Criers & Kibitzers, Kibitzers & Criers

I LOOK OUT FOR ED WOLFE

He was an orphan, and, to himself, he seemed like one, looked like one. His orphan’s features were as true of himself as are their pale, pinched faces to the blind. At twenty-seven he was a neat, thin young man in white shirts and light suits with lintless pockets. Something about him suggested the ruthless isolation, the hard self-sufficiency of the orphaned, the peculiar dignity of men seen eating alone in restaurants on national holidays. Yet it was this perhaps which shamed him chiefly, for there was a suggestion, too, that his impregnability was a myth, a smell not of the furnished room which he did not inhabit, but of the three-room apartment on a good street which he did. The very excellence of his taste, conditioned by need and lack, lent to him the odd, maidenly primness of the lonely.

He saved the photographs of strangers and imprisoned them behind clear plastic windows in his wallet. In the sound of his own voice he detected the accent of the night school and the correspondence course, and nothing of the fat, sunny ring of the word’s casually afternooned. He strove against himself, a supererogatory enemy, and sought by a kind of helpless abrasion, as one rubs wood, the gleaming self beneath. An orphan’s thinness, he thought, was no accident.

Returning from lunch, he entered the office building where he worked. It was an old building, squat and gargoyled, brightly patched where sandblasters had once worked and then, for some reason, quit before they had finished. He entered the lobby, which smelled always of disinfectant, and walked past the wide, dirty glass of the cigarette-and-candy counter to the single elevator, as thickly barred as a cell.

The building was an outlaw. Low rents and a downtown address and the landlord’s indifference had brought together from the peripheries of business and professionalism a strange band of entrepreneurs and visionaries, men desperately but imaginatively failing: an eye doctor who corrected vision by massage; a radio evangelist; a black-belt judo champion; a self-help organization for crippled veterans; dealers in pornographic books, in paper flowers, in fireworks, in plastic jewelry, in the artificial, in the artfully made, in the imitated, in the copied, in the stolen, the unreal, the perversion, the plastic, the schlak.

On the third floor the elevator opened and the young man, Ed Wolfe, stepped out.

He passed the Association for the Indians, passed Plasti-Pens, passed Coffin & Tombstone, passed Soldier Toys, passed Prayer-a-Day. He walked by the open door of C. Morris Brut, Chiropractor, and saw him, alone, standing at a mad attention, framed in the arching golden nimbus of his inverted name on the window, squeezing handballs.

He looked quickly away, but Dr. Brut saw him and came toward him, putting the handballs in his shirt pocket, where they bulged awkwardly. He held him by the elbow. Ed Wolfe looked down at the yellowing tile, infinitely diamonded, chipped, the floor of a public toilet, and saw Dr. Brut’s dusty shoes. He stared sadly at the jagged, broken glass of the mail chute.

“Ed Wolfe, take care of yourself,” Dr. Brut said.

“Right. ”

“Regard your position in life. A tall man like yourself looks terrible when he slumps. Don’t be a schlump. It’s not good for the organs.”

“I’ll watch it.”

“When the organs get out of line the man begins to die.”

“I know.”

“You say so. How many guys make promises. Brains in the brainpan. Balls in the strap. The bastards downtown.” Dr. Brut meant doctors in hospitals, in clinics, on boards, non-orphans with M.D. degrees and special license plates and respectable patients who had Blue Cross, charts, died in clean hospital rooms. They were the bastards downtown, his personal New Deal, his neighborhood Wall Street banker. A disease cartel. “They won’t tell you. The white bread kills you. The cigarettes. The whiskey. The sneakers. The high heels. They won’t tell you. Me, I’ll tell you.”

“I appreciate it.”

“Wise guy. Punk. I’m a friend. I give a father’s advice.”

“I’m an orphan.”

“I’ll adopt you.”

“I’m late to work.”

“We’ll open a clinic. ‘C. Morris Brut and Adopted Son.’ ”

“It’s something to think about.”

“Poetry,” Dr. Brut said and walked back to his office, his posture stiff, awkward, a man in a million who knew how to hold himself.

Ed Wolfe went on to his own office. The sad-faced telephone girl was saying, “Cornucopia Finance Corporation.” She pulled the wire out of the board and slipped her headset around her neck, where it hung like a delicate horse collar. “Mr. La Meck wants to see you. But don’t go in yet. He’s talking to somebody.”

He went toward his desk at one end of the big main office. Standing, fists on the desk, he turned to the girl, “What happened to my call cards?”

“Mr. La Meck took them,” she said.

“Give me the carbons,” Ed Wolfe said. “I’ve got to make some calls.”

The girl looked embarrassed. Her face went through a weird change, the sadness taking on an impossible burden of shame, so that she seemed massively tragic, like a hit-and-run driver. “I’ll get them,” she said, moving out of the chair heavily. Ed Wolfe thought of Dr. Brut.

He took the carbons and fanned them out on the desk, then picked one in an intense, random gesture like someone drawing a number on a public stage. He dialed rapidly.

As the phone buzzed brokenly in his ear he felt the old excitement. Someone at the other end greeted him sleepily.

“Mr. Flay? This is Ed Wolfe at Cornucopia Finance.” (Can you cope, can you cope? he hummed to himself.)

“Who?”

“Ed Wolfe. I’ve got an unpleasant duty,” he began pleasantly. “You’ve skipped two payments.”

“I didn’t skip nothing. I called the girl. She said it was okay.”

“That was three months ago. She meant it was all right to miss a few days. Listen, Mr. Flay, we’ve got that call recorded, too. Nothing gets by.”

I’m a little short.”

“Grow.”

“I couldn’t help it,” the man said. Ed Wolfe didn’t like the cringing tone. Petulance and anger he could meet with his own petulance, his own anger. But guilt would have to be met with his own guilt, and that, here, was irrelevant.

“Don’t con me, Flay. You’re a troublemaker. What are you, Flay, a Polish person? Flay isn’t a Polish name, but your address…”

“What’s that?”

“What are you? Are you Polish?”

“What’s that to you? What difference does it make?” That’s more like it, Ed Wolfe thought warmly.

“That’s what you are, Flay. You’re a Pole. It’s guys like you who give your race a bad name. Half our bugouts are Polish persons.”

