Just to give him pause, the dozens, that old verbal game of maligning a friend’s female relatives, came to mind. “Wait,” I said. “You have told me about what to ask your great-great-grandpa. But I want to know what to ask your great-great-grandma.”

“I don’t play the dozens that far back,” said Simple, following Zarita into the smoky juke-box blue of the back room.

Landladies

Landladies

THE next time I saw him, he was hot under the collar, but only incidentally about Zarita. Before the bartender had even put the glasses down he groaned, “I do not understand landladies.”

“Now what?” I asked. “A landlady is a woman, isn’t she? And, according to your declarations, you know how to handle women.”

“I know how to handle women who act like ladies, but my landlady ain’t no lady. Sometimes I even wish I was living with my wife again so I could have my own place and not have no landladies,” said Simple.

“Landladies are practically always landladies,” I said.

“But in New York they are landladies plus!” declared Simple.

“For instance?”

“For a instant, my landlady said to me one night when I come in, said, ‘Third Floor Rear?’

“I said, ‘Yes’m.’

“She says, ‘You pays no attention to my notices I puts up, does you?’

“I said, ‘No’m.’

“She says, ‘I know you don’t. You had company in your room after ten o’clock last night in spite of my rule.’

“‘No, ma’am. That was in the room next to mine.’

“‘Yes, but you was in there with your company, Mr. Simple.’ Zarita can’t keep her voice down when she goes calling. ‘You and you-all’s company and Mr. Boyd’s was raising sand. I heard you way down here.’

“‘What you heard was the Fourth Floor Back snoring, madam. We went out of here at ten-thirty and I didn’t come back till two and I come back alone.’

“‘Four this morning, you mean! And you slammed the door!’

“‘Madam, you sure can hear good that late.’

“‘I am not deef. I also was raised in a decent home. And I would like you to respect my place.’

“‘Yes, ma’am,’ I said, because I owed her a half week’s rent and I did not want to argue right then, although I was mad. But when I went upstairs and saw that sign over them little old pink towels she hangs there in the bathroom, Lord knows for what, I got madder. Sign says:

GUEST TOWELS—ROOMERS DO NOT USE

“But when even a guest of mine uses them, she jumps salty. So for what are they there? Then I saw that other little old sign up over the sink:

WASH FACE ONLY IN BOWL—NO SOX

And a sign over the tub says:

DO NOT WASH CLOTHES IN HEAR

Another sign out in the hall says:

TURN OUT LIGHT—COSTS MONEY