Neighbors: A Novel

by Thomas Berger

  If he found Greavy now and punched him in the stomach, the man would have no memory of having done him dirty. Greavy would believe himself the accidental victim of a lunatic. God, how unfair it all was!

  But he was not to be counted out yet. He spoke to the door.

  "Enid, are you aware of the impression you are creating?"

  "Leave us in peace," said Ramona.

  "Enid!"

  At last a sleepy voice answered: "What do you want now?"

  "Enid, the inevitable impression one gets here is that you are behaving like a deviate."

  "Well."

  "Behind a locked bedroom door with a person of your own sex—"

  "Then," Enid murmured, "there's the dog."

  "The fact is, Earl," said Ramona, "you've been outmaneuvered. It's as simple as that."

  Strangely enough he was, momentarily at least, pacified by the ineluctable truth of this statement. He turned away and shuffled towards the stairway.

  Down the hall Elaine was peeking timorously from the door of her room. She whispered so softly he could not hear her. He went close.

  Elaine asked: "What's happened?"

  "Your mother is entertaining a friend."

  "Do you have to be disagreeable about that?" she asked, raising her voice to its normal level.

  "Don't push me, Elaine, I warn you. You've been getting a free ride for many years. Don't start acting like a paying passenger."

  "Daddy," said Elaine, "please don't start telling me the truth about anything. I hate showdowns. There's always something false about them, anyway."

  He was touched by her plaintiveness. "All right, I'm sorry. I didn't mean that."

  "I think you meant it." Elaine's expression was smug. "What you regret is having said it."

  "Why am I always being suckered?" Keese asked of himself as he turned and went downstairs. It now had happened: women were in utter control of his house.

  He went outside, through the kitchen, and looked at his car. The painted legend was the cruelest of ironies, though Greavy, a near-moron, had no doubt chosen it for its mere ugliness of sound. Pimp. He supposed he was one, in a way—like everybody else.

  He examined the letters closely, and suddenly he was, of all things, grateful to Greavy, of all people, and for an odd reason: the paint was not enamel, but whitewash! Good old Greavy. Keese wet a finger and swiped it through the first P. Then he went back to the garage and found a pail and a sponge, and at the corner of the house he got water from a hose attached to an outdoor faucet. In a trice his car had one clean and shiny door. But this too looked out of the way, and therefore he began to wash the entire vehicle.

  He had reached the trunk when from behind he was hit by a gush of water, and he turned and took it, blindingly, in his face for a while before he could dodge and identify Harry as his tormentor.

  Harry however was not discouraged by the recognition and continued to advance with the pouring hose. This was not the ultimate in punishment: the weather was temperate and in washing the car Keese had already got himself damp enough, but as Harry got closer the stream of water, having less far to travel, increased in pressure. It was still not precisely painful, but the inexorable approach began to suggest to Keese that Harry might just be desperate enough, at this point, to plunge the nozzle into one of his neighbor's orifices.

  He therefore flung the contents of the bucket at Harry. This was no deterrent, the pail being by now but half full, and anyway the blob of flung water was split and pretty well dissipated by the gush from the hose, which Harry quickly brought to his own defense. After an instant it was back on target, on Keese, and advancing once more.

  Moving swiftly and deftly for a man of his bulk, Keese got to close quarters with Harry, reached up and slammed a bucket over his head, and while Harry was groping to claw it away, Keese ran to the faucet and shut off the water.

  Harry got the pail free and hurled it at Keese. Being of weightless plastic, it flew not far. Harry picked up the hose he had dropped and tried, with a great whipping movement, to snake it at Keese. But it was rather too long and sluggish to permit this.

  Harry's eye looked worse than it had in his kitchen at dawn. For all practical purposes he was a Cyclops now. Keese did not want to hurt him again.

  "Harry!" he cried. "You really got me then. Look, I'm soaked!" Harry looked dubious. Keese would have to convince him, else the stupidity would start up all over again. "Harry, I think we're even now!"

  Harry dropped the hose and stood deliberating. He wore a pouty expression. "I don't know, Earl. I don't know at all. Do you really think so?"

  "Who would know better than I?" Keese tried to say it wryly: "I'm soaked to the buff."

  "But they're your old clothes," said Harry. "And you were anyway washing the car. I don't see that's much damage. I won't mention again the major dirty deals I got from you last night. I'll just point out the final kick in the nuts. I writhed on the floor for a quarter hour! I thought I was permanently ruptured. You're not a nice guy, Earl! You're a malignant little bastard. You're a dirty fighter. You're a hood, for Christ sake!" He was working himself up, that was clear. "You pretend to be a normal kind of neighborhood guy, respectable, stuffy, overweight, and so on, but that's a mask."

