The Specialty of the House

by Stanley Ellin

  Mr Keesler shook his head. ‘What a softie,’ he said. ‘If you only wouldn’t let Betty talk you into these things—’

  ‘Now don’t start with that. Just go to work.’

  She helped him on with his coat in the hallway. ‘Are you going to take the car today?’ she asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘All right, then I can use it for the shopping. But don’t forget about the suit. It’s the tailor right near the subway station.’ Mrs Keesler plucked a piece of lint from his coat collar. ‘And you make a very nice living, so stop talking like that. We do all right.’

  Mr Keesler left the house by the side door. It was an unpretentious frame house in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn, and like most of the others on the block it had a small garage behind it. Mr Keesler unlocked the door of the garage and stepped inside. The car occupied nearly all the space there, but room had also been found for a clutter of tools, metal cans, paint brushes, and a couple of old kitchen chairs which had been partly painted.

  The car itself was a four-year-old Chevrolet, a little the worse for wear, and it took an effort to open the lid of its trunk. Mr Keesler finally got it open and lifted out his big leather sample case, groaning at its weight. He did not lock the garage door when he left, since he had the only key to it, and he knew Mrs Keesler wanted to use the car.

  It was a two-block walk to the Beverly Road station of the IRT subway. At a newsstand near the station Mr Keesler bought a New York Times, and when the train came in he arranged himself against the door at the end of the car. There was no chance of getting a seat during the rush hour, but from long experience Mr Keesler knew how to travel with the least inconvenience. By standing with his back braced against the door and his legs astride the sample case he was able to read his newspaper until, by the time the train reached 14th Street, the press of bodies against him made it impossible to turn the pages.

  At 42nd Street he managed to push his way out of the car using the sample case as a battering ram. He crossed the platform and took a local two stations farther to Columbus Circle. When he walked up the stairs of the station he saw by his wristwatch that it was exactly five minutes to nine.

  Mr Keesler’s office was in the smallest and shabbiest building on Columbus Circle. It was made to look even smaller and shabbier by the new Coliseum which loomed over it on one side and by the apartment hotels which towered over it on the other. It had one creaky elevator to service its occupants, and an old man named Eddie to operate the elevator.

  When Mr Keesler came into the building Eddie had his mail all ready for him. The mail consisted of a large bundle of letters tied with a string, and a half dozen small cardboard boxes. Mr Keesler managed to get all this under one arm with difficulty, and Eddie said, ‘Well, that’s a nice big load the same as ever. I. hope you get some business out of it.’

  ‘I hope so,’ said Mr Keesler.

  Another tenant picked up his mail and stepped into the elevator behind Mr Keesler. ‘Well,’ he said, looking at the load under Mr Keesler’s arm, ‘it’s nice to see that somebody’s making money around here.’

  ‘Sure,’ said Mr Keesler. ‘They send you the orders all right, but when it comes to paying for them where are they?’

  ‘That’s how it goes,’ said Eddie.

  He took the elevator up to the third floor and Mr Keesler got out there. His office was in Room 301 at the end of the corridor, and on its door were painted the words KEESLER NOVELTIES. Underneath in quotation marks was the phrase ‘Everything for the trade.’

  The office was a room with a window that looked out over Central Park. Against one wall was a battered rolltop desk that Mr Keesler’s father had bought when he himself had started in the novelties business long ago, and before it was a large, comfortable swivel chair with a foam-rubber cushion on its seat. Against the opposite wall was a table, and on it was an old L. C. Smith typewriter, a telephone, some telephone books, and a stack of magazines. There was another stack of magazines on top of a large filing cabinet in a corner of the room. Under the window was a chaise-longue which Mr Keesler had bought second-hand from Eddie for five dollars, and next to the rolltop desk were a wastepaper basket and a wooden coat-rack he had bought from Eddie for fifty cents. Tenants who moved from the building sometimes found it cheaper to abandon their shopworn furnishings than to pay cartage for them, and Eddie did a small business in selling these articles for whatever he was offered.

