In everything he did there were elements of such order, demanding, monastic. He was unyielding and sometimes forbidding. Dressed in the anonymous clothing of a man who buys his garments as cheaply as possible, there were nonetheless two creases always to be found in a vertical parallel upon his buttocks. The straight black hair was always combed, he never needed a shave. And his room, clean as any cell could have been in our aged mansion, described an unending campaign against the ceiling which sweated water and the floor which collected dust.
I made a number of assumptions about McLeod. At the department store his salary was small, and I wondered why he should have been content with so little when he was intelligent and probably efficient. I ended with an hypothesis developed from what I knew of his room, his clothing, and the way he bought his books. Everything about him, I decided, was timid. His horizon bounded no doubt by the image of a house in some monotonous suburb, he would sell the birthright he had never enjoyed for regular work and security. “Bury the rest,” I could hear him say, “I’m only a poor noodle in search of a sinecure.”
It is true that in many of our conversations he worried ceaselessly at a political bone, but I showed little interest. He spoke in a parody of Dinsmore’s words, saying almost the same things but with an odd emphasis that made it difficult to know if he were serious or not. Once I told him, “You sound like a hack,” and McLeod reacted with a rueful frown. “An exceptional expression for you to employ, Lovett,” he told me softly. “I take it you mean by ‘hack’ a representative of the people’s state across the sea, but I’m wondering where you picked up the word, for it indicates a reasonable amount of political experience on your part.”
I laughed and said somewhat heavily, “Out of all the futilities with which man attempts to express himself, I find politics among the most pathetic.”
“Pathetic, is it?” he had said, and directed at me a searching stare. “Well, maybe it is. And in answer to your question, I’m hardly a hack. I’ve told you already, m’boy, I’m not a joiner.” He grinned sourly. “One might call me a Marxist-at-liberty.”
This, too, has been an excessive preamble. But as Dinsmore was to muddle my impression of Guinevere, so McLeod was to mislead me about Hollingsworth, our neighbor on the top floor. The morning McLeod and I met in the bathroom he had said in passing that Hollingsworth was lazy, and I was to learn that the word meant nothing at all. Afterward, McLeod was more specific.
One day he introduced the subject. “You met our little buddy, Hollingsworth, yet?”
When I shook my head, McLeod said typically, pinching his words, “I’ll be interested in your reactions when you do.”
“Why?”
But he would not tell me so easily. “You’re a student of human nature.”
I sighed and sat back in my chair.
“He’s a fascinating case,” McLeod continued. “Hollingsworth. A pretty sick individual.”
“I’m bored with sick people.”
McLeod’s internal laughter twisted his mouth. I waited for his humor to pass. He removed his severe silver-rimmed glasses and cleaned them leisurely with his handkerchief. “You know, Lovett, you can’t talk without nonsense. I don’t suppose you’ve said ten words to me you’ve ever meant.”
“I have nothing to say.”
“Neither has Hollingsworth.” He whinnied again, his tongue probing with relish a tooth in his upper jaw. “He’s got a mind like a garbage pail. My private opinion of him can be summed up in one word. He’s a madman.”
There he let it lapse and we talked of other things, but as I left that evening McLeod was to repeat, “Just let me know what you think of him.”
The meeting, when it came, was accidental. I crossed the hall next evening to knock upon McLeod’s door, and to my chagrin he was not there. I stood in the hall for a moment, disappointed because I did not want to work that night, and now there was no other prospect. For luck, I knocked once more.
Instead, a young man who I guessed was Hollingsworth peered out of the adjoining room. I nodded to him. “I’m sorry,” I said, “I guess I tapped too loudly on McLeod’s porthole.”
“Oh, that’s all right.” He peered at me in the dim light of the hallway. “Are you the fellow who moved in just recently?”
I affirmed this, and he smiled politely. There was a pause. He broke it by saying without embarrassment and in great seriousness, “The weather’s been mighty hot, hasn’t it?”
“It has, I guess.”
“I do believe it’s going to let up though,” he said in a soft mild voice. “I think it’s fixing to rain, and that should clear a lot of the humidity out of the air.”
I grunted something in return.
Hollingsworth seemed to feel that the necessary liaison had been established, and we were no longer strangers. He said, “I’m having a drink now, and I wonder if you’d like to have one with me?”
When I accepted, he invited me in and opened a can of beer. His room was somewhat larger than McLeod’s or mine, but there was little more space, for the bed was big and an immense bureau covered a sizable area of the floor. I pushed aside some dirty shirts to sit down, and as if their touch remained against my finger tips, I was aware for seconds afterward of something odd, or out of place.
His room was unbelievably messed. There were several piles of soiled laundry, and two drawers in the bureau stuck open with linen hanging over the edge. His closet door was set at an angle, and I could see a suit tumbled upon the floor. Empty beer cans were strewn everywhere; the wastepaper basket had overflowed. He had a desk littered with pencil shavings, inkstains, cigarette butts, and a broken box of letter paper.
