hairs sprouting on the back of her calves. They look like pine needles, sharp and shiny and covered in miniscule scales. “What’s a pretty woman want with the likes of you anyway?”
Afraid he might break down in front of her, Kaliher hides his face behind the pantry door and whispers, “I’ll win her back …”
With a loud snort of contempt, Mrs. O’Neill lumbers into the dark bedroom, her imposing silhouette framed against the window. She lets the bathrobe slide from her freckled back. Kaliher shudders. It’s like watching a snake shed its skin. The heavy ring of keys hits the hardwood floor with a terrible clatter. The glowing ember of her cigarette hovers in the blackness like the unblinking eye of a cyclops and sinks slowly to the mattress before winking out. His sleeping arrangements are primitive. There is no frame, no box spring, no down comforter, but Mrs. O’Neill doesn’t seem to mind.
Kaliher hesitates, cowed by her silence. He thinks of his children, John and Carol, six-year old twins, and recalls how, during their last weekend visit, they sobbed in their sleeping bags arranged on either side of that same mattress and begged to be taken home to their mother: “Please, Daddy,
please
.”
“Time!” Mrs. O’Neill proclaims.
“Yes,” Kaliher murmurs, “I’m coming, coming …”
II
Mrs. O’Neill actively seeks out male renters, losers one and all, the downtrodden, ruined, addicted, and insane. She usually captures her prey at the Stone Town Café where the city’s luckless gather to drink one cup of coffee after another (refills are free) and stare out the window as if waiting for somebody who once loved them to miraculously appear and say that all is forgiven, mistakes happen, now it’s time to start life over again. Most of these men secretly yearn to tell a woman, any woman, about their private miseries, their personal failures, and Mrs. O’Neill delights in playing the role of comforter and confessor. With great patience and understanding, she listens to these tales of woe, nods her head, squeezes a hand in a very reassuring way. She offers a warm smile when it is most needed. Then, moving in for the kill, she brings up the subject of herapartment building, “the property,” she calls it, willed to her by her now deceased third husband.
“You come right on over, honey, and see the place for yourself. Maybe we can work out some kind of arrangement. No deposit required to rent a room.”
For most of these men this news comes as a great relief, since the only thing they have with which to barter is the worthless currency of a hundred broken promises. Of course a few of them, the more reasonable ones, find her motives suspect, but in the end desperation always wins out. They don’t even wait for her to scribble an address on a napkin; they simply follow her back to the building, a never-ending parade of derelicts and fools marching up the walkway—scrawny, scruffy, their faces frozen with expressions of self-pity and stunned disbelief. How many men has she lured here over the years? How many has she cajoled, threatened, and humiliated in this warren of stinking, threadbare cubicles? Some have second thoughts.
Sensing their misgivings, Mrs. O’Neill tries to sweeten the deal by offering rooms on the seventh floor. “Lucky number seven, eh, honey?”
Bernie Kaliher can hardly believe that he has joined the ranks of these losers. Only three months ago the local sports columnists—those hacks who never see eye-to-eye on anything—agreed that his team would crush each of its regular- and post-season opponents with ease and cruise undefeated to the state championship game. No one dared to think otherwise. It was predestined. God had commanded it to be so. How then to explain the slew of injuries to his offensive linemen, the diminishing skills of his star quarterback, the heartbreaking defeats in overtime? God does not abandon the pious. Surely a decisive victory tomorrow night
Afraid he might break down in front of her, Kaliher hides his face behind the pantry door and whispers, “I’ll win her back …”
With a loud snort of contempt, Mrs. O’Neill lumbers into the dark bedroom, her imposing silhouette framed against the window. She lets the bathrobe slide from her freckled back. Kaliher shudders. It’s like watching a snake shed its skin. The heavy ring of keys hits the hardwood floor with a terrible clatter. The glowing ember of her cigarette hovers in the blackness like the unblinking eye of a cyclops and sinks slowly to the mattress before winking out. His sleeping arrangements are primitive. There is no frame, no box spring, no down comforter, but Mrs. O’Neill doesn’t seem to mind.
Kaliher hesitates, cowed by her silence. He thinks of his children, John and Carol, six-year old twins, and recalls how, during their last weekend visit, they sobbed in their sleeping bags arranged on either side of that same mattress and begged to be taken home to their mother: “Please, Daddy,
please
.”
“Time!” Mrs. O’Neill proclaims.
“Yes,” Kaliher murmurs, “I’m coming, coming …”
II
Mrs. O’Neill actively seeks out male renters, losers one and all, the downtrodden, ruined, addicted, and insane. She usually captures her prey at the Stone Town Café where the city’s luckless gather to drink one cup of coffee after another (refills are free) and stare out the window as if waiting for somebody who once loved them to miraculously appear and say that all is forgiven, mistakes happen, now it’s time to start life over again. Most of these men secretly yearn to tell a woman, any woman, about their private miseries, their personal failures, and Mrs. O’Neill delights in playing the role of comforter and confessor. With great patience and understanding, she listens to these tales of woe, nods her head, squeezes a hand in a very reassuring way. She offers a warm smile when it is most needed. Then, moving in for the kill, she brings up the subject of herapartment building, “the property,” she calls it, willed to her by her now deceased third husband.
“You come right on over, honey, and see the place for yourself. Maybe we can work out some kind of arrangement. No deposit required to rent a room.”
For most of these men this news comes as a great relief, since the only thing they have with which to barter is the worthless currency of a hundred broken promises. Of course a few of them, the more reasonable ones, find her motives suspect, but in the end desperation always wins out. They don’t even wait for her to scribble an address on a napkin; they simply follow her back to the building, a never-ending parade of derelicts and fools marching up the walkway—scrawny, scruffy, their faces frozen with expressions of self-pity and stunned disbelief. How many men has she lured here over the years? How many has she cajoled, threatened, and humiliated in this warren of stinking, threadbare cubicles? Some have second thoughts.
Sensing their misgivings, Mrs. O’Neill tries to sweeten the deal by offering rooms on the seventh floor. “Lucky number seven, eh, honey?”
Bernie Kaliher can hardly believe that he has joined the ranks of these losers. Only three months ago the local sports columnists—those hacks who never see eye-to-eye on anything—agreed that his team would crush each of its regular- and post-season opponents with ease and cruise undefeated to the state championship game. No one dared to think otherwise. It was predestined. God had commanded it to be so. How then to explain the slew of injuries to his offensive linemen, the diminishing skills of his star quarterback, the heartbreaking defeats in overtime? God does not abandon the pious. Surely a decisive victory tomorrow night
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