“Listen. You can’t…”

He began to shout. “You listen. You wanted the car. The refrigerator. The chintzy furniture. The sectional you saw in the funny papers. And we paid for it, right?”

“Listen. The money I owe is one thing, the way…”

“We paid for it, right?”

“That doesn’t…”

“Right? Right?”

“Yes, you…”

“Okay. You’re in trouble, Warsaw. You’re in terrible trouble. It means a lien. A judgment. We’ve got lawyers. You’ve got nothing. We’ll pull the furniture the hell out of there. The car. Everything. ”

“Wait,” he said. “Listen, my brother-in-law….”

Ed Wolfe broke in sharply. “He’s got money?”

“I don’t know. A little. I don’t know.”

“Get it. If you’re short, grow. This is America.”

“I don’t know if he’ll let me have it.”

“Steal it. This is America. Good-by.”

“Wait a minute. Please.”

“That’s it. There are other Polish persons on my list. This time it was just a friendly warning. Cornucopia wants its money. Cornucopia. Can you cope? Can you cope? Just a friendly warning, Polish-American. Next time we come with the lawyers and the machine guns. Am I making myself clear?”

“I’ll try to get it to you.”

Ed Wolfe hung up. He pulled a handkerchief from his drawer and wiped his face. His chest was heaving. He took another call card. The girl came by and stood beside his desk. “Mr. La Meck can see you now,” she mourned.

“Later. I’m calling.” The number was already ringing.

“Please, Mr. Wolfe.”

“Later, I said. In a minute.” The girl went away. “Hello. Let me speak with your husband, madam. I am Ed Wolfe of Cornucopia Finance. He can’t cope. Your husband can’t cope.”

The woman made an excuse. “Put him on, goddamn it. We know he’s out of work. Nothing gets by. Nothing.”

There was a hand on the receiver beside his own, the wide male fingers pink and vaguely perfumed, the nails manicured. For a moment he struggled with it fitfully, as though the hand itself were all he had to contend with. Then he recognized La Meck and let go. La Meck pulled the phone quickly toward his mouth and spoke softly into it, words of apology, some ingenious excuse Ed Wolfe couldn’t hear. He put the receiver down beside the phone itself and Ed Wolfe picked it up and returned it to its cradle.

“Ed,” La Meck said, “come into the office with me.”

Ed Wolfe followed La Meck, his eyes on La Meck’s behind.

La Meck stopped at his office door. Looking around, he shook his head sadly, and Ed Wolfe nodded in agreement. La Meck let him enter first. While La Meck stood, Ed Wolfe could discern a kind of sadness in his slouch, but once the man was seated behind his desk he seemed restored, once again certain of the world’s soundness. “All right,” La Meck began, “I won’t lie to you. ”

Lie to me. Lie to me, Ed Wolfe prayed silently.

“You’re in here for me to fire you. You’re not being laid off. I’m not going to tell you that I think you’d be happier some place else, that the collection business isn’t your game, that profits don’t justify our keeping you around. Profits are terrific, and if collection isn’t your game it’s because you haven’t got a game. As far as your being happier some place else, that’s bullshit. You’re not supposed to be happy. It isn’t in the cards for you. You’re a fall-guy type, God bless you, and though I like you personally I’ve got no use for you in my office.”

I’d like to get you on the other end of a telephone some day, Ed Wolfe thought miserably.

“Don’t ask me for a reference,” La Meck said. “I couldn’t give you one.”

“No, no,” Ed Wolfe said. “I wouldn’t ask you for a reference.” A helpless civility was all he was capable of. If you’re going to suffer, suffer, he told himself.

“Look,” La Meck said, his tone changing, shifting from brutality to compassion as though there were no difference between the two, “you’ve got a kind of quality, a real feeling for collection. I’m frank to tell you, when you first came to work for us I figured you wouldn’t last. I put you on the phones because I wanted you to see the toughest part first. A lot of people can’t do it. You take a guy who’s already down and bury him deeper. It’s heart-wringing work. But you, you were amazing. An artist. You had a real thing for the deadbeat soul, I thought. But we started to get complaints, and I had to warn you. Didn’t I warn you? I should have suspected something when the delinquent accounts started to turn over again. It was like rancid butter turning sweet. So I don’t say this to knock your technique. Your technique’s terrific. With you around we could have laid off the lawyers. But Ed, you’re a gangster. A gangster.”

That’s it, Ed Wolfe thought. I’m a gangster. Babyface Wolfe at nobody’s door.

“Well,” La Meck said, “I guess we owe you some money.”

“Two weeks’ pay,” Ed Wolfe said.

“And two weeks in lieu of notice,” La Meck said grandly.

“And a week’s pay for my vacation.”

“You haven’t been here a year,” La Meck said.

“It would have been a year in another month. I’ve earned the vacation.”

“What the hell,” La Meck said. “A week’s pay for vacation.”

La Meck figured on a pad, and tearing off a sheet, handed it to Ed Wolfe. “Does that check with your figures?” he asked.

Ed Wolfe, who had no figures, was amazed to see that his check was so large. After the deductions he made $92.73 a week. Five $92.73’s was evidently $463.65. It was a lot of money. “That seems to be right,” he told La Meck.

La Meck gave him a check and Ed Wolfe got up. Already it was as though he had never worked there. When La Meck handed him the check he almost couldn’t think what it was for. There should have been a photographer there to record the ceremony: ORPHAN AWARDED CHECK BY BUSINESSMAN.

“Good-by, Mr. La Meck,” he said. “It has been an interesting association,” he added foolishly.

“Good-by, Ed,” La Meck answered, putting his arm around Ed Wolfe’s shoulders and leading him to the door. “I’m sorry it had to end this way.” He shook Ed Wolfe’s hand seriously and looked into his eyes. He had a hard grip.

Quantity and quality, Ed Wolfe thought.

“One thing, Ed. Watch yourself. Your mistake here was that you took the job too seriously. You hated the chiselers.”

No, no, I loved them, he thought.

“You’ve got to watch it. Don’t love. Don’t hate. That’s the secret. Detachment and caution. Look out for Ed Wolfe.”

“I’ll watch out for him,” he said giddily, and in a moment he was out of La Meck’s office, and the main office, and the elevator, and the building itself, loose in the world, as cautious and as detached as La Meck could want him.

