“It’s a very large room, Mr. Hendricks,” Miss Moore said. “On the top floor. With a view. And the twelve dollars is for both room and board.”
“Can I see it?”
The landlady was short but so am I. She looked at my face and then down around my feet.
“No bag?”
I reached for my wallet and produced my last five- and ten-dollar bills.
“I left my bag with my fiancee,” I said. “You know I’ll only be staying here a week, and so I’d be happy to add on three dollars to what you usually get. And if you rent the room to me, at least you won’t lose a second week’s rent while looking for a more permanent tenant.”
Miss Moore reached for the money but I held it back.
“Could I see the room first?”
The landlady closed her hand and smiled.
“Of course, Mr. Hendricks. You’re going to fall in love with it I’m sure.”
THE FRONT DOOR LED INTO A LARGE DINING ROOM with a long table that had fourteen mismatched chairs set at placemats with the dishware and cutlery already out.
“We serve coffee, toast, and hard-boiled eggs in the morning, and dinner six nights a week,” Miss Moore informed me as we walked through the dining room and into a long hallway.
Halfway down the hall a door swung open and a large man dressed only in a T-shirt and boxer shorts emerged. He was fat and freckled, lemon-colored and past fifty.
“Miss Moore,” he said in an accent that had to be put on. “I distinctly remember you promising me that I would be told when the tub was ready for my bath.”
“Oh, Mr. Conroy. You aren’t dressed,” she said.
This observation caused the big man to fold his arms over his belly.
“I said,” Miss Moore continued, “that you were next on the list. But you can’t expect me to be watching the tub and then running down here to tell you when it’s ready. I’ve been washing linens all morning. And then there’s dinner I have to prepare.”
The landlady’s gaze drifted to Mr. Conroy’s stomach upon mentioning the meal. He hugged himself even tighter.
“This is Mr. Hendricks, Mr. Conroy. He’s going to be with us for a week.”
“Pleased to meet you,” I said.
I held out my hand but he didn’t take it.
“It’s that wicked girl Charlotta taken my bath,” Conroy said to me. “She will take your bath and pick your pocket if you don’t lock your door.”
“Mr. Conroy, I will not have you bad-mouthing the other tenants.”
“But she —”
“Not another word. Come with me, Mr. Hendricks.”
The stern property owner led me to the end of the hall, where there was a surprisingly wide staircase. We went up three flights and came to a small landing that had only one door. Miss Moore took a brass Sargent key from her apron pocket and worked it on the lock.
It was a beautiful room, having a ten-foot ceiling and picture windows on either side. The bed was maple and stood two feet or more off the floor. The walls were painted a watery coral. Underneath the coat you could see the dim patterns of wallpaper that the painters had been too lazy to strip off. There was a big stuffed chair in one corner and a simple cherry table that could have been used for dining or as a desk in another. It even had a sink against one wall in case I got up in the middle of the night and needed to wash my face.
Through one of the windows I could see the tops of houses all the way to the hills that separated L.A. proper from the valley. There were pine, palm, carob, and a dozen other varieties of trees and wide asphalt roadways with very little traffic on them. There were children playing in the streets and clotheslines heavy with the day’s cleaning in almost every backyard. Here and there an incinerator put out white smoke, and the sky was that deep blue that threatens to suck the breath right out of your lungs.
I couldn’t remember the last time I had felt that peaceful. I didn’t want to turn around and face the job of lying to the good landlady. My deepest desire was to somehow fly through that window and become a part of everything I saw. I wanted to be those streets and those children’s jump-rope song. I wanted to climb with those pale puffs of smoke into the blue sky and surrender like the white flags they resembled.
“I threw out most’a the clothes and trash he left,” Miss Moore was saying. “You might find something here or there. If it’s trash throw it out, but if it could be sold you should turn it over to me so that I can try and make back the rent he stole.”
I handed over the rent money. This left me with three singles and one two-dollar note—that and three Liberty quarters was all I had in my pockets.
“I won’t be lookin’ too close,” I said. “Just sleepin’ and applying for work, that’s all it’ll be for me this week.”
“The phone is not for tenant use,” Miss Moore said. “Dinner is at seven sharp, and you have to sign up for the bath.”
“Yes ma’am.”
“The big key is for the front door,” she said as she handed over two brass Sargent keys tied together with a dirty bit of string. “You can come in whenever you want but the house goes dark after ten, and you should be quiet
