All the Old Haunts (15 page)

“It matters. I asked you first, so you’re supposed to answer first.”

“That’s the way it works?”

“That’s the way it works.”

There is a pause. Then some muffled something as she apparently cups her hand over the phone to talk to someone.

“Hey,” I say, “Who’s there? You’re with somebody?”

“It’s a little early in the relationship to be getting possessive, don’t you think?” she says. “And besides, he agrees with you. That is the way it works.”

“Oh.” I find myself lighting another cigarette. “Oh, good—”

“But I don’t like the way it works, so it’s going to work different. It works like this: I can see you and you can’t see me, so you’re required to tell me who you are first.”

“This is mental,” I say, and it is.

Pause. This is where I should be slamming down the phone and filing the whole thing away as a great story to tell my buddies when I’m thirty years old and finished my
chores
for my dad.

I stay on the line.

“Virgil,” I say. “My name. It’s Virgil.”

“Well hey, you know, you look like a Virgil,” she says and I swear her voice has dropped two more octaves. “Did you notice, Virgil, that they are closing the post office right now?”

I turn, just in time to see the uniformed post office monkey do his one real-time move of the day, snapping the glass door shut and bolting it from the citizens who need to get inside.

I hang up the phone, grab my parcel, and start knocking on the door.

“I
will
go to hell, Dad. And I
will
go to the damn post office, and the dry cleaners and the hardware store, but I
won’t
be back, not until something rude and fun and excellent happens to me.”

I storm back down toward the front door and fling it open, about to sweep outside in a fury. But first I pause in the doorway, knowing that while he has not, would not, pursue me, this is not quite finished.

“The package, the coats, the linseed oil, and home, Virgil,” he calls.

Finished.

I shut the door firmly, but without slamming.

He stands there, shaking his head and pointing at the stupid little sign that hangs on the door. It’s shaped like a clock face, with the hands pointing at twelve o’clock. Then he points behind him, up on the wall where there is a real clock that looks just like it. Same stupid post office face. Same stupid post office hands.

“I need to get in there. I need to mail this for my dad. It’s important that I get this mailed.”

His voice is muffled, through the glass, but all too clear.

“If it was important, you should have mailed it before.”

“But I can mail it now.”

“No you can’t.” He’s pointing again. At the clock.

“There are plenty of people in there though.” I am pointing now, at the thousands and thousands of people still inside, still allowed to do their Saturday post office business.

“They were here on time.”

“I was here on time.”

“Then how come you’re out there and not in here?”

“Because I needed to go out again.”

“Why was that, now?”

Just then a couple comes up behind him, flush with the joy of having completed their Saturday postal business and not been shut out. They now wish to be released.

“Yes,” I say, but very quietly. You know how these post office guys can be.

He turns to the couple, then back to me, then back to them.

Then back to me. He isn’t strong, smiling and confident now. He has to open that door, and we both know that when he does I’m going to squirt through like a rat.

The phone rings.

Mr. Postman and I are staring at each other now. The phone rings a second time. It is clearly audible from where I stand, and from where he stands as well. The man behind the postman nudges him, frowns, and points at the lock. A couple more people are behind them now, wanting to get out.

The phone rings a third time.

I calculate. Smoky voice. I could be to the phone in three seconds, tell her to call right back, hang back up, and be to the door once more in another three. Probably ten seconds total. Smoky voice. There are eight people waiting to go out now. It will take time to let them out, and I’m in, squirting, like a rat, like I said.

This is doable. It has to be doable. I will prove I can do the work and have the fun too, dammit.

Ringgg.

Go!

I rush around the corner, and I can hear the snap-clap of the lock on the door.

“Hey,” I say.

“Hey,” she says. She must have had four more cigarettes while I was in there. “I was starting to worry about you.”

I see five of the people from the line, they are out.

“Call me back,” I snap. I hang up the phone and bolt.

