Stanley Elkin - Criers & Kibitzers, Kibitzers & Criers

He went to the window and pushed aside the loose, broken shade. He opened the window and set both lists on the ledge. He made a ring of his forefinger and thumb and flicked the paper balls into the street. “Look out for Ed Wolfe,” he said softly.

In six weeks the season changed. The afternoons failed. The steam failed. He was as unafraid of the dark as he had been of the sunlight. He longed for a special grief, to be touched by anguish or terror, but when he saw the others in the street, in the cafeteria, in the theater, in the hallway, on the stairs, at the newsstand, in the basement rushing their fouled linen from basket to machine, he stood, as indifferent to their errand, their appetite, their joy, their greeting, their effort, their curiosity, their grime, as he was to his own. No envy wrenched him, no despair unhoped him, but, gradually, he became restless.

He began to spend, not recklessly so much as indifferently. At first he was able to recall for weeks what he spent on a given day. It was his way of telling time. Now he had difficulty remembering, and could tell how much his life was costing only by subtracting what he had left from his original two thousand four hundred seventy-nine dollars and three cents. In eleven weeks he had spent six hundred and seventy-seven dollars and thirty-four cents. It was almost three times more than he had planned. He became panicky. He had come to think of his money as his life. Spending it was the abrasion again, the old habit of self-buffing to come to the thing beneath. He could not draw infinitely on his credit. It was limited. Limited. He checked his figures. He had eighteen hundred and one dollars, sixty-nine cents. He warned himself, “Rothschild, child. Rockefeller, feller. Look out, Ed Wolfe. Look out.”

He argued with his landlord and won a five-dollar reduction in his rent. He was constantly hungry, wore clothes stingily, realized an odd reassurance in his thin pain, his vague fetidness. He surrendered his dimes, his quarters, his half-dollars in a kind of sober anger. In seven more weeks he spent only one hundred and thirty dollars and fifty-one cents. He checked his figures. He had sixteen hundred seventy-one dollars, eighteen cents. He had spent almost twice what he had anticipated. “It’s all right,” he said. “I’ve reversed the trend. I can catch up.” He held the money in his hand. He could smell his soiled underwear. “Nah, nah,” he said. “It’s not enough.”

It was not enough, it was not enough, it was not enough. He had painted himself into a corner. Death by cul-de-sac . He had nothing left to sell, the born salesman. The born champion, long distance, Ed Wolfe of a salesman lay in his room, winded, wounded, wondering where his next pitch was coming from, at one with the ages.

He put on his suit, took his sixteen hundred seventy-one dollars and eighteen cents and went down into the street. It was a warm night. He would walk downtown. The ice which just days before had covered the sidewalk was dissolved to slush. In darkness he walked through a thawing, melting world. There was something on the edge of the air, the warm, moist odor of the change of the season. He was touched despite himself. “I’ll take a bus,” he threatened. “I’ll take a bus and close the windows and ride over the wheel.”

He had dinner and some drinks in a hotel. When he finished he was feeling pretty good. He didn’t want to go back. He looked at the bills thick in his wallet and went over to the desk clerk. “Where’s the action?” he whispered. The clerk looked at him, startled. He went over to the bell captain. “Where’s the action?” he asked and gave the man a dollar. He winked. The man stared at him helplessly.

“Sir?” the bell captain said, looking at the dollar.

Ed Wolfe nudged him in his gold buttons. He winked again. “Nice town you got here,” he said expansively. “I’m a salesman, you understand, and this is new territory for me. Now if I were in Beantown or Philly or L.A. or Vegas or Big D or Frisco or Cincy — why, I’d know what was what. I’d be okay, know what I mean?” He winked once more. “Keep the buck, kid,” he said. “Keep it, keep it,” he said, walking off.

In the lobby a man sat in a deep chair, The Wall Street Journal opened wide across his face. “Where’s the action?” Ed Wolfe said, peering over the top of the paper into the crown of the man’s hat.

“What’s that?” the man asked.

Ed Wolfe, surprised, saw that the man was a Negro.

“What’s that?” the man repeated, vaguely nervous. Embarrassed, Ed Wolfe watched him guiltily, as though he had been caught in an act of bigotry.

“I thought you were someone else,” he said lamely. The man smiled and lifted the paper to his face. Ed Wolfe stood before the opened paper, conscious of mildly teetering. He felt lousy, awkward, complicatedly irritated and ashamed, the mere act of hurting someone’s feelings suddenly the most that could be held against him. It came to him how completely he had failed to make himself felt. “Look out for Ed Wolfe, indeed,” he said aloud. The man lowered his paper. “Some of my best friends are Comanches,” Ed Wolfe said. “Can I buy you a drink?”

“No,” the man said.

“Resistance, eh?” Ed Wolfe said. “That’s good. Resistance is good. A deal closed without resistance is no deal. Let me introduce myself. I’m Ed Wolfe. What’s your name?

“Please, I’m not bothering anybody. Leave me alone.”

“Why?” Ed Wolfe asked.

The man stared at him and Ed Wolfe sat suddenly down beside him. “I won’t press it,” he said generously. “Where’s the action? Where is it? Fold the paper, man. You’re playing somebody else’s gig.” He leaned across the space between them and took the man by the arm. He pulled at him gently, awed by his own boldness. It was the first time since he had shaken hands with La Meck that he had touched anyone physically. What he was risking surprised and puzzled him. In all those months to have touched only two people, to have touched even two people! To feel their life, even, as now, through the unyielding wool of clothing, was disturbing. He was unused to it, frightened and oddly moved. Bewildered, the man looked at Ed Wolfe timidly and allowed himself to be taken toward the cocktail lounge.

They took a table near the bar. There, in the alcoholic dark, within earshot of the easy banter of the regulars, Ed Wolfe seated the Negro and then himself. He looked around the room and listened for a moment, then turned back to the Negro. Smoothly boozy, he pledged the man’s health when the girl brought their drinks. He drank stolidly, abstractedly. Coming to life briefly, he indicated the men and women around them, their suntans apparent even in the dark. “Pilots,” he said. “All of them. Airline pilots. The girls are all stewardesses and the pilots lay them.” He ordered more drinks. He did not like liquor, and liberally poured ginger ale into his bourbon. He ordered more drinks and forgot the ginger ale. “ Goyim ,” he said. “White goyim . American goyim .” He stared at the Negro. He leaned across the table. “Little Orphan Annie, what the hell kind of an orphan is that with all her millions and her white American goyim friends to bail her out?”

He watched them narrowly, drunkenly. He had seen them before — in good motels, in airports, in bars — and he wondered about them, seeing them, he supposed, as Negroes or children of the poor must have seen him when he had sometimes driven his car through slums.They were removed, aloof — he meant it — a different breed. He turned and saw the Negro, and could not think for a moment what the man was doing there. The Negro slouched in his chair, his great white eyes hooded. “You want to hang around here?” Ed Wolfe asked him.