Stanley Elkin: Van Gogh's Room at Arles

Where he collected his strength and doodled messages in his head for the answering machine.

Hi, he thought, this is Jack Schiff. Sorry to have missed your call, but I’ve stepped out for five minutes to run out to the store for some milk for my coffee. Just leave your et cetera, et cetera, and I’ll get right back to you.

That wasn’t bad, Schiff thought, but what would people who knew him make of it, of his “stepped out” and “run out” locutions? Of the swiftness and fluency of movement — so unlike him — he implied in that “get right back to you” trope? Unless they read it as the code that it was, they would think they’d reached some other Jack Schiff. Also, what if the thieves waited five minutes and called back? Or ten? Or fifteen? Or a whole hour and then heard the same damn message? After they robbed him they’d probably trash the place, maybe even torch it.

Hi, et cetera, et cetera, he revised, but — WOULD YOU CUT THAT OUT, PLEASE? DOWN, DAMN IT DOWN! Sorry, my pit bull’s acting up again. Look, just leave your name at the sound of the — oh, my God, BEEEEP!

Well, Schiff thought, pleased with the new composition and his invention of the pit bull. But there was a problem of verisimilitude. Wouldn’t there have to be growls, the sound of snarls and vicious barking? Probably he could manage a fairly convincing growl, or even a snarl, particularly over a telephone with its gift of enhanced, electronic sibilance, but he was an academic not an actor, he’d never be able to handle the rough barking. (A pit bull went on the wish list. Then, thinking of the effort it would be to care for, came right back off again.)

Et cetera, et cetera, he began over, I’m too depressed to come to the phone right now. Thieves cleaned me out. I called the cops. They tell me it looks like the work of professionals. Like that’s supposed to be a comfort? Leave your name, if I ever cheer up I’ll try to get back to you.

There were people at his front door. From where he sat on the sofa he could see the S.O.S. van through the French windows. Well, thought Schiff, thank God for small favors.

It was good he was downstairs. If he’d gone up — he had the wrong temperament for someone with his disease; really, he thought, he wasn’t laidback enough; not trying to get to the phone earlier before it stopped ringing was the exception not the rule — he could have had an accident in an effort to rush down to them before his visitors gave up and left. Even now, knowing what he knew about himself, and no more than twenty feet from the door, he scampered to it. The bank statements were still in his mouth.

“No no,” Bill, who was in the business, who knew a rotten hand when he saw one, who’d told him as much, said, waving off the hand Schiff extended, “let’s wait, why don’t we, until you sit down before we try to shake hands?”

In the living room Bill introduced him to the technician he’d brought with him, a woman. For a fellow with a quiet libido, it was astonishing to Schiff how much at ease women could put him, even women like this one, got up in gray coveralls like a repairman’s, moving man’s, or delivery man’s jumpsuit, a person’s who worked basements. It was generally true what Claire had said. Workmen tended to frighten him. At something like the ambassadorial level Claire handled the workmen, though Schiff began to wonder if he hadn’t been missing something. After some initial small talk—“Have any trouble finding the place?” ““Yes, it is a nice neighborhood, St. Louis’s best-kept secret”—which he quite enjoyed but wouldn’t have guessed he had in him, Bill presented him with some brochures about the equipment and service. Schiff accepted and started to read them before Bill interrupted. “Those are just to give you an idea of the colors that are available.”

“Oh, I don’t care about the color,” Schiff said.

“Well, good for you,” said Bill.

“The olive would have to be special-ordered anyway,” Jenny Simmons said. “So would the teal.”

“We don’t have the teal?” Bill said.

“I don’t think Indianapolis even makes it anymore. When was the last time you saw a teal?”

“Come to think of it,” Bill admitted.

“I really don’t care about the color,” Schiff said.

“Most clients don’t,” Bill said.

“Hey,” Schiff said, “I’m far gone, but I’m not that far gone. I still get a kick out of life. It’s not all monochromatic. All I meant was, it ticks me off when a company tries to make a profit off the paint it splashes over its products. I can remember when the Princess telephone first came out and Ma Bell charged you extra for any piece of equipment that wasn’t black.”

“That’s what I thought you meant,” Bill said, “Wasn’t it Henry Ford who said you could get the Model T in any color you wanted so long as it was black? Some clients are a little fussy is all. It actually matters to them whether the unit they wear around their neck and that could save their life is green or gray. Though don’t get me wrong. The S.O.S. Corporation isn’t Ma Bell. We don’t charge extra for the color.”

“There’s no scientific reason for it I can think of,” Jenny Simmons said, “but it’s been my experience that we have less trouble with a plain white unit than with any other color.”

“Plain white it is for me,” Schiff said.

“There you go,” Bill said. “It’s just we’re required by law to show you what’s available.”

Schiff looked to Jenny, who seemed to be frowning. By law? Was he serious? Required by law? Schiff smiled at her. Jenny looked down. Then Schiff wondered if she knew about his situation. Sure, he thought, she had to. They’d come together in the van. They were partners. Like cops. The salesman would almost certainly have passed on all that Schiff had himself volunteered— that he’d been married thirty-six years and that this was the day the Lord had made for his wife to just up and leave him, fled to her boyfriend in Oregon, spilling his life like a suicide. Also, she’d seen him with bank statements in his mouth. Now Schiff looked down. And only a few minutes earlier he’d been thinking of giving them tea, hard stuff even. (Schiff remembered when he was a kid, his parents offering “a shot” to men who came to do for them, carry their furniture up and down flights of stairs. Maybe that’s why he was still afraid of them— their power and rough, blue-collar ways.) He felt a little betrayed. Even at that, though, he took a sort of comfort in their company, and if it wasn’t for the fact that he had still to call the banks and check with them about his accounts he would have been content to spend the rest of the afternoon being sold to. There was something soothing about it, like watching a fishing show on TV that taught you to tie your own flies or showed you how to paint a picture. It was a little, he imagined, like a woman getting a free makeover in a department store. (Schiff, abandoned, on his own, was coming a little to terms with the domestic.)

“I took the liberty of making some notes during our earlier phone conversation.” Bill said. “Whenever you’re ready we can check out your floor plan. Jenny’s the expert. I’d like her to walk us through it. Nothing’s written in stone yet. There could still be some changes you might want to make.”

“Of course, of course, but I don’t think you really need me. While you’re pacing it off I could be making some calls.”

“Sure thing,” Bill said, “we’ll take care of it. Go make your calls.”

“Well, that’s just it,” Schiff said. “I have this cordless phone? I may even have mentioned it to you.”

“I remember you did.”

“It’s up on the bed in my room. I live by the cripple’s code. That you must never do anything twice. Unfortunately, I do just about everything twice. Well,” he said, “I’m crippled. I almost have to.”