Neighbors

by Thomas Berger

  "I don't know yet," he said.

  Harry was incredulous. "Are you saying that you won't honor my apology? If so, I don't think you can continue to call yourself a gentleman, Earl, I'm sorry."

  "You've got some nerve, Harry," Keese said heatedly, "considering the tricks you've pulled."

  "Which have been so successful that my car is in the swamp and we are locked in your basement," said Harry. "Come on!"

  Did he really see those as Keese's victories? Well, maybe he did. Keese sighed into the telephone.

  "All right," he said, "you've convinced me." He hung up and trudged to the kitchen. He unlocked the door to the basement and opened it, expecting that Harry and Ramona would be waiting impatiently on the steps for their liberation. But they could not be seen. "It's open!" he shouted. Silence. "Hey! You wanted out!" He went down a few steps, far enough to lower his head and look across, beneath the pipes and ducts, to the door of the game room. It was closed.

  What were they waiting for? Did they expect him to come and fetch them, conduct them upstairs as if they were royalty. Ha! He climbed back to the kitchen.

  But after waiting there for a time which seemed as though it might extend, without straining itself, to the following morning, Keese found further suspense unbearable. He marched smartly down the steps and across the concrete to the door of the game room.

  He rapped on the upper panel. "Come on," he cried. "You're free."

  A rustle and a scraping sound came from his rear right side. Harry and Ramona had been hiding in the corner beyond the furnace. They rushed out at him now, tripped him up, and knocked him to the floor. They dashed in tandem up the stairs into the kitchen and locked the door behind them.

  This proved conclusively that Harry had no integrity whatever. Meanwhile Keese was a prisoner in his own basement.

  CHAPTER 6

  KEESE felt uneasy when below ground level. This was not the sort of place in which his strengths were at maximum efficacy. He would have been at least twenty-five percent to the good had he instead been locked in an attic. But it was no doubt a truth that we can seldom choose our place to stand against misfortune!

  One thing was certain: sentimentalizing would not help. He narrowed his eyes as an aid to scheming. The windows, of course! They were set high in the wall, but a little stepladder was available. A more troublesome fact was that they were of constricted aperture, and Keese was not a slender man. He went to the nearest window and measured it crudely with spread hands, which he then applied to his body. It was hard to say whether the fit was right. What if he got stuck when halfway through?

  The car! Of course! He still hadn't got around to calling the wrecker. He might do that now, from the game-room phone, and while he was at it, tell the garageman to stop by the basement first and let him out.

  A copy of the directory accompanied the telephone, a wall-mounted instrument: the phone book hung beneath it on a twisted string. He found the number of Greavy's Garage. The wrecker was supposed to be available around-the-clock: therefore no offense could properly be taken by the man who owned and operated it. But in practice he was reputed to be a curmudgeon if summoned outside the frame of the normal working day. Keese could not understand the morality of offering an emergency service and then deploring its use in an emergency, but then the world was full of such discrepancies.

  When Greavy answered his ring now, Keese (who could not bear being treated rudely) made a prefatory statement in which he endeavored to justify his late call and so forestall any abuse, but Greavy soon interrupted.

  "It's already on its way." His voice was genial. "Harry done called for the wrecker, and it went five minutes ago, the boy at the wheel."

  So he knew Harry already?

  "Then sorry to have bothered you," said Keese, "if you're sure we're speaking of the same car."

  "Harry called," Greavy repeated. "He said you ran his car down the swamp and locked him and his missus in the basement." He sounded as if he had difficulty in breathing, but eventually Keese understood that the man was laughing.

  "Yes, it was a practical joke," said Keese.

  "You just watch yourself now," said Greavy, "because if I know Harry he'll have something up his sleeve to pay you back with."

  "Actually, he has already tricked me into going to the basement, and I'm locked here now, whereas they got out."

  "There you are!" Greavy said enthusiastically. "Harry don't take it laying down."

  "Known him long, have you?"

  Greavy suddenly became suspicious. "What business is that of yours?"

  "Now don't act like that," said Keese. "You just spoke as if you knew him fairly well. You called him Harry and you said, 'If I know him he'll want revenge.'"

  "Now, I never said that, Greavy replied, "and you better watch what you're saying to me, brother: I won't put up with no sarcasm: I'll take away your teeth with a wrench."

  Again there was that charge of "sarcasm." Keese doubted that this was Greavy's own style. It was pretty obvious that he had been programmed by Harry.

  "All right, all right. Maybe you didn't use those exact words, but you did give me the idea. I guess it was mainly that you called him Harry."

  "How would I know his last name?" Greavy asked. "What is it, if you're so damned smart?"

  "I don't know."

  "Then what are you doing talking about him?" Greavy asked furiously. "You got no right at all. Are you trying to make a fool out of me, you mummysucker?"

  Keese went cold. He could not believe that he was being spoken to so vilely. "Call yourself a businessman?" was the best rejoinder he could find at the moment, playing for time while he put down wild impulses to go the station and throw a match into one of Greavy's gasoline tanks. The more he sought aid, the more scores he had to settle. He was somehow antagonizing the entire world merely by trying to defend himself.

