Boswell (6 page)

“I’m still here,” he said. “You need a place for tonight, is that it?”

“Well, for a few nights. Until I decide what to do.”

“This place is awfully small. Just a room.”

“Oh. Well, that’s all right. Thanks anyway.”

“Have you got much luggage? I mean there aren’t any bar bells or anything, are there? I’ve got limited closet space.”

I remembered what my uncle had said about circus trailers. “I haven’t any luggage.”

“Well, come on over. We’ll work something out.”

“That’s all right, if the room’s that small, I’m not offended if—”

“No, it’s all right. Come on over. I’m glad you called.”

“You’re sure it will be all right?”

“Sure I’m sure. Certainly. It’s okay. Listen—” He lowered his voice. “I’m glad you called.”

“Well, if it’s all right. I’m leaving now.”

I took a taxi to Penner’s and gave the driver the rest of my two dollars. A spender spends. What’s $1.90? This was all in the old days, you understand. I wasn’t established and I was more or less innocent and everybody’s secrets were important to me. I had no discrimination, no taste in these things. If a man clapped a hand over a receiver he had something to hide. If he turned around two minutes later and lowered his voice and told you he was glad you called, he had two things to hide and maybe more. He was a good person to put up with. Who knew? Penner could turn out to be a queer, an embezzler, somebody into the mob for a few thou. I needed an intimacy badly. What innocence!

I’ve been going over some of my notes. What can I do with this stuff? I feel nasty tonight. From the old days: Boris Schlockin, the professor, joined the Communist Party
after
the Depression. Noel and Elizabeth Sarrow’s baby, Eileen, was adopted. The girl is 17 and doesn’t know. Philip Paris wrote his wife’s doctoral dissertation. Dr. Fernan Bidwell, who lobbies for the AMA against socialized medicine, does illegal operations. Herman Ote, the Boy Scout official, is a homosexual. Cardinal Fellupo was a suicide. Murray Butcher, the famous racer, drinks while driving. These are people I don’t even know, you understand, just that I’ve heard about. Usually I do not spread gossip. I use it to trade with, of course, but I am no gossipmonger. It is just that I must know it. I can’t help myself.

The driver let me out in front of Marty Penner’s rooming house. (It has just occurred to me that Penner must have been my first host.) There was a directory in the hall, a blue slate with the roomers’ names and room numbers written in chalk. (Later I copied some of the names down on file cards and asked Penner about them casually.) Penner lived on the first floor all the way in the back. I knocked.

“It’s Boswell.”

“Come in. The door’s not locked.”

Penner was frying eggs on a hot plate. The coil looked barely warm. “It takes a half hour,” he said, “but they’re usually delicious.”

I nodded. There was only one bed and we were both big men. I wondered where I would sleep.

“Did he throw you out?” Penner asked.

“What?”

“Your uncle. Did he throw you out?”

“No. I think I left on my own. Maybe it was both.”

Penner took the pan off the hot plate and stuck a fork into the eggs. He ate them out of the pan. “Out of the frying pan into my mouth,” he said with his mouth full of yellow egg. “Sorry I haven’t got any more or I’d offer you something. You’ve probably eaten, though. It’s pretty late.”

As a matter of fact I hadn’t, but it
was
pretty late. I made allowances, as I always do for my hosts. Whatever it was that had been upsetting Penner when I spoke to him on the phone, he seemed pretty jaunty now. “How long do you think you’ll need the place?” he said.

I told him it would be a terrific favor if he could let me stay three days. I hadn’t the slightest idea where I would go after that, but things happen.

“Three days,” he said as though that were what he was chewing in his mouth. “Three days. We’ll, well see.”

This was some Penner, I thought. Well, we’ll see, indeed. He was pretty sprightly about other people’s troubles. I am not a rude man. I decided to let him control the moods in that small room. I told him about the car lift. I made it very funny, but Penner didn’t laugh. I resented his indifference, but then I wondered where I got it, my resentment, my expectations of how people ought to act, to me and to each other. What was I? A booted- around guy who since age seven had never managed to run up more than four years in any one place. A guest in my own family, for God’s sake. How would I know anything about these things?

But I knew, all right. Penner was being lousy. And I knew this because whatever else I am or am not, I am a social person. I came into the world knowing.