Yet the floor had no dust, the woodwork was wiped, and the windows had been washed within the last few days. Hollingsworth took care of himself as well. His cloth summer pants were clean, his open shirt was fresh, his hair was combed, he was shaved. Later I noticed that his nails were proper. He seemed to have no relation to the room.
“It’s nice to have a sociable beer once in a while,” he said. “My folks always taught me not to go in for heavy drinking, but this can’t hurt a fellow, now can it?”
He was obviously from a small town: the talk about the weather, the accent, the politeness were unmistakable signs. The simple small-town boy come to the big city. His body expressed it: less than medium size with a trim build, he suggested the kind of grace which vaults a fence in an easy motion.
The features were in character. He had straight corn-colored hair with a part to the side, and a cowlick over one temple. His eyes were small and intensely blue and were remarked immediately, for his nose and mouth were without distinction. He was still freckled, which made me wonder at his age. I was to learn later that like myself he was at least in his middle twenties, but there must have been many people who thought him eighteen.
Standing in the center of the floor, the light reflected from his blond hair, he was in considerable contrast to his room. It seemed wrong for him. I had a picture of the places in which he had slept through his boyhood: a bed, a Bible, and in the corner a baseball bat perhaps. As though in confirmation, the only decoration upon his wall was a phosphorescent cross printed on cardboard. It would glow in the darkness when the lights were out.
I had the fantasy that each morning he cleaned this room, dusted the woodwork and beat the rug. Then after he was gone, a stranger would enter and make a furious search for something Hollingsworth could not possibly possess. Or else … There was the picture of Hollingsworth making the search himself, ripping open the drawers, hurling clothing to the floor. This was fanciful, and yet the room seemed to be visited more by violence than by sloth.
After a few minutes I asked him where he worked, and he told me he was a clerk in one of the large brokerage houses in Wall Street.
“Do you like it?”
He made a characteristic speech. “Oh, yes, I can’t complain,” he said in his soft voice. “They’re all very nice over there, and they lead one to believe?
??although of course they may have their reasons for it—that there’s a lot of room for advancement. But I like a job like that anyway. It’s clean work, and I always prefer clean work, don’t you?”
“I haven’t thought about it much.”
“No? Well, I can see that not everybody thinks about it the way I do.” His politeness was irritating. He added, “I suppose there’s a lot to be said for an outdoor occupation, and the healthful qualities involved.”
“I’d hate the idea of being cooped up in an office.”
“Mr. Wilson—he’s the man over me—says there are all kinds of inside jobs, and if you can work with people instead of paper, it’s very different. He’s going to prepare me to be a customer’s man, and that I would like more.”
“Do you think you’d be good at that?”
He considered my question seriously. “Yes, I do. I’m very good at selling. My folks have a store in Meridabet—that’s my home town—and I’ve always been able to sell people the things they wanted, and then sometimes the things they didn’t want.” He gave an uncertain smile which voided his last sentence of any humor, and said, “I don’t suppose that’s a very nice way to do business?”
“It’s a rough life as the man said.”
He guffawed loudly with a hir-hir-hir that lasted for many seconds. But his laughter lapsed so abruptly that I realized there was no real merriment. He was making just another gesture. “That is a clever way of putting it,” he told me. In one of his excursions he had picked up a pipe and a tin of tobacco, and he played a match carefully over the bowl. I could see by the way he held it in his mouth that he found little enjoyment.
“You smoked that long?” I asked.
“No, I’m learning. I’ve noticed that Mr. Wilson and some of the men over him like Mr. Court tend to smoke a pipe a great deal. College men mainly smoke pipes, don’t they?”
“Probably a case can be made.”
“I don’t like the pipe much, but if it’s necessary, I suppose I’ll have to learn.” He tapped the stem in resignation against his teeth. “Do you mind if I ask you a personal question?”
“No.”
“You’re a college man, aren’t you?”
Indeed, why not? So I nodded, and he smiled with pleasure. “Yes, I thought so,” he went on. “I’ve trained myself to observe people. Which college is it?”
I named at random a famous university.
He bobbed his head in admiration as if I had built the place. “Sometime I’d like to have a few talks with you about college. I’ve been wondering … Do you make many contacts there?”
I resisted the impulse to be flip, and said noncommittally, “I think it depends on whether you want to.”
“That could be a big help for a career I would say. Most of the big men in the place I work at are college men. I’m intelligent, everybody tells me that,” he added in his colorless voice, “and maybe I should have gone, but I hated to think of all the years I’d waste there. Wouldn’t you?”
I merely said, “It is four years.”
“That’s what I say.” He produced an image. “If you all start a race together, and there’re too many men, you can get licked even if you’re good.” He regarded me seriously, and I discovered again how unusual were his eyes. The pupils were almost submerged in the iris, and reflected very little light. Two circles of blue, identical daubs of pigment, stared back at me, opaque and lifeless.
The sockets were set close together, folded into the flanks of his thin nose. Front-face, he looked like a bird, for his small nose was delicately beaked and his white teeth were slightly bucked. There was a black line between his gums and the center incisors in his upper jaw, and it gave the impression of something artificial to his mouth.
“Do you mind if I inquire what you do?” he said to me.
“I’m a writer, although don’t ask me what I’ve published.”
Again he produced his excessive laughter, going hir-hir-hir for some time and then ceasing abruptly. I had a passing image of the mechanical laughter in a canned radio program, the fans whirring, the gears revolving, the klaxons producing their artificial mirth and halting on signal. “Oh, that’s good,” he said. “I think that’s very humorous.” He tilted the beer to his mouth, and gurgled at the can. “You know a lot about books then.”
“Yes. About some.”
His next question was more tentative. “Do you know any good books I could read?”
“What kind do you mean?”
“Oh, you know.”
I noticed a few magazines and a book on his desk. Because I was curious I said, “If you could let me see what you’re reading now, I’d have a better idea of what you want.”
“I guess you would.” As though exposing his chest to the stethoscope, he gathered up the publications on his desk, and deposited them beside me. “You can see there’s quite a bit of reading matter.”
“Yes.” He had a pocket book with the cellophane carefully peeled from the jacket. It was an anthology of the letters of famous people. Underneath, I found a pile of pulp magazines, a radio amateur’s handbook, several Westerns, and a series of mimeographed papers which contained lessons on ballroom dancing.
“I don’t suppose I ought to be reading things like that,” Hollingsworth said.
“Why not?”
But he only tittered. I leafed through the pile and put them aside. “What kind of books do you want?” I asked again.
“Well …” He seemed hesitant. “In the Army there was an awful lot of literature that I liked. You know things with the facts of life in them.”
I gave the name of an historical romance which had been a best seller.
“N-n-no. I don’t remember the titles, but there were you know things about American fellows and girls. The real stuff though. You know the way we feel.”
I mentioned several of the major novels which had been written by Americans between the two wars. This seemed to satisfy Hollingsworth. He made a list very carefully, writing each title into a little notebook he carried in his hip pocket. When he was finished, he asked, “Do you know where I could get them?”
“I can loan you one or two,” I offered.
“Oh, I’d appreciate that. It’s awfully neighborly.” He had sat down in the chair by his desk, and was fingering the crease in his pants. “And there’s lots of real things in them, isn’t there? I mean, you know,… foolish girls, and boys who are willing to … to take a chance.” He grinned.
“You’ll probably find some.”
“I’m really surprised they print things like that. I wonder if they should allow it. Atheistic things, and the Bolshevists, I understand, write for them a lot.”
“For what?”
“Oh, for them, you know.” He picked up another can of beer and offered it to me.
I had decided he annoyed me. “No, I think I’d better get back to my room and work.”
“Do you make things there?”
“No. I …?” I realized that he had forgotten. “No, I write.”
“Oh, well that’s a clever occupation.” He followed me toward the door, and stood talking to me in the hall.
“I’ve been in New York for two months,” he said suddenly, “and do you know I haven’t found any of the evil quarters. I understand that Harlem is quite something, although they say that the tourists have ruined it, isn’t that true?”
“I don’t know.”
“It takes all kinds to make a world, I suppose.”
“Yes.”
He leered at me suddenly. “I’ve had some interesting experiences with the lady downstairs. Mrs. Guinevere. She’s a fine lady.” The leer was shocking.
“I’ve heard a lot about her,” I said.
“Oh, yes. She’s an experience. Something to put into one’s memoirs as they say.”
“Mmm.” I shuffled a step or two away. “Well, back to work for me.”
“Oh, yes, I understand,” he said in his soft voice. “One has to work, doesn’t on
e?” He sipped his beer reflectively. “Sometime I’d like to talk over my experiences with you, would you mind?”
“No.”
“It’s been very enjoyable having this little discussion.” He retreated almost completely into his room. As I left, he said one last thing. “You know that Mrs. Guinevere?”
“Yes.”
“An extremely colorful person. Typical of New York, so I’ve heard.”
I had no idea at all what to think of Hollingsworth.
SIX
IF I was a very lonely young man in New York that summer, it could be only my fault. Outside the rooming house I had not many acquaintances, but still there were people I could have visited. Yet as time went by, a week and then another, the tenuous circle of my acquaintances withered and fell apart. Entering Dinsmore’s room with the intention to see no one until I had completed some work, I did not realize that actually I was feeding a wish, and in effect making it more difficult to break the bonds I fashioned myself.
This may sound extreme, and in fact it was. I did not have to disappear so completely, nor was I obliged to feel an insuperable weight at the prospect of seeing some indifferent friend for a few hours. A man in such a pass is hardly interesting, and there is no need to recount the hours I spent imagining a series of rebuffs and insults. In my mind I would telephone to somebody and he would invite me to his house, but from the moment I entered I would know it had been a mistake. Conversation would languish, I would stammer, I would be in an agony to depart. And so, in thinking of those people I knew in the city, I would discard them one by one, convinced as I considered each person that he was without interest, or without friendship.