“Ha,” the door is wide-open. He’s trying to be ruder than they are even allowed to be, giving a small shove to the last of the people as he stares all panicky at me, but he’s mine, I’m in, because, god bless her, the woman he’s hurrying is one of those people who get slower when you hurry them. She stops right there in the doorway, stares right into his evil civil servant mug, and I’m in.

“Yes,” I say, walking past him on my way to the counter. There is only one person there, an old man buying sheets of collector stamps. This is efficient. I should do it this way every time. I’ll sit outside smoking and talking on the phone and making dates and fielding party invitations until they close, then I’ll do my squirt move. Like a rat. Like a wildly popular, socializing, showing-his-father rat.

It can be done, and I can prove it.

I hear the door shut and lock behind me. I hear victory.

I hear laughter.

I turn and he is, laughing lowly, looking at me.

I do not care. God knows what motivates these people, but it has nothing to do with me. I have better things to think about … and I am thinking about them, about her, as the old man walks away with his pages of little pictures of World War II fighter planes or Supreme Court justices, state birds, or whatever and I am sincerely hoping he has the time of his life with them. Lick, my good man, lick.

It is ten minutes past official closing, and I am the last customer. The door opens and closes and the postman laughs once more behind me as I step to the counter.

“What can I do for you?” the counterman says pleasantly enough. He too can smell a fine Saturday afternoon’s freedom ahead. He has places to go, this man. He understands.

“I need to—”

The laughter behind me increases. The man behind the counter throws up his hands. “What?” he asks.

Holy … My package. My package is not with me. More importantly, my father’s package is not with me.

I could ask the man behind the counter to wait just another minute. But I know already. The man behind the counter could wait a hundred minutes but it wouldn’t matter. I’m not getting back in that door.

As I pass solemnly out through the glass door one more time, my shoulders slumped, head down, the post officer puts the final boot in.

“Now, if you had been mailing that package like you were supposed to, and not heavy breathing with Eva …”

Slam,
Snap-clap. I’m locked out before I can even spin on him.

The phone rings.

“How the hell does the post office guy know what I’m doing out here?”

“You should take that package down off the phone there before you lose it for good. You frankly don’t seem very responsible.”

“Ugh, the package. I can’t go home with my father’s package. You don’t know. This is a matter of … wait, answer my question.”

“Leave it with me. I’ll mail it for you.”

“How,
Eva, does that post office guy know …”

“I don’t think I like your tone. You’re getting a little too nosy, so early on. Maybe we shouldn’t see each other anymore.”

“Fine,”
I snap into the phone. “I was thinking that myself, so maybe we should just not. Fine with me.”

This, again, would be where I should hang up, to make my point and all. But I stand there, listening to her breathing. Standing, like a dummy. While, duh Virgil, she is completely watching me. She exhales kind of theatrically.

“Are you smoking?” I demand.

“Now that’s it,” she says, “I’m not listening to any more interrogation.” She hangs up.

“Fine,” I say vainly into the receiver, then, “Fine!” I yell across the street in her general direction.

I stand there, pretending actually, like I’m searching for something in my pockets. What? Change for the phone? My driver’s license? Smokes. Yes, smokes. I take my sweet time searching for them, lighting them, savoring them.

The phone, during this time, persistently does not ring.

I don’t care. No really, I don’t. I have plenty else to do.

I need a shave, I think as I light the next cigarette off of the previous cigarette. It’s been three weeks, and I feel like I have a face full of pine needles. Think maybe I’ll shave later today.
If,
I feel like it.

The two postal employees walk out from around the back of the building. As they approach the traffic light on the corner about ten feet away from me, the one of them looks over, then nudges the other. They laugh as they wave to me.

I do not wave back.

They wait for the light, then cross, practically arm in arm. They seem pretty happy.

They reach the other side, and as they do the one who was so mean to me turns once more, and offers me a friendly wave. I give in. I wave back.

Then the two of them crack up, as they enter the building directly across the street. Eva’s building.

I am almost out of cigarettes.

