Neighbors

by Thomas Berger

  "Were you aware," he asked, "that Elaine detested that canned spaghetti?"

  "Which canned spaghetti?"

  "The kind we always went out of our way to get her when she was a little girl."

  "No."

  "No?" Keese happened to catch sight of the little clock on the table next to her. "Oh, that can't be right: three thirty?" He went to the dresser, opened the lowest drawer, and found a pair of pajamas. "I trust you changed the sheets after the neighbors left? I don't want to contract a disease." He walked to the door of the bathroom. "You could do me a favor, you know. Get a paper and pencil and list in chronological order the events of the evening, as you remember them. Then I'll fill in the blanks from my experience. It'll be pretty formidable, I promise you."

  Enid nodded and returned to her magazine. Keese entered the bathroom and examined himself in the mirror. It was the same familiar face, inappropriate for melodrama. Still in his day clothes, he went back into the bedroom.

  "I'm sorry to say that Elaine has let me down."

  "Because of the canned spaghetti?" asked Enid.

  "Her whole manner is strange. Why was she humble with Harry? That's not like Elaine. Come to think of it, why did she creep in at midnight without warning? I have never known her not to phone from school."

  "Are you ready to talk seriously?" asked Enid, lowering her magazine.

  "What does that mean? Another slur?"

  Enid raised her magazine. "Obviously you're not."

  "Goddammit, Enid!"

  Her face came into view once more. "Elaine," said she, "has been expelled."

  "No," said Keese.

  "But at least they've dropped the charges."

  "No."

  "It could have been uglier. Actually it was grand theft." "Lies," said Keese. "It's extraordinary the lengths certain people will go to discredit their betters. No one is immune."

  "The ring belonged to the dean's wife. It was to everybody's advantage that no stink was raised."

  "Someone like Ramona steals something," said Keese, "and an exemplary person like Elaine is blamed. Is that not the way of the world, to befoul the superior person?"

  "Earl, if you want to cope with this, you'll just have to accept the truth."

  Keese became very haughty. "No, I don't," he said. "I don't have to accept anything that doesn't suit me."

  He left the room. He considered going to see Elaine, but what did he have to say to a thief? He went downstairs. He decided to take Ramona's offer, whatever it was.

  He was not astonished to find her gone from his front step. That's the way it always worked. He crossed his lawn and half of that of his neighbors, climbed to their porch, and, not being able to locate a bell-button in the dark, knocked upon their door.

  At length an indistinguishable voice shouted down from an upstairs window on what seemed to be the side of the house that faced Keese's property. Keese left the porch and went around there.

  "Hello!" he shouted at the window. "It's Earl Keese."

  The answer was a blaze of red and yellow and a deafening report. Someone had fired a gun at him.

  CHAPTER 9

  IT was a new experience for Keese; his military service had been put in between wars. He fell down and embraced the earth. He had not been struck, nor had he heard the passage of a projectile. But the explosion continued for a time to resound throughout his head, as though his skull were a hall of marble.

  After the worst of the shock had passed he began to approach the problem of interpretation. There were several possibilities. That the shooter had tried to kill him was foremost, but perhaps the attempt had been but to wound. In either case his enemy had failed. But was not this very failure a promise that the effort would be renewed?

  He was on ground that made self-preservation difficult indeed: where he lay was altogether flat and naked of vegetation. Only the darkness protected him at the moment. But when a lantern came on, a hose of glow which soaked him in a torrent of light, he assumed the chance of his survival was so feeble that any measure he could take, however degrading, was justified; and he rose upon his knees, clasping his wrists, and piteously entreated the gunman to show him mercy.

  "Why, Earl!" said Harry's voice, and it was quite near. He had had time to come down from upstairs. "Good God," said he, "it's lucky I didn't take aim the first time. I took you for a prowler."

  Keese clawed at the beam of light, which was still fastened to his face.

  "Oh, 'scuse me," Harry said finally, directing his lantern towards the ground.

  For a moment Keese heard only his own labored breathing. "Whff," he gasped, "that's quite an experience." The effect of the bright light lingered: he couldn't see Harry as yet, but he had the feeling that he must provide his end of a polite conversation: "Keep a gun, do you?"

  "Yes I do," Harry said almost smugly. "It is my practice to have at hand the means with which to defend my own home."

  Keese felt very ill. "Yes," he said, "you are well within your rights." He staggered away a few paces, bent over with his hands on his thighs, and vomited.

  "Wow," he said when he could, "the aftereffect just arrived!"

  Harry spoke with a marked lack of sympathy: "Maybe you'll get around to telling me what you're doing here?"

  Keese wiped his face. "Yeah."

  "You haven't come to apologize, have you, Earl?" Harry asked impatiently. "Because if you have, it'll take some thought on my part, I promise you."

  Keese had forgotten until this moment about punching Harry in the eye! "God," he said, "I do apologize for that, Harry. It was a stupid mistake."

