Neighbors

by Thomas Berger

  "I'll tell you this, Earl," Ramona said, "I'm getting hungry as hell."

  "Damn right!" Keese cried. "I'm going to call a cab from Allenby to take us to the city! Can you imagine the cost of that? We'll sumptuously wine and dine and stay at the finest hostelry. We'll roam the boulevards with a supercilious smile for all, and glide through smart shops exchanging glib remarks. I'll sport a thin Malacca cane and thrash anyone showing insolence."

  "Your concepts seem to date from a bygone era," said Ramona, "but I like them, Earl."

  "Well then," he said, "I'd better get into some decent clothes." He felt his unshaven chin.

  "On the other hand," said Ramona, "it's certainly comfortable right here. It's not really necessary to go all the way to the city."

  "Uh-huh," Keese said. "Are you telling me you'd rather stay here? It's just that I thought of you as the city type."

  "But to go in on Saturday from the country is not a city thing, if you see what I mean."

  Keese leaned against the refrigerator. "Yes," said he, "it's a thing done by people who live in the country. We don't have to go to the city. There's a well-known restaurant outside Allenby."

  "Would that be La Nourriture?"

  "Yes, it would," said Keese. "You've eaten there?"

  "Only a hamburger," said Ramona. "It was O.K."

  "The place I meant is luxurious and expensive," said he, somewhat peeved by her obvious confusion of it with a lunch counter. "Their dishes run to turbot and saddle of lamb and asparagus soufflé."

  "I just had the hamburger," said Ramona. "It wasn't bad, either."

  "I have to get cleaned up and dressed," Keese said. He went upstairs and shaved and showered. He donned a tan suit, a blue shirt, and a blue necktie figured in tan.

  He returned to the kitchen. He saw Ramona through the window and went out to join her. The ruins were still smoking, as Perry Greavy had predicted. Keese touched Ramona's shoulder.

  "It really is too bad," he said. "You didn't even get a chance to live there one whole day."

  "I don't give a damn about that," Ramona said. "I was just thinking about Baby. Maybe I made a mistake. I really miss him."

  They returned to the kitchen. Keese seized the phone book and looked in the Ns and could not find La Nourriture, then searched the Ls and found the number.

  When the answer came he asked: "Are you still serving lunch?"

  "As a policy or with reference to today?" This voice was accented and male.

  "A table for two, please, as soon as we can get there."

  "No, no, you will not find admittance. It is complete for today."

  "It's too late?"

  "Go away."

  "Now, don't be rude."

  "Launch is gone away," cried the voice. "Kiss my phallus."

  "How dare you abuse me?" cried Keese.

  "This is no malice, I repeat," said the man. "We close. Eat tit! Closed!" Or had he said: "I repeat it"?

  Keese gave him the benefit of the doubt. "I'm sorry to have bothered you," he said. "I didn't look at my watch."

  "Merde!" shouted the voice. "I do not wish to look into your crotch!" The line went abruptly dead.

  Keese turned slowly. "They think it's chic to misunderstand. I suppose that seems charming to a vulgar kind of clientele, but I won't put up with it."

  "Couldn't make a connection?" Ramona asked indifferently. She had obviously lost all interest in going to lunch.

  "I got all cleaned up," Keese said. He had inspected his clothed person in the full-length mirror behind the bathroom door. Oddly enough the scales had told him that after twenty-four hours without food he weighed a pound and a half more than he had a day earlier. Still, he was always slenderized by a suit. "Sure a relief to get those old clothes off," he said, "and shave."

  Ramona said impatiently: "I think I'll go out for a walk."

  "You don't want me to call the Allenby taxi?"

  "If you want to."

  Keese sighed and loosened the knot of his tie, though knowing full well that just such a minor adjustment would make a man of his figure look like a tramp. "It's not successful, is it, Ramona?"

  "It's probably too early to say."

  "I don't think it's working out."

  "Well, Earl, all it takes is one person to kill it."

  "You're blaming me?" Keese looked at the floor. "You may be right, but let me point out that I wasn't consulted on the arrangement in the first place. When I first heard of it it was already an accomplished fact. You might say I have no great responsibility to make it work."

  "I hope you're not insulting me," said Ramona.

  "You're doing a good job!" said Keese. "I think you're a fine girl, Ramona. I really like you."

  "But I'm not right here?"

  "Well," said Keese, "it's—"

  "I agree," she said. "I'm wrong here. I don't know why, but I'm wrong."

  "I wouldn't use that word," Keese said.

  Ramona shrugged. "I'm going for a walk."

  "Towards the village?"

  "I don't know. Why?"

  "I was thinking," said he. "I wouldn't want to load you down, but do you think a roll or two might be possible, and a few slices of liverwurst?"

  She shook her head. "I don't want to bother with that, Earl."

  "Mixed nuts?" Keese pleaded. "Couple small plastic bags?"

  "Naw," said Ramona. "Too much trouble. Sorry." She smiled vaguely and slipped out the back door.

