I never liked Roy, and I didn’t think Elsie liked Nancy going around with him any more than I did, but she wasn’t going to say anything bad about him. I figured that Nancy probably felt sorry for Roy on account of he had only one arm, like she’d felt sorry for Mr. Winkley because he had only one eye. When Mr. Winkley was living out on the street and he had pneumonia, Nancy took him in. He went in and out her window. Elsie didn’t know about Mr. Winkley, and I wasn’t going to tell her. I was sorry that Mr. Winkley only had one eye, but I wasn’t sorry for Roy, because he caused enough trouble with one arm that he didn’t need another one.
“I’ll tell that Roy he better stay away from her if he knows what’s good for him,” I said. I never did like that Roy.
“You’ll tell him no such thing, Willy. You just stay away from him. Did you hear what I just said?”
“Yeah.”
We watched TV with the sound off, and I thought, Roy has been bothering Nancy.
“She’s lost weight,” Elsie said.
“I know,” I said. “She’s not happy like she used to be.”
“She said her door was sticking. You told me you fixed it.”
“I did. I put on a new deadbolt just last week.”
“And she said the hinges were loose. When she gets back from work, would you take a look at it?”
“Yup.”
“Talk to her, Willy. See if you can find out what’s troubling her.”
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll find out and let you know right away, Elsie.” I liked to find out things for her.
We were looking at the TV. I was thinking that maybe Elsie had forgotten the soup, but I didn’t want her to think I was hinting for her to give me some, so I didn’t say anything.
“She has a steady day job,” Elsie said. “She pays her rent on time every week.”
I wanted to get her off the subject of rent.
“She’s got a bank account,” I said. “She told Gladys, and Gladys told me, that she had a thousand dollars in it.”
“Well I shouldn’t be at all surprised; and she’s only twenty-one. Nancy’s a nice young woman.”
“Yup.”
“You’re a young man. What are you, nineteen or twenty?”
“I guess. You don’t want to burn your soup,” I said. “Are you going to have lunch?”
“You can still make something of your life.”
“Yeah, sure.”
“Why won’t you apply for a job at the restaurant?”
Elsie was always nagging me about getting a job. Her brother ran a diner a few blocks from The Morpheum. Stanley worked there part time for Elsie’s brother, washing dishes. I figured that if I went to work for Elsie’s brother, any money he paid me I’d have to pay right back to Elsie for rent and then for all I knew she’d give it right back to her brother, and that didn’t seem fair to me.
“It’s honest work,” she said. “I think that a nice young woman, like Nancy, would be wanting for some young man, I mean a nice young man who worked and had some money in his pocket, to take her to see a movie. If I was a young woman, that’s what I’d want.”
She was trying to fix me up with Nancy. I didn’t think I could ever ask Nancy out; not that I hadn’t thought about it. I liked Nancy a lot, but she was way up there and I was way down here. She never made you feel that way, though. It’s just that I saw her as like an angel or something, and I was—well …
“I’m not the guy for her,” I said.
“You paid your debt to society, Willy.”
“Yeah.” I’d paid and then some. Up society’s, I thought.
“She won’t wait forever, what with all the nice young working men there are today. A young woman expects a young man to express his feelings and not keep them inside; and as pretty and sensible, as nice a young woman as Nancy is—time waits for no man.”
Elsie didn’t understand. A girl like Nancy, I’d only drag her down, and I didn’t want that.
“Now don’t forget, when Nancy gets home, to fix her door. Talk to her, Willy. She needs someone to talk to.”
I had a lot of things to do outside and she wasn’t going to give me any soup, so I left.
The sun was bright that day and I couldn’t see anything at first. I waited on the sidewalk until my eyes got used to the light, facing the building with my back to the sun, looking through a big window that had tape on it. The room was empty except there was a table with a red squeeze bottle that was a chef with a pointy hat where catsup came out. He was always there grinning at you. It must have been a lunch place once.
After I got done looking at the chef I walked around town for a long time, but all I found was a blue jay feather. Then right away I found some jelly doughnuts in back of the bakery, and a dime and a nickel underneath the machines at the Laundromat.
I was walking along minding my own business and eating a jelly doughnut when some guy tried to jump me down by the river. It was some guy I’d seen around town and I thought he’d been following me. He said something when I walked by, asked me if I had a cigarette, and I didn’t like the way he said it. I figured he was planning to jump me. I went over to ask him what he was looking at and he gave me a dirty look so I went to smack him and he pushed me into the river and shook his fist and walked off. Now that I think about it, maybe he’d only wanted a cigarette. Still, a guy could grab your wrist when you’re handing him a cigarette, and there might be another guy in the bushes. I thought the guy might be going to jump me.
When I was done walking I went in the alley out back of The Morpheum to see if Mr. Winkley was out there, and he was sitting on top of the dumpster looking up the fire escape at Nancy’s window.
“I’m waiting for her too,” I said. I don’t usually talk to cats, though. “I’m going to fix her door.”
He stood up and began turning around in circles on top of the dumpster and meowing.
“I just got jumped,” I said.
He went into the dumpster and started hopping around on top of the trash. Then he stopped and stared at the trash that was in there.
“I smacked the guy,” I said.
We all figured that Mr Winkley had probably lost his eye in a fight. Before Nancy had him fixed he got into fights all the time, but he lost most of them. You kind of hate to do that to them, but you can’t live with them any other way, and they fight and get in trouble all the time. After his operation he didn’t fight as much.
It must have been a mouse in the dumpster. Mr Winkley stood still and waited. He probably figured that the mouse would forget he was there, and come back out.
He waited for a while but the mouse didn’t come back, and he hopped back out, sat down again on top of the dumpster, and started butting the side of his head against my hand and purring.
“If I had just kept on walking, then maybe he wouldn’t have jumped me,” I said.
Mr Winkley was washing his face and then he stopped and looked up at the window. He jumped from the dumpster onto the fire escape, ran up and went through the hole in the screen. Nancy was home.
I headed back. Stanley was standing on the sidewalk in front