The Easter House. David Rhodes

After the money was gone, there would be nothing.

      He walked down Burlington Avenue and into town. He had never been downtown much before except to buy books—so went into the first tavern he saw, on the corner of Dubuque Street. Many of the men and women in the bar turned around as the door opened, but then resumed their private activities after C had securely fastened it—as though they were only concerned with seeing the cold air come in. The bartender was in shirt sleeves and C went across the street to another bar after he refused to accept a check.

      C sat alone in a booth and drank and ate until he was sick, and then rented a room in the Roosevelt Hotel and lay down, thinking before he fell asleep that this would not work, that he had only spent twelve dollars, and at that rate . . . well, it would simply have to go faster. The next morning he bought a used car (he could not bring himself to waste money on a new one; no, that would be wrong; but everyone needed an automobile), and drove it around all day, having the oil checked, putting air in the tires, eating four full meals in restaurants, watching two movies, and going finally back to his hotel room with a strawberry ice-cream fizz.

      The following few days were like this, except without the food. Then he took the last step, walked into the final phase, and gave his money away—in the manner that his father might have—donating it to needy institutions under his full name: The Reverend Ansel C. Easter, Ontarion, Iowa. Even some to the University.

      He was soon without money in the bank and threw his checkbook into a trash barrel outside the telegraph office. And walking down Clinton Avenue, he wondered for the first time how he would die—how the money made any difference at all. He would have to stop eating; and he could’ve done that anyway. Surely something will happen now, he thought, and felt in his pocket—four bits in nickels and dimes. C went inside a drugstore and bought a small bottle of terpin hydrate, signing his name The Reverend Ansel C. Easter and the date, carried it over to a tree in the Pentacrest, sat down, and began drinking it sip by sip, the taste exploding inside his mouth, very badly. There is nothing quite like terpin hydrate.

      The cold air bit into him.

      A girl came walking through the slush and drizzle across from the drugstore. The wind tried to carry her thin bones away. Once a horn blew at her and she stumbled back to the curb, waiting for the light. Several more people came, talking and laughing, and went into a bar. She did not look up, and pulled her denim coat more tightly around her neck. A large man stopped beside her, waiting for the light, and she turned to him. C saw the man bodily push his way past her, shaking his head and swearing, as though he might have been asked for something he was unwilling to give. She crossed the street and entered the Pentacrest, dragging her feet along in the snow, her uncovered hair wet and streaking across her face like tears. She sat down next to C and lowered her face between her arms and against her upright knees.

      “How’s everything?” she asked, out loud, dull, expecting no answer, like someone talking to herself. She sounded young.

      “Good,” said C. “Everything’s good. How about you?”

      “Good,” she said (but didn’t look up). “Everything’s good.”

      “Want some cough syrup?”

      “Codeine?”

      “Yeah.”

      “O.K.” And she took the bottle, swallowed, and shivered from the taste.

      “Go ahead,” C said, “kill it.” And she took the rest of the corner in one quick gulp.

      “That’s good.”

      “You’re welcome.”

      These two sat together and the snow and the ice and the cold went on, though they didn’t comment on it, or anything. And it grew darker. Those few cars that trudged down the streets beside the Pentacrest were forced to stop at each intersection by the conspiracy of Iowa City traffic lights, and slid sideways when they began to move, as though they were large gray animals being led home on a long rope.

      “You got a place to stay?” she asked.

      “Yeah,” he said. “Sure, I got a place.”

      “I just thought, because you were sitting here, I mean—”

      “Right.” And they were quiet again for a while.

      “You a student?” she asked.

      “No. Not now.”

      “You mean you were?”

      “Sure. For a while.”

      “What’s the matter—run out of money or flunk out or something?”

      C almost laughed.

      “No. I guess I just quit. You want a cigarette?” He shoved a half-filled pack toward her after his hand had bumped into them inside his coat pocket.

      “Thanks,” she said.

      “Keep ’em. I think I ought to stop.”

      “Thanks . . . non-filters. That’s good.”

      “You a student?”

      “Me?” She was looking at him in the dark. “No . . . oh, no.”

      “I don’t know, I just thought—”

      “You sure you don’t want one of these cigarettes?”

      “Well, maybe one last one.” She held them out to him, then gave him her own to light from.

      “You cold?”

      “No, I’m fine. How ’bout you?”

      “You haven’t got any more of that terpin hydrate, do you?” she asked, very slowly, stirring the snow around with her high-top work shoes.

      “No. But I can get—” Then he stopped. He couldn’t. “Are you sure you’re not cold?”

      “Yeah, sure.”

      “I just thought. I mean, because of wanting some more cough syrup.”

      “No. I didn’t want any; I just wondered. I wondered if maybe you were addicted to that stuff.”

      “Oh. No, I’m not.”

      “Oh.”

      “How about you?”

      “What?”

      “You addicted to that stuff?”

      “No. Say, you getting ready to go?” she asked. He could feel her shivering, though he had not thought they were touching.

      “Go where?” More shivering. “And you’re cold. What’s the matter with you anyway? Why don’t you get on out of here?”

      “Damn it,” she said, half crying. “I ain’t got any place to go. I’m cold, and hungry . . . and I don’t know what the fuck the difference is to you. So why don’t you get on out of here yourself, Jackshit? I can stay in the lobby of the girls’ dorm anyway.”

      “