“‘Don’t try to get on the good side of me through Trixie.’

“‘Madam, have you got a good side?’

“‘Mr. Semple, I am hurted by that last remark. I tries to treat everybody nice. I do! And I am hurted. As often as I let you slip a week, sometimes two, on your rent. Nice as I been to you compared to most landladies, I tell you, I am hurted. You can just move, if you want to. Move.’

“‘Madam, I do not wish to move. And I did not mean what I said. You got three or four good sides. I expect more. If it wasn’t so damp right now I would walk Trixie for you.’

“‘Trixie! Trixie! Trixie! Do you think that nobody else lives downstairs here in this Dutch basement but Trixie? Ain’t you got no regard for me?’

“‘Madam, does you want me to walk you?’

“‘I likes to go out once in a while myself. And you ain’t never so much as invited me to Paddy’s for a beer in all these years you been living in my house.’

“‘But you got a husband, madam.’

“‘It were my understanding that you also had a wife when you moved in here. But that does not, and has not, stopped you from running with every woman that wears a skirt—and some in pedal-pushers.’

“‘But, madam, you always said you did not drink.’

“‘What I say and what I do are two different things.’

“‘Do you want me to bring you back a can of beer when I go out?’

“‘Oh, no! Don’t worry about me, Mr. Semple. Just bring Trixie some dog food—since you are so concerned about her. And excuse me, I am going to fix my husband’s dinner. I don’t need a thing. Excuse me.’

“‘You are excused,’ I said, to which she did not answer. Wrong again! What can a man say to a woman that is not wrong, be they landladies, wives, or Joyce?”

Empty Room

Empty Room

ONE night Paddy’s bar for once was strangely quiet. I soon learned why. Watermelon Joe was going around taking up a collection to bury a fellow who had just died that day, a boy everybody around that corner knew. The bartender said the fellow had been in Paddy’s drinking just a few nights before, now he was gone. The juke box was not playing as continuously that evening because most of the men had given their last spare change to help put their late bar-buddy away. Everybody was a little sad.

“Zarita has just been in here, cried, and gone,” Simple said. “I expect she knew that boy better than she makes out—Zarita being a woman. We all knew him pretty well. Just to think, here today, gone tonight! I can’t quite get it. You know, pal, I have not been around people dying very much.”

“Neither have I,” I said.