No Lease on Life

by Lynne Tillman

  The Con Ed man always rang twice. He appeared regularly, once a month. Depending on how eager he was to finish his day, which was the beginning of her day, he woke her at 7, 8, or 9 A.M. She’d put on her robe—he’d be shouting, CON ED CON ED CON ED, buzzing everyone’s doorbell—and she’d let him in. He’d beam his flashlight at the meter, he’d punch in the numbers on his blue electronic notepad. Then he’d leave.

  Elizabeth wondered how he felt about people in general, what kind of feelings he had about waking everyone, if he did, and how he felt about seeing people in semiconscious states, in their ratty robes, or half-naked, and whether he wanted the job so that he could see people like that. She wondered if his job made him like people more or less.

  Elizabeth yelled, OK, wait a second. Her nakedness was covered. She opened the door to Con Ed. It was 8:30 A.M.

  —You’re late, she said.

  He grinned and flashed his light at the meter, punched in the numbers. He appeared sheepish. He bent his head down as he walked out the door. He always lowered his head. He was tall, not as tall as her dead friend. Elizabeth shut the door behind him.

  In the hospital her dead friend said to his mother, I’m at peace, then he shut his eyes, went to sleep, and left the world in the early morning of an Independence Day.

  The Con Ed man shouted again, CON ED CON ED. Some tenants never opened their doors to him. He probably didn’t take it personally, unless he was paranoid. Some tenants figured that the amount of gas and electricity Con Ed estimated was less than what they actually used. Those tenants received an official letter. Con Ed insisted upon reading their meters.

  Elizabeth switched on the radio—we’ll give you the world, 1010 WINS. She turned the volume low. The radio muttered fitfully. She put a pot of water on the stove. A thread dangled from the gas pipe. It hung there petulantly. It’d been there for half a century. It was there because if there was a gas leak, you could put a match to the thread and then explode.

  Roy said she used too much toilet paper. She couldn’t accept his leaving the seat up. After years of living with him, she still didn’t understand him. She once had a boyfriend who didn’t use toilet paper when he pissed, like Roy and other men, but his penis leaked. It left a wet spot on his pants. He had an operation on his penis, performed by his surgeon father. Later, he went to a therapist for a long time. Elizabeth broke up with him three years before Roy came along. She saw him on the street every once in a while. He looked insane.

  She switched off the news. She turned on Courtney Love who sang morosely, “I make my bed, I lie in it.” She had a right to be miserable. Everyone did.

  Elizabeth sat down at the rectangular Formica table in the kitchen. Sunlight or gloom entered through two dirty windows. She wouldn’t clean them. She could lose her balance and fall out. The young super would be ecstatic if she cracked her skull open and her brains bled out. He’d be delighted. All her enemies would.

  She’d fall onto the backyard patio. There was a backyard, with a tree. A New York tree, a weed. It was unashamed and hardy for a long time. Unabashed, it grew. Now the tree was dying. The landlord didn’t tend it. It was suffering from a disease that was probably curable. Gloria was a tree killer. Elizabeth had become attached to the once-sturdy weed. In winter, it shed its leaves and withered. It became skeletal and forlorn. There’d been a weeping willow in front of the house she grew up in. The willow’s roots were strong. They made the walkway buckle. Her parents had the willow tree pulled out and thrown away, because it caused trouble. A weeping willow out her bedroom window, a weeping pillow in her bedroom, the tree caused trouble, and she grew up.

  A man goes to the pearly gates. St. Peter asks how much he made last year, and he says, $300,000. What’d you do? St. Peter asks. I was a lawyer. Go through, St. Peter says. The next guy comes along, and St. Peter asks him how much he made, and he says, I made $100,000. St. Peter asks, What’d you do? I was a doctor, the guy says. Go through, St. Peter tells him. The next guy arrives, and St. Peter asks him how much he made. I made $7,000, the guy says. St. Peter says, Oh yeah, I think I’ve heard you play.

  Elizabeth was on call for the proofroom today. If one of the obese men was still sick, she’d do some time, a few hours. Yesterday she finished a freelance job—a dictionary, small print—in the room. The room called doing freelance doubledipping. The obese men frowned on it, others just didn’t do it, others could care less. As long as you put your freelance away when the pages swished into the basket, you didn’t get in trouble with the supervisors.