  Mr Keesler closed the office door behind him. He gratefully set the heavy sample case down in a corner, pushed open the desk, and dropped his mail and the New York Times on it. Then he hung his hat and coat on the rack, checking the pockets of the coat to make sure he had forgotten nothing in them.

  He sat down at the desk, opened the string around the mail, and looked at the return address on each letter. Two of the letters were from banks. He unlocked a drawer of the desk, drew out a notebook, and entered the figures into it. Then he tore the receipts into small shreds and dropped them into the wastepaper basket.

  The rest of the mail was easily disposed of. Mr Keesler took each of the smaller envelopes and, without opening it, tore it in half and tossed it into the basket on top of the shredded deposit slips. He then opened the envelopes which were thick and unwieldy, extracted their contents – brochures and catalogues – and placed them on the desk. When he was finished he had a neat pile of catalogues and brochures before him. These he dumped into a drawer of the filing cabinet.

  He now turned his attention to the cardboard boxes. He opened them and pulled out various odds and ends – good-luck charms, a souvenir coin, a plastic keyring, several packets of cancelled foreign stamps, and a small cellophane bag containing one chocolate cracker. Mr Keesler tossed the empty boxes into the wastepaper basket, ate the cracker, and pushed the rest of the stuff to the back of the desk. The cracker was a little bit too sweet for his taste, but not bad.

  In the top drawer of the desk were a pair of scissors, a box of stationery, and a box of stamps. Mr Keesler removed these to the table and placed them next to the typewriter. He wheeled the swivel chair to the table, sat down, and opened the classified telephone directory to its listing of dentists. He ran his finger down a column of names. Then he picked up the phone and dialed a number.

  ‘Dr Glover’s office,’ said a woman’s voice.

  ‘Look,’ said Mr Keesler, ‘this is an emergency. I’m in the neighborhood here, so can I come in during the afternoon? It hurts pretty bad.’

  ‘Are you a regular patient of Dr Glover’s?’

  ‘No, but I thought—’

  ‘I’m sorry, but the doctor’s schedule is full. If you want to call again tomorrow—’

  ‘No, never mind,’ said Mr Keesler. ‘I’ll try someone else.’

  He ran his finger down the column in the directory and dialed again.

  ‘This is Dr Gordon’s office,’ said a woman’s voice, but much more youthful and pleasant than the one Mr Keesler had just encountered. ‘Who is it, please?’

  ‘Look,’ said Mr Keesler. ‘I’m suffering a lot of pain, and I was wondering if the doctor couldn’t give me a couple of minutes this afternoon. I’m right in the neighborhood here. I can be there any time that’s convenient. Say around two o’clock?’

  ‘Well, two o’clock is already filled, but I have a cancellation here for three. Would that be all right?’

  ‘That would be fine. And the name is Keesler.’ Mr Keesler spelled it out carefully. ‘Thanks a lot, miss, and I’ll be there right on the dot.’

  He pressed the bar of the phone down, released it, and dialed again. ‘Is Mr Hummel there?’ he said. ‘Good. Tell him it’s about the big delivery he was expecting this afternoon.’

  In a moment he heard Mr Hummel’s voice. ‘Yea?’

  ‘You know who this is?’ asked Mr Keesler.

  ‘Sure I know who it is.’

  ‘All right,’ said Keesler, ‘then meet me at four o’clock instead of three. You understand?’

  ‘I get it
,’ said Mr Hummel.

  Mr Keesler did not continue the conversation. He put down the phone, pushed aside the directory, and took a magazine from the pile on the table. The back pages of the magazine were full of advertisements for free gifts, free samples, and free catalogues. Mail us this coupon, most of them said, and we will send you absolutely free—

  Mr Keesler studied these offers, finally selected ten of them, cut out the coupons with his scissors, and addressed them on the typewriter. He typed slowly but accurately, using only two fingers. Then he addressed ten envelopes, sealed the coupons into them, and stamped them. He snapped a rubber band around the envelopes for easier mailing and put everything else in the office back into its proper place. It was now 10:25, and the only thing left to attend to was the New York Times.