He took the car from the parking lot, handing the attendant the two dollars. The man gave him back fifty cents. “That’s right,” Ed Wolfe said, “it’s only two o’clock.” He put the half-dollar in his pocket, and, on an impulse, took out his wallet. He had twelve dollars. He counted his change. Eighty-two cents. With his finger, on the dusty dashboard, he added $12.82 to $463.65. He had $476.47. Does that check with your figures? he asked himself and drove into the crowded traffic.

Proceeding slowly, past his old building, past garages, past bar-and-grills, past second-rate hotels, he followed the traffic further downtown. He drove into the deepest part of the city, down and downtown to the bottom, the foundation, the city’s navel. He watched the shoppers and tourists and messengers and men with appointments. He was tranquil, serene. It was something he could be content to do forever. He could use his check to buy gas, to take his meals at drive-in restaurants, to pay tolls. It would be a pleasant life, a great life, and he contemplated it thoughtfully. To drive at fifteen or twenty miles an hour through eternity, stopping at stoplights and signs, pulling over to the curb at the sound of sirens and the sight of funerals, obeying all traffic laws, making obedience to them his very code. Ed Wolfe, the Flying Dutchman, the Wandering Jew, the Off and Running Orphan, “Look Out for Ed Wolfe,” a ghostly wailing down the city’s corridors. What would be bad? he thought.

In the morning, out of habit, he dressed himself in a white shirt and light suit. Before he went downstairs he saw that his check and his twelve dollars were still in his wallet. Carefully he counted the eighty-two cents that he had placed on the dresser the night before, put the coins in his pocket, and went downstairs to his car.

Something green had been shoved under the wiper blade on the driver’s side.

YOUR CAR WILL NEVER BE WORTH MORE THAN IT IS WORTH RIGHT NOW! WHY WAIT FOR DEPRECIATION TO MAKE YOU AUTOMOTIVELY BANKRUPT? I WILL BUY THIS CAR AND PAY YOU CASH! I WILL NOT CHEAT YOU!

Ed Wolfe considered his car thoughtfully a moment and then got in. That day he drove through the city, playing the car radio softly. He heard the news on the hour and half-hour. He listened to Art Linkletter, far away and in another world. He heard Bing Crosby’s ancient voice, and thought sadly, Depreciation. When his tank was almost empty he thought wearily of having to have it filled and could see himself, bored and discontented behind the bug-stained glass, forced into a patience he did not feel, having to decide whether to take the Green Stamps the attendant tried to extend. Put money in your purse, Ed Wolfe, he thought. Cash! he thought with passion.

He went to the address on the circular.

He drove up onto the gravel lot but remained in his car. In a moment a man came out of a small wooden shack and walked toward Ed Wolfe’s car. If he was appraising it he gave no sign. He stood at the side of the automobile and waited while Ed Wolfe got out.

“Look around,” the man said. “No pennants, no strings of electric lights.” He saw the advertisement in Ed Wolfe’s hand. “I ran the ad off on my brother-in-law’s mimeograph. My kid stole the paper from his school.”

Ed Wolfe looked at him.

“The place looks like a goddamn parking lot. When the snow starts falling I get rid of the cars and move the Christmas trees in. No overhead. That’s the beauty of a volume business.”

Ed Wolfe looked pointedly at the nearly empty lot.

“That’s right,” the man said. “It’s slow. I’m giving the policy one more chance. Then I cheat the public just like everybody else. You’re just in time. Come on, I’ll show you a beautiful car.”

“I want to sell my car,” Ed Wolfe said.

“Sure, sure,” the man said. “You want to trade with me. I give top allowances. I play fair.”

“I want you to buy my car.”

The man looked at him closely. “What do you want? You want me to go into the office and put on the ten-gallon hat? It’s my only overhead, so I guess you’re entitled to see it. You’re paying for it. I put on this big frigging hat, see, and I become Texas Willie Waxelman, the Mad Cowboy. If that’s what you want, I can get it in a minute.”

It’s incredible, Ed Wolfe thought. There are bastards everywhere who hate other bastards downtown everywhere. “I don’t want to trade my car in,” he said. “I want to sell it. I, too, want to reduce my inventory.”

The man smiled sadly. “You want me to buy your car. You run in and put on the hat. I’m an automobile salesman, kid.”

“No, you’re not,” Ed Wolfe said. “I was with Cornucopia Finance. We handled your paper. You’re an automobile buyer. Your business is in buying up four- and five-year-old cars like mine from people who need dough fast and then auctioning them off to the trade.”

The man turned away and Ed Wolfe followed him. Inside the shack the man said, “I’ll give you two hundred.”

“I need six hundred,” Ed Wolfe said.

“I’ll lend you the hat. Hold up a goddamn stagecoach.”

“Give me five.”

“I’ll give you two-fifty and we’ll part friends.”

“Four hundred and fifty.”

“Three hundred. Here,” the man said, reaching his hand into an opened safe and taking out three sheaves of thick, banded bills. He held the money out to Ed Wolfe. “Go ahead, count it.”

Absently Ed Wolfe took the money. The bills were stiff, like money in a teller’s drawer, their value as decorous and untapped as a sheet of postage stamps. He held the money, pleased by its weight. “Tens and fives,” he said, grinning.

“You bet,” the man said, taking the money back. “You want to sell your car?”

“Yes,” Ed Wolfe said. “Give me the money,” he said hoarsely.

He had been to the bank, had stood in the patient, slow, money-conscious line, had presented his formidable check to the impassive teller, hoping the four hundred and sixty-three dollars and sixty-five cents she counted out would seem his week’s salary to the man who waited behind him. Fool, he thought, it will seem two weeks’ pay and two weeks in lieu of notice and a week for vacation for the hell of it, the three-week margin of an orphan.

“Thank you,” the teller said, already looking beyond Ed Wolfe to the man behind him.

“Wait,” Ed Wolfe said. “Here.” He handed her a white withdrawal slip.

She took it impatiently and walked to a file. “You’re closing your savings account?” she asked loudly.

“Yes,” Ed Wolfe answered, embarrassed.

“I’ll have a cashier’s check made out for this.”

“No, no,” Ed Wolfe said desperately. “Give me cash.”

“Sir, we make out a cashier’s check and cash it for you,” the teller explained.

“Oh,” Ed Wolfe said. “I see.”

When the teller had given him the two hundred fourteen dollars and twenty-three cents, he went to the next window, where he made out a check for $38.91. It was what he had in his checking account.

