Automatically, he put the cage into a brown paper shopping bag and laid part of a newspaper over the top so that the cage could not be seen. Then he smiled at himself. This time he needn’t hide the parakeet from anyone! But he let the paper stay, anyway. Perhaps the less his neighbors knew, the better.
It was one of those remodeled brownstone houses with the kitchen downstairs in front and a chime doorbell that was answered by a maid—as different from Mr. McKenny’s brownstone as a palace is from a third-class rooming house. The maid glanced at the bulky shopping bag.
“Ah! The man with Felix! Yes! Come in!” She swung the door open.
“Thank you.” As soon as Mr. McKenny stepped into the hall, he heard a confusion of voices. A couple of men—they looked like reporters—came out of a door into the hall. Then, before he could turn to try to escape, a young woman with blond hair ran past the two men toward him.
“Oh, you dear man! You’ve got Felix?” she asked excitedly.
Mr. McKenny was surrounded. The shopping bag was taken from his hand. Somebody pulled the cage out of the bag and a shout went up at the sight of the bird.
“It is my Felix!” the young blond woman cried. “Oooooh!” She embraced the cage, sending Felix into a flutter of excitement himself.
A couple of cameras clicked and flashed.
“Tell us how you found the parakeet, sir,” a reporter said in Mr. McKenny’s face. “Just come in here, sir, will you, please?”
The whole group, including a couple of women reporters, moved into a large living room filled with red roses.
“This story’s big. You know who Dianne Walker is, don’t you?” the reporter asked.
“I’m afraid—”
“She’s number one box office of the year in Hollywood and on Broadway,” the man whispered in Mr. McKenny’s ear.
Mr. McKenny did not understand the sentence. He supposed she was an actress. She was posing for photographers now with Felix sitting on her red-nailed finger, kissing her lips. In fact, a hush came over everybody as all eyes turned to where the camera focused. Once more Mr. McKenny thought of escape. A reward—whatever it was—would not be worth what the publicity would do to him.
“She just told us,” the same reporter was saying in his ear, “that she wouldn’t go on tonight if she didn’t get her parakeet back. She says Felix brings her all her luck.”
Click!
“All right, Miss Walker, thank you!”
“Will you tell us how you caught the parakeet?” one of the women reporters asked.
Cameras swung around on Mr. McKenny.
“Well, I—I was getting my own parakeet cages in from my fire escape a little before eight this morning, when I—” At that moment, Mr. McKenny’s eye fell on a familiar face: it was the face of the tall young reporter who had come to his house to interview him last month.
“Go on, Mr. McKenny,” he said, giving Mr. McKenny a little smile and a wave. It did not somehow look friendly to Mr. McKenny. He plunged on. “I saw this parakeet—Felix—sitting on the rail of my fire escape. I knew it wasn’t one of mine because I haven’t any just this color.” He had told the young reporter he hadn’t any parakeets of his own, he remembered suddenly. “So I called to it—I took my own birds in and set them on the floor—in their cages. I kept calling to Felix to come in.”
“Did you know it was Felix then?”
“No, I mean, I kept calling to it the way I’d call to any bird. Finally, he came in and I shut the window. I had bought my papers and saw that a parakeet of this description was lost.”
“You mean, you accidentally saw the ad in the paper?”
“Which paper?”
“I looked to see if such a parakeet was missing. I immediately called the phone number.”
Miss Walker stepped forward—she was wearing a tight black sweater, slacks that seemed to be made of tiger skin, and heelless slippers—holding out several bills in her hand. “I am very happy to give this honest man one hundred dollars as a reward for my beloved Felix Mendelssohn!” she announced to the whole room.
The cameras clicked again as Mr. McKenny looked mutely at the money in his hand. Mr. McKenny was asked to smile. Miss Walker kissed his cheek and held it for what seemed to Mr. McKenny an hour until six cameras clicked. Mr. McKenny murmured that he had to be going.
“Oh-h,” said Miss Walker. “Can’t I offer you a cup of coffee, at least, before you go?”
“Thank you. I don’t drink coffee,” said Mr. McKenny. “I think I’d better go. Thank you very much for your generous reward. It’s much more than I had expected. I really don’t think I—”
“You will keep it, too! It’s a small thing compared to my Felix!”