There are lots of apartments over there. Could be anyone’s. Not that I care.

The phone continues not to ring. I’m outta here. Just as soon as I finish these last two smokes, I’m history ….

The phone, not that I care, continues not—

It rings.

I snap for it like a cobra, then catch myself. Be cool. I let it ring twice more.

“Hello,” I say coolly.

It’s a dial tone.

Dammit. Damn me. Damn, damn me, dammit.

It rings again, and I snap it up.

“Stop laughing at me,” I say.

“You are very cute,” Eva says.

“Ya, well who else is cute up there?” I can definitely hear sounds, party sounds, like jazz music, laughter, and ice tinkling in a glass.

“Why don’t you come up and find out?” Eva asks.

“Ya … well I just might.”

“Good.”

“I just might.”

“Might you?”

“I’m not afraid.”

“Why would you be afraid?”

“Because I’m not, you know.”

“We’ve established that. You’re a very brave little soldier. Now why don’t you come up and show me.”

“Right. Well it’s just, I have to mail this package. If I don’t mail this package I’m gonna get—”

“We’ll get your package mailed, don’t you worry. Just come on up, will you?”

I have run out of things to say. So I say nothing. I stare up dumbly at her window, whichever window that is. I stealthily make eye contact with every pane of glass in the building.

“It’s apartment nine. I’ll buzz you up.”

She’s going to buzz me up.

Like she has not already buzzed me up. Buzzed me so completely up that I do not know what I am doing. But I’m doing it anyway.

I go to the corner shop first, for a pack of smokes and a big bag of Chee-tos. Because this is big, it’s new, and it’s important. Can’t be going to a party empty-handed, I know that much. I don’t know much, but I know that much, and in a very short while I hope to know much, much more. I have the money, on top of what I need for the dry cleaning and the linseed oil, because Dad always makes sure. Makes sure I never fall short.

And never asks for his change. Even if the change is more than the spending. Keep the change, he always says when he sees me reach into my pocket, keep the change.

I ring the bell. I stand there shifting from one foot to the other. I am standing on the sidewalk in front of the building, staring up at the big bank of doorbells with the little labelmaker-gun labels next to them telling you who lives in which apartment.

Except apartment nine, which has no label-maker label.

It seems an awfully long wait. I step back from the door, out to the gutter, and look up, trying to see what’s going on up there.

The buzzer rings.

I dash back across the sidewalk to get there just as the buzzing stops. The buzzer buzzing, that is. Stops. My own is louder than ever.

I ring the doorbell again. This time instead of the buzzer response I get the sounds from inside the apartment. You know, the intercom gizmo. Nobody is talking to me, actually, but someone is holding the button down so that I can listen. Music, loud and clear like there is a saxophone aimed right at the speaker, and a piano right behind it. Laughter and snacking, and somebody drops a glass and shatters it. More laughter.

I look all around me, like I have done something wrong. Like I have done something wrong, and it could possibly matter to anybody here on the street, and I am going to be caught.

“Hello?” I say into the receiver, into the noise. “Hello?”

But you can’t broadcast in that direction when they are broadcasting out, right? They must release the button before they can hear you. I have to be patient.

“Hello?” I say again.

The music stops, the party sound stops. I wait.

I call again, “Hello?” but of course I speak again into the teeth of a party. You have to time this just right, so the two of you don’t talk simultaneously.

“Hel—”

Jeez.

Beer. You are supposed to bring beer to these things. Or wine. And condoms. What was I thinking?

I dash back to the store, stop dashing before I ease on in the door. I ease on in.

Counting up money as I enter. How much will I need to save? What does linseed oil cost? Who uses linseed oil anyway?

My dad does. My dad uses linseed oil.

I still have plenty of money, I figure. Still left over from other errands.

Maybe I don’t even need to go to the hardware store.

“You carry linseed oil?” I ask the guy behind the counter. He looks like he’s sleeping, slumped on his stool, but his eyes are apparently open. He scans the store and me through slits.