On Ed Wolfe’s kitchen table was a thousand dollars. That day he had spent one dollar and ninety cents. He had twenty-seven dollars and seventy-one cents in his pocket. For expenses. “For attrition,” he said aloud. “The cost of living. For streetcars and newspapers and half-gallons of milk and loaves of white bread. For the movies. For a cup of coffee.” He went to his pantry. He counted the cans and packages, the boxes and bottles. “The three weeks again,” he said. “The orphan’s nutritional margin.” He looked in his icebox. In the freezer he poked around among white packages of frozen meat. He looked brightly into the vegetable tray. A whole lettuce. Five tomatoes. Several slices of cucumber. Browning celery. On another shelf four bananas. Three and a half apples. A cut pineapple. Some grapes, loose and collapsing darkly in a white bowl. A quarter-pound of butter. A few eggs. Another egg, broken last week, congealing in a blue dish. Things in plastic bowls, in jars, forgotten, faintly mysterious leftovers, faintly rotten, vaguely futured, equivocal garbage. He closed the door, feeling a draft. “Really,” he said, “it’s quite cozy.” He looked at the thousand dollars on the kitchen table. “It’s not enough,” he said. “It’s not enough,” he shouted. “It’s not enough to be cautious on. La Meck, you bastard, detachment comes higher, what do you think? You think it’s cheap?” He raged against himself. It was the way he used to speak to people on the telephone. “Wake up. Orphan! Jerk! Wake up. It costs to be detached.”

He moved solidly through the small apartment and lay down on his bed with his shoes still on, putting his hands behind his head luxuriously. It’s marvelous, he thought. Tomorrow I’ll buy a trench coat. I’ll take my meals in piano bars. He lit a cigarette. I’ll never smile again,” he sang, smiling. “All right, Eddie, play it again,” he said. “Mistuh Wuf, you don’ wan’ ta heah dat ol’ song no maw. You know whut it do to you. She ain’ wuth it, Mistuh Wuf.” He nodded. “Again, Eddie.” Eddie played his black ass off. “The way I see it, Eddie,” he said, taking a long, sad drink of warm Scotch, “there are orphans and there are orphans.” The overhead fan chuffed slowly, stirring the potted palmetto leaves.

He sat up in the bed, grinding his heels across the sheets. “There are orphans and there are orphans,” he said. “I’ll move. I’ll liquidate. I’ll sell out.”

He went to the phone, called his landlady and made an appointment to see her.

It was a time of ruthless parting from his things, but there was no bitterness in it. He was a born salesman, he told himself. A disposer, a natural dumper. He administered severance. As detached as a funeral director, what he had learned was to say good-by. It was a talent of a sort. And he had never felt quite so interested. He supposed he was doing what he had been meant for — what, perhaps, everyone was meant for. He sold and he sold, each day spinning off little pieces of himself, like controlled explosions of the sun. Now his life was a series of speeches, of nearly earnest pitches. What he remembered of the day was what he had said. What others said to him, or even whether they spoke at all, he was unsure of.

Tuesday he told his landlady, “Buy my furniture. It’s new. It’s good stuff. It’s expensive. You can forget about that. Put it out of your mind. I want to sell it. I’ll show you bills for over seven hundred dollars. Forget the bills. Consider my character. Consider the man. Only the man. That’s how to get your bargains. Examine. Examine. I could tell you about inner springs; I could talk to you of leather. But I won’t. I don’t. I smoke, but I’m careful. I can show you the ashtrays. You won’t find cigarette holes in my tables. Examine. I drink. I’m a drinker. I drink. But I hold it. You won’t find alcohol stains. May I be frank? I make love. Again, I could show you the bills. But I’m cautious. My sheets are virginal, white.

“Two hundred fifty dollars, landlady. Sit on that sofa. That chair. Buy my furniture. Rent the apartment furnished. Deduct what you pay from your taxes. Collect additional rents. Realize enormous profits. Wallow in gravy. Get it, landlady? Get it, landlady! Two hundred fifty dollars. Don’t disclose the figure or my name. I want to remain anonymous.”

He took her into his bedroom. “The piece of resistance, landlady. What you’re really buying is the bedroom stuff. This is where I do all my dreaming. What do you think? Elegance. Elegance! I throw in the living-room rug. That I throw in. You have to take that or it’s no deal. Give me cash and I move tomorrow.”

Wednesday he said, “I heard you buy books. That must be interesting. And sad. It must be very sad. A man who loves books doesn’t like to sell them. It would be the last thing. Excuse me. I’ve got no right to talk to you this way. You buy books and I’ve got books to sell. There. It’s business now. As it should be. My library—” He smiled helplessly. “Excuse me. Such a grand name. Library.” He began again slowly. “My books, my books are in there. Look them over. I’m afraid my taste has been rather eclectic. You see, my education has not been formal. There are over eleven hundred. Of course, many are paperbacks. Well, you can see that. I feel as if I’m selling my mind.”

The book buyer gave Ed Wolfe one hundred twenty dollars for his mind.

On Thursday he wrote a letter:

American Annuity & Life Insurance Company,

Suite 410,

Lipton-Hill Building,

2007 Beverly Street, S.W.,

Boston 19, Massachusetts

Dear Sirs,

I am writing in regard to Policy Number 593-000-34-78, a $5,000, twenty-year annuity held by Edward Wolfe of the address below.

Although only four payments have been made, and sixteen years remain before the policy matures, I find I must make application for the immediate return of my payments and cancel the policy.

I have read the “In event of cancellation” clause in my policy, and realize that I am entitled to only a flat three percent interest on the “total paid-in amount of the partial amortizement.” Your records will show that I have made four payments of $198.45 each. If your figures check with mine this would come to $793.80. Adding three percent interest to this amount ($23.81.), your company owes me $817.61.

Your prompt attention to my request would be gratefully appreciated, although I feel, frankly, as though I were selling my future.

