Stanley Elkin - Mrs. Ted Bliss

“So tell me, Nate,” Junior Yellin said, “you got plans for this place?”

“Plans?”

“You know. How you intend to market it.”

“We haven’t really gotten that far in our thinking, Milt.”

“We?”

“Aunt Rosie’s and Uncle Manny’s legatees.”

“You know best, Counselor, but I figure you’re down here — what? — only one or two more days? Probably figure to list your uncle’s condo with an agent and skedaddle the hell out of here before you even get to know the lay of the land.”

“ Junior! ” said Mrs. Ted Bliss.

“Well, he was hired over the phone, Dorothy. He’s…what…a distant nephew? Manny and Rosie were from Michigan. That’s distant. Am I getting warm, Nate?”

“Well,” Nathan Apple said.

“Sure I am, I’m getting warm. All I’m saying, son, is that I’ve handled a few real estate transactions in my day. Aunt Dorothy can tell you. As a matter of fact I had at least a leetle something to do with some property she and her husband had a few years back. That was in Michigan, too, now I recall. Tell him, Dot.”

“Junior!”

“Tell him.”

“My husband bought a farm from Mr. Yellin.”

“ Through Mr. Yellin. I know you’re already the executor, young Nate, but if it makes you more comfortable why don’t you consult with the legatees and see what they want to do with the place? Tell them you have a man who might be willing to handle it for them without, under the circumstances, taking a commission.”

“Under what circumstances?” the lawyer said.

“Well, it’s sentimental,” Junior Yellin said. “I know how helpful Uncle Manny was to Mrs. Bliss. How indebted she was to him. In her book he was practically Uncle Johnny-on-the-spot.”

“Come on,” said Mrs. Bliss, “cut it out.”

“He was, wasn’t he?”

“He was very kind to me,” Mrs. Bliss admitted.

“I’m afraid I don’t see—”

“Tell me your price range. Maybe I’ll buy it myself.”

“I don’t know,” Nathan Apple said. “I don’t know the lay of the land. You said so yourself.”

“Ballpark.”

“I don’t know,” he said. “It’s the most expensive of the three basic floor plans. It’s got a beautiful panoramic view of Biscayne Bay. And didn’t my uncle refurnish the place a few months after Aunt Rosie died?”

Junior nudged Mrs. Bliss and winked. “He don’t know he says, he don’t know. Is this guy Mr. Perry Fucking Mason or what?”

“I don’t know,” Nathan said. “A hundred seventy thousand dollars?”

“Jesus,” Junior said, “he don’t know!”

Mrs. Bliss was amazed by Yellin, who seemed in the few minutes he’d been talking to Apple to have climbed down from all the moderated energies he’d displayed for her since coming to Florida and renewing their (in a sense) practically historical relationship, and reverted to his old piratical ways. The seamlessness of the transition was what most surprised her, some now-you-see-it, now-you-don’t quality to his character palpable as a magician’s trick. Old and diminished as he’d become, conversational, anecdotal, at times almost soliloquial in some gentle, calm, barbershop sense of mild, almost privileged reflection; then, quick as snap, there he was, back in business again. He was no slouch. And neither, Mrs. Bliss saw, to judge by the kid’s $170,000 gambit, was young Nate.

She was probably just a foolish old woman, thought Mrs. Ted Bliss, but she had a sense that at least a bit of this male flourish and display were for her benefit. Even the pisher’s. It was a proposition incapable of being tested, but she had the impression that if she weren’t there to witness them, their moves and positioning, their vying, would never have been near so blunt. It was astonishing to her how people just couldn’t help themselves, fantastic they should be so mired in gender. Then she thought, look at the pot calling the kettle black. What, I’m not getting a kick out of this? And surrendered to what, in all the most ancient parts of her old being, she hoped would prove to be spectacular.

And egged it on even.

“A hundred seventy thousand dollars,” she said, almost like someone in a prompter’s box reminding the players where things stood, pronouncing this as the prompter would, without emphasis, neutrally as she could, almost meaninglessly.

“Ballpark,” said Nathan, picking up his cue.

“Yeah, sure,” Junior Yellin said, “ballpark. But Yankee Stadium?”

Mrs. Ted Bliss loved it. It was delicious. She ate it up.

“Okay,” Nathan said reasonably, “all right. I forgot about your loyalty to Uncle Manny and Aunt Dorothy. I forgot about your willingness to sacrifice your usual commission. What’s five percent of a hundred seventy thousand? Eighty-five hundred, am I right? A hundred seventy thousand take away eighty-five hundred is what…? A hundred sixty-one thousand, five hundred.”

“Absolutely,” Junior said. “Back in Grosse Pointe. Down here they go by the new math altogether.”

“The new math.”

“Yeah, well, first of all we start from an entirely different commission basis. The agent takes ten percent, not five. Already that brings us down to one hundred fifty-three thousand, and that’s without even factoring in the buyer’s initial additional expenses.”

“ What initial additional expenses?” Apple said.

“The initial additional expenses of refurnishing this place.”

“That’s no problem,” Nathan said, “we’re selling it furnished.”

“You decided that? You and Aunt Rosie’s and Uncle Manny’s legatees?”

“I’m the executor.”

“I guess it just wasn’t meant to be,” Yellin said. “We’re at an impasse here, Dorothy.” Junior sighed sadly. Nathan Apple, deep in thought, stroked his chin.

“Let’s see,” he said, “maybe not.” And looked up brightly. “Tell you what,” he said. “You gave up your agent’s commission, I’ll give up my executor’s commission. But you know,” he said, “my hands are tied. We’re paid on a sliding scale. In most states, in an estate like Uncle Manny’s, the lawyer is entitled to a two and three-quarters percent fee. Anyone have a pocket calculator?”

“I do,” said Mrs. Ted Bliss, “your uncle gave me this in a time of trouble.” She handed it to him. “It works on solar,” she said.

The lawyer punched some numbers into the little machine, then showed them the numbers that ran along the top of the keypad like a faded headline. “I make that $4,207.50,” he said. “Subtract that from…We’ll use your $153,000 as a base price, Milt. There, it’s $148,792.50.”

“Tell him, Dorothy.”

“Tell him what?” said Mrs. Bliss.

“Tell him about the neighborhood.”

“I want to stay out of this,” said Mrs. Ted Bliss.

She did. She wanted to stay out of it altogether. She wished only to sit there, comfortably ringside, and watch these two champions go at each other. Rivals, she thought girlishly. Rivals for my hand. She almost laughed at the absurdity. She was eighty years old. If she had once been beautiful it would have taken the genius of some paleontological vision to restore her from her fossil clues and data. Bands of archaeologists would have had to reconstitute her from the geological record. It wasn’t vanity, she wasn’t vain. It had to do with that old gender mire. It was that they couldn’t help themselves. They couldn’t.

“Go on, Dot. Tell him.”

“You tell him, Milt.”

“Tell me what?”

“It’s sociology,” said the jack of all trades.

“Sociology.”

“And style. Sociology and style. Sociology and style and evolution, both progressive and retrograde.”