Stephen Dixon: All Gone

“That’s what I said. Joe the super. I guess we can take a cab over. Think I can be back for the Danube case by four?”

“It shouldn’t take you any longer than that,” Penny says. “Mail these on the way?” She gives him a packet.

“I’m paying her but she acts like my boss. Hey, you pay me from your salary from now on, all right?”

“Great, if you triple mine.”

“A raise? I’ll give you a raise. Sure I’ll give you, a triple one. And next week I get to play the boss. Alternate weeks, got it?”

“Wonderful. Don’t get lost.”

We get a cab. In it he says “You know, I also was an actor once. Not seriously for the movies like you maybe, but commercials. I’m married but was seeing this actress, an unbelievable beauty. Boobs out to here and waist my thumb and middle finger went around and I’m stubby. I won’t mention her name because she’s right on top and making a million now and might not like it because acting people can gossip, I know that. I’ve seen you guys on panel shows. But at one party we’re at there’s a television ad man who says to me am I an actor or model? I said ‘Me, you kidding?’ and he said it’s because I might look like one. That I have just the right face they need, rough and ugly, and would I like to audition for a shampoo ad. I asked if it pays and he said ‘plenty.’ ‘Then you’ve hired me, baby,’ and I took this film test and the ad got the okay from the soap company and was seen network to network twenty times a night for I don’t know how many months and I’m still getting residuals from it, three years later. They still put it on. Same product but a little changed with an XYZ formula now in it, but still with me sudsing my hair like King Kong. Gave me enough to live on for two years if my expenses weren’t so irrationally high. You like money?”

“I need it to live on. I like it all right.”

“I love it, that’s how much I like it. More than anything except the health you can’t buy with it. But for the health care you can buy with it I love it for that reason also and everything else it buys. That’s not original thinking, I know, but for me it’s true. But why be original? Play in, I say, play in. But I respect you. I’m not kidding. You’re a serious artist Penny says — an actor but artist, right? And I respect all serious people for what they do no matter how many years it takes them. Me, it has to come quick. That’s why I’m both lawyer and in real estate and a businessman, but what I’m most serious and do best at is being a baker. Making bread. Bread: money. No? Hey, good thing my seriousness isn’t in selling jokes.”

We stop in front of one of his buildings. He tries to get into the apartment that will also serve as my office till I rent it. After going through the entire key ring and some of the keys two and three times each and in both key positions and on both locks, he whacks the key ring against the knob and says “I’d kick the shit out of this door if it wasn’t mine,” and we go outside. Joe the super comes by on his bike.

“I’ll get them all marked by tomorrow,” Joe says.

“Tonight,” Larry says. “Then get your ass out here early tomorrow morning to give my keys to Mort.”

“Tonight. You bet. Meet me here at ten on the spot, Mort.”

“Nine,” Larry says.

“Nine. Good. I’ll get them all etched in with my stamp machine I got. For instance, that one on your ring I can see is already 3B for number 57 down the block. So some of the keys will be no problem.”

“How do you know it’s 3B’s?” Larry says.

“By the grooves and lock make. See, I got an exact one of each myself,” and he jangles a ring of about two hundred keys on his belt. “Some are already marked of mine and the most aren’t because I don’t have to. I got those memorized by heart.” He aligns a key on his ring with one of Larry’s. They do look alike.

“Let’s get in there then. I want to show Mort at least one apartment before we go.”

Joe tries to get into 3B with Larry’s key. It doesn’t work. He tries his own. Goes in but doesn’t turn.

“I was sure this was the right one. Maybe the last tenant changed the lock. That bum. Burglarized by his own friends he also steals from us everything from spigots and bathroom tiles. Junkies. That’s why we got him out and the first-floor tenant’s also vacant. Nobody wanted to live in the same building with him.”

“Let’s try that one,” Larry says. “It’s a duplex, our highest rental, and at least it’s open.”

The front door of IB has no cylinder in it so Joe just pushes it open. The place is a mess. Holes in the plaster walls, some floor planks ripped out, a closet door hanging by a mangled hinge, the banister to the windowless playroom below, which makes it a duplex, lying on the stairs.

“Dwayne David had it last,” Larry says.

“Who?” I say.

“The actor-performer, star of The Magic Feet . Real pothead. Built his own loft out of ropes and hammocks and puffed puffed puffed with his boy and girl cuties all day except on matinees. I don’t see how you never heard of him, but use him as a strong selling point. People like to live where there were stars.”

He shows me the garden which he says has 3B’s garbage in it. “I’ll have it cleaned out, but see the kind of slobs we get? That’s what I want to change from now on. One thing I want to warn you about renting these places is if a dude pulls up in a new pimpmobile and wears a fancy pimp outfit and Superfly hat and says ‘Hey daddy, jive, give me five,’ and gives you the hand-slapping number for a greeting but on the application says he’s a tailor, tailor him the hell out of here or tell him he hasn’t a chance to get a mouse hole in this building because your boss doesn’t let pimps in, understand? Don’t be afraid of offending anyone.”

“I don’t see how I could say that.”

“Then tell him his application will be processed summarily, but don’t take a deposit as that one we just tear up. With the last pimp in 4A it was like a screaming slave market in there. He even threw a live dog out the window.”

“We don’t know if it was alive,” Joe says.

“We even sure it was a dog? God, what pigs.”

Larry and I go to Columbus Avenue for a taxi. As I’m stepping into the cab I tell him I’ve changed my mind and now want to walk home.

“I guess it’s good for you, exercise. But one last thing. No renting to more than two black families per building, got it? No matter if they’re all college presidents and the building has ten vacancies in it like number 7.”

“I don’t think I can do that either.”

“All right. If it’s against your principles, put an asterisk on the bottom right-hand corner of the application so I know the applicant’s black. It’s not against my principles. I don’t like them. Neither do most of my tenants. They bring down the property value and destroy the building because they hate the landlord. Even the blacks I let in tell me to keep more out, so if you think you’re doing anyone a favor, think about that.”

I think about the asterisk that night and don’t know what to do. I call a friend and ask her what she’d do in the same position and circumstances—“If you hadn’t a hundred dollars to your name and could possibly make a thousand or two in a month.”

Doris says “How would you explain carrying out the duties of this job to Max?” who’s a mutual friend of ours and black.

“Is it necessary for me to tell him?”

“I’ll tell him.”

So I write my decision in a note to Larry, saying that “even putting that asterisk on the page presents moral problems to me,” and at nine next morning show up at the meeting spot with the super to give him the note and application forms when he’s supposed to give me the keys.