Home Land: A Novel Read Free Page B

streak. The lady was needy, belligerent. She did not believe in boiler repair, denied both the Holocaust and the very idea that I’d ever paid her a security deposit. Plus, she was wont to call the cops for a noise complaint if I did so much as quietly moan at my computer screen after dinnertime. It’s a wonder I stayed so long. When dementia crept up on her like one of those ancient guild ninjas, I began to enjoy corroborating her suspicions that her visiting nurse was stealing bits of hair and skin from the divan. “People will pay a fortune for a white woman’s slough,” I told her. Mrs. Hildebrandt’s probably dead by now, buried deep in cold Wisconsin dirt, and I’d guess that Tommy and the rest of her hand-eye Gandhi brood don’t kneel at her tomb too often, either.
    MY NEW LANDLORD PETE is a sweetheart. He’s a kid, really, barely out of Eastern Valley High himself, where now, in fact, he teaches phys. ed. You can tell he’s not born to landlordship, but he’ll learn. (Remember Vinnie Lazlo? Pete looks like Vinnie with muscles,
hands.) The kid hails from a family of landlords, and someday, doubtless, he’ll be exhorting county marshals to spray buckshot at evicted spinsters, but for now he treats my tenancy in his building as a personal favor. Rent day he shuffles his feet at my door, a boy come for his bubblegum money. When the sink stops up he’s over in a jiff with his motorized snake. He works like a demon, albeit with no expertise, averts his eyes as though awaiting blows from kin.
    Pete’s letting me coast a few weeks on the rent. I’m flat busted, Catamounts. Send check or money order care of me to—Ha! Ha! I’d never! Honestly, though, there’s a reason I’m tapped. I’m owed thousands by a soft drink juggernaut for my work compiling historical data for an in-house newsletter. (See, Catamount Notes isn’t the only rag in town!) I won’t name the outfit but suffice it to say their cola is not sweeter than the other one. The newsletter, Fizz , is designed to amuse distributors with FunFacts, or FakeFacts, as I tend to concoct them. Prez Truman downs an entire bottle of the famed elixir before giving the heave-ho to Fat Man. Mister Sidney Vicious has some sent up to his Chelsea Hotel suite the night he smites the fetching Spungeon. I haven’t a clue where I get this crap. There must truly be a collective unconscious, all syrupped and bubbly, but not as sweet as the other one.
    PENNY BETTIS from the soft drink outfit called today to say they might cut my check next week. This is how I know it’s Friday: Penny calls to deliver false hope. I’ve never met her but she has one of those cozy phone voices people cultivate in lieu of truth. I don’t blame her for it, it’s protocol, and besides, I prefer ease to honesty. Isn’t that in our DNA? I’d like to think that with the proper woman I could reach denturehood and beyond swapping comforting obfuscations. Of course, she’d have to know jazz dancing and be willing to bundle her calves in wool for my load. Today I pictured Penny doing leg lifts by her desk while she offered up a FakeFact of her own.

    “Accounting has your invoice,” she said. “They’re ready to process.”
    “You said that last week,” I said.
    “Last week was hell, honey. You don’t want to know.”
    “Maybe we could get dinner and you could tell me.”
    “You sound cute, but I’m taken.”
    “Who is he, Penny?”
    “None of your business.”
    “Is he feverish for you?” I said. “Does he weep at the altar of your fat pussy?”
    The line went dead. So did my hopes for timely remuneration. I tend to take things too far, Valley Cats. I figure I’m still chatting the woman up and she’s filing charges. It’s always been this way, as many of you might recall. Somebody chucks a snowball, I’m scouring the school yard for rocks. The bully just wants to shove sadness around, shake me down for spare change, I’m looking to scrape out his eye. I lack a sense