  This portrait of himself was not altogether repugnant to Keese. He was not displeased to be considered dangerous. Distracted by vanity, he had failed to register that Harry was moving closer. Now his neighbor leaped upon him, bore him to the ground, and began to throttle him with a loop of the plastic hose.

  Keese resisted Harry's effort to strangle him, but he was weakening. Could Harry be seriously trying to murder him? His arms were pinned by Harry's powerful elbows, while the huge hands twisted the hose ever more tightly. Keese's eyeballs were ready to pop from their sockets, and his tongue was oozing from his pursed lips like toothpaste from a tube. His face was maroon; his white-of-eye, bloody. These symptoms were the work of his imagination, as he understood when Harry relaxed the pressure for a moment.

  "Are you trying to kill me?" he croaked dramatically.

  "Don't exaggerate your damage," Harry said with disgust, wincing down at him with one good eye. "That's the trouble: I don't know what to do. Anything effective as revenge would be lethal."

  "Then may I get up?"

  Harry sighed and began to lift one of the thighs with which he was straddling his victim. But then he lowered it and seized Keese by the shirt front and slapped his face a half-dozen times, backhand-and-forehand, movie-style. "I always wanted to do that to someone!" he said exultantly. But he frowned and added: "I guess the whap-whap-whap sound must be made by artificial means."

  Keese struggled away from him and got up. He reclaimed his bucket and filled it from the hose, which he made no attempt to turn on Harry. He found the sponge that had been hurled away, and he returned to the washing of the car.

  "Ah," said Harry, stretching, "turned out to be nice weather for our first day in the country. Say, Earl, you know a sponging isn't enough: might as well chamois it if you're going to all that trouble."

  Obviously he didn't know about the abusive sign, though it had faced his house (where he had been writhing from the groin-kick), and it wasn't the sort of thing that Keese wanted him to know.

  "You're right," Keese said now, and he went to the garage and brought back a chamois.

  "Give that here," said Harry, amazingly, and he was as good as his word. He took the hard leather, wet it till it wilted, and began to stroke it across the body of the car, absorbing the beads of dirty water.

  "Oh, you were looking for your wife last night," said Keese.

  "Correction," said Harry. "I noted that she was gone. I was not actively seeking her out."

  "She's in my house," said Keese, sponging the right-hand door.

  "Figured she was," Harry said, chamoising the fender just behind.

  "I had nothing to do with it."

  "I didn't think you did," said Harry.

  "She and my wife seem
to hit it off."

  "Yes," said Harry, "that's because they're both women."

  "That's true," Keese said. He moved onto the front fender. The job went swiftly on the buddy-system.

  "Damn right," said Harry. He reached into his pocket—he was wearing what appeared to be a brand-new pair of blue jeans, on which the rivets sparkled—and brought out an opened package of chewing gun. He offered this to Keese, who hadn't chewed a stick of gum in at least twenty years.

  "O.K.," Keese said, "I will." He took a piece and he thanked Harry. Fortunately his teeth were in good condition, for the gum was stale and tough going at the outset.

  Harry stopped chamoising and leaned against the car. "Kind of nice to chew gum with a pal."

  Keese would never have expected such an ingenuous statement from Harry. "Real man-stuff, to clean a car on the weekend," he said. "I haven't done this myself in years. I usually run it through the automatic car-wash in Allenby, when the impulse occurs."

  "Well, I—" Harry began, and then he and Keese stared at each other for a moment and then they laughed uproariously.

  "Man," said Harry, "last night was really something, wasn't it?" He continued to laugh. His black eye looked better when it was squinting in mirth. "I can't remember how it started. But you know, talking of man-stuff, that was it, all right: paying one another back."

  Keese was chewing vigorously. "You know, this gum isn't bad," he said. "I used to smoke cigarettes."

  "That's how I got started on the gum," said Harry. "I gave up the smokes. Only thing that won't make you fat is gum."

  Keese said hastily: "I've got no worries about that."

  Harry sucked air and said: "No offense intended."

  "It never would occur to me," said Keese. "I've been heavy all my life."

  "You're all right, Earl," said Harry, smiling. "Damn if you aren't." He winked with his good eye. "Nice to have a friend."

  "And neighbor," Keese added robustly. Harry joined him in the chuckle.

  And Harry added: "It certainly beats having an enemy as a neighbor!"

  "Doesn't it, though?" said Keese.

  "A lot of countries are like that," Harry said. "Pillboxes at the border, barbed wire, minefields. And who's on the other side? Human beings, just other men."

  Keese had earlier observed Harry's tendency to philosophize in a banal fashion, and it made him vaguely uneasy to hear these political commonplaces: he felt he might be asked to join in the affirmation of some truism which would embarrass him intellectually.

  He cocked an eye towards the heavens and cried: "Oh, no, that's not a rain cloud!"

