Boswell by Stanley Elkin

Boswell.”
    “Come in. The door’s not locked.”
    Penner was frying eggs on a hot plate. The coil looked barely warm. “It takes a half hour,” he said, “but they’re usually delicious.”
    I nodded. There was only one bed and we were both big men. I wondered where I would sleep.
    “Did he throw you out?” Penner asked.
    “What?”
    “Your uncle. Did he throw you out?”
    “No. I think I left on my own. Maybe it was both.”
    Penner took the pan off the hot plate and stuck a fork into the eggs. He ate them out of the pan. “Out of the frying pan into my mouth,” he said with his mouth full of yellow egg. “Sorry I haven’t got any more or I’d offer you something. You’ve probably eaten, though. It’s pretty late.”
    As a matter of fact I hadn’t, but it was pretty late. I made allowances, as I always do for my hosts. Whatever it was that had been upsetting Penner when I spoke to him on the phone, he seemed pretty jaunty now. “How long do you think you’ll need the place?” he said.
    I told him it would be a terrific favor if he could let me stay three days. I hadn’t the slightest idea where I would go after that, but things happen.
    “Three days,” he said as though that were what he was chewing in his mouth. “Three days. We’ll, well see.”
    This was some Penner, I thought. Well, we’ll see, indeed. He was pretty sprightly about other people’s troubles. I am not a rude man. I decided to let him control the moods in that small room. I told him about the car lift. I made it very funny, but Penner didn’t laugh. I resented his indifference, but then I wondered where I got it, my resentment, my expectations of how people ought to act, to me and to each other. What was I? A booted- around guy who since age seven had never managed to run up more than four years in any one place. A guest in my own family, for God’s sake. How would I know anything about these things?
    But I knew, all right. Penner was being lousy. And I knew this because whatever else I am or am not, I am a social person. I came into the world knowing.
    I let Penner finish his eggs. They took as long to eat as they did to make. When he finished he went over to a tiny washstand in the corner of the room and rinsed out his pan. Then he took a coffee pot from behind a green-cloth-covered apple crate and put in some water and a single tablespoon of coffee. “There’s only the coil,” he said, “so if I make eggs I have to eat them before I make the coffee.”
    “I see.”
    “It makes for a long meal. Aids digestion.”
    “It would.”
    “Just one coil, one cup of coffee, one room, one closet, one bed, one faucet in the sink. And me, I’m single,” he said. “Simplicity. Functional, right?”
    “Listen,” I said, “you could have told me on the phone. I don’t want to put you to any trouble. I’ve got a key to the gym. I’ll sleep there.”
    “No, no,” Penner said. “Don’t be silly. Are you putting me to any trouble?”
    I had to admit that I didn’t seem to be.
    “Look,” he said, “this is a rooming house. There’s always an empty room. I’ll find you one when it’s time to go to sleep.”
    “What about the landlady?”
    “Deaf.”
    Penner picked up a newspaper. He read for a while and then remembered that I was sitting there on his one chair. “Have you seen the paper?”
    “No,” I said.
    “Here.” He handed me the classified section.
    “Have you got the society section there?” I asked.
    “Oh. Sure. Here.”
    I read every word. I usually do, but tonight I was compulsive about it; I was damned if I would say another word to Penner until he spoke to me. I stared at the sons of, the daughters of, the announcements of, and read the character lines in the faces of important-looking bankers at their winter homes in Florida, and the character lines in the butts of their nieces on the white sand beaches. What was he thinking of? Was everyone crazy? What did he mean with his sotto voce “I’m