On Monday someone came to buy his record collection. “What do you want to hear? I’ll put something comfortable on while we talk. What do you like? Here, try this. Go ahead, put it on the machine. By the edges, man. By the edges! I feel as if I’m selling my throat. Never mind about that. Dig the sounds. Orphans up from Orleans singing the news of chain gangs to cafe society. You can smell the freight trains, man. Recorded during actual performance. You can hear the ice cubes clinkin’ in the glasses, the waiters picking up their tips. I have jazz. Folk. Classical. Broadway. Spoken word. Spoken word, man! I feel as though I’m selling my ears. The stuff lives in my heart or I wouldn’t sell. I have a one-price throat, one-price ears. Sixty dollars for the noise the world makes, man. But remember, I’ll be watching. By the edges. Only by the edges!”

On Friday he went to a pawnshop in a Checker cab.

“You? You buy gold? You buy clothes? You buy Hawaiian guitars? You buy pistols for resale to suicides? I wouldn’t have recognized you. Where’s the skullcap, the garters around the sleeves? The cigar I wouldn’t ask you about. You look like anybody. You look like everybody. I don’t know what to say. I’m stuck. I don’t know how to deal with you. I was going to tell you something sordid, you know? You know what I mean? Okay, I’ll give you facts.

“The fact is, I’m the average man. That’s what the fact is. Eleven shirts, 15 neck, 34 sleeve. Six slacks, 32 waist. Five suits at 38 long. Shoes 10-C. A 7½ hat. You know something? Those marginal restaurants where you can never remember whether they’ll let you in without a jacket? Well, the jackets they lend you in those places always fit me. That’s the kind of guy you’re dealing with. You can have confidence. Look at the clothes. Feel the material. And there’s one thing about me. I’m fastidious. Fastidious. Immaculate. You think I’d be clumsy. A fall guy falls down, right? There’s not a mark on the clothes. Inside? Inside it’s another story. I don’t speak of inside. Inside it’s all Band-Aids, plaster, iodine, sticky stuff for burns. But outside — fastidiousness, immaculation, reality! My clothes will fly off your racks. I promise. I feel as if I’m selling my skin. Does that check with your figures?

“So now you know. It’s me, Ed Wolfe. Ed Wolfe, the orphan? I lived in the orphanage for sixteen years. They gave me a name. It was a Jewish orphanage, so they gave me a Jewish name. Almost. That is, they couldn’t know for sure themselves, so they kept it deliberately vague. I’m a foundling. A lostling. Who needs it, right? Who the hell needs it? I’m at loose ends, pawnbroker. I’m at loose ends out of looser beginnings. I need the money to stay alive. All you can give me.

“Here’s a good watch. Here’s a bad one. For good times and bad. That’s life, right? You can sell them as a package deal. Here are radios. You like Art Linkletter? A phonograph. Automatic. Three speeds. Two speakers. One thing and another thing, see? And a pressure cooker. It’s valueless to me, frankly. No pressure. I can live only on cold meals. Spartan. Spartan.

“I feel as if I’m selling — this is the last of it, I have no more things — I feel as if I’m selling my things.”

On Saturday he called the phone company: “Operator? Let me speak to your supervisor, please.

“Supervisor? Supervisor, I am Ed Wolfe, your subscriber at TErrace 7-3572. There is nothing wrong with the service. The service has been excellent. No one calls, but you have nothing to do with that. However, I must cancel. I find that I no longer have any need of a telephone. Please connect me with the business office.

“Business office? Business office, this is Ed Wolfe. My telephone number is TErrace 7-3572. I am closing my account with you. When the service was first installed I had to surrender a twenty-five-dollar deposit to your company. It was understood that the deposit was to be refunded when our connection with each other had been terminated. Disconnect me. Deduct what I owe on my current account from my deposit and refund the rest immediately. Business office, I feel as if I’m selling my mouth.”

When he had nothing left to sell, when that was finally that, he stayed until he had finished all the food and then moved from his old apartment into a small, thinly furnished room. He took with him a single carton of clothing — the suit, the few shirts, the socks, the pajamas, the underwear and overcoat he did not sell. It was in preparing this carton that he discovered the hangers. There were hundreds of them. His own, previous tenants’. Hundreds. In each closet, on rods, in dark, dark corners, was this anonymous residue of all their lives. He unpacked his carton and put the hangers inside. They made a weight. He took them to the pawnshop and demanded a dollar for them. They were worth more, he argued. In an A&P he got another carton for nothing and went back to repack his clothes.

At the new place the landlord gave him his key.

“You got anything else?” the landlord asked. “I could give you a hand.”

“No,” he said. “Nothing.”

Following the landlord up the deep stairs he was conscious of the $2,479.03 he had packed into the pockets of the suit and shirts and pajamas and overcoat inside the carton. It was like carrying a community of economically viable dolls.

When the landlord left him he opened the carton and gathered all his money together. In fading light he reviewed the figures he had entered in the pages of an old spiral notebook:

So, he thought, that was what he was worth. That was the going rate for orphans in a wicked world. Something under $2,500. He took his pencil and crossed out all the nouns on his list. He tore the list carefully from top to bottom and crumpled the half which inventoried his ex-possessions. Then he crumpled the other half.

He went to the window and pushed aside the loose, broken shade. He opened the window and set both lists on the ledge. He made a ring of his forefinger and thumb and flicked the paper balls into the street. “Look out for Ed Wolfe,” he said softly.

In six weeks the season changed. The afternoons failed. The steam failed. He was as unafraid of the dark as he had been of the sunlight. He longed for a special grief, to be touched by anguish or terror, but when he saw the others in the street, in the cafeteria, in the theater, in the hallway, on the stairs, at the newsstand, in the basement rushing their fouled linen from basket to machine, he stood, as indifferent to their errand, their appetite, their joy, their greeting, their effort, their curiosity, their grime, as he was to his own. No envy wrenched him, no despair unhoped him, but, gradually, he became restless.

He began to spend, not recklessly so much as indifferently. At first he was able to recall for weeks what he spent on a given day. It was his way of telling time. Now he had difficulty remembering, and could tell how much his life was costing only by subtracting what he had left from his original two thousand four hundred seventy-nine dollars and three cents. In eleven weeks he had spent six hundred and seventy-seven dollars and thirty-four cents. It was almost three times more than he had planned. He became panicky. He had come to think of his money as his life. Spending it was the abrasion again, the old habit of self-buffing to come to the thing beneath. He could not draw infinitely on his credit. It was limited. Limited. He checked his figures. He had eighteen hundred and one dollars, sixty-nine cents. He warned himself, “Rothschild, child. Rockefeller, feller. Look out, Ed Wolfe. Look out.”

