hinges, whereas the other had been discreet, almost tentative: the work of a single knuckle, tapping its faint, intimate message on the wood. I turned these differences over in my mind for several hours, pondering the wealth of human information that was buried in such simple sounds. If the two knocks had been made by the same person, I thought, then the contrast would seem to indicate a terrible frustration, and I was hard-pressed to think of anyone who was that desperate to see me. This meant that my original interpretation was correct. There had been two people. One had come in friendship, the other had not. One was probably a woman, the other was not. I continued thinking about this until nightfall. As soon as I was aware of the darkness, I lit a candle, then went on thinking about it until I fell alseep. In all that time, however, it did not occur to me to ask who those people might have been. Even more to the point, I did not make any effort to understand why I did not want to know.
The pounding started again the next morning. By the time I was sufficiently awake to know I was not dreaming it, I heard a jangle of keys out in the hall—a loud, percussive thunder that exploded in my head. I opened my eyes, and at that moment a key entered the lock. The latch turned, the door swung open, and into the room stepped Simon Fernandez, the building superintendent. Sporting his customary two-day beard, he was dressed in the same khaki pants and white T-shirt that he had been wearing since the beginning of summer—a dingy outfit by now, smudgedwith grayish soot and the drippings of several dozen lunches. He looked directly into my eyes and pretended not to see me. Ever since Christmas, when I had failed to give him his annual tip (another expense struck from the books), Fernandez had turned hostile. No more hellos, no more talk about the weather, no more stories about his cousin from Ponce who almost made it as a short-stop with the Cleveland Indians. Fernandez had taken his revenge by acting as though I did not exist, and we had not exchanged a word in months. On this morning of mornings, however, there was an unexpected reversal of strategy. He sauntered around the room for several moments, tapping the walls as though inspecting them for damage, and then, passing by the bed for the second or third time, he stopped, turned, and did an exaggerated double-take as he noticed me at last. “Jesus Christ,” he said. “Are you still here?”
“Still here,” I said. “In a manner of speaking.”
“You gotta be out today,” Fernandez said. “Apartment’s rented for the first of the month, you know, and Willie’s coming with the painters tomorrow morning. You don’t want no cops dragging you out of here, do you?”
“Don’t worry. I’ll be out in plenty of time.”
Fernandez looked around the room with a proprietary air, then shook his head in disgust. “You’ve got some place here, my friend. If you don’t mind me saying so, it reminds me of a coffin. One of those pine boxes they bury bums in.”
“My decorator has been on vacation,” I said. “We were planning to do the walls in robin’s egg blue, but then we weren’t sure if it would match the tile in the kitchen. We agreed to give it a little more thought before taking the plunge.”
“Smart college boy like you. You got some kinda problem or what?”
“No problem. A few financial setbacks, that’s all. The market has been down lately.”
“You need money, you gotta work for it. The way I see it,you just sit around on your ass all day. Like some chimp in the zoo, you know what I mean? You can’t pay the rent if you don’t have no job.”
“But I do have a job. I get up in the morning just like everyone else, and then I see if I can live through another day. That’s full-time work. No coffee breaks, no weekends, no benefits or vacations. I’m not complaining, mind you, but the salary is pretty low.”
“You sound like a fuck-up to me. A smart
The pounding started again the next morning. By the time I was sufficiently awake to know I was not dreaming it, I heard a jangle of keys out in the hall—a loud, percussive thunder that exploded in my head. I opened my eyes, and at that moment a key entered the lock. The latch turned, the door swung open, and into the room stepped Simon Fernandez, the building superintendent. Sporting his customary two-day beard, he was dressed in the same khaki pants and white T-shirt that he had been wearing since the beginning of summer—a dingy outfit by now, smudgedwith grayish soot and the drippings of several dozen lunches. He looked directly into my eyes and pretended not to see me. Ever since Christmas, when I had failed to give him his annual tip (another expense struck from the books), Fernandez had turned hostile. No more hellos, no more talk about the weather, no more stories about his cousin from Ponce who almost made it as a short-stop with the Cleveland Indians. Fernandez had taken his revenge by acting as though I did not exist, and we had not exchanged a word in months. On this morning of mornings, however, there was an unexpected reversal of strategy. He sauntered around the room for several moments, tapping the walls as though inspecting them for damage, and then, passing by the bed for the second or third time, he stopped, turned, and did an exaggerated double-take as he noticed me at last. “Jesus Christ,” he said. “Are you still here?”
“Still here,” I said. “In a manner of speaking.”
“You gotta be out today,” Fernandez said. “Apartment’s rented for the first of the month, you know, and Willie’s coming with the painters tomorrow morning. You don’t want no cops dragging you out of here, do you?”
“Don’t worry. I’ll be out in plenty of time.”
Fernandez looked around the room with a proprietary air, then shook his head in disgust. “You’ve got some place here, my friend. If you don’t mind me saying so, it reminds me of a coffin. One of those pine boxes they bury bums in.”
“My decorator has been on vacation,” I said. “We were planning to do the walls in robin’s egg blue, but then we weren’t sure if it would match the tile in the kitchen. We agreed to give it a little more thought before taking the plunge.”
“Smart college boy like you. You got some kinda problem or what?”
“No problem. A few financial setbacks, that’s all. The market has been down lately.”
“You need money, you gotta work for it. The way I see it,you just sit around on your ass all day. Like some chimp in the zoo, you know what I mean? You can’t pay the rent if you don’t have no job.”
“But I do have a job. I get up in the morning just like everyone else, and then I see if I can live through another day. That’s full-time work. No coffee breaks, no weekends, no benefits or vacations. I’m not complaining, mind you, but the salary is pretty low.”
“You sound like a fuck-up to me. A smart
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