  Harry did not bother to glance upwards. He simply said: "No, certainly not." He appeared slightly miffed to have been diverted from his train of thought. He resumed: "The good old human condition—" But the initiative was gone now, and his voice petered out.

  Keese had not wished to offend him. At whatever cost the old strife must not be permitted to have a renascence. "Your remarks are well taken," he told Harry. He at first regretted having come up with nothing better than that, but in point of fact Harry gave every evidence of being flattered.

  "The only thing I ever claim for myself is that I strive for moderation," Harry said. "I try to rise above, to get the general picture, to find the perspective which would allow—" He continued, and Keese, wearing a glazed smile, pretended to listen but heard nothing.

  Finally it seemed fair enough to move on. "Well," Keese said, emptying the pail on the ground, "I'd better get clean water." He went to the nozzle end of the hose, seized it, and proceeded to the faucet. Harry continued to speak all this while. When Keese turned off the water Harry was just finishing a sentence with "on it."

  Keese walked past him with the bucket, saying: "That's very interesting."

  "Well," said Harry, "you're an easy man to talk with, Earl." He followed along and when Keese put the pail on the ground, Harry rinsed his chamois in it. Side by side they bent and cleaned the grille.

  "I did the other side," said Keese, pointing with his sponge-laden hand, "but it wasn't chamoised, and it's probably dried by now."

  He went there and looked. The whitewash had apparently disappeared with a few swipes of the sponge, but some of it, concealed by the damp, had secretly remained, and now that the metal was completely dry the outlines of the word PIMP were once again clearly discernible.

  After making the last few touches of his chamois to the grille, Harry came around to join Keese, who was frantically scrubbing with his sponge.

  "Hold on, Earl," said Harry, reaching for Keese's elbow. "Something's been painted there."

  Keese yanked his arm beyond Harry's range, and continued to scour.

  "What's it say?" asked Harry. "Can you read it?"

  "Little punks," Keese said. "They come from across the creek."

  "Jesus," Harry said fervently, "if you get graffiti here, how's it better than the city?"

  "Well, it doesn't happen very often," Keese said.

  Harry moved in and put his head at an angle. "What's it say? 'Chump'?" He firmly, gently forced Keese to move left. "Oh, I see. Yeah. Well." He seemed to be chewing on something the size of a caraway seed.

  Keese suspected that Harry was, underneath it all, enjoying himself immensely. Well, why not? If one stepped away, so to speak, and looked back, it was funny.

  He began to laugh. After all, he was chewing gum with his best friend. "Yeah, 'Pimp,'" he said. "Whoever wrote that was trying to summon up the ultimate in abusive terms."

  "He found a pretty good one," said Harry.

  But then the light came on! "You wrote that, didn't you, Harry?"

  Too bad. They really had begun to build a friendship.

  CHAPTER 11

  BUT Harry surprised him. "No, Earl, I didn't—and you know I'd be the first to admit it if I did."

  Keese did not "know" that, but he chose to believe Harry for another reason: at this point he would accept almost any excuse so as not to begin the strife again.

  "I'm glad to hear that, Harry. I'm sick of tangling with you. But I'm afraid that I cannot help striking back when I'm attacked: it's my nature. And I don't mean to suggest that I am exceptionally courageous or anything. It's just a kind of reflex. If I were convinced that you wrote this on my car, I couldn't rest till I had retaliated in some way."

  Harry flipped his chamois back and forth between his hands. "I can understand that, Earl, though I don't think I am as sensitive as you in that area. And by the way, I didn't mean a moment ago that the term was deserved: I meant by 'pretty good one' only that it is the kind of thing that would get under your skin."

  Keese drew back slightly, thrusting his jaw forward. "Wouldn't it get under yours?"

  "It might," said Harry.

  "I'll take you into my confidence," Keese said. "This was done by Greavy, I'm pretty sure."

  "The garage guy?" Harry shook his head. "This gets worse and worse! This guy you hire to come with his wrecker—he writes insulting terms on your car? That wouldn't even happen in the city."

  Keese sighed. "I'm afraid you have a pretty bad impression of our area."

  Harry continued to weigh his chamois, as if it represented the issue at hand. "What are your plans for getting revenge on Greavy?"

  Keese worked his sponge on the minuscule white fragments that remained of the insulting epithet. "I haven't decided yet."

  "If you're on the outs with him," said Harry, "how will my car ever get out of the swamp?"

  Keese stopped working and straightened up. "My quarrel's not with Greavy's son Perry, who usually drives the wrecker. It was he who came last night and hauled my car away—no doubt as the result of, well, I guess it was your call, wasn't it?"

  "My call?" asked Harry.

  Keese said: "I assumed when he hauled my car away it was on your orders, it was your act of vengeance."

  But Harry shook his head decisively. "Would that be likely, Earl? Think about it. Wouldn't I first want my own car pulled out of the muck dow
n there?"