Stanley Elkin - Mrs. Ted Bliss

So it was quite possible, now she had regained her composure, that even if he hadn’t asked to see a list of her interests she might have volunteered anyway.

“Cards,” she began.

“For money?” Toibb said.

“Yes, sure for money.”

“Big money?”

“Friendly games. But rich enough for my blood.”

“How friendly?”

“Friendly. If someone loses five dollars that’s a big deal.”

“Go on,” Toibb said.

“Cooking.”

“Mexican? Continental? Japanese? What sort of cooking?”

“Supper. Coffee, dessert. Cooking.”

“What else?”

“Breakfast. Lunch. Not now, not so much.”

“No, I mean do you have any other interests?”

“Oh, sure,” Mrs. Bliss said. “I’m very interested in television. We bought color TV back in the sixties and were one of the first to have cable. If you mean what kind of television I’d have to say the detectives.”

She had known while she wrote the list out that it made her life seem trivial. Even those interests she hadn’t yet mentioned — her membership in ORT and other organizations, things connected with events in the Towers, her visits to Chicago and Pittsburgh and Cincinnati — even that which was most important to her, her children and grandchildren, all her family. The trips, when Ted was alive, they’d taken to the islands and, one time, to Israel with a stop in London to visit Frank and his family Frank’s sabbatical year. (Her childhood, the years she’d spent in Russia, even farther than London, farther than Israel.) All these were real interests, yet she was ordinary, ordinary. Everyone had interests. Everyone had a family, highlights in their lives. She had considered, when she made her list, putting down Alcibiades Chitral’s name, the business with the car, the time she’d had to testify in court, but wasn’t sure those experiences qualified as interests. Unless Ted’s death also qualified, her twelve-hundred-mile crying jag on the plane to Chicago, Marvin’s three-year destruction. All the unhappy things in her life. Did they interest her?

“Other people’s condominiums,” she blurted. “Tommy Auveristas,” she said. “ All the South Americans.”

“You know Tommy Overeasy?” Holmer Toibb said.

“Tommy Overeasy?”

“It’s what they call him. But wait a minute, you know this man?” Toibb said excitedly.

She’d struck pay dirt but was too caught up in her thoughts to notice. Not even thoughts. Sudden impressions. Saliencies. Bolts from the blue. And she rode over Toibb’s lively interest. Not her loose ends, her sixes and sevens, not her blues or sadness or even her grief. Maybe she wasn’t even a candidate for Holmer Toibb’s therapies.

I know, she thought, I want to go visit Alcibiades Chitral!

Speak of the devil, thought Mrs. Ted Bliss.

She had just left Holmer Toibb’s office on Lincoln Road and was sitting on a bench inside a small wooden shelter waiting for her bus. The devil who’d come into her line of sight just as she was thinking of him was Hector Camerando. Camerando from Building Two and his friend, Jaime Guttierez from Three, were two of the first South American boys she had met in the Towers. Mrs. Bliss, like many unschooled people, had an absolutely phenomenal memory when it came to attaching names to faces and, since in her relatively small world, her limited universe of experience, strangers were almost always an event, she was usually bang on target recalling the circumstances in which she’d met them. She’d met Hector through Jaime on one of the old international evenings that used to be held in the game rooms on Saturday nights. Rose Blitzer had thought him quite handsome, recalled Mrs. Bliss. Even Rose’s husband, Max, olov hasholem, had remarked on his smile. Dorothy sighed. It had been less than four years yet so many were gone. Just from Mrs. Bliss’s table alone — Max; Ida; the woman on coffee duty, Estelle. Ted. She didn’t care to think about all the others in the room that night who were gone now. (Not “cashed in his chips,” not “kicked the bucket.” “Who had lost his life.” That’s how Toibb should have put it. As if death came like the account of a disaster at sea in a newspaper. Or what happened to soldiers in wars. He should have honored it for the really big deal it was.) Let alone the people who’d been too sick to make it to the gala and had stayed in their apartments. Plus all those who’d been well enough but hadn’t come anyway. In a way even Guttierez hadn’t survived. Oh, he was still alive, touch wood, but Louise Munez had told Mrs. Bliss he’d taken a loss on his condo and moved to a newer, even bigger place in the West Palm Beach area that Louise told her was restricted.

And, if you could trust Louise (even without her mishegoss newspapers and magazines the security guard was a little strange), Hector Camerando was thinking to put his place on the market.

Mrs. Ted Bliss hated to hear about Towers condominiums being put up for sale. Everyone knew the Miami area was overbuilt, that it was a buyer’s market. But interest rates were sky high. It could cost you a fortune to take out a loan, and what you gave to the bank you didn’t give to the seller. That’s why the prices kept falling. Or that’s what Manny from the building told her anyway. Poor Rose Blitzer, thought Dorothy Bliss. As if it wasn’t enough that her husband had lost his life. Poor Rose Blitzer with her three bedrooms, two and a half baths, full kitchen, California room, and a living room/dining room area so large all she needed to have two extra, good-sized rooms was put in a wall. She must rattle around in a place like that. She’d never get back what they’d put into it before Max lost his life. (Crazy Louise was floating rumors.) But selling at a loss was better than renting or leaving it stand empty. Not that it made a difference to Mrs. Ted Bliss. She’d never sell her place. When she lost her life it would go to the kids and they’d do what they’d do. Till then, forget it. She and Ted had picked their spot and Mrs. Bliss was perfectly willing to lie in it.

But what, Mrs. Bliss wondered, was Hector Camerando doing on Lincoln Road? What could there be for him here?

Dorothy remembered Lincoln Road from when it was still Lincoln Road. From back in the old days, from back in the fifties, from when they first started coming down to Miami Beach. From when all the tourists from all the brand-new hotels up and down Collins Avenue would come there to shop — all the latest styles in men’s and women’s beach-wear, lounging pajamas, even fur coats if you could believe that. Anything you wanted, any expensive, extravagant thing you could think of — cocktail rings, studs for French cuffs, the fanciest watches and men’s white-on-white shirts, anything. Hair salons you could smell the toilet water and perfumes blowing out on the sidewalks like flowers exploding. You want it, they got it. Then, afterward, you could drop into Wolfie’s when Wolfie’s was Wolfie’s.

Now, even the bright, little, old-fashioned trolley bus you rode in free up and down Lincoln looked shabby and the advertising on the back of the bench on which Dorothy sat was in Spanish. Half the shops were boarded up or turned into medical buildings where chiropractors and recreational therapeusisists kept their offices; and in Wolfie’s almost the only people you ever saw were dried-up old Jewish ladies on sticks with loose dentures hanging down beneath their upper lips or riding up their jaws, and holding on for dear life to their fat doggie bags of rolls and collapsing pats of foiled, melting butter that came with their cups of coffee and single boiled egg, taking them back to the lone rooms in which they lived in old, whitewashed, three-story hotels far down Collins. Either them or the out-and-out homeless. It stank, if you could believe it, of pee.