  By twelve o’clock, Mr Keesler, stretched comfortably out on the chaise-longue, had finished reading the Times. He had, however, bypassed the stock market quotations as was his custom. In 1929 his father’s entire capital had been wiped out overnight in the market crash, and since that day Mr Keesler had a cold and cynical antipathy to stocks and bonds and anything connected with them. When talking to people about it he would make it a little joke. ‘I like to know that my money is all tied up in cash,’ he would say. But inwardly he had been deeply scarred by what his father had gone through after the debacle. He had been very fond of his father, a gentle and hardworking man, well-liked by all who knew him, and had never forgiven the stock market for what it had done to him.

  Twelve o’clock was lunchtime for Mr Keesler, as it was for almost everyone else in the building. Carrying his mail he walked downstairs along with many others who knew that it would take Eddie quite a while to pick them up in his overworked elevator at this hour. He dropped the letters into a mailbox on the corner, and banged the lid of the mailbox a couple of times for safety’s sake.

  Near 58th Street on Eighth Avenue was a cafeteria which served good food at reasonable prices, and Mr Keesler had a cheese sandwich, baked apple, and coffee there. Before he left he had a counterman wrap a cinnamon bun in waxed paper and place it in a brown paper bag for him to take along with him.

  Swinging the bag in his hand as he walked, Mr Keesler went into a drugstore a block away and bought a roll of two-inch-wide surgical bandage. On his way out of the store he surreptitiously removed the bandage from its box and wrapper and dropped the box and wrapper into a litter basket on the street. The roll of bandage itself he put into the bag containing the cinnamon bun.

  He repeated this process in a drugstore on the next block, and then six more times in various stores on his way down Eighth Avenue. Each time he would pay the exact amount in change, drop the box and wrappings into a litter basket, put the roll of bandage into his paper bag. When he had eight rolls of bandage in the bag on top of the cinnamon bun he turned around and walked back to the office building. It was exactly one o’clock when he got there.

  Eddie was waiting in the elevator, and when he saw the paper bag he smiled toothlessly and said as he always did, ‘What is it this time?’

  ‘Cinnamon buns,’ said Mr Keesler. ‘Here, have one.’ He pulled out the cinnamon bun wrapped in its waxed paper, and Eddie took it.

  ‘Thanks,’ he said.

  ‘That’s all right,’ said Mr Keesler. ‘There’s plenty here for both of us. I shouldn’t be eating so much of this stuff anyhow.’

  At the third floor he asked Eddie to hold the elevator, he’d be out in a minute. ‘I just have to pick up the sample case,’ he said. ‘Got to get to work on the customers.’

  In the office he lifted the sample case to the desk, put the eight rolls of bandage in it, and threw away the now empty paper bag into the wastepaper basket. With the sample case weighing him down he made his way back to the elevator.

  ‘This thing weighs more every time I pick it up,’ he said to Eddie as the elevator went down, and Eddie said, ‘Well, that’s the way it goes. We’re none of us as young as we used to be.’

  A block away from Columbus Circle, Mr Keesler took an Independent Line subway train to East Broadway, not far from Manhattan Bridge. He ascended into the light of Straus Square, walked down to Water Street, and turned left there. His destination was near Montgomery Street, but he stopped before he came to it and looked around.

  The neighborhood was an area of old warehouses, decaying tenements, and raw, new housing projects. The street Mr Keesler was interested in, however, contained only warehouses. Blackened with age, they stood in a row looking like ancient fortresses. There was a mixed smell of refuse and salt water around them that invited coveys of pigeons and seagulls to fly overhead.

  Mr Keesler paid no attention to the birds, nor to the few waifs and strays on the street. Hefting his sample case, he turned into an alley which led between two warehouses and made his way to the vast and empty lot behind them. He walked along until he came to a metal door in the third warehouse down the row. Using a large, old-fashioned key he opened the door, stepped into the blackness beyond it, and closed it behind him, locking it from the inside and testing it to make sure it was locked.

