his right thumb toward the phone behind him. 'I was just talkin' onna phone. Ginny over management. She called me up again. She's always calling me up all the time. Every morning, got some new thing on her mind, some new project for me to do. Like she wants to drive me nuts. And then, in addition, she comes over here, two, three, four times a week, see how I'm doin' on something. I don't know what it is with that woman, what she thinks I am.'
'Maybe she's lonely, and hot for your body,' Merrion said. 'Lookin' for love. Just doesn't know how to say it to you, put it into words.'
Brody grinned and reddened. He had clearly envisioned that possibility, perhaps often. 'Nah,' he said, 'isn't that. Can't be that. Guy my age, I'm fifty-one years old, and she's what, thirty-two?
Just a kid. Uh uh, I think what it is is that she doesn't understand how long it takes to do a thing. No idea, you know? No comprehension at all.
'You get these kids: it's not their fault, but they never did anything with their hands. Spend all their lives shufflin' papers, workin' with figures. Now the computers: hit a key and what they want to do is done. So as a result they got no idea of how long it actually takes to do something. They think when they say it, they want it done, bingo, that's all there is to it. Now it's time to go on to the next thing onna list. 'Can't have you standin' around here alia time, doin' nothin', getting' paid for it, you know.' And then they laugh, 'ha ha,' like that at you; like they didn't really mean it, they're only fooling with you.
'Well, it just isn't like that, as you and I both know, and I try to tell her that sometimes. 'You know when I'm working on a thing and it's gonna take a week, all right? Because I told you it was gonna take that, before I even started. I been on it a day and of course it isn't done. So what're you doin' this now for, already; comin' around and actin' like you still don't understand a day is not a week? You got me thinkin': how can this be? After I went to all the trouble of explaining it to you, tell you what's involved in a thing, I make sure you understand; you tell me you do; and then, boom, like that, you turn around and call me up, the very next day, the day after I started, acting like you don't know the first thing about it and I must be finished now. Tell me you now've got something else for me, I got to get started on right away. I mean: How can you keep doing this to me all the time? This doesn't make any sense.'
'She always tells me she'll stop,' Brody said. 'Promising me then she wont do it no more; she'll cut it out. She never does, though.' He paused and reflected, 'She's still a good kid, though; we get along all right.'
The anxiety returned to his voice and his face wrinkled up. 'But hey, what's it with you being up here? Something didn't go wrong here or something, I hope? Everything still okay with Mark, up there and everything with him? I didn't hear nothin'. He was doin' okay last I heard. Sounded like he was all right. I know I didn't get no call here. Got my machine on all the time here, too, I'm not in the apartment; somewhere else in the building or something. I know they got my number up there and everything 'cause I gave it to them there when he went in. I didn't get no calls. Kid's still all right up there, isn't he? Nothin' wrong there with Mark?'
'If there is, I haven't heard about it,' Merrion said. 'Far's I know, everything's fine.'
Brody's face relaxed. He nodded and smiled. 'Okay then,' he said, 'that makes it easy. Then what can I do for you, here? Anything else is a cinch, long's it's not those fuckin' drugs again. Anything else I can handle, no problem.'
'It's LeClerc I'm here about,' Merrion said. 'I'm here to see Janet LeClerc'
Brody looked puzzled. 'Yeah,' he said, 'sure. She lives here all right.' He grinned again. 'But hey, you oughta know that. You're the one put her in here. You told me to give her an apartment if I had one vacant and we did, and I did it, which I was glad to, something I could do for you. Number fourteen. Third floor. You know the building, right? Sure, you used to come here a lot. Back when Larry Lane's still here; you used to come here and see him, number eleven. Jee-zuss he hadda hard time, the poor guy. Anyway, number fourteen: one of our nicer ones. Always gets plenty of sun. Overlookin' the street at the front. All she's gotta do's look out the window, any time she wants, see everything that's going on. She's been here with us almost a year now.
'Not the best tenant we ever had, no, couldn't go that far for her. But she doesn't cause us much trouble. Rent's always paid on time, anyways; that's always the biggest thing. Course it should be, town's paying it for her; she don't have to pay it herself.
