This building’s just as important as those buildings over on Park Avenue. If my bathrooms run dry, you can come over here and take the complaints yourself. It’s a moving day, and the handyman and me have got too much to do to be sitting beside the auxiliary all the time.” His face got red. His voice echoed through the basement. When he hung up, he felt uncomfortable and his cigar burned his mouth. Then Ferarri came in with a piece of bad news. The Bestwicks’ move would be delayed. They had arranged for a small moving company to move them to Pelham, and the truck had broken down in the night, bringing a load south from Boston.
Ferarri took Chester up to 9-E in the service car. One of the cheap, part-time maids that Mrs. Bestwick had been hiring recently had thumb-tacked a sign onto the back door. “To Whom It May Concern,” she had printed. “I never play the numbers and I never will play the numbers and I never played the numbers.” Chester put the sign in the waste can and rang the back bell. Mrs. Bestwick opened the door. She was holding a cracked cup full of coffee in one hand, and Chester noticed that her hand was trembling. “I’m terribly sorry about the moving truck, Chester,” she said. “I don’t quite know what to do. Everything’s ready,” she said, gesturing toward the china barrels that nearly filled the kitchen. She led Chester across the hall into the living room, where the walls, windows, and floors were bare. “Everything’s ready,” she repeated. “Mr. Bestwick has gone up to Pelham to wait for me. Mother took the children.”
“I wish you’d asked my advice about moving companies,” Chester said. “It isn’t that I get a cut from them or anything, but I could have put you onto a reliable moving firm that wouldn’t cost you any more than the one you got. People try to save money by getting cheap moving companies and in the end they don’t save anything. Mrs. Negus?she’s in 1-A?she wants to get her things in here this morning.”
Mrs. Bestwick didn’t answer. “Oh, I’ll miss you, Mrs. Bestwick,” Chester said, feeling that he might have spoken unkindly. “There’s no question about that. I’ll miss you and Mr. Bestwick and the girls. You’ve been good tenants. During the eight years you’ve been here, I don’t believe there’s been a complaint from any of you. But things are changing, Mrs. Bestwick. Something’s happening. The high cost of living. Oh, I can remember times when most of the tenants in this building wasn’t rich nor poor. Now there’s none but the rich. And, oh, the things they complain about, Mrs. Bestwick. You wouldn’t believe me. The day before yesterday, that grass widow in 7-F called up, and you know what she was complaining about? She said the toilet seats in the apartment wasn’t big enough.”
Mrs. Bestwick didn’t laugh at his joke. She smiled, but her mind seemed to be on something else.
“Well, I’ll go down and tell Mrs. Negus that they’ll be a delay,” Chester said.
Mrs. Negus, who was replacing Mrs. Bestwick, took piano lessons. Her apartment had an entrance off the lobby, and in the afternoon she could be heard practicing her scales. The piano was a difficult instrument for her and she had mastered only a few jingles. Piano lessons were a new undertaking for Mrs. Negus. When she first moved into the building, during the war, her name had been Mary Toms, and she had lived with Mrs. Lasser and Mrs. Dobree. Chester suspected that Mrs. Lasser and Mrs. Dobree were loose women, and when Mary Toms joined them, Chester had worried about her, because she was so young and so pretty. His anxiety was misplaced?the loose life didn’t depress or coarsen her at all. Coming in there as a poor girl in a cloth coat, she had at the end of the year more furs than anybody else and she seemed to be as happy as a lark. It was in the second winter that Mr. Negus began to call. He went there by chance, Chester guessed, and the visit changed his whole life. He was a tough- looking middle-aged man, and Chester remembered him because when he came through the lobby on his way to 1 -A, he used to bury his nose in the collar of his coat and pull his hat brim down over his eyes.
As soon as Mr. Negus began to visit Mary Toms regularly, she eliminated all her other friends. One of them, a French naval officer, made some trouble, and it took a doorman and a cop to get him out. After this, Mr. Negus pointed out the door to Mrs. Lasser and Mrs. Dobree. It was nothing against Mary Toms, and she tried hard to get her friends another apartment in the building. Mr. Negus was stubborn, and the two older women packed their trunks and moved to an apartment on West Fifty-eighth Street. After they had gone, a decorator came in and overhauled the place. He was followed by the grand piano, the poodles, the Book-of-the-Month Club membership, and the crusty Irish maid. That winter, Mary Toms and Mr. Negus went down to Miami and got married there, but even after his marriage Mr. Negus still skulked through the lobby as if he was acting against his better judgment. Now the Neguses were going to move the whole caboodle up to 9-E. Chester didn’t care one way or the other, but he didn’t think the move was going to be permanent. Mrs. Negus was on the move. After a year or two in 9-E, he figured she’d ascend to one of the penthouses. From there, she’d probably take off for one of the fancier buildings on upper Fifth.
WHEN CHESTER RANG the bell that morning, Mrs. Negus let him in. She was still as pretty as a picture. “Hi, Chet,” she said. “Come on in. I thought you didn’t want me to start moving until eleven.”
“Well, there may be a delay,” Chester said. “The other lady’s moving truck hasn’t come.”
“I got to get this stuff upstairs, Chet.”
“Well, if her men don’t come by eleven,” Chester said, “I’ll have Max and Delaney move the stuff down.”
“Hi, Chet,” Mr. Negus said.
“What’s that on the seat of your pants, honey?” Mrs. Negus said.
“There’s nothing on my pants,” Mr. Negus said.
“Yes, there is, too,” Mrs. Negus said. “There’s a spot on your pants.”
“Look,” Mr. Negus said, “these pants just come back from the dry cleaner’s.”
