WLT (25 page)

He had forgotten something! Something simple and obvious, like sugar, or salt. She could take him up a jarful, as a welcome gift. His angel from below.
Mr. Devereaux, I'm Patsy Konopka, I live downstairs. Among my people, there is an ancient tradition of welcoming new neighbors with a sack of salt and a jar of sugar. May life be sweet and may life have savor.

And then she remembered. She didn't have any salt or sugar, she ate all her meals at the coffeeshop.

That day, Little Becky returned to
Friendly Neighbor
after a few days' visit to some people in Littleton. Marjery seemed morose about her boyfriend running off. She gave Frank a listless look in the Green Room and didn't recognize him.

That evening, Ginger knocked on Frank's door. She had met him in the laundry, she explained, and wondered if he happened to be busy. If so, she could return later. Frank did not invite her in, not even when she said she was very upset and wouldn't mind a beer. He told her he was tired.

Downstairs, Patsy Konopka listened carefully. Ginger was moving fast. But the door closed and only one pair of feet came across the living-room floor, Mr. Devereaux's. He stopped overhead, and stood in the living room, read a letter, then walked into the bedroom. His footsteps sounded like on
The Other World
where a man awakes at midnight in his bed and gropes around for the lamp switch and touches a cold brick wall and finally finds a match and lights it and gasps, for of course it is a tomb. She hoped he wouldn't spot the big hole in his floor by the radiator. Sitting at her kitchen table, under the hole, she could hear him breathe up there. He tromped down the hall and stopped for a moment and then she heard his water, gallons of it, like a horse, hit the center of the bowl. And now Mr. Devereaux flushed, and headed to the bedroom. Patsy heard his clothes hit the floor. He lay on the bed. He was touching himself. She listened. She hoped he would not be alone for long. She wondered if he was sensitive to emanations or had any familiarity with the psychic realm.

She thought a clear thought about him and waited, listening, to hear if he was struck by it, but he continued, and then he gasped, and she returned to
Golden Years.
“Who is that out there on the street?” asked Edna. “Who?” said Elmer. They were in the cafe, coffee cups rattled, someone was griping about sore feet. “That handsome young man standing by the lamppost, his hands in his pockets, his red mackinaw pulled up around his ears, and his long black hair blowing,” observed Edna. “Oh, him,” said Elmer. Edna said, “Imagine being that young again, with the world laid out in front of you like the county fair. Imagine being twenty.”

T
he next morning, despite a grievous headache, he landed the job at WLT. He had gotten the headache Thursday evening. He had been strolling around the block, past the Kenosha and Belfont and Arcola Apartments, none so nice as the Antwerp, and gazed down at the basement windows (frosted) of the YWCA and around past the big limestone Minneapolis Auto Club—he reminded himself to buy a car someday, a Studebaker—and studied the menu in the window of the Pot Pie and the faculty list in the window of MacPhail School of Music—a Maude Moore taught elocution, he should see about lessons so he could become an announcer—and then he retraced the trip in the other direction, planning his great radio career, and in front of the Auto Club he ran into Mr. Odom and accepted an invite to go for a bump at the Red Eye Lounge on Hennepin Avenue and there, in a dark booth, had tried various concoctions, including a bourbon and sour, a vodka sour, and something called a Bombaroo. Mr. Odom, he discovered, had known Daddy from when they attended commercial college in Park River and had been living in Minot when Daddy was en route there and they had planned to have breakfast together the very morning that Daddy died. Mr. Odom had written “The Ballad of Old No. 9” the same day. Frank told him that he didn't remember much about his dad. They drank a toast to his memory, a couple of Rusty Nails and a Galesburg Gearbox and then something called Molly in the Morning and—though Frank hardly remembered this—he dashed out the front door and deposited the entire evening over the curb and into the gutter. A woman in a sealskin coat stood nearby. She looked away, as if she'd seen this before and wasn't interested.

In the morning, Frank rolled out, took aspirin, and climbed into a tepid bath, and tried to think of a speech (“I want to get into broadcasting and apply myself and be useful, sir, and earn your confidence so you will let me go on and do bigger things, and whatever I lack in intelligence I will make up for in hard work”) but the pain came and sat inside his left eyeball, like a long nail. So when he went into the Ogden Hotel, he was in a mood to be calm and not shake his head.

A sandy-haired red-faced man named Sloan interviewed him. He had a big beak and his hair was combed hard, in straight furrows. He snapped his gum and winked a lot. He glanced at the questionnaire Frank had filled out and said, “No college and no newspaper experience. Good. They don't go for that here.” He picked his teeth thoughtfully and remarked that Frank's Uncle Art was probably the smartest man that he, Sloan, had ever met. Then he led Frank upstairs to Mr. Soderbjerg's office, opened the door, and said, “Go in.”