  There was a light switch on the wall near the door. Mr Keesler put down his sample case and wrapped a handkerchief loosely around his hand. He fumbled along the wall with that hand until he found the switch, and when he pressed it a dim light suffused the building. Since the windows of the building were sealed by metal shutters, the light could not be seen outside. Mr Keesler then put away the handkerchief and carried the sample case across the vast expanse of the warehouse to the huge door of the delivery entrance that faced on the street.

  Near the door was a long plank table on which was a time-stamper, a few old receipt books, and some pencil stubs. Mr Keesler put down the sample case, took off his coat, neatly folded it and laid it on the table, and placed his hat on top of it. He bent over the sample case and opened it. From it he took the eight rolls of bandage, a large tube of fixative called Quick-Dry, a four-inch length of plumber’s candle, two metal cans each containing two gallons of high octane gasoline, six paper drinking cups, a two-yard length of fishline, a handful of soiled linen rags, and a pair of rubber gloves much spattered with drops of dried paint. All this he arranged on the table.

  Now donning the rubber gloves he picked up the length of fishline and made a series of loops in it. He fitted a roll of bandage into each loop and drew the string tight. When he held it up at arm’s length it looked like a string of white fishing bobbers.

  Each gasoline tin had a small spout and looked as if it were tightly sealed. But the lid of one could be removed entirely and Mr Keesler pried at it until it came off. He lowered the line of rolled bandages into the can, leaving the end of the string dangling over the edge for ready handling. A few bubbles broke at the surface of the can as the gauze bandages started to soak up gasoline. Mr Keesler observed this with satisfaction, and then, taking the tube of Quick-Dry with him, he made a thoughtful tour of inspection of the warehouse.

  What he saw was a broad and high steel framework running through the center of the building from end to end and supporting a great number of cardboard boxes, wooden cases, and paper-covered rolls of cloth. More boxes and cases were stacked nearly ceiling-high against two walls of the room.

  He surveyed everything carefully, wrinkling his nose against the sour odor of mold that rose around him. He tested a few of the cardboard boxes by pulling away loose pieces, and found them all as dry as dust.

  Then having studied everything to his satisfaction he kneeled down at a point midway between the steel framework and the angle of the two walls where the cases were stacked highest and squeezed some fixative on the wooden floor. He watched it spread and settle, and then went back to the table.

  From the pocket of his jacket he drew out a finely whetted penknife and an octagon-shaped metal pencil which was also marked off as a ruler. He looked at his wristwatch, making some brief calculations, and measured off a length of the plumber’s candle with the ruler. With the penknife he
then sliced through the candle and trimmed away some wax to give the wick clearance. Before putting the knife back into his pocket he cleaned the blade with one of the pieces of cloth on the table.

  When he looked into the can which contained the bandages soaking in gasoline he saw no more bubbles. He picked up the can and carried it to the place on the floor where the fixative was spread. Slowly reeling up the string so that none of the gasoline would spatter him he detached each roll of wet bandage from it. He loosened a few inches of gauze from six of the bandages and pressed the exposed gauze firmly into the fixative which was now gummy.

  Unspooling the bandage as he walked he then drew each of the six lengths of gauze in turn to a designated point. Three went among the boxes of the framework and three went into the cases along the walls. They were nicely spaced so that they radiated like the main strands of a spiderweb to points high among the packed cases. To reach the farthest points in the warehouse Mr Keesler knotted the extra rolls of bandage to two of those which he had pulled out short of the mark. There was a sharp reek of gasoline in the warehouse now, added to its smell of mold.

  Where the ends of the bandages were thrust between the boxes, Mr Keesler made sure that the upper box was set back a little to provide a narrow platform. He took the paper drinking cups from the table, filled each with gasoline, and set it on top of the end of the bandage, resting on this platform.

  The fixative was now put to work again. Mr Keesler squeezed some of it over the juncture of the six bandages on the floor which were sealed there by the previous application. While it hardened he went to the table, took a handful of rags, and brought them to the open gasoline can. He lowered each rag in turn into the can, squeezed some of the excess gasoline back into the can after he pulled it out, and arranged all the rags around the fixative.