Stanley Elkin - Mrs. Ted Bliss

What did she know of the world and its kingpins?

Who ruled here? Did the dog track and jai alai interests hold sway over the drug ones?

A word to Camerando, a note from Chitral. Yes, and the mystery of the missing roses. Louise was a little crazy and a blabbermouth but she was honest as the day is long, responsible, an ethics stickler, too conscientious to quit her post for so much as five minutes to stash stolen roses. No, that was out of the question. Speaking of which, she remembered having brought up the whole visit business with Manny after she heard about Alcibiades Chitral’s hundred-year sentence, and recalled that the lawyer’s response had been those words exactly! How could Chitral know? Was Manny from the building working both sides of the street? Impossible, she thought, what could the real estate lawyer get out of it? Or Chitral either? I mean, she thought, they gave the guy a hundred years. What was that supposed to be, a reduced sentence? Or maybe Manny was even a lousier lawyer than Maxine thought he was. Impossible again, thought Mrs. Bliss. The South American was a hotshot drug lord. Those fellows could afford nothing but the best. It was a mystery. It was all a mystery. Like all those cop and detective shows she liked to watch. It was as if — Tommy Overeasy flashed into her head — her 5,512 chickens had come home to roost. Though the mystery of the missing roses was maybe the biggest mystery of them all. Her part in the affair, too. Lashing out at the girl like that — with all she, Louise, had to worry about. It wasn’t like Dorothy. Even though Dorothy didn’t always know what Dorothy was like these days. The sudden, terrible reappearance of temper like a renewal of feelings she almost couldn’t remember ever really having. And suppose when he said that about the roses all he meant were those original roses, the ones he brought the night she sold him Ted’s car. She reread the letter. No, he said, “I hope you enjoy the roses.” That could only mean today’s roses, not roses he’d given her years ago. Unless he thought, and here Dorothy felt herself blush, remembering all the times in the game room when the men had spoken openly of her beauty, and been asked to guess her age as if she were some girl at the fair, she kept them pressed in a book somewhere. Oh, God, thought Mrs. Ted Bliss, don’t let him think that, anything but not that.

Who ruled here? What did?

Why, the mysteries. It was like the puzzle of the jai alai and drug and dog track ascendancies. It was like those words her children had spoken before throwing out their hands in that game. What was that game? Lorn Som Po. Paper covers rock! Rock smashes scissors! Scissors cuts paper! It made her head spin. Such a mishmash of claims on her attention. The hidden secrets of the upper hand.

There was no guarantee he’d show up. Probably he wouldn’t. But why take chances? So when Dorothy went to bed that night she set the alarm to go off an hour earlier than it usually did. She set it to go off the same time it would if she had an appointment at the beauty parlor, or the doctor’s, or she wanted to beat the heat on a day she went shopping, or if she were going away on a trip. This way she had time for her bath and to lay out her clothes the way she wanted, and to eat her breakfast without having to rush.

She was down in plenty of time. She had time to spare, even. As a matter of fact, if it hadn’t been such a beautiful day she would have gone back inside and sat down on a bench in the lobby till he came. (If he was coming.) But it was, so she was content to stay put, to get away from the air-conditioning and stand out in the wondrous weather. (If it even was weather, and not some gorgeous potion of perfect idealized memory, the luscious aromatics of a childhood spell say, Mrs. Bliss’s, Dorothy’s, charmed skin fixed in the softened, smoothed-over stock-stillness of all temperate sufficiency. If it even was weather this temperate ate sufficiency as absent of climate as a room in a dream.)

She wasn’t the only resident of Building One content to be there, happy just to stand in place, apparently with neither a desire to go back indoors nor the will to continue on the errands that had brought them outside in the first place. Those who’d come down to walk their dogs remained where they were, and so did their animals.

They marveled at the temperature, they complimented the perfect humidity. They congratulated each other on their decision to have chosen south Florida as a place to retire.

“They bottled this stuff they’d make a fortune,” one of them said.

“Put me down for a dozen cases. Money’s no object.”

“It is, but not under the circumstances.”

“Weather like this, you couldn’t bribe me to go inside.”

“What’s that smell? Oranges?”

“Lemons, limes. Something citric.”

“It’s like you just stepped out of the best shower you ever took.”

“It’s paradise.”

“I wish my kids were here today. They never catch the really good weather.”

“I know. Mine are always complaining, ‘Ma, it’s too hot,’ ‘It’s too cold,’ ‘Don’t it ever stop raining?’ ”

Mrs. Bliss joined in the laughter. It was true. They had a day like this once, maybe two times a year, tops.

“And not every year,” someone said as though continuing her thought, or as if she’d spoken it aloud.

What’s that all about, Mrs. Bliss wondered, startled, returned suddenly to her mission, and nervous because the atmospherics were a distraction and might hold them there until the car came for her. (If it did.) What, did she need this, a bunch of strangers standing around like they were seeing her off? (Because, Mrs. Bliss noted, most of their faces were new to her. She’d laid low the past few years, did not often go to the parties in the game room these days, was less and less comfortable shlepping along with her married friends like a fifth wheel. And with her fellow widows, so unhappy and lonely, it was even worse. She didn’t need no grief support groups.) The presence of so many onlookers made Dorothy self-conscious. And if the driver showed up — he was already ten minutes late — in an actual limousine she wasn’t entirely sure she might not just disappear into the small crowd, turn around, and go right back into the building. Louise could make up some excuse for her. Because the thought, just the thought, of these people seeing her helped into a long white stretch limo — she could picture it: the automobile with its gleaming silver wing-shaped antenna mounted on the trunk and the one-way glass that made the passengers invisible; its spic-and-span leather interior got up like a fancy motel room with its absurd built-ins — the speaker phones and cable TV and wet bar and sun lamp and a desktop you let down like a tray top on an airplane — would diminish her more than she already was, turn her pathetic, as if there were no quicker, more obvious way of pronouncing this some redletter day in the life, summing her up in the measly bottom lines of her dressed-up, shined-shoe, queen-for-a-day happiness. What, did she need it? Did she need it?

And then, suddenly, their chatter ceased. They made a collective sound of awe and wonder. The limo pulled into Building Number One’s driveway and stopped beneath the canopy.

The driver got out and walked around the immense length of the car. He was in black livery, and wore high black boots and a chauffeur’s inky cap.

He came directly up to Dorothy.

“Mrs. Ted Bliss?”

“Yes?”

“I apologize for the delay, Madam. There was construction on 163rd Street, and the traffic was backed up.”

“That’s all right,” Mrs. Bliss said.