  "Listen," said Greavy, "I'm as good as you, any old day. Just because you bring your car in here and pay me to fix it, don't mean I'm dirt under your feet."

  This too was reminiscent of Harry's style in its use of bogus resentment. Keese had never been disrespectful of Greavy. Far from it: like everybody else, he was the obsequious, helpless victim of any mechanic. But he realized that it would only be playing into Greavy's, and presumably Harry's, hands to confess this.

  "No, you're not as good as I," he said. "I stand there in a good suit, shirt, tie, watching you cover yourself with grease in my interest. Furthermore, you must do what I tell you to. No matter how nicely I put it, it's an order, and you must obey because I'm a customer. You are actually my servant, my flunky. No wonder at your vicious envy."

  Greavy accepted this in silence. When he finally came back on the wire his venom was gone. Indeed, he was such a sycophant that Keese regretted having brought him so low—unless, of course, this was another hoax.

  "I'm a ignorant man, sir," said Greavy. "I don't know how to act with decent people. That's why I keep to myself mostly. I let the boy deal with the public."

  Now he was making a bid for Keese's sympathy. That could not be suffered. First, because it was needless; and for another, Keese needed all his strength to use against Harry & Ramona.

  "You're a fraud, Greavy! I'm glad to have had the opportunity to tell you that." Keese hung up. This had been no impassioned outburst. He was cool and serene. Greavy had been vile to him for no reason at all. But he had nothing against his son. In future, when he needed service he would either apply directly to Perry Greavy or take his car to one of the garages in Allenby.

  Meanwhile he was still locked in his own basement. Apparently he would not get out without destroying something. He must break the lock on one of the doors, and if so, that to the kitchen was preferable to the one leading to the yard. For strategy, however, it would be more cunning to get out without the knowledge of one's captors. He had a marked advantage over Harry & Ramona if they believed him still safely incarcerated, completely harmless to them. He could then range freely about the property,
swooping in for a guerilla attack when such was least expected. In this light the door to the yard could be seen as the better one to breach.

  Nor would it be necessary to break anything at all! Simply removing the hinges, or rather the pins which secured them, would do the job. Keese chuckled to himself as he searched for a tool with which to accomplish the task. He could find nothing better than an archaic hooked beer-can opener of yesteryear, now rusted.

  The hinges were painted over and would not have been quick to respond to the proper tools; to Keese's application the door was impervious, and more than once he stabbed his other hand when the can opener slipped. He was getting nowhere.

  He stopped laboring, to entertain this rueful thought, and now for the first time he looked up the stairs which rose to his right, and he saw that the door to the kitchen was ajar. He had no way of knowing how long this had been the case. He threw down his makeshift tool and plodded deliberately up the steps, preparing to be sheepish when he faced his neighbors. In fact, he was ready to shake hands with Harry and call an end to this whole futile business.

  But when he emerged into the kitchen his neighbors were gone. Cold clanking noises from outside attracted him to the window. Perry Greavy had arrived with the wrecker. In the light from the two lamps on its rear superstructure he was attaching the chains to the front bumper of the car in the driveway. Perry wore a billed hunting cap made of lustrous orange-hued synthetic. Keese had once poked the crown of such a cap in a hardware store: it looked as if it might be hard to the touch, but actually it was resilient, even spongy.

  Keese continued to stand passively at the window, the victim of a loss of will. He unprotestingly watched Perry Greavy climb into the cab of the wrecker and drive away, pulling his car along on its hind wheels.

  When the red taillights were finally extinguished by intervening trees, Keese left the window and reconnoitered the entire ground floor of his house. No Harry was to be found, and no Ramona! God be praised. Obviously Harry believed that his final trick had evened the score, and they had gone home at last. The loss of Keese's own car, plus thirty-two dollars in cash, was a small price to pay for their absence, and anyway Perry would hardly destroy the automobile. No doubt he would park it at the station overnight and get to it in the morning. Keese might have to pay him for the useless round-trip haul, as well as for the subsequent retrieving of Harry's car and the repair thereof, but this did not worry him. He intended to study his insurance policies.

  In the living room Keese settled in the large overstuffed chair that he regarded as his personal property, though when guests were present he always sincerely urged other persons to sit there, even children. As a small boy himself he had always adored the grown man who invited him to use the regal chair, in which a child sat so far back that his shoes hung far above the floor.

  This neighborly contest had ended just in time. There had been no damage that could not be mended—and the assessment applied to the emotions as well as to material considerations. Keese intended to limit his subsequent association with Harry & Ramona, but he did not hate them. He would wave across yards, he might even shout a greeting now and again. Sending an Xmas card was a must. Packages might be accepted in their absence. Small items might be lent: an egg, a cup of confectioners' sugar, a fifteen-amp fuse. But even such transactions were nearing the yellow-colored or warning zone. A man like Harry might try to parlay a rake, say, into something much more ambitious. And Keese could not picture Ramona in the kitchen, baking a pie. Lewdness emanated from her. Obviously she was the sort who would sunbathe in her back yard while dressed in little or nothing: from May to October her navel would never be covered.

