Stanley Elkin - Criers & Kibitzers, Kibitzers & Criers

“Bertie? Bertie? Let me get rid of this stuff. Give me a hand, will you?” Preminger said.

“Sure,” Bertie said. “It’s on my family crest. One hand washing the other. Here, wait a minute.” He passed Preminger on the stairs and held the door for him. He followed him outside.

“Take the key from my pocket, Bertie, and open the trunk. It’s the blue convertible.”

Bertie put his hand in Preminger’s pocket. “You’ve got nice thighs,” he said. To irritate Preminger he pretended to try to force the house key into the trunk lock. Preminger stood impatiently behind him, balancing his heavy burdens. “I’ve been to Dallas, lived in a palace,” Bertie said over his shoulder. “There’s this great Eskimo who blows down there. Would you believe he’s cut the best side ever recorded of ‘Mood Indigo’?” Bertie shook the key ring as if it were a castanet.

Preminger dumped his load on the hood of the car and took the keys from Bertie. He opened the trunk and started to throw things into it. “Going somewhere?” Bertie asked.

“Vacation,” Preminger said.

“Oh,” Bertie said.

Preminger looked toward the apartment house. “I’ve got to go up for another suitcase, Bertie.”

“Sure,” Bertie said.

He went up the stairs behind Preminger. About halfway up he stopped to catch his breath. Preminger watched him curiously. He pounded his chest with his tiny fist and grinned weakly. “ Mea culpa ,” he said. “Mea booze, Mea sluts. Mea pot. Me-o-mea.”

“Come on,” Preminger said.

They went inside and Bertie heard a toilet flushing. Through a hall, through an open door, he saw Norma, Preminger’s wife, staring absently into the bowl. “If she moves them now you won’t have to stop at God knows what kind of place along the road,” Bertie said brightly.

Norma lifted a big suitcase easily in her big hands and came into the living room. She stopped when she saw Bertie. “Bertie! Richard, it’s Bertie.”

“We bumped into each other in the hall,” Preminger said.

Bertie watched the two of them look at each other.

“You sure picked a time to come visiting, Bertie,” Preminger said.

“We’re leaving on our vacation, Bertie,” Norma said.

“We’re going up to New England for a couple of weeks,” Preminger told him.

“We can chat for a little with Bertie, can’t we, Richard, before we go?”

“Of course,” Preminger said. He sat down and pulled the suitcase next to him.

“It’s very lovely in New England.” Bertie sat down and crossed his legs. “I don’t get up there very regularly. Not my territory. I’ve found that when a man makes it in the Ivy League he tends to forget about old Bertie,” he said sadly.

“What are you doing in St. Louis, Bertie?” Preminger’s wife asked him.

“It’s my Midwestern swing,” Bertie said. “I’ve been down South on the southern sponge. Opened up a whole new territory down there.” He heard himself cackle.

“Who did you see, Bertie?” Norma asked him.

“You wouldn’t know her. A cousin of Klaff’s.”

“Were you living with her?” Preminger asked.

Bertie shook his finger at him. The Premingers stared glumly at each other. Richard rubbed the plastic suitcase handle. In a moment, Bertie thought, he would probably say, “Gosh, Bertie, you should have written. You should have let us know.” He should have written! Did the Fuller Brush man write? Who would be home? Who wouldn’t be on vacation? They were commandos, the Fuller Brush man and he. He was tired, sick. He couldn’t move on today. Would they kill him because of their lousy vacation?

Meanwhile the Premingers weren’t saying anything. They stared at each other openly, their large eyes in their large heads on their large necks largely. He thought he could wait them out. It was what he should do. It should have been the easiest thing in the world to wait out the Premingers, to stare them down. Who was he kidding? It wasn’t his forte. He had no forte. That was his forte. He could already hear himself begin to speak.

“Sure,” he said. “I almost married that girl. Klaff’s lady cousin. The first thing she ever said to me was, ‘Bertie, they never build drugstores in the middle of the block. Always on corners.’ It was the truth. Well, I thought, this was the woman for me. One time she came out of the ladies’ john of a Greyhound bus station and she said, ‘Bertie, have you ever noticed how public toilets often smell like bubble gum?’ That’s what it was like all the time. She had all these institutional insights. I was sure we could make it together. It didn’t work out.” He sighed.

Preminger stared at him, but Norma was beginning to soften. He wondered randomly what she would be like in bed. He looked coolly at her long legs, her wide shoulders. Like Klaff’s cousin: institutional.

“Bertie, how are your eyes now?” she asked.

“Oh,” he said, “still seeing double.” He smiled. “Two for one. It’s all right when there’s something to look at. Other times I use the patch.”

Norma seemed sad.

“I have fun with it,” he said. “It doesn’t make any difference which eye I cover. I’m ambidextrous.” He pulled the black elastic band from his forehead. Instantly there were two large Richards, two large Normas. The Four Premingers like a troupe of Jewish acrobats. He felt surrounded. In the two living rooms his four hands fumbled with the two patches. He felt sick to his stomach. He closed one eye and hastily replaced the patch. “I shouldn’t try that on an empty stomach,” he said.

Preminger watched him narrowly. “Gee, Bertie,” he said finally, “maybe we could drop you some place.”

It was out of the question. He couldn’t get into a car again. “Do you go through Minneapolis, Minnesota?” he asked indifferently.

Preminger looked confused, and Bertie liked him for a moment. “We were going to catch the Turnpike up around Chicago, Bertie.”

“Oh, Chicago,” Bertie said. “I can’t go back to Chicago yet.”

Preminger nodded.

“Don’t you know anybody else in St. Louis?” Norma asked.

“Klaff used to live across the river, but he’s gone,” Bertie said.

“Look, Bertie…” Preminger said.

“I’m fagged,” Bertie said helplessly, “locked out.”

“Bertie,” Preminger said, “do you need any money? I could let you have twenty dollars.”

Bertie put his hand out mechanically.

“This is stupid,” Norma said suddenly. “Stay here .”

“Oh, well—”

“No, I mean it. Stay here . We’ll be gone for two weeks. What difference does it make?”

Preminger looked at his wife for a moment and shrugged. “Sure,” he said, “there’s no reason you couldn’t stay here. As a matter of fact you’d be doing us a favor. I forgot to cancel the newspaper, the milk. You’d keep the burglars off. They don’t bother a place if it looks lived in.” He put twenty dollars on the coffee table. “There might be something you need,” he explained.

Bertie looked carefully at them both. They seemed to mean it. Preminger and his wife grinned at him steadily, relieved at how easily they had come off. He enjoyed the idea himself. At last he had a real patron, a real matron. “Okay,” he said.

“Then it’s settled,” Preminger said, rising.

“It’s all right?” Bertie said.

“Certainly it’s all right,” Preminger said. “What harm could you do?”

“I’m harmless,” Bertie said.

Preminger picked up the suitcase and led his wife toward the door. “Have a good time,” Bertie said, following them. “I’ll watch things for you. Rrgghh! Rrrgghhhfff!”

Preminger waved back at him as he went down the stairs. “Hey,” Bertie called, leaning over the banister, “did I tell you about that crazy Klaff? You know what nutty Klaff did out at U.C.L.A.? He became a second-story man.” They were already down the stairs.