I let Penner finish his eggs. They took as long to eat as they did to make. When he finished he went over to a tiny washstand in the corner of the room and rinsed out his pan. Then he took a coffee pot from behind a green-cloth-covered apple crate and put in some water and a single tablespoon of coffee. “There’s only the coil,” he said, “so if I make eggs I have to eat them before I make the coffee.”

“I see.”

“It makes for a long meal. Aids digestion.”

“It would.”

“Just one coil, one cup of coffee, one room, one closet, one bed, one faucet in the sink. And me, I’m single,” he said. “Simplicity. Functional, right?”

“Listen,” I said, “you could have told me on the phone. I don’t want to put you to any trouble. I’ve got a key to the gym. I’ll sleep there.”

“No, no,” Penner said. “Don’t be silly. Are you putting me to any trouble?”

I had to admit that I didn’t seem to be.

“Look,” he said, “this is a rooming house. There’s always an empty room. I’ll find you one when it’s time to go to sleep.”

“What about the landlady?”

“Deaf.”

Penner picked up a newspaper. He read for a while and then remembered that I was sitting there on his one chair. “Have you seen the paper?”

“No,” I said.

“Here.” He handed me the classified section.

“Have you got the society section there?” I asked.

“Oh. Sure. Here.”

I read every word. I usually do, but tonight I was compulsive about it; I was damned if I would say another word to Penner until he spoke to me. I stared at the sons of, the daughters of, the announcements of, and read the character lines in the faces of important-looking bankers at their winter homes in Florida, and the character lines in the butts of their nieces on the white sand beaches. What was he thinking of? Was everyone crazy? What did he mean with his
sotto voce
“I’m glad you called”? Was he a master ironist? Who had been in the room with the rude bastard? If I’d had any brains I would have stood up and gotten the hell out of there. At least I could be silent.

“I’ve finished this section,” I said. “Would you like to see it?”

I know, I know. But I’m a spender. A spender spends. It doesn’t make much difference what other people do. He picks up checks. He picks up checks and picks up checks.

“No,” he said. “I’m pretty tired. I’ll find you a place to sleep. You stay here. It wouldn’t do for both of us to be prowling around the halls.”

When Penner went out I was tempted to look around his room to see if I could find out anything about him. But I didn’t know when he would be back, so I sat perfectly still and looked over the society section some more. Maybe he was testing me; maybe the son of a bitch was right outside the door and just waiting for me to make a move.

In a few minutes he was back.

“Four-L,” he said. “You don’t need a key.”

It was obvious by the way he sat down on the bed that he didn’t mean to escort me. One coil, one cup of coffee, one room, one bed, one trip to 4-L.

“Well,” I said, hating my lousy character, “goodnight, and thanks.”

“That’s all right.”

I found the stairs and went up. It was dark and I had to light matches in front of each doorway to read the room number. The numbers and letters were thin tin cutouts and I wondered abstractedly just who made them. What kind of market was there for 4-D, 3-M, 2-R? It was a strange world I was alive in, and everybody had seemed to find a place in it for himself. By the time I found 4-L I was pretty sorry for myself. I turned the handle gently, found a light switch and looked around. There were no sheets on the bed but there was a blanket in the closet. I turned on the tiny radiator, and rolled down the mattress and went to sleep.

When I woke in the morning I had to go to the bathroom very badly. It’s all those eggs I didn’t eat, I thought. All that coffee I didn’t drink. For some reason I felt it would be trespassing to use any toilet but the one on Penner’s floor. Downstairs there was a line of people waiting to get in. Penner wasn’t in the line and somehow I knew that it was he in the bathroom. The others looked at me suspiciously.

“Where’s Schwartz’s room?” I asked a man at the back of the line.

“I don’t know no Schwartz,” he said. “There a Schwartz here?” he asked an old man in front of him.

“Maybe that’s the new guy up on three,” he said. “Look on the board in the hall.”

I thanked him and went toward the front. Nobody was watching me, but I looked at the board anyway. I couldn’t go back, so I went outside. It was cold and I had left my coat in 4-L and I still had to pee but I would have to stay outside until they had all cleared out. I thought of going into Penner’s room, but that crowd in the hall would think it suspicious. In about ten minutes I walked back anyway. There were still a few people in line. The old man looked at me. “Did you find Schwartz?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said. “He’s up in 4-L.” “Fine,” he said.