  Keese stared dully after her for a while, and then, alone in the house, he knew no restraint. He found a patch of bare kitchen wall, and he threw a tantrum against it, pounding with both fists and stamping on the floor, crying: "No food—no sleep—no company." But part of this was in irony, for he did not forget at any moment that he had lived half a century: the old carefree rages of childhood were no longer accessible.

  When he had had enough of this he thought he would go upstairs and change into the old clothes once more: a suit and tie seemed to mock his current existence.

  But before he moved Ramona came in from outdoors.

  "Harry's coming back!" she said.

  "Alone?"

  "I'm sure that Baby is with him."

  What an egoist she was! "I wonder about my women," said he.

  "How do I know?" said she. "I just see the car coming."

  CHAPTER 15

  WHEN Keese got outside, the car was turning into his drive. Harry saw him and sounded the horn. He pulled up around back and leaped out.

  The rear doors of Keese's automobile were flung open simultaneously and Enid emerged from the left one; Elaine from the right, leading the wolfhound.

  Harry led Keese around to the trunk. He was dressed in fresh, perhaps even new clothing, and his face was clean. Even his black eye seemed to have faded somewhat.

  He unlocked and raised the lid of the trunk. "Take a look at this," said he.

  A mèlange of fragrances assaulted Keese's nostrils, and he saw paper bags, cardboard boxes, and containers molded from shiny substances, even makeshift carriers fashioned from pairs of paper plates with facing concavities, lids stapled.

  "Lend a hand," said Harry, beginning to fill his arms with burdens.

  Keese lost his appetite immediately. Nevertheless he took an armload of food and carried it indoors. Neither Enid nor Elaine turned a finger. His daughter, not wearing the turban, but leading Baby on a long leash that looked thin as a hair, went to Ramona and kissed her on the mouth. Enid, dressed in a suit that was the female counterpart of his own, presumably had gone upstairs.

  Two trips each were required of Harry and Keese. On their second, the latter said: "You got an awful lot."

  Harry plucked up several candy-striped bags. "The way things have gone for us this weekend, we must always shop with a catastrophe in mind."

  Keese arranged a series of cardboard boxes along his forearm, which he held close against his chest. They had all the earmarks of Chinese provender. He had already carried in what from the aroma and leaking s
auces would seem Mexican, and still left in the trunk were the flat pizza containers, the stapled pie plates holding whatever, the very white boxes imprinted with a baker's name in blue, and the standard brown bags dispensed by supermarkets and delicatessens.

  "May I ask a question?" Keese said, looking over the burdens in his arms. "Your intention just now, from start to finish, was only to go for food?"

  "What else could it have been?" asked Harry.

  "Enid and Elaine went along for the ride?"

  "They were in the market for an outing," said Harry. "Say, Allenby is quite the metropolis, isn't it?"

  "Then you weren't heading for the horizon, but got cold feet and turned back, and picked up this food merely so you'd have an excuse for the trip?" Harry stared silently at him as they walked towards the house. "Forgive me," Keese said. "I'm thinking out loud and obviously not to the point."

  They entered the kitchen. Keese felt a further explanation was necessary. "I didn't mean to cast aspersions," he said. "It's just that someone tried to give me an impression which seems to have been chicane."

  "Sounds like Ramona," Harry said, putting his goods on the kitchen counter. "She tends to heighten the moment if she can manage it." He dug into one of the bags and produced what he proceeded to term "a flask of fiery spirits."

  "I'll get glasses," Keese said. "What are we drinking?"

  "Rum, me hearty!" Harry cried, as if from the thicket of a beard, and he raised one foot and hopped about the kitchen with the implication that he had a peg leg, and he shouted snatches of bogus sea-talk: "Belay that! Avast, ye lubbers!"

  Keese returned from the dining-room cabinet with two squat tumblers.

  "Reef the t'gallant!" cried Harry. "Lower the tops'l and top the bottoms'l." He poured Keese a generous serving of his amber potion and took an ample measure for himself.

  "Ice and mix?" asked Keese.

  "Never!" cried Harry. He threw back his head and drained the glass.

  Keese prudently sipped at his own: he had nothing in his stomach. Moreover, he had drunk no spirits in ages.

  Harry smacked his lips and said: "Now for a gastronomic tour of the world." He began to open bags and boxes. "Cooked," said he, "by the scum of all nations."

  Keese toasted him. "For a man who has just lost all his material possessions, your morale is incredible. Have you decided to rebuild with the insurance money?"

  "I didn't have any insurance on that house," said Harry.

  "No, no," said Keese, "that's impossible. The bank wouldn't give you a mortgage."

  "I didn't have a mortgage," Harry said. He unwrapped a Chinese egg roll and inserted one end into his mouth, dropping his hands.

  "You paid cash?"

  Harry bit off the end of the egg roll. The larger piece fell into the cupped hands he brought from nowhere, just in time. He chewed for a moment.

  "I didn't own it," he said.

  "Rent?"

