Vern retiring?
It wasn't possible. It just wasn't.
“Vernon,” I asked, “what kind of joke is this?”
“No joke, Mr. Umney,” he said, and as he brought the elevator car to a stop on Three, he began to hack a deep cough I'd never heard in all the years I'd known him. It was like listening to marble bowling balls rolling down a stone alley. He took the Camel out of his mouth, and I was horrified to see the end of it was pink, and not with lipstick. He looked at it for a moment, grimaced, then replaced it and yanked back the accordion grille. “Thuh-ree, Mr. Tuggle.”
“Thanks, Vern,” Bill said.
“Remember the party on Friday,” Vernon said. His words were muffled; he'd taken a handkerchief spotted with brown stains out of his back pocket and was wiping his lips with it. “I sure would admire for you to come.” He glanced at me with his rheumy eyes, and what was in them scared the bejabbers out of me. Something was waiting for Vernon Klein just around the next bend in the road, and that look said Vernon knew all about it. “You too, Mr. Umney – we been through a lot together, and I'd be tickled to raise a glass with you.”
“Wait a minute!” I shouted, grabbing Bill as he tried to step out of the elevator. “You wait just a God damned minute, both of you! What party? What's going on here?”
“Retirement,” Bill said. “It usually happens at some point after your hair turns white, in case you've been too busy to notice. Vernon's party is going to be in the basement on Friday afternoon. Everybody in the building's going to be there, and I'm going to make my world-famous Dynamite Punch. What's the matter with you, Clyde? You've known for a month that Vern was finishing up on May thirtieth.”
That made me angry all over again, the way I'd been when Peoria called me a faggot. I grabbed Bill by the padded shoulders of his double-breasted suit and gave him a shake. “The hell you say!”
He gave me a small, pained smile. “The hell I don't, Clyde. But if you don't want to come, fine. Stay away. You've been acting poco loco for the last six months, anyhow.”
I shook him again. “What do you mean, poco loco?”
“Crazy as a loon, nutty as a fruitcake, two wheels off the road, out to lunch, playing without a full deck – any of those ring a bell? And before you answer, just let me inform you that if you shake me one more time, even a little shake, my guts are going to explode straight out through my chest, and not even dry-cleaning will get that mess off your suit.”
He pulled away before I could do it again even if I'd wanted to and started down the hall with the seat of his pants hanging somewhere down around the level of his knees, as per usual. He glanced back just once, while Vernon was sliding the brass gate across. “You need to take some time off, Clyde. Starting last week.”
“What's gotten into you?” I shouted at him. “What's gotten into all of you?” But by then the inner door was closed and we were headed up again – this time to Seven. My little slice of heaven. Vern dropped his cigarette butt into the bucket of sand that squats in the corner, and immediately stuck a fresh one in his kisser. He popped a wooden match alight with his thumbnail, set the fag on fire, and immediately started coughing again. Now I could see fine drops of blood misting out from between his cracked lips. It was a gruesome sight. His eyes had dropped; they stared vacantly into the far corner, seeing nothing, hoping for nothing. Bill Tuggle's B. O. hung between us like the Ghost of Binges Past.
“Okay, Vern,” I said. “What is it and where are you going?”
Vernon had never been one to wear out the English language, and that at least hadn't changed. “It's Big C,” he said. “On Saturday I catch the Desert Blossom to Arizona. I'm going to live with my sister. I don't expect to wear out my welcome, though. She might have to change the bed twice.” He brought the elevator to a stop and rattled the gate back. “Seven, Mr. Umney. Your little slice of heaven.” He smiled at that just as he always did, but this time it looked like the kind of smile you see on the candy skulls down in Tijuana, on the Day of the Dead.
Now that the elevator door was open, I smelled something up here in my little slice of heaven that was so out of place it took a moment for me to recognize it: fresh paint. Once it was noted, I filed it. I had other fish to fry.
“This isn't right,” I said. “You know it isn't, Vern.”
He turned his frightening vacant eyes on me. Death in them, a black shape flapping and beckoning just beyond the faded blue. “What isn't right, Mr. Umney?”
“You're supposed to be here, damn it! Right here! Sitting on your stool with Jesus and your wife over your head. Not this!” I reached up, grabbed the card with the picture of the man fishing on the lake, tore it in two, put the pieces together, tore it in four, and then gave them the toss. They fluttered to the faded red rug on the floor of the elevator car like confetti.
“S'posed to be right here,” he repeated, those terrible eyes of his never leaving mine. Beyond us, two men in paint-splattered coveralls had turned to look in our direction.
“That's right.”
“For how long, Mr. Umney? Since you know everything else, you can probably tell me that, can'tcha? How long am I supposed to keep drivin this damned car?”
“Well... forever,” I said, and the word hung between us, another ghost in the cigarette-smokey elevator car. Given a choice of ghosts, I guess I would have picked Bill Tuggle's B. O.. .. but I wasn't given a choice. Instead, I said it again. “Forever, Vern.”
He dragged on his Camel, coughed out smoke and a fine spray of blood, and went on looking at me. “It ain't my place to give the tenants advice, Mr. Umney, but I guess I'll give you some, anyway – it being my last week and all. You might consider seeing a doctor. The kind that shows you ink-pitchers and you say what they look like.”
“You can't retire, Vern.” My heart was beating harder than ever, but I managed to keep my voice level. “You just can't.”
“No?” He took his cigarette out of his mouth – fresh blood was already soaking into the tip – and then looked back at me. His smile was ghastly. “The way it looks to me, I ain't exactly got a choice, Mr. Umney.”
III. Of Painters and Pesos.
The smell of fresh paint seared my nose, overpowering both the smell of Vernon's smoke and Bill Tuggle's armpits. The men in the coveralls were currently taking up space not far from my office door. They had put down a dropcloth, and the tools of their trade were spread out all along it – tins and brushes and turp. There were two step-ladders as well, flanking the painters like scrawny bookends. What I wanted to do was to run down the hall, kicking the whole works every whichway as I went. What right had they to paint these old dark walls that glaring, sacrilegious white?
Instead, I walked up to the one who looked as if it might take a twodigit number to express his IQ and politely asked what he and his fellow mug thought they were doing. He glanced around at me. “Hellzit look like? I'm givin Miss America a finger-frig and Chick there's puttin rouge on Betty Grable's nippy-nips.”
I'd had enough. Enough of them, enough of everything. I reached out, grabbed the quiz-kid under the armpit, and used my fingertips to engage a particularly nasty nerve that hides up there. He screamed and dropped his brush. White paint splattered his shoes. His partner gave me a timid doe-eyed look and took a step backward.