picturing her waiting behind the door, smoking a cigarette or filing her nails.

She opened the door, seeming to withdraw her halting smile just as soon as she gave it. “Would you like to come in? Though why I should be so polite to you after your treatment of me the other day, I don’t know.”

“I’m fine here, thanks.”

“Have it your own way.” She flipped an unlit cigarette out of her hand, almost like a magician pulling something from his sleeve, stuck it between her lips, and tried to light it with a silver table lighter.

“Needs fuel.” She put the lighter and cigarette on a little table by the door and searched her housecoat for matches.

Bert forced a smile. “Say, I saw those fellows leave before and wanted to know if they had anything new to say about me.”

“You? Nothing much. Why should they?”

“Oh, stop it. They must’ve said something.”

“Only about me. They offered — you know: like they always offer.”

“So come on; what happened?”

“What happened, what?”

The money, the money! How much you finally take to leave?”

“You think I took? Is that what you’re driving at all this time?”

“Look, I’m nobody’s fool. All along I knew you were holding out and using me just to get more cash from them.”

“What, are you altogether insane?”

“Goddamnit, I saw you myself running to the drugstore to phone them. Thursday — right? Yeah, Thursday late.”

“To dump garbage and for my groceries I went for Thursday. Always Thursday the groceries. Friday’s too crowded, and Saturday’s my holy day. I eat and throw my trash out, you know, no matter how some people live.”

“Anna, I know what you did, so why bother arguing? I didn’t come here for that.”

Then what is it you came for? The first day since last week I speak to them is today— today ; but did I expect them? I didn’t. They drop in from nowhere, no letter, just unannounced, and now I think I’m glad they did.”

“Glady for the money you mean.”

“Money? What’s money to me? Enough I got without theirs. To you, maybe — to a stingy hoarding old man like yourself it’s the world — but to me? Pride’s more important. It’s living here, you, always insulting me like I’m an animal, that’ll make up my mind fast. So I’ll tell you, Mr. Samuels, before I only got excited and threatened to go, but now, don’t tempt me into really going.”

“So you’re leaving this week then, right?”

“I wasn’t leaving no time till you helped me decide this very moment. Now I’m going to call them tomorrow morning and say that anything they want to give me is good enough just as long as they take me away from this madhouse.”

He didn’t believe a word she said. All he wanted was for her to admit she sold out — just that simple satisfaction — and also to know what amount she sold out for, since besides using the figure for his own bargaining purposes it’ll give him an opportunity to tell her what a monkey they made out of her. But she’d turned around, ignoring him and appearing to be deep in thought, and then said “You’ll have to excuse me, but I got a lot of packing to do and might as well start it now, so if that’s all you got to say, goodbye.”