  There’s always something that needs to be done around the house, her mother often remarked. It was a reason to hate houses and mothers.

  Elizabeth stirred the black coffee in the blue cup. Roy stirred in the bed at the other end of the apartment. She didn’t talk to him in the morning. He wasn’t available. It wasn’t his time.

  The air wasn’t circulating. It was stolid and stale. When she thought about summer in winter, she didn’t remember how dead the air was. People like the change of seasons. They don’t remember everything about them.

  She had to cut Greta, Regreta, out of her life with surgical precision. It was funny. She’d realized the necessity one night after a rainstorm, when she’d come home soaked and frenetic, and there was another Greta phone call, asking for something and denigrating someone else, the person had taken something from her, used her. Greta regretted everything and complained about the conspiracy of people stealing her ideas, her men, her books, jokes, clothes. Greta was always so calm, reasonable, and compassionate, it’d never occurred to Elizabeth that she schemed or that she was part of Greta’s scheme. The revelation came after the thunderstorm.

  Elizabeth’s wet clothes were lying in a lump on the floor. She kicked them into the bathroom with her bare foot. She listened to Regreta complain and realized, everything she’s complaining about she is and does. Elizabeth had to end it.

  A friendship ends, and there’s no ceremony. There are no tombstones, just marks and wounds that aren’t supposed to be there. People want to think that the things they hate are not in them, that what hurts them isn’t in them to do, that they’re incapable of behavior like that. Almost beyond repair, people did precisely what they complained others did to them. A simple thing was not phoning a friend back and keeping the friend waiting, for days, maybe weeks. Simple sadism. People hated it done to them and did it to other people.

  Elizabeth didn’t trust herself. She thought primitively, she thought all thought was in a way primitive or basic, there was no purity in thinking, and people were fools to think they could think their way out of their thoughts.

  That revelatory spring thunderstorm was huge. The city collapsed under its weight. The tops of roofs crumbled and one or two people were hit on their heads by bricks falling from great heights. They died an absurd death. You finish work and a brick hits you on your head. First, you’re lied to by a friend, then you finish work, and then a brick hits you on your head and kills you.

  Elizabeth had to quit her job and get rid of Regreta. Elizabeth stared at the phone, indifferent emissary to the outside world. She was sleepy and hot. She got into the shower. The guy next door got into his shower. The water stopped running in her shower. He’d made a science of it, timed it. Maybe he wanted to be next to her. Pink tiles separated them. He was scrubbing, she was scrubbing. Maybe he’d heard her turn on the water, and the thought of it seeped through, he remembered he hadn’t showered. The water pressure lowered. It got lower. The water trickled down. Oscar, she yelled, Oscar, wait a second. He turned off his water and waited. She rinsed. OK, she shouted. He started his water. It was a weird intimacy.

  Oscar was a wiry Irish guy with a shaved head. He’d been in the States for years. He did odd jobs and had a string of girlfriends. They were all Irish. All the people who visited him or lived with him were Irish, Irish-American, or African-American. Oscar once played his music very loud, in the middle of the night. They’d worked that out. It took a while, but they�
��d worked it out. He was all right. Except he showered when she did.

  Roy and the dog went for a walk, coffee, the newspaper. Fatboy was a mutt. He wasn’t fat, he was solid like Roy. When the two returned, Roy drank his coffee and fed Fatboy. Elizabeth was on the phone, talking to Larry.

  —With families, you don’t need enemies, she said.

  Larry didn’t have trouble sleeping.

  Roy handed Elizabeth the Times. He took a shower—Oscar never showered at the same time as Roy—dressed for work, and walked to the door. They kissed. As soon as she touched his lips and smelled him, she wanted him to stay, But he left.

  —It’s not the heat, it’s the humidity, Lizard, Roy said.

  He locked the door behind him. Elizabeth went back to the table. Abandoned, Fatboy marched over to be petted.