There were two men in there, a younger one, lanky, in a nubbly brown wool suit and a portlier one, about sixty, with a mane of white hair and the younger one was saying, “She can't even boil an egg! Can't boil an
egg
!” Then he turned to Frank. “We're talking about my wife. She can't boil an egg.”

“I think it's easier to fix a
steak
than boil an egg,” said the older one. “First of all, you have no idea what's inside that egg. Each egg is different. You can't tell by looking at them. Some eggs, the shell is too thin. The chicken didn't get enough milk in her diet. So you leave it boiling for two minutes and fifteen seconds and it comes out like an old tennis ball, and the day before, you did your egg three minutes and it came out like a bad cold. No, I'd rather run a radio station than have to boil an egg. The perfect egg is a myth, like the Northwest Passage. It's a miracle anytime you get one that's edible.” And he waved at them to clear out. “Anyway, I don't want to hear about it. I'm going upstairs to bed. I think I slept too fast last night.”

“Frank,” Mr. Roy Soderbjerg, Jr., said, when they got to his office and he sat down in the big chair and swivelled around and faced out the window, “Frank, I hear from your Uncle Art you're a good man, and I like the looks of you myself, so as far as I'm concerned you're hired. I must say I've had bad experiences with orphans like yourself, they tend to be treacherous, but you don't seem sneaky yourself, so I'll just bring it to your attention. It's a tendency to avoid. Trust is what we operate on here. We had an orphan once who stole money out of people's desks, if you can imagine that. He slid around here opening drawers and lifting petty change and anything else he saw, stopwatches, ladies' necklaces, and finally he tried to take a revolver from my dad's desk and the gun went off and nailed him in the knee. He lost his leg. Now he hawks umbrellas on the streetcorner. So remember that radio is a great business and it's all about honesty and if we lose trust with each other, then we're out on our rear ends. Now go see Sloan and he'll find you some work to do.”

Sloan was in the basement, yakking with the mail girls. Frank's job, Sloan told him, was to follow the Soderbjergs around and take care of things for them. “Just keep your eyes peeled and make sure they're happy and you'll be happy.” He told Frank to go out and buy six pounds of Jamaican coffee, three boxes of White Owl cigars, and some greeting cards: twelve dozen Get Well and six dozen Happy Birthday and twelve dozen With Deepest Sympathy—an assortment, not too many floral ones and nothing Scriptural—and then to come back and walk Ray's dachshund Columbus. He referred to the Soderbjergs as The Sodajerks. “He likes to do his business around the front doors of taverns. When you get back, you can wait around in the lobby for Roy Sodajerk, Jr., to go out for lunch. Nobody likes to eat lunch with the poor bastard, so he may ask you, and if he asks you, go and God help you. Part of your job. He'll take you to the Pot Pie. Make sure you have a couple bucks with you in case he forgets. Let him sit with his back to the door and you take a seat facing the door. It's your job to identify incoming friends so when they say hi, he can say their name. Of course, you can't do that now, being new, but you'll catch on. The Sodajerks can't remember the names of their own children. Old Ray Sodajerk runs off to New York every fall with a different broad on his arm and two months later at the Christmas party he's asking you what her last name was. I tell you, they're a caution. And if he doesn't ask you to lunch, then come back here and I'll show you how to sign their names. We're a week behind on sympathy cards.”

Then Sloan went back to discussing something with the girls. Frank fetched the dog, who was old and fussy, and walked him to Woolworth's and bought the stuff and came back and delivered it. Ray was drowsy from his morning nap. He told Frank that he was out of cigars and Frank gave him the box of White Owls. Ray was impressed. He asked Frank if he played golf. Frank said, no, he was sorry but he didn't. Ray said, “Why be sorry? You'll never meet more boring men than on a golf course. A game for pygmies.” Frank made a note to himself:
don't be apologetic unnecessarily.

Down in the lobby, he hung around for fifteen minutes near a crowd of fans waiting to see Dad Benson come down from his show.
Friendly Neighbor
had just celebrated eighteen years on the air, the same age as Frank. The fans were holding signs from their home towns, Waseca, Marshall, Pine City, Menomonie, Decorah, Crosslake, San-born, and getting their Kodaks ready, lining up the shots. One woman had brought her six little children in red satin vests that appeared to be home-made and had their names sewn across the back: Marilyn, Merwin, Marianne, Meredith, Murray, and Miriam. Frank introduced himself to the receptionist, Laurel, who said, “Ray Soderbjerg I wouldn't trust as far as I could throw him but Roy Jr. I'd do anything for, believe me. That man is as decent as they come.” Laurel was a peach, he could see that. He was going to invite her to the movies but before he could work in that direction, Mr. Odom came by, pushing a mop. He looked up and said hi.