He argued with his landlord and won a five-dollar reduction in his rent. He was constantly hungry, wore clothes stingily, realized an odd reassurance in his thin pain, his vague fetidness. He surrendered his dimes, his quarters, his half-dollars in a kind of sober anger. In seven more weeks he spent only one hundred and thirty dollars and fifty-one cents. He checked his figures. He had sixteen hundred seventy-one dollars, eighteen cents. He had spent almost twice what he had anticipated. “It’s all right,” he said. “I’ve reversed the trend. I can catch up.” He held the money in his hand. He could smell his soiled underwear. “Nah, nah,” he said. “It’s not enough.”

It was not enough, it was not enough, it was not enough. He had painted himself into a corner. Death by cul-de-sac. He had nothing left to sell, the born salesman. The born champion, long distance, Ed Wolfe of a salesman lay in his room, winded, wounded, wondering where his next pitch was coming from, at one with the ages.

He put on his suit, took his sixteen hundred seventy-one dollars and eighteen cents and went down into the street. It was a warm night. He would walk downtown. The ice which just days before had covered the sidewalk was dissolved to slush. In darkness he walked through a thawing, melting world. There was something on the edge of the air, the warm, moist odor of the change of the season. He was touched despite himself. “I’ll take a bus,” he threatened. “I’ll take a bus and close the windows and ride over the wheel.”

He had dinner and some drinks in a hotel. When he finished he was feeling pretty good. He didn’t want to go back. He looked at the bills thick in his wallet and went over to the desk clerk. “Where’s the action?” he whispered. The clerk looked at him, startled. He went over to the bell captain. “Where’s the action?” he asked and gave the man a dollar. He winked. The man stared at him helplessly.

“Sir?” the bell captain said, looking at the dollar.

Ed Wolfe nudged him in his gold buttons. He winked again. “Nice town you got here,” he said expansively. “I’m a salesman, you understand, and this is new territory for me. Now if I were in Beantown or Philly or L.A. or Vegas or Big D or Frisco or Cincy — why, I’d know what was what. I’d be okay, know what I mean?” He winked once more. “Keep the buck, kid,” he said. “Keep it, keep it,” he said, walking off.

In the lobby a man sat in a deep chair, The Wall Street Journal opened wide across his face. “Where’s the action?” Ed Wolfe said, peering over the top of the paper into the crown of the man’s hat.

“What’s that?” the man asked.

Ed Wolfe, surprised, saw that the man was a Negro.

“What’s that?” the man repeated, vaguely nervous. Embarrassed, Ed Wolfe watched him guiltily, as though he had been caught in an act of bigotry.

“I thought you were someone else,” he said lamely. The man smiled and lifted the paper to his face. Ed Wolfe stood before the opened paper, conscious of mildly teetering. He felt lousy, awkward, complicatedly irritated and ashamed, the mere act of hurting someone’s feelings suddenly the most that could be held against him. It came to him how completely he had failed to make himself felt. “Look out for Ed Wolfe, indeed,” he said aloud. The man lowered his paper. “Some of my best friends are Comanches,” Ed Wolfe said. “Can I buy you a drink?”

“No,” the man said.

“Resistance, eh?” Ed Wolfe said. “That’s good. Resistance is good. A deal closed without resistance is no deal. Let me introduce myself. I’m Ed Wolfe. What’s your name?

“Please, I’m not bothering anybody. Leave me alone.”

“Why?” Ed Wolfe asked.

The man stared at him and Ed Wolfe sat suddenly down beside him. “I won’t press it,” he said generously. “Where’s the action? Where is it? Fold the paper, man. You’re playing somebody else’s gig.” He leaned across the space between them and took the man by the arm. He pulled at him gently, awed by his own boldness. It was the first time since he had shaken hands with La Meck that he had touched anyone physically. What he was risking surprised and puzzled him. In all those months to have touched only two people, to have touched even two people! To feel their life, even, as now, through the unyielding wool of clothing, was disturbing. He was unused to it, frightened and oddly moved. Bewildered, the man looked at Ed Wolfe timidly and allowed himself to be taken toward the cocktail lounge.

They took a table near the bar. There, in the alcoholic dark, within earshot of the easy banter of the regulars, Ed Wolfe seated the Negro and then himself. He looked around the room and listened for a moment, then turned back to the Negro. Smoothly boozy, he pledged the man’s health when the girl brought their drinks. He drank stolidly, abstractedly. Coming to life briefly, he indicated the men and women around them, their suntans apparent even in the dark. “Pilots,” he said. “All of them. Airline pilots. The girls are all stewardesses and the pilots lay them.” He ordered more drinks. He did not like liquor, and liberally poured ginger ale into his bourbon. He ordered more drinks and forgot the ginger ale. “Goyim,” he said. “White goyim. American goyim.” He stared at the Negro. He leaned across the table. “Little Orphan Annie, what the hell kind of an orphan is that with all her millions and her white American goyim friends to bail her out?”

He watched them narrowly, drunkenly. He had seen them before — in good motels, in airports, in bars — and he wondered about them, seeing them, he supposed, as Negroes or children of the poor must have seen him when he had sometimes driven his car through slums.They were removed, aloof — he meant it — a different breed. He turned and saw the Negro, and could not think for a moment what the man was doing there. The Negro slouched in his chair, his great white eyes hooded. “You want to hang around here?” Ed Wolfe asked him.

“It’s your party,” the man said.

“Then let’s go some place else,” Ed Wolfe said. “I get nervous here.”

“I know a place,” the Negro said.

“You know a place. You’re a stranger here.”

“No, man,” the Negro said. “This is my home town. I come down here sometimes just to sit in the lobby and read the newspapers. It looks good, you know what I mean? It looks good for the race.”

“The Wall Street Journal? You’re kidding Ed Wolfe. Watch that. ”

“No,” the Negro said. “Honest.”

“I’ll be damned,” Ed Wolfe said. “I come for the same reasons.”

“Yeah,” the Negro said. “No shit?”

“Sure, the same reasons.” He laughed. “Let’s get out of here.” He tried to stand, but fell back again in his chair. “Hey, help me up,” he said loudly. The Negro got up and came around to Ed Wolfe’s side of the table. Leaning over, he raised him to his feet. Some of the others in the room looked at them curiously. “It’s all right,” Ed Wolfe said. “He’s my man. I take him with me everywhere. It looks good for the race.” With their arms around each other’s shoulders they stumbled out of the bar and through the lobby.