Mr. McKenny smiled and made a little bow. “Thank you, Miss Walker.” Somebody handed him the empty cage and the shopping bag.
The maid preceded him down the hall to open the door. Mr. McKenny heard a quick pair of feet following him. He knew whose they were.
“Morning,” said the young reporter on the pavement. “You remember me, don’t you?”
“Yes,” said Mr. McKenny. “How are you?”
“Fine. How did you like your write-up the last time?”
“Oh, very nice, I thought.”
“You’ll get a bigger one this time. You have quite a lot of luck finding parakeets, haven’t you, Mr. McKenny?”
“Well—this was luck. I suppose he was attracted to my birds. That’s the only way I can explain it.”
“I thought you didn’t have any birds.”
“I’ve acquired some since. I told you I used to keep them.”
“Hm-m. Just how many birds have you found, Mr. McKenny?”
“Oh . . . just these two, I think—that I remember.” Mr. McKenny looked up at the young man, half expecting to be struck down, by the young man or by the Lord.
The reporter’s mouth was turned down at one corner. “You know, I think you’re a big fake. I don’t think that’s Miss Walker’s bird in there at all. I’m going to do a little investigating this morning, and if what I think is true . . . well, I’m going to see that it gets printed, that’s all.”
Mr. McKenny’s knees sagged a little. “All right. That’s your privilege,” he said softly, and then turned and walked on.
That morning, Mr. McKenny did not greet any of his neighbors. Let them think he had gone deaf or blind overnight, he didn’t care. By tomorrow, his neighbors wouldn’t want to speak to him, either. Dark, tumultuous thoughts filled his mind. His shame permeated everything, but the thought that he would have to move was almost as horrible, to find another apartment at a rent he could afford and also where he would be allowed to keep his birds. And he would have to find one immediately. He could not bear to think of stepping out his door even once when every person on the block would know of his disgrace.
The greeting from his parakeets when he walked into his apartment shamed him, too. His parakeets were his only friends now, he realized—and that only because they couldn’t read a newspaper. In a kind of daze, so that he had to concentrate very hard to understand what the words meant, Mr. McKenny read the advertisements for furnished apartments in the newspapers he had bought that morning. They all sounded extremely bleak and joyless. Or else unbelievably expensive. One place that sounded possible he saw on second reading was a hundred and ten dollars a week, not a month.
He made more tea. He talked with his parakeets, drawing a little cheer from their thoughtless cheerfulness. Finally, he dragged his one trunk out of a closet and began unsystematically to pack. Maybe the evening papers would have an apartment for him, he thought. He knew they wouldn’t.
At last, he just stood at his window, staring out with wide eyes and whistling an old song.
The doorbell rang, and Mr. McKenny jumped. More reporters, he thought
. Or maybe even the police! For one instant, he thought of escape. There was only one way, out the kitchen window, down into the court. Suicide. But he had never thought suicide honorable. Mr. McKenny straightened up. He would face his punishment or fine or whatever like a man.
The doorbell rang again, and Mr. McKenny went to the kitchenette and pressed the release button.
He recognized the step of the young reporter. He was alone. Perhaps he was the bearer of a summons. Or he wanted a firsthand confession from him for his paper. The young man knocked. Mr. McKenny opened the door.
“Good afternoon, Mr. McKenny,” the young man said politely. “May I come in?”
Mr. McKenny opened the door wider.
The young man came in. There was no tablet in his hand. “Mr. McKenny—I was wrong this morning about Miss Walker’s parakeet. I went back and talked to her. She’s positive the parakeet is hers because he knows some phrases she taught him and she has some color photographs, too. I saw them.”
“Well, parakeets do look pretty much alike,” Mr. McKenny said. “It’s pretty easy to make a mistake, but—”
“But this parakeet really is Miss Walker’s.” He moistened his lips. “I checked with some back issues of my paper and some other papers, though, and went over to see a couple of the people who’d gotten their parakeets back—from you. One woman over on York Avenue, maybe you remember, had a parakeet named Billy.”
“Yes—I remember.”