“Where’s Penner’s room?” I asked. “Oh, Penner. Penner’s in 1-M.” “Thank you,” I said and walked down to Penner’s room. I knocked.

“Boswell?”

“Yes.”

“Come on in. Door’s open.”

Penner was making himself more eggs. He was already dressed.

“I had a pretty good sleep,” I said.

He looked at his watch, and then began spooning eggs out of the pan into his mouth. I was pretty hungry, but I didn’t have any illusions.

“You’re dressed,” I said. “Do you work far?”

“Not far.”

“Uh huh. Listen, Penner, would it be all right if I hung around the place today until it’s time to go to the gym?”

“Sure,” he said. “Perfectly okay. There’s a little restaurant on the corner where you can grab some breakfast.”

Hadn’t he listened when I told him about the two dollars? Penner was a rat. As soon as he was gone I would pee, and then I would come back and steal his eggs.

“Will you be coming to the gym tonight?” I asked.

“I
don’t know,” he said. “I’ve got to get out now.”

“Goodbye.”

He closed the door without answering and I heard him go down the hall.

When I came back from the bathroom I looked around for Penner’s eggs. I couldn’t find them anywhere and decided that I would make some coffee. Inside the coffee can were three eggs. I broke them into the pan and scrambled them with Penner’s one spoon. It took a long time and I couldn’t wait. I ate the wet, loose eggs and then washed the pan and the spoon in warm water from Penner’s single faucet. Then I put on six cups of coffee and lay down on Penner’s bed to wait.

I fell asleep and woke to the smell of strong, burning coffee. I drank about two cups and poured the rest down Penner’s one sink.

Now I was through. There was nothing more for me to do. I looked for something to read, but all I could find were a Bible and last night’s newspaper. I read the Bible for about forty minutes but it only made me sleepy. I was still curious about Penner, of course, but there was nothing in the room that told me very much. It was true about the simplicity of his life. He wasn’t a getter either. He had only two shirts in his drawer, two pairs of slacks and a couple of ties in his closet. It was like a wardrobe one takes somewhere for the weekend. Why, I realized suddenly, that was what my wardrobe was like, too. Were Penner and I somehow alike? Had he spent himself down to this? Now I was very curious about Penner. I had been kidding around before. Now I went to the door and locked it. I turned back and looked suspiciously at everything—for letters, a diary, anything. There was nothing. I pulled back the blanket and investigated Penner’s sheets. In the closet I found his laundry bag. I took it out and emptied it on the floor. I stooped down and picked out his underwear and looked inside. I thought I heard someone coming and I shoved everything back into the bag and put it in the closet. Whoever it was came up to the door and shuffled around outside it for a few minutes and then turned and left. It was a light step, either a woman’s or a very small man’s. I wondered about it for a while, then went back to Penner’s bed, picked up the Bible once more and soon I was asleep again.

Sometime in the middle of the afternoon I opened my eyes. I was laying on the bed like an ox, the radiator bubbling and hissing in the overheated room. I turned on my side and scraped against the Bible. I moved my feet off the bed and pushed myself upright with my arm. My feet were so heavy I couldn’t move them from their position on the floor. I had the impression they would grow there, rooting downward through the thin flooring, spreading outward toward the walls, through them. I felt massively doughy, unconsolidated. Probably it was time to go to the gym, but who needed it? It was absurd to exercise, to make myself larger than I already was. As I sat heaped like bedding on Penner’s mattress, it occurred to me that I was larger than anything in that room— perhaps larger than anything in that house. Certainly I was bigger than anything up in 4-L, but what did that mean? Four-L was a little room, practically unfurnished. I seemed almost architectural to myself, something in the landscape. Not a mountain or a building or even a tree— a bog, the weed row along a railroad track in summer.

I was not meant for afternoons, I could see that. What had I been doing with my afternoons before I came here? There had been the gym, of course, and a couple of years in a junior college. I had filled my days, I suppose, as a careless man covers a wall with paint. There were great gaps.

I stood up. It was a major effort. Like lifting a car. Penner’s room bored me. Penner bored me.