In the street Ed Wolfe leaned against the building, and the Negro hailed a cab, the dark left hand shooting up boldly, the long black body stretching forward, raised on tiptoes, the head turned sharply along the left shoulder. Ed Wolfe knew that he had never done it before. The Negro came up beside him and guided Ed Wolfe toward the curb. Holding the door open, he shoved him into the cab with his left hand. Ed Wolfe lurched against the cushioned seat awkwardly. The Negro gave the driver an address and the cab moved off. Ed Wolfe reached for the window handle and rolled it down rapidly. He shoved his head out the window of the taxi and smiled and waved at the people along the curb.

“Hey, man, close the window,” the Negro said after a moment. “Close the window. The cops, the cops.”

Ed Wolfe laid his head on the edge of the taxi window and looked up at the Negro, who was leaning over him, smiling; he seemed to be trying to tell him something.

“Where we going, man?” Ed Wolfe asked.

“We’re there,” the Negro said, sliding along the seat toward the door.

“One ninety-five,” the driver said.

“It’s your party,” Ed Wolfe told the Negro, waving away responsibility.

The Negro looked disappointed, but reached into his pocket.

Did he see what I had on me? Ed Wolfe wondered anxiously. Jerk, drunk, you’ll be rolled. They’ll cut your throat and leave your skin in an alley. Be careful.

“Come on, Ed,” the Negro said. He took Ed Wolfe by the arm and got him out of the taxi.

Fake. Fake, Ed Wolfe thought. Murderer. Nigger. Razor man.

The Negro pulled him toward a doorway. “You’ll meet my friends,” he said.

“Yeah, yeah,” Ed Wolfe said. “I’ve heard so much about them.”

“Hold it a second,” the Negro said. He went up to the window and pressed his ear against the opaque glass.

Ed Wolfe watched him without making a move.

“Here’s the place,” the Negro said proudly.

“Sure,” Ed Wolfe said. “Sure it is.”

“Come on, man,” the Negro urged him.

“I’m coming, I’m coming,” Ed Wolfe said. “But my head is bending low,” he mumbled.

The Negro took out a ring of keys, selected one and put it in the door. Ed Wolfe followed him through.

“Hey, Oliver,” somebody called. “Hey, baby, it’s Oliver. Oliver looks good. He looks good.”

“Hello, Mopiani,” the Negro said to a short black man.

“How is stuff, Oliver?” Mopiani said to him.

“How’s the market?” a man next to Mopiani asked, with a laugh.

“Ain’t no mahket, baby. It’s a sto’,” somebody else said.

A woman stopped, looked at Ed Wolfe for a moment, and asked, “Who’s the ofay, Oliver?”

“That’s Oliver’s broker, baby.”

“Oliver’s broker looks good,” Mopiani said. “He looks good.”

“This is my friend, Mr. Ed Wolfe,” Oliver told them.

“Hey there,” Mopiani said.

“Charmed,” Ed Wolfe said.

“How’s it going, man,” a Negro said indifferently.

“Delighted,” Ed Wolfe said.

He let Oliver lead him to a table.

“I’ll get the drinks, Ed,” Oliver said, leaving him.

Ed Wolfe looked at the room glumly. People were drinking steadily, gaily. They kept their bottles under their chairs in paper bags. He watched a man take a bag from beneath his chair, raise it and twist the open end of the bag carefully around the neck of the bottle so that it resembled a bottle of champagne swaddled in its toweling. The man poured liquor into his glass grandly. At the dark far end of the room some musicians were playing and three or four couples danced dreamily in front of them. He watched the musicians closely and was vaguely reminded of the airline pilots.

In a few minutes Oliver returned with a paper bag and some glasses. A girl was with him. “Mary Roberta, Ed Wolfe,” he said, very pleased. Ed Wolfe stood up clumsily and the girl nodded.

“No more ice,” Oliver explained.

“What the hell,” Ed Wolfe said.

Mary Roberta sat down and Oliver pushed her chair up to the table. She sat with her hands in her lap and Oliver pushed her as though she were a cripple.

“Real nice little place here, Ollie,” Ed Wolfe said.

“Oh, it’s just the club,” Oliver said.

“Real nice,” Ed Wolfe said.

Oliver opened the bottle, then poured liquor into their glasses and put the paper bag under his chair. Oliver raised his glass. Ed Wolfe touched it lamely with his own and leaned back, drinking. When he put it down empty, Oliver filled it again from the paper bag. Ed Wolfe drank sluggishly, like one falling asleep, and listened, numbed, to Oliver and the girl. His glass never seemed to be empty any more. He drank steadily, but the liquor seemed to remain at the same level in the glass. He was conscious that someone else had joined them at the table. “Oliver’s broker looks good,” he heard somebody say. Mopiani. Warm and drowsy and gently detached, he listened, feeling as he had in barbershops, having his hair cut, conscious of the barber, unseen behind him, touching his hair and scalp with his warm fingers. “You see, Bert? He looks good,” Mopiani was saying.

With great effort Ed Wolfe shifted in his chair, turning to the girl.

“Thought you were giving out on us, Ed,” Oliver said. “That’s it. That’s it.”

The girl sat with her hands folded in her lap.

“Mary Roberta,” Ed Wolfe said.

“Uh huh,” the girl said.

“Mary Roberta.”

“Yes,” the girl said. “That’s right.”

“You want to dance?” Ed Wolfe asked.

“All right,” she said. “I guess so.”

“That’s it, that’s it,” Oliver said. “Stir yourself.”

Ed Wolfe rose clumsily, cautiously, like one standing in a stalled Ferris wheel, and went around behind her chair, pulling it far back from the table with the girl in it. He took her warm, bare arm and moved toward the dancers. Mopiani passed them with a bottle. “Looks good, looks good,” Mopiani said approvingly. He pulled her against him to let Mopiani pass, tightening the grip of his pale hand on her brown arm. A muscle leaped beneath the girl’s smooth skin, filling his palm. At the edge of the dance floor he leaned forward into the girl’s arms and they moved slowly, thickly across the floor. He held the girl close, conscious of her weight, the life beneath her body, just under her skin. Sick, he remembered a jumping bean he had held once in his palm, awed and frightened by the invisible life, jerking and hysterical, inside the stony shell. The girl moved with him in the music, Ed Wolfe astonished by the burden of her life. He stumbled away from her deliberately. Grinning, he moved un-gently back against her. “Look out for Ed Wolfe,” he crooned.

