“That’s no skin off my nose,” Clancy said. “I’m not taking you up in my car.”
“Come here, Clancy,” Mr. Rowantree said. Clancy didn’t answer. Mr. Rowantree put his finger on the bell and held it there. Clancy didn’t move. He heard Mr. Rowantree and his friend talking. A moment later, he heard them climb the stairs. All the solicitude he had felt for Mr. Rowantree, the times he had imagined him walking in the Park with Miss James, seemed like money lost in a terrible fraud. He was hurt and bitter. The idea of Bobbie’s being in the Building was a painful one for him to take, and he felt as if it contested his own simple view of life. He was curt with everyone for the rest of the day. He even spoke sharply to the children. When he went to the basement to take off his uniform, Mr. Coolidge, the superintendent, called him into his office.
“Rowantree’s been trying to get you fired for the last hour, Jim,” he said. “He said you wouldn’t take him up in your car. I’m not going to fire you, because you’re a good, steady man, but I’m warning you now. He knows a lot of rich and influential people, and if you don’t mind your own business, it won’t be hard for him to get you kicked out.” Mr. Coolidge was surrounded by all the treasures he had extricated from the rubbish baskets in the back halls?broken lamps, broken vases, a perambulator with three wheels.
“But he?” Clancy began.
“It’s none of your business, Jim,” Mr. Coolidge said. “He’s been very quiet since he come back from Europe. You’re a good, steady man, Clancy, and I don’t want to fire you, but you got to remember that you aren’t the boss around here.”
The next day was Palm Sunday, and, by the grace of God, Clancy did not see Mr. Rowantree. On Monday, Clancy joined his bitterness at having to live in Sodom to the deep and general grief he always felt at the commencement of those events that would end on Golgotha. It was a gloomy day. Clouds and darkness were over the city. Now and then it rained. Clancy took Mr. Rowantree down at ten. He didn’t say anything, but he gave the man a scornful look. The ladies began going off for lunch around noon. Mr. Rowantree’s friend Bobbie went out then.
About half past two, one of the ladies came back from lunch, smelling of gin. She did a funny thing. When she got into the elevator, she stood with her face to the wall of the car, so that Clancy couldn’t see it. He was not a man to look into somebody’s face if they wanted to hide it, and this made him angry. He stopped the car. “Turn around,” he said. “Turn around. I’m ashamed of you, a woman with three grown children, standing with your face to the wall like a crybaby.” She turned around. She was crying about something. Clancy put the car into motion again. “You ought to fast,” he mumbled. “You ought to go without cigarettes or meat during Lent. It would give you something to think about.” She left the car, and he answered a ring from the first floor. It was Mr. Rowantree. He took him up. Then he took Mrs. DePaul up to 9. She was a nice woman, and he told her about John’s trip to Chicago. On the way down, he smelled gas.
For a man who has lived his life in a tenement, gas is the odor of winter, sickness, need, and death. Clancy went up to Mr. Rowantree’s floor. That was it. He had the master key and he opened the door and stepped into that hellish breath. It was dark. He could hear the petcocks hissing in the kitchen. He put a rug against the door to keep it open and threw up a window in the hall. He stuck his head out for some air. Then, in terror of being blown into hell himself, and swearing and praying and half closing his eyes as if the poisonous air might blind him, he started for the kitchen and gave himself a cruel bang against the doorframe that made him cold all over with pain. He stumbled into the kitchen and turned off the gas and opened the doors and windows. Mr. Rowantree was on his knees with his head in the oven. He sat up. He was crying. “Bobbie’s gone, Clancy,” he said. “Bobbie’s gone.”
Clancy’s stomach turned over, his gorge opened and filled up with bitter spit. “Dear Jesus!” he shouted. “Dear Jesus!” He stumbled out of the apartment. He was shaking all over. He took the car down and shouted for the doorman and told him what had happened.
The doorman took the elevator, and Clancy went into the locker room and sat down. He didn’t know how long he had been there when the doorman came in and said that he smelled more gas. Clancy went up to Mr. Rowantree’s apartment again. The door was shut. He opened it and stood in the hall and heard the petcocks. “Take your Goddamned fool head out of that oven, Mr. Rowantree!” he shouted. He went into the kitchen and turned off the gas. Mr. Rowantree was sitting on the floor. “I won’t do it again, Clancy,” he said. “I promise, I promise.”
Clancy went down and got Mr. Coolidge, and they went into the basement together and turned off Mr. Rowantree’s gas. He went up again. The door was shut. When he opened it, he heard the hissing of the gas. He yanked the man’s head out of the oven. “You’re wasting your time, Mr. Rowantree!” he shouted. “We’ve turned off your gas! You’re wasting your time!” Mr. Rowantree scrambled to his feet and ran out of the kitchen. Clancy heard him running through the apartment, slamming doors. He followed him and found him in the bathroom, shaking pills out of a bottle into his mouth. Clancy knocked the pill bottle out of his hand and knocked the man down. Then he called the precinct station on Mr. Rowantree’s phone. He waited there until a policeman, a doctor, and a priest came.
Clancy walked home at five. The sky was black. It was raining soot and ashes. Sodom, he thought, the city undeserving of clemency, the unredeemable place, and, raising his eyes to watch the rain and the ashes fall through the air, he felt a great despair for his kind. They had lost the warrants for mercy, there was no movement in the city around him but toward self-destruction and sin. He longed for the simple life of Ireland and the City of God, but he felt that he had been contaminated by the stink of gas.
He told Nora what had happened, and she tried to comfort him. There was no letter or card from John. In the evening, Mr. Coolidge telephoned. He said it was about Mr. Rowantree.
“Is he in the insane asylum?” Clancy asked.
“No,” Mr. Coolidge said. “His friend came back and they went out together. But he’s been threatening to get you fired again. As soon as he felt all right again, he said he was going to get you fired. I don’t want to fire you, but you got to be careful, you got to be careful.” This was the twist that Clancy couldn’t follow, and he felt sick. He asked Mr. Coolidge to get a man from the union to take his place for a day or so, and he went to bed.