“Well, it’s not Billy that she’s got now. The kids weren’t at home. The woman told me. She said it looked quite a bit like Billy, but it wasn’t. They renamed it Ting because that’s what it keeps saying. But the kids still think it’s their bird, and while they’re happy, she can’t bring herself to tell them.”
Mr. McKenny realized he was smiling. “Good!”
“I told her I thought you’d been doing this all over town, bringing in parakeets and getting rewards. She said she didn’t think I ought to report you. In fact, she begged me not to. She said if you were making so many families happy, it didn’t really matter. So did a couple of other people say the same thing. Anyway, Mr. McKenny, I feel the same way and I thought I’d drop by and tell you in case you were worried about what I said this morning.”
“Oh—not at all,” Mr. McKenny said.
“I guess it’s kind of like Santa Claus. Santa Claus isn’t real, either, but he makes a lot of kids happy.” The young man walked toward the door. “Well, so long, Mr. McKenny.”
Mr. McKenny turned around, took a deep breath and smiled. There were people who understood. The world seemed brighter, full of sunshine and goodwill. He looked at his watch. Three o’clock already! Mr. McKenny went to his closet for his jacket and his hat. Time to go out and get the afternoon papers.
MUSIC TO DIE BY
Aaron Wechsler got home from work at ten past six. He had stayed a few minutes longer than usual helping to sort the mail after the post office closed at five, just to give an impression that today was like any other day, that he was not at all uneasy or anxious to get out of the place, even though Roger Hoolihan’s body was crumpled up and bloody in a back storage closet where they kept spare mailbags. Who’d find it? Aaron wondered. Mac, the postmaster? Bobby, Mac’s son? One of the carriers? Aaron didn’t care who found the body.
He was a middle-sized man with a slight paunch, fifty-five years old, with straight black hair that was graying at the temples. He wore dark-rimmed, thick-lensed glasses that gave a blurry, evasive look to his eyes. Actually, Aaron’s eyes were evasive. More and more, he disliked looking straight at people. He was restless and nervous, and he hated his job at the post office, but he was determined to stick it out—to stick it out in some post office, if not this one—until he got his pension, his just reward for a lifetime’s work. Aaron went to the kitchen and washed his hands thoroughly with the yellow soap he used for dishes. Then he sat down at the table that served him both as eating table and desk, and opened the gray ledger in which he kept his diary. He wrote:
September 28, 19——
Today I killed Roger Hoolihan. I did it shortly after noon, as I had planned. The others had gone out to lunch and I was supposed to go out at 12 while Roger kept the post office open. Roger was to go out at 1. So about twenty past 12 Roger looked over his shoulder and said with his customary sneer, “Aren’t you going out to lunch?” He was standing at the counter going through the money order book. I picked up the stapler and hit him in the back of the head. I probably fractured his skull with the first blow, but I hit him several times. Then I dragged him to the storage closet in back and dumped him on the mailbags. I didn’t go home to lunch, but I went out before 1 and came back around 1 when the others did. When Mac asked where Roger was (this was around 2) I said, “I haven’t seen him since I went out a little after 12.” Mac looked surprised, but didn’t say anything. I suppose Mac will call his house tomorrow morning when he doesn’t show up or they’ll start looking for him tonight when he doesn’t come home. But it might be a couple of days before they find the body, as that closet is not opened very often.
Roger Hoolihan. Number One.
Aaron laid his pen down in the groove of the ledger, rubbed his palms gently together, and looked at what he had written. The handwriting was very small and neat, the ink black. Mac was next. Wipe out that self-satisfied expression, stop that scornful head-shaking, the eyes that slurred away, as if whatever or whoever Mac looked at was the lowest of the low, not even worthy of a word of contempt from the great Edward MacAllister, postmaster. Yet whatever bungling Bobby did, that was okay, because Bobby was his son. “Dad, where’s the seven-cent airmails? . . . Dad, mind if I shove off? I got an early date with Helen.” Bobby might be Number Three. Watch out, Bobby.