The girl stiffened and held him away from her, dancing self-consciously. Brooding, Ed Wolfe tried to concentrate on the lost rhythm. They danced in silence for a while.

“What do you do?” she asked him finally.

“I’m a salesman,” he told her gloomily.

“Door to door?”

“Floor to ceiling. Wall to wall.”

“Too much,” she said.

“I’m a pusher,” he said, suddenly angry. She looked frightened. “But I’m not hooked myself. It’s a weakness in my character. I can’t get hooked. Ach, what would you goyim know about it?”

“Take it easy,” she said. “What’s the matter with you? Do you want to sit down?”

“I can’t push sitting down,” he said.

“Hey,” she said, “don’t talk so loud.”

“Boy,” he said, “you black Protestants. What’s that song you people sing?”

“Come on,” she said.

“Sometimes I feel like a motherless child,” he sang roughly. The other dancers watched him nervously. “That’s our national anthem, man,” he said to a couple that had stopped dancing to look at him. “That’s our song, sweethearts,” he said, looking around him. “All right, mine then. I’m an orphan.”

“Oh, come on,” the girl said, exasperated, “an orphan. A grown man.”

He pulled away from her. The band stopped playing. “Hell,” he said loudly, “from the beginning. Orphan. Bachelor. Widower. Only child. All my names scorn me. I’m a survivor. I’m a goddamned survivor, that’s what.” The other couples crowded around him now. People got up from their tables. He could see them, on tiptoes, stretching their necks over the heads of the dancers. No, he thought. No, no. Detachment and caution. The La Meck Plan. They’ll kill you. They’ll kill you and kill you. He edged away from them, moving carefully backward against the bandstand. People pushed forward onto the dance floor to watch him. He could hear their questions, could see heads darting from behind backs and suddenly appearing over shoulders as they strained to get a look at him.

He grabbed Mary Roberta’s hand, pulling her to him fiercely. He pulled and pushed her up onto the bandstand and then climbed up beside her. The trumpet player, bewildered, made room for him. “Tell you what I’m going to do,” he shouted over their heads. “Tell you what I’m going to do.”

Everyone was listening to him now.

“Tell you what I’m going to do,” he began again.

Quietly they waited for him to go on.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do,” he shouted. “I don’t know what I’m going to do. Isn’t that a hell of a note?

“Isn’t it?” he demanded.

“Brothers and sisters,” he shouted, “and as an only child bachelor orphan I use the term playfully, you understand. Brothers and sisters, I tell you what I’m not going to do. I’m no consumer. Nobody’s death can make me that. I won’t consume. I mean, it’s a question of identity, right? Closer, come up closer, buddies. You don’t want to miss any of this.”

“Oliver’s broker looks good up there. Mary Roberta looks good. She looks good,” Mopiani said below him.

“Right, Mopiani. She looks good, she looks good,” Ed Wolfe called loudly. “So I tell you what I’m going to do. What am I bid? What am I bid for this fine strong wench? Daughter of a chief, masters. Dear dark daughter of a dead dinge chief. Look at those arms. Those arms, those arms. What am I bid?”

They looked at him, astonished.

“What am I bid?” he demanded. “Reluctant, masters? Reluctant masters, masters? Say, what’s the matter with you darkies? Come on, what am I bid?” He turned to the girl. “No one wants you, honey,” he said. “Folks, folks, I’d buy her myself, but I’ve already told you. I’m not a consumer. Please forgive me, miss.”

He heard them shifting uncomfortably.

“Look,” he said patiently, “the management has asked me to remind you that this is a living human being. This is the real thing, the genuine article, the goods. Oh, I told them I wasn’t the right man for this job. As an orphan I have no conviction about the product. Now, you should have seen me in my old job. I could be rough. Rough! I hurt people. Can you imagine? I actually caused them pain. I mean, what the hell, I was an orphan. I could hurt people. An orphan doesn’t have to bother with love. An orphan’s like a nigger in that respect. Emancipated. But you people are another problem entirely. That’s why I came here tonight. There are parents among you. I can feel it. There’s even a sense of parents behind those parents. My God, don’t any of you folks ever die? So what’s holding us up? We’re not making any money. Come on, what am I bid?”

“Shut up, mister.” The voice was raised hollowly some place in the back of the crowd.

Ed Wolfe could not see the owner of the voice.

“He’s not in,” Ed Wolfe said.

“Shut up. What right you got to come down here and speak to us like that?”

“He’s not in, I tell you. I’m his brother.”

“You’re a guest. A guest got no call to talk like that.”

“He’s out. I’m his father. He didn’t tell me and I don’t know when he’ll be back.”

“You can’t make fun of us,” the voice said.

“He isn’t here. I’m his son.”

“Bring that girl down off that stage!”

“Speaking,” Ed Wolfe said brightly.

“Let go of that girl!” someone called angrily.

The girl moved closer to him.

“She’s mine,” Ed Wolfe said. “I danced with her.”

“Get her down from there!”

“Okay,” he said giddily. “Okay. All right.” He let go of the girl’s hand and pulled out his wallet. The girl did not move. He took out the bills and dropped the wallet to the floor.

“Damned drunk!” someone shouted.

“That whitey’s crazy,” someone else said.

“Here,” Ed Wolfe said. “There’s over sixteen hundred dollars here,” he yelled, waving the money. It was, for him, like holding so much paper. “I’ll start the bidding. I hear over sixteen hundred dollars once. I hear over sixteen hundred dollars twice. I hear it three times. Sold! A deal’s a deal,” he cried, flinging the money high over their heads. He saw them reach helplessly, noiselessly toward the bills, heard distinctly the sound of paper tearing.

He faced the girl. “Good-by,” he said.

She reached forward, taking his hand.

“Good-by,” he said again, “I’m leaving.”

She held his hand, squeezing it. He looked down at the luxuriant brown hand, seeing beneath it the fine articulation of bones, the rich sudden rush of muscle. Inside her own he saw, indifferently, his own pale hand, lifeless and serene, still and infinitely free.