  New York, Friday, June 77, 1994. Late edition. Today, early clouds, then hazy, warm, humid. High 86. Tonight muggy, coastal fog. Low 75. Tomorrow, sultry. High 92. Yesterday, high 82, low 67. G.O.P. IN THE HOUSE IS TRYING TO BLOCK HEALTH CARE BILL. GENERALS OPPOSE COMBAT BY WOMEN. NEW YORK DEBATES ITS RULES FOR COMMITTING MENTALLY ILL. U.S. JURIES GROW TOUGHER ON THOSE SEEKING DAMAGES. QUEST FOR SAFER CIGARETTE NEVER REACHED GOAL. L.I.R.R. WORKERS GO ON STRIKE; COMMUTERS BRACE FOR GRIDLOCK. CLINTON MAY ADD G.I.’S IN KOREA WHILE REMAINING OPEN TO TALKS.

  It wasn’t a good death day. A newsworthy death was noted on page one, in a box, or the obituary itself started on page one. BRINGING BACK WOLVES was the box. There was a picture of a wolf, grinning. Thirty wolves were going to be reintroduced into Yellowstone National Park and Idaho. They could introduce them to Tompkins Square Park. Elizabeth smiled like a wolf at Fatboy. He stretched.

  She turned to the obits first. Sports fans turn to the sports page for the scores. She was a death fan. She read every one, including the listings. She learned about the deaths of uncles and aunts of people she barely knew. Losses of high school friends she never saw. Some deaths consumed space. Famous figures. Infamous. Peculiar. Some deaths the living fought to have recognized by the Times. She knew of people who worried about how long their obits were going to be. They worried they wouldn’t get a full column. They wanted a picture. Pictures were usually taken twenty years, on average, before the person’s death, which meant the person’s achievements were made twenty years before, then they disappeared from public view or they didn’t want to be photographed later, older, otherwise there’d be a more recent picture available. Columns of print about the dead next to pictures of their relatively young faces.

  His death may have been a suicide, technically, since he didn’t choose extraordinary measures. He let himself die naturally. He didn’t tell her of his wish for self death. Selfish death.

  He said once, I’m not afraid to die. Death notices were straightforward. They paled next to the In Memoriams, addressed directly to the dead. Eerie, sad, silly, understandable, the way most things are.

  “My heart is with you.” The dead person was not going to read it, would never know this.

  “I have never stopped thinking about you.” Only the living would know that someone was thinking of her.

  Elizabeth wondered what it meant to write direct addresses to the dead, for the living to read.

  —I guess it’s the thought that counts, she said to Roy yesterday.

  —Yeah. But what’s the thought?

  In Memoriam. Told death to fuck itself, death fucks everybody but itself. Write if you can.

  The coffee was bitter. She put another lemon peel in it and stirred again. Fatboy shook his tail. He wanted another walk. Elizabeth didn’t want to take him. She didn’t like scooping up his shit, especially in the summer.

  A man comes home from the golf course. His wife says, Why do you look so depressed? The man says, Harry had a heart attack. His wife says, That’s terrible. The man says, Yes, it was. All day long it was, hit the ball, drag Harry, hit the ball, drag Harry.

  The void was outside her door. The stairs were an abyss of green sticky slime. There was an uncommonly strong, foul smell. It didn’t seem to be the green slime. Someone may have died. The last time she thought someone or something was dead in the building, because of a smell wafting up from below her wooden floor, she figured a dead rat or pigeon was decomposing, and she went downstairs and asked her neighbors if they smelled something dead. They said they were cooking. They were a little distant after that. Roy said, What’d you expect.

  Elizabeth was stymied in front of her door. She locked it. Ernest trotted jauntily down the stairs. They met at her landing. It was the first time in months.

  —What’s that stench? Elizabeth asked.

  —There’s a guy sleeping at my door. I’m still running a homeless shelter, Ernest said.

  —Even in the summer?

  —No accounting.

  They walked down the filthy stairs together. Cigarettes, a used condom, gum wrappers, dried gum blackened with time. It didn’t stick anymore. Nothing big. The smell became worse.

  Ernest clutched The Confessions of St. Augustine to his chest.

  —If there’s a heat wave, he said. All the garbage…

  —Don’t say it. The Confessions?

  —I once wanted to be a priest.

  —Do you still go to confession?

  —Sure. Catholics go to confession.

  —That’s good.

  There was blood on the vestibule floor. Crack vials. The smell was overwhelming. There was a pile of shit near a bunch of takeout menus pushed behind the door.