Aaron went to the sink again, stooped, and from behind a blue-and-white checked curtain below the sink took a bottle of rye that stood among Clorox and ammonia bottles and other cleaning material. He poured himself a generous drink, dropped in some ice cubes, and sipped it with appreciation. Then he opened a can of corned beef hash, and put it into a frying pan with an egg in the center of it. It crossed his mind, very faintly, that he might have treated himself to something special like a steak or at least lamb chops or pork chops, but the thought did not last long, and brought him no discontent with his simple meal. His wife had used to make fun of him for liking corned beef hash, and said he had the taste of a convict. His memory was confused for a few seconds between Vera smiling when she had said that and Vera sneering when she said it. Well, maybe she’d done both at different times. She’d ended by walking out on him, and she’d certainly been sneering then. Good riddance, Aaron thought. He hadn’t gone to rack and ruin, he hadn’t lost his health, or his job, or anything else Vera had predicted. He’d quit the job in the post office in East Orange and moved to Copperville, New Jersey, where he’d had no difficulty at all in getting the same kind of job at the Copperville post office.
“The hell with her,” Aaron murmured, and dragged a folded newspaper on the table toward him. His eyes moved over the print, but he did not read. He ate at a steady rate, neither fast nor slow. He got up for a second helping, which finished the hash. The hell with his children, too, Aaron was thinking. Billy was twenty-four now—no, twenty-seven—and Edith was twenty-three and already had three kids by that lowlifer she’d married. Yes, there’d been a time when Aaron had had great ambitions for his children, and Billy had gone through college and was a certified public accountant, but Edith had fallen in love in her sophomore year and gotten married, and to a numbskull who was not a college man and who hadn’t any money. Aaron had flown into a rage and tried to get the marriage annulled, but alas, Edith was already pregnant, so an annulment was out of the question, but Aaron had fumed—hadn’t he reason to, and wasn’t he borne out now, with the two of them and their three kids living in some slum in Philadelphia?—and Billy had defended his sister and so had V
era. To Aaron, it had been as if his whole world had suddenly lost its mind, reversed the correct order of things. He had stood alone in his defense of sanity, education, the good life, and his own family had turned traitor, betrayed him and all he had struggled for since the children had been born and before. Aaron had gotten so angry one day, he had wrecked the house. He had torn pictures off the walls and stamped on them, pulled down the curtains and thrown every dish in the house on the floor. Then Vera had burst into tears and said she was leaving him, and she had. And he’d let her.
“Let her,” Aaron murmured to himself as he sipped his instant coffee. “Let her!” Let her leave him, with all her talk about psychiatrists for him, a talk with the preacher—“Tschuh,” Aaron said with contempt. His blood boiled for an instant, and subsided. He was better off now than he’d ever been in his life. There was a lot to be said for independence. He was saving more money now, too, than he’d ever been able to save since he got married. Last year, he had toyed with the idea of taking a cruise to the West Indies in the summer, but he had postponed it, and postponed it this year, too. Well, one summer it’d be Europe instead, and that was more interesting than the West Indies, which were simply closer and cheaper. Yes, his life was fine now, except for the awful batch of people he had to work with. They made him dislike his work, and dislike all the gadgets and rubber stamps and weighing machines and every other mechanical device in the place. He’d been in Copperville three years now. There were times when it didn’t seem that long, and times when it seemed much longer. Tonight it didn’t seem that long.
Roger Hoolihan had a boy in college and another in high school. Plus a wife. Aaron shrugged. It was no time for pity.
He washed up his dishes, put a couple of shirts and a pair of pajamas in a washtub to soak, and went to bed early. Aaron liked to sleep. He slept ten hours every night.
The next morning was bright and sunny, the temperature a perfect sixty-two, Aaron saw by his thermometer beside his front door. Aaron’s house was set behind the larger house of his landlord, at the end and to one side of the driveway which led to a garage where his landlord kept his car, a pale blue Buick. There was a thin lawn between Aaron’s house and the landlord’s house, and Aaron’s feet had worn a faint path from his door diagonally across the lawn to the nearer of the two barren streaks made by the car’s wheels in the driveway. Aaron had a five-block walk to the post office, through streets of two-story houses with elm and maple trees growing along the sidewalk.
Nothing That Meets the Eye Page 27