  Elaine was due to graduate on one day in June and on the next to go to France for postgraduate study, paid for by some foundation and not her father, though of course Keese had always bought her anything she wanted. Though happy for her, until this moment he had found the prospect of a daughterless summer to be without recommendation. Yet now he found himself almost happy, in a negative sense, to think that she would not be here to witness the decline of the neighborhood.

  But the answer at the moment was to return to the routine. To see where he should be at this hour under normal circumstances Keese consulted the little clock on the bookshelf. Past 11:00 P.M.! One way to kill an evening was to entertain your neighbors. He decided he could not do better than to retire at this point.

  He locked the doors and turned out all the lights but that which illuminated the staircase. He ascended to the second floor. The door to the master bedroom was closed and no thin line of light could be seen along the threshold. Why Enid had retired so early he could not say: she had hardly exhausted herself in the matter of Harry & Ramona. He would not soon forgive her for that performance.

  Keese entered the bathroom. His pajamas were habitually kept all day on a hook that was fastened to the inner door, that which opened on the bedroom. But the pair that he had hung up in the morning was not to be found in place. If Enid had declared them ready for laundering, she was wrong. In fact, they were new, fresh from the plastic bag! To support this argument to himself, he went to the waste can to find that bag—and discovered the pajama coat. It was balled and befouled, soaked in some oily fluid as if it had been used to clean a piece of machinery.

  He was too shocked to be angry. Obviously someone had spilled something, probably bath oil, and used half of his new pair of pajamas to clean it off the floor. For a long moment he could not imagine who might be responsible for this crime. Certainly Enid was incapable of it; he might sooner suppose he had done it himself in some overwrought transport. But then he remembered Ramona's incursion into the second floor. The little bitch! Now his anger came, and it was intensified almost to fury by his discovery of the pajama trousers, which though quite clean, still unused in fact, were rolled into a kind of limp sausage and inserted through the gooseneck beneath the washstand. If some excuse might be found for ruining the coat—fallen bottle, flood of oil, panic—there could be none at all for the degradation of the pants.

  It was all Keese could do, as he used the toothbrush, not to bite off the bristles. One of his disadvantages in dealing with Harry & Ramona was that he had no one to assist him. Enid had obviously disqualified herself: she was definitely not in sympathy with him. Certainly he had received no encouragement for his position from anybody on the telephone. Even the Greavys seemed in league with his neighbors. If only Elaine were there! Nobody could stand long against Elaine, with her devastating combination of brilliance and beauty: where one failed the other could always be brought into play.

  Keese rinsed his mouth and spat with great vehemence. He inspected his face in the mirror, avoiding a close study of his jowls. His teeth were in first-rate shape, and he had kept most of his hair. It was his body that could not pass muster, and furthermore he intended to do nothing whatever about it. He had given up smoking and confined his drinking to white wine. To lessen the intakes of fats and starches was too much to ask of him.

  He now stripped to the buff, placing his washable clothing in the laundry hamper and his sneakers in the corner. He extinguished the bathroom light and opened the door to the bedroom. Instantly he felt a draft from the open window: the night air was chillier than he expected, but then he was naked. In the dark he found his chest of drawers and the appropriate compartment, and by touch he selected a pair of pajamas. It was unkind to put on a light in a room where Enid lay sleeping; noise disturbed her little, but any illumination however modest was ruinous to her repose.

  Keese slept on the far side of the bed, near the windows. He went there now, peeled away the layered sheet and blanket, sat down on the edge of the bed, and swung himself in. With his left hand at an awkward angle, he reached for the edge of the bedclothes he had flung back, but it eluded him as such things are wont to do, and it was necessary to bring his right hand into service. He reached across himself and felt—Enid's back. She was much closer to his side than usual. The bed was king-sized, and she
was now in possession of a good two-thirds of it. Ordinarily he would not have minded that so much, but after her really shameful failure to support him against Harry & Ramona, and then her early voiding of the field altogether, to come to this bed, he was not inclined towards generosity.

  Impatiently he drew the blanket over him while turning his body away. He jackknifed himself then, and steering his rump into her small of back, he pushed her slowly, inexorably, towards the opposite edge. But this movement had hardly got under way when it was arrested. No further progress was possible without applying more pressure than could be justified. Such difficulties are always mysterious in the dark, but light soon solves them. Keese was in no mood to be senselessly merciful. After a day like the foregoing, he must at least be permitted to possess his half of bed. If the light awakened Enid, then so much the worse for her.

  He thumbed the switch of his bedside lamp and turned back to determine why she was wedged immovably.

  He lay beside Ramona, who was sleeping next to Harry. Harry however was not sleeping. He had lifted his head to stare across at Keese, and he was grinning. No, just a moment: his large teeth were in evidence, but not in the interests of a grin. A savage grimace was more like it. But Keese himself was hardly in a genteel attitude. He glared back for an instant and then leapt from bed. He marched around to Harry's side of the bed.