  The smell was coming from upstairs and downstairs.

  Elizabeth was nauseated, speechless. Ernest understood. They looked into each other’s eyes and stepped over the shit. Probably human shit. Some of the crackheads came back and shit on your floor if you pushed them out of the vestibule, or were too tough with them. It was retribution. It could’ve been the peroxided one. She was out to get Elizabeth.

  —Nice, Ernest said.

  —Lovely, Elizabeth said.

  She held her nose. Ernest said he’d call the landlord about getting a new door. If there was a good lock on the outside door, the dopesters and crackheads wouldn’t get in, and the homeless man wouldn’t be able to get up the stairs and sleep on the top landing.

  Elizabeth and Ernest were on the street, in front of the lousy door.

  —I’ve tried, Elizabeth said.

  —I’ll give it another whirl, he said.

  —Good luck, she said.

  —Good luck, he said.

  Ernest smiled grimly.

  Hector was outside, too, on the sidewalk, conspiring with the Big G.

  —Not our day, Elizabeth whispered.

  —I’m not ready for this, Ernest said.

  Ernest walked one way, she walked the other. She had to pass the Big G and Hector. This is my street, they’re not going to make me run, Elizabeth encouraged herself. She marched past them, eyes straight ahead. She controlled her breathing. In, out, in, out, in, out. Calm, even breaths. She kept herself from jumping up and down on the sidewalk and screaming, There’s shit in the vestibule, Hector. Human shit.

  It was late morning. Elizabeth felt late and good-for-nothing. Her mother said she was a good-for-nothing. She agreed with her mother about some things.

  Elizabeth walked on, into the day. The endless night had oozed, drooled into day. There may have been people who despised her on sight, or who had grown to dislike her over the years, or who never even noticed her though they passed her on the street every day. But she was ignorant of them. She headed east toward Avenue A, toward the park.

  Tyrone was coming toward her.

  —Hey, Elizabeth, let me wash your windows. I’ll do them today.

  Tyrone always had a wave and a big smile for Elizabeth. Hector and the Big G were watching, she knew they were. So was Frankie.

  Everyone knew Tyrone. He was a big, friendly black guy, almost a giant. Tyrone was retarded. He hung around the neighborhood, their building especially. He appeared out of nowhere. He need
ed work. He wanted to clean the halls of their building.

  Tyrone told Elizabeth he lived in Brooklyn. Sometimes he couldn’t get home because he didn’t have a token. She lent him money and told him she didn’t want it back. He always tried to pay her back. He’d grab her hand, shake it and hold it. He needed affection, to be touched. She’d shake his hand and then, after he’d passed by, she’d wave her hand in the air. She didn’t think she’d catch something. He was a sad case.

  —I’ll wash your windows, I’ll do your windows, today, anytime, Tyrone said.

  —No no. No, thanks, she said.

  —I’ll do a good job, you’ll see.

  —I’ll pay you if you do it.

  —You’ll see how clean I can get them.

  —No no, Tyrone. Thanks, but no, not today.

  —You don’t have to pay me. I’ll do a good job.

  Voluntary servitude alarmed her, she’d been a volunteer. She’d had other slavish offers, to rub her back, massage her feet, do her floors, suck her cunt, whatever. She didn’t take them up, not for long, anyway. It’s easy to be a casual sadist.

  She didn’t want the pleasure. A man’s face, blurry, ashen, a trashy hotel room, a bottle of Jack Daniel’s, picture imperfect, sounds muted, the tape played often, had worn itself out, rubbed itself out. It speeded up and slowed down, and the pictures were smeared, run through too often, everything in pieces, he doesn’t matter. Rocket to oblivion. She didn’t want that. No sense to it, she thought. He tried to take me down with him, but in the end I ruined him. He’s a ruined man today, Elizabeth remembered contentedly.

  Everyone should confess.

  Sometimes Hector used Tyrone to clean the halls. He probably didn’t pay him, or he paid him next to nothing. Hector permitted Tyrone to do it, gave him the chance to work, because he didn’t want to bother to do it himself. Tyrone needed approval, so he’d do anything. You have to be in pretty bad shape yourself, reduced to petty inhumanities, to take advantage of retarded people. Hector was oppressed and oppressive.