  "Making stupid mistakes seems to be a profession with you, Earl. Who needs any more? I can't afford being on close terms with you."

  "Excuse me," Keese said weakly. He turned and vomited again.

  "And you might do your puking at home."

  "Sorry."

  But Harry wasn't going to pass up an opportunity like this. "Is that why you woke me up and got me to come downstairs: to watch you heave?"

  Keese's eyes had now adjusted to the darkness, and he could see a shadowy area around Harry's right eye. As it turned out, punishing him for pawing Elaine had been foolish. She was a common thief. She had disgraced him. Why should he protect her from molestation?

  Harry kept it up: "You were making a symbolic comment on my spaghetti, is that it? Still another act of vengeance?"

  Keese waved his hands above his head; he was still standing in the position of an upended L. "No, no, nothing like that, Harry. I'm sick."

  "I can see that, Earl. You're also disgusting."

  "I know," Keese confessed. "And I'm going to make it up to you, Harry."

  "I get scared when I hear your good intentions," said Harry. "Just keep your distance, and I'll keep mine."

  Keese breathed deeply to discourage his viscera from rising in protest again. "Look," he said, "I can really use your friendship."

  "At an earlier date," said Harry, "I might have been taken in by that statement. But that's before I served as your dupe—and more than once. Jesus, how often must a guy get bitten before he shies away at the approach of a dog?"

  Keese cleared his throat, which was like sandpapering an open wound: the stomach acids had made it raw. "Well," he said, "we're on your property now. Now you're the boss. You can make short work of me if I get out of line."

  Harry struck an attitude. "Vengeance doesn't appeal to me, Earl," he said loftily. "That's your game, not mine."

  "I didn't mean that. I meant that you have the moral advantage and that I'm in a subordinate position. I'm coming to you, not vice versa, and that gives you a tremendous edge."

  Harry laughed bitterly. "The way you look at life! All I bargained for was a bit of neighborliness, for God's sake."

  This was hypocrisy, but Keese was in no position to identify it aloud. "That's what I'm asking now," he said. "There's an awful crisis in my personal life, and I need some help."

  Harry suddenly noticed that his lante
rn was still alight, spilling its illumination uselessly on the ground. He snapped it off and said curtly: "Sorry, it's against my principles."

  "Oh, I don't mean money," Keese said in haste.

  "Then don't call your problem serious!" cried Harry. "I have no respect for people who have none for money."

  "I wonder," Keese said mostly to himself but aloud, "if Elaine can be explained that simply. Did she steal the ring only to sell it? But I thought I always provided her with sufficient funds. I only know this: she never asked for any extra."

  Without warning Harry became compassionate. "It does sound as if you're perplexed, Earl my boy," he said. "Come on, we'll talk about it." He led Keese around to the back of the house, and they entered the kitchen, which looked more or less as it had when the Walkers lived there. The boxes that Keese had seen through the window when watching Harry prepare spaghetti were stacked to one side.

  Keese became aware that Harry had been unobtrusively carrying the gun he had fired from the upstairs window. While they spoke in the darkness outside he had kept it close against his side.

  "So that's your shotgun?"

  Harry peered quickly at him and then carried the weapon across the kitchen and propped it in a corner alongside a cupboard. "Don't worry about it, Earl," he said when he was done, "a gun never goes off by itself."

  "And no one," Keese said, sagely shaking his chin, "has ever been shot by an unloaded gun."

  "That's a strange thing to say," Harry replied. He sat down at the table. "Take a pew. Has it occurred to you that we are inevitably drawn back to a kitchen table whenever we have tried to talk all evening? Maybe that does suggest we're in some basic sympathy, like members of the same family?"

  "I'm sure it does," said Keese. His need for Harry's friendship seemed to increase by the moment.

  "But this time it's my kitchen—is that your point?"

  "Well," said Keese, "yours, mine, what difference does it make after all?" He saw Harry for the first time since entering the kitchen (he had not looked at him since coming into the light; instead he had peered at the room, the boxes, and the gun). Harry's right eye was extravagantly discolored. Identified in haste, the hue could probably be labeled blue-black, but on brief examination almost any color could have been found somewhere in the bruised eye-socket. The lid was half closed.

  "Know what that statement represents?" asked Harry. "The kind of falsity of a politician or entertainer who wishes the whole world good luck. How can everybody be fortunate simultaneously? How can the bank robber be successful without the loss of the banker?"

  Keese couldn't get over the damage he had done to Harry's eye. Actually he had no memory of hitting anyone in the eye before, not even as a kid. It was probably the most savage kind of blow to administer, given its visible effect. It was certainly worse than the punch Greavy had buried in his stomach.

  "Look," he said, "will you accept my apology? I shouldn't have swung. I probably misinterpreted your gesture. I've been completely disoriented since that girl came home." He genuinely believed now that he had punched Harry because of his confusion and horror regarding Elaine's disgrace—whereas he had learned of the latter only afterwards. But he was desperate to find any answer for his predicament. "I've never been a violent man," he said. "All these things are without precedent, believe me."

  Harry peered speculatively at him. "Maybe you're right," he said finally. "I guess it does matter that you're in my house now. Whatever happens, you eventually have to go home. Isn't that what it comes down to? Whereas this is where I belong?"

  Without warning he threw a punch at Keese's eye, but by chance Keese turned his head at just that instant, as a man will, and he was instead hit on the ear, and not a direct blow there, either, but rather a glancing strike which stung the lobe, scarcely the most sensitive of organs.

  Keese retained his composure, though his ear burned slightly. But Harry was apparently embarrassed by his failure to connect. He turned away in probable chagrin. When he turned back after a moment, however, his manner was bland.

  "A cuppa coffee, Earl? Sleep seems out of the question this night."

  Keese assented to the offer, and as Harry rose from the table he said: "I also apologize for keeping you up at this hour."

  "It couldn't be helped," Harry said in a happy-go-lucky fashion, with matching grin.

  Keese shrank back as Harry passed him, but the larger man made no attempt to throw another punch. A tea kettle sat on the stove: someone had long since found it amongst the kitchen boxes. Harry swished the contents, decided that it held sufficient water for his needs, and turned on the gas. He went to the sink, where two cups, upside down, rested on the drainboard. Their situation suggested they had been washed and put to dry. But when Harry brought them to the table and put one, right side up, before him, Keese saw it was dirty; vilely so, in fact, with a dried swarthy sediment in the bowl and a scalloping of lipstick under the brim.

  He didn't know quite what to say, given the tenuous peace between them; therefore he silently lifted the cup and displayed its condition to his host.

  Harry nodded, but did nothing about it. He put another cup at his own place and went to a counter and found a jar of instant coffee. While his back was turned Keese deftly switched cups: obviously that was the least offensive way to deal with the matter.

  A recognizable stench reached his nostrils at that point. Gas! "Harry," he said urgently, "I don't think that burner's lighted."

  Harry turned with the bottle of powdered coffee. "Put it on for me, willya?" he asked, thrusting his hip towards Keese. "Pilot's not operating yet." He did a sidewards bump at Keese. "Matches in my pocket," he said, "and don't roam around when you put your hand in there: being groped is not my game."

  Keese ignored this bit of gratuitous offensiveness. He went to the stove and turned off the burner, then headed for the back door. "Too much gas in here now to light up."

  But Harry was at the stove before Keese could open the door. He turned on the burner and then searched himself for some deliberate moments before he found a match and lighted it. Nothing happened, except that the gas came bluely visible. He moved the kettle over it. "What an alarmist you are, Earl," he said. He returned to the counter and came subsequently to the table with the coffee jar and brown-stained spoon. He looked at Keese, his eyebrows rising above both eyes, normal and blackened, and asked: "Strong?"

  "So-so."

  Harry put a rounded teaspoonful of brown powder in the cup before his own place and exchanged it for the cleaner cup at Keese's.

  Keese really thought he should say something at this point. "This cup's not clean." To show his good intentions he rose. "I'll just rinse it out."

  "And waste that coffee?" Harry asked belligerently.

  "Maybe I can just put it someplace temporarily," said Keese, "until I have washed the cup." He looked desperately about and could find nothing. Therefore he emptied the cup's contents into his left palm. He was enroute to the sink when arrested by Harry's command.

  "Sit down, Earl."

  "Just let me—"

  "Sit down," Harry roared. When Keese had complied with this order Harry said: "Now just pour the coffee powder back into the cup."

  Keese did so. Owing to the natural moisture of his palm, some of the powder adhered to it. He displayed this to Harry.

  "May I wash my hand?"

  "No," said Harry.

  Keese smirked and got up anyway. Harry hurled himself upon his guest. He maneuvered himself around in back of Keese and got him with a forearm across the throat. Keese's left arm was twisted behind him by Harry's viselike left fist. Not only did this put him absolutely into Harry's power, but it was extremely painful. He would have been loud to announce his surrender had he been able to speak, but the mugger's grip across his windpipe rendered him mute.

  Harry steered him back to the chair and forced him to sit down. The first few moments of Keese's liberation were consumed by swallowing and breathing, which seemed new exercises. H
e coughed for a while, once to the point of choking briefly. Then, after determining that his handkerchief had been left behind in the clothes he had removed hours before, he dried his streaming eyes on the cuff of his old shirt.

  Nevertheless, as soon as Harry turned his back again Keese switched cups. Then ensued one of those seemingly endless phases of time in which emotions are left hanging, when all the world waits upon the rising of water to the boil.

  At last Harry brought the kettle to the table and transformed into muddy coffee the powder in the cups. Then he went to the corner where he had left his shotgun, lifted the weapon, and pointed it at Keese, and said: "Take the cup you tried to trick me into using."