The Tenants by Bernard Malamud Read Free Book Online Page B

the sofa. “None of that apeshit on me.”
     
     
    When Willie and his friends left the apartment the blizzard had spent itself. The black, his eyes still glassy, slapped Lesser on the back.

    “We groove on art, dad. You and I are gonna be real tight.”
    They embraced like brothers.
     
     
    A few hours later when Willie came in for his typewriter he spoke not a word to Lesser though his lips worked nervously. His expression was tense. He seemed like a man staring at two thoughts, neither of which he could stand.
    Lesser at first was afraid Irene had told him he had tried to make her after overhearing Willie’s remark to her. Or had Mary Kettlesmith described his acrobatics with her miniskirt?
    But Willie had nothing to say, and alarmed at the thought of an argument that might upset the morning he was balancing like a ball on his nose, the writer offered strict silence in return. He was more than a little hung up, stupid from lack of sleep, worried about his work.
    Willie, with a grunt, lifted his machine and stepped into the hall. Lesser shut the door in relief and was immediately writing. He worked steadily into a very good day; this sometimes happened when he was worried little sleep would lock the gears of concentration. At half past twelve the black had not appeared. At
seven that night, washing his two supper dishes, the writer found himself wondering if—wishing?—Willie had for some reason cut out of here, located himself a new place to work. Maybe an abandoned apartment house all to himself? Lesser could do without his daily don’t-do-me-any-favors visits although he was willing to help a fellow writer out. Writers helped writers. Up to a point: his writing came first.
    At 9 P.M., Lesser reading in his rocker, Willie kicked the door, hugging his machine as though he were pregnant with it. After setting it under the table, the black after a minute of fixed thought, said: “Lesser, I have to pull your coat about a certain matter.”
    The writer apologized in advance for his behavior last night.
    “It was the hashish I’d say. It doesn’t agree with me. I’d better stay away from the stuff.”
    Willie flicked his nail along the part in his hair. After a while he scratched both pink palms with hard brown nails and blew into his stubby-fingered fist. He shuffled one foot, then the other.
    Lesser was uncomfortable. Has he been seeing old Stepin Fetchit films, or is something the matter with him?
    Willie spoke brusquely. “I thought I would leave my manuscript of my book here tonight.”
    “Ah, it’s welcome,” Harry said, relieved if that was
all. “Don’t worry about anybody reading it. You have my word on that.”
    Willie drew a restless heavy breath. “Man, I’m asking you to read it.”
    He bent as though afflicted by a spasm but at once straightened up.
    “Like I have a belly ache about my work.” Sweat gleamed on his brow. He touched dry lips with his pink tongue. It seemed to Lesser he had never seen his eyeballs so large before, inflated, white, scared.
    “Belly ache?”
    “On my writing. I am revising some of it again but every time I read it I do something very new, like I never got it right in the first place. The picture keeps shifting on me, you know what I mean? Yesterday I thought I laid down some good pages but when I was reflecting about them in my chick’s apartment the whole scene I wrote blew up in my mind like a brick shithouse. Man, that wipes you out. I didn’t feel like coming to your party. I wanted to go on back to my work and stay on it till I got the wrong stuff out and the right stuff in but Irene told me to renew myself with some relaxation and fun. Today I sat in my office all day reading on my book and I have this fuckn feeling I rode off the main track in some places but I don’t exactly know where that starts or why it does. Anything I read now looks blurred up, as if I am wearing my grandpappy’s eyeglasses, and throws me off my
balance. I feel like I am