  Harry finally swallowed what he was chewing. "The old lady went to a nursing home when the old man died, right? Then she died, and they didn't have any heirs, so the house went to the state. Well, the red tape will take years to unravel."

  Keese drank a hearty share of the rum in his glass, almost all of it, in fact. "Can I be right," he asked, "in my feeling that you and Ramona simply moved in over there without any financial arrangement?"

  "All they could have done was throw us out," said Harry. "You don't get the electric chair for trespassing on public property."

  "God damn," Keese said in admiration, striking the counter-top and reaching for the bottle. "You're all right, Harry." He opened the bag and found half a chicken breast. This was sensible, with rum on an empty stomach. But the chicken was dead cold, with a dull glaze of grease over its insipid breading. Keese got no further than one bite. But he didn't want a case to be made of this: therefore, when Harry was getting something more to eat for himself, Keese slipped the piece of chicken into one of the empty brown bags in which another item of food had been transported.

  "How's the Kentucky Fried cluck-cluck?" asked Harry. He had yet to make his next choice. He turned and saw no chicken in Keese's hands. "God, what a trencherman you are!" He seized the bottle and poured more rum for Keese. "Better wash that down."

  Keese patted his abdomen. "That'll probably hold me. I could use losing a few grams. Of course, I was never skinny, not even when your age."

  "Look in these bakery cartons," Harry said, folding back the cardboard tops. "Lemon meringue pie! Napoleons! Prune danish! Am I tempting you?"

  Keese drank some rum. "I'll have something more when I finish my drink. Well, what will you do now, Harry? Look for another house in the same situation?"

  "They're not come across that frequently, Earl. I simply have to be alert to whatever opportunity comes my way."

  Keese drank some more. "I suppose it keeps you hopping. But it's an interesting way of life. You can't deny that." He chuckled. "What about your furniture?"

  "It wasn't museum stuff, Earl." Harry was roaming through the foods. "Can it be—" He ripped open the mouth of a bag and plunged his head at it, almost into it. "Yes, it is: ribs!" He reached into the interior and brought forth an oblong covered with aluminum foil. He peeled back the foil, and a feeble wisp of steam arose.

  Keese accepted the warm rack of barbecued spareribs, which was considerably heavier than it appeared. He found a carving knife and separated a section of three ribs, and then cut those into individuals. They glistened redly, and Harry offered a plastic cup brimful with more sauce. Keese turned this down but found a shaker and salted the meat lavishly.

  Harry gulped some rum. "The suspense is killing me," said he.

  After Keese found a box of paper napkins in the cupboard he was ready. He took a bite of pork. It was still warm. The meat was abundant, lean, and tasty. The sauce, pungent without excessive acidity.

  "These are very nice," he told Harry, waving a rib at him.

  "Damn right," Harry said, pushing one end of a taco into his own mouth and spilling a good deal of its contents from the other end—which cleverly he held over an open paper bag that stood on the countertop. After he had chewed awhile he said: "We can have a lot of fun here."

  Keese ate more from the rib and took another drink. He had now had just enough of the latter to feel a sense of well-being that seemed natural and not the result of alcohol. This equilibrium was not simple to maintain, especially when in the company of someone with another tolerance.

  Harry said: "Do you agree, Earl?"

  "With what?"

  "That it's nice here."

  "Yes," said Keese, "this is really nice, Harry."

  "Whereas," said Harry, "if your house was burned too, then none of us would have anything."

  "I couldn't disagree with that," said Keese.

  "You're not going to burn this place down, are you, Earl?"

  Keese took a while to digest this remarkable speech. Then he said: "It never occurred to me, Harry."

  "I don't know," Harry said, "you were looking mighty wistful."

  Keese took the bottle and replenished his glass. "What I actually was thinking, a while back, was that you might want to take this house off my hands, but obviously that's not possible now, if you haven't got any insurance money coming."

  Harry shook his head. "Besides, where would you go, Earl? Where else would you be likely to feel at home?"

  "I was thinking of the city," Keese said, "where the idea of feeling at home has different values from those in the country."

  Harry had opened the packages piecemeal and at random, but he now began at the outer edge of the counter and worked back, removing each bag or carton altogether and exposing the food. He did not however ignore Keese.

  "You might be bored," he said. "It's all very well to think that the city's where the life is, but that's probably an illusion. And your style, Earl, is pretty out of date so far as the city goes, if you'll forgive my saying so."

  "Of course," Keese said, having had a
drink, "I go there every day to work, don't I?"

  "Do you?" said Harry. "Yet my point still stands, no? It's not working in a place that makes it home, it's living there. For example, I've known city people who commute to the country to work and then return at the time that everyone else is leaving. But what do they know about the country?

  Keese couldn't decide whether to eat a second rib. Actually he did not like barbecued spareribs, nor Chinese food, nor tacos, nor much of anything else that Harry had yet revealed. Therefore what he ate now was a question of what he disliked least. But tastes were tastes, and he didn't blame Harry for the selection.