'But just the same, no matter who's payin', I wish they could all be like that. Not to have that to worry about, ever again on my mind:
'Well, did so-and-so pay their rent yet, or are we gonna have to go in and throw 'em out onna street?'
'I'm tellin' you: that is one job I really hate. I'd rather eat something that I knew was gonna make me sick and throw up and maybe break out in a rash, everything like that, 'n I would to hear I'm gonna have to go and put somebody out. And it's almost always the same reason. In some buildings I've been in sometimes have to do it on account of someone making too much noise or not being clean or something; that could happen. But in this building it's almost always been because for some reason they didn't have no money, so I have to go and do it. I don't care what the reason is. It don't make any difference to me. I got my orders and that's what I hafta do: Out in the street; they haven't paid us their rent. Cryin' an' hollerin', weepin' an' wailin', everything like that. Sometimes they wanna fight me. Like this was my idea? I'm the one who made the decision that they're getting' thrown out; this's something I like to do?
'I'm tellin' you, sir, and I am not kidding you, one little bit: it's an awful part of the job. It's the worst job in the world. At least it's not gonna be that with her.'
His expression changed, becoming avid. 'But why then, what is it? Why is it you want to see her7. You think she did something wrong? Like that time when she tried to steal all the old lady's money? She in some new kind ah trouble? Some kind of a problem we should be concerned about here?'
'I need to talk to her, is all,' Merrion said. 'There's something I need to see her about. But I've been up there. I went up to fourteen and I knocked on her door and she didn't answer. The TV was on in there. Not loud, but I could hear it. I decide maybe she didn't hear me, knocked again. Good and hard, so she would've had to've heard me.
But she didn't come to the door that time, either. So that raised another possibility: maybe she did hear me; she just doesn't want to see me. Got a guest in her apartment, like I just told her Saturday she was not to do. And so that's when I decided I'd come down here, and see if you knew where she was.'
'She's usually up there, this time of day,' Brody said doubtfully, looking at his watch. 'This's when she's got the news on. Now it's not that I'm watching her alia time now, I wouldn't want you to think that, but this time of day is when I'm getting started, going to work on what I got to do. And so I'm around the place inna morning, upstairs or down. Or on my way down to the basement, all right? Like I was on my way today, when Ginny called up. You move around like that in the building every day, you get so you know where most of the people usually are. And this time of day she's generally in her apartment.'
'Yeah, well, that's what I thought,' Merrion said, 'TV going and so forth. But then when I knocked again, and she still didn't come, I wasn't sure. Does she leave the TV on, if she happens to go out?
Because she told me she goes to the store in the morning to get cigarettes.'
Brody nodded vigorously as Merrion talked. 'Uh huh,' he said, 'every day. Faithful as clockwork, you can depend on it. Winter; summer; hot or cold; raining; snowing; I don't care: by ten A.M. she's down the stairs and out the door, on her way down to Dineen's. Raining or something? Doesn't make any difference to her. She's got her little plastic hat on, one of those folding plastic hats they used to give out in banks and dry cleaners always wears one of those. Inna wintertime, her boots and coat and scarf on, so forth, all bundled up, keep her all nice and warm. Like the mailmen, you know? Whatever it takes. Janet's going out, and that's just all there is to it. She's got her routine she follows, regular rounds every day.'
'But not this early,' Merrion said, 'she doesn't go this early.'
'Nope,' Brody said firmly. This'd still be too early for her. Janet by now'd be just about up. Sittin' in her bathrobe in front ah the TV there. Drinkin' her coffee; tellin' everybody off, says something that she doesn't like on the television: 'Yah that's what you say, always givin' us your stuff. Liar, liar, pants on fire. Bullshit.' Talks back to it all the time. Oh, she gets all upset at them. I've been up there, working on the third floor, and I've heard her inside sayin' all that stuff. Very emotional.
'Assuming of course she got to bed last night; made it in the bedroom and then actually got into bed. Didn't go to sleep there in her chair, front of the TV; wake up still in front of it, still on, same place inna morning.'
'She does that,' Merrion said.
'Now and then, she does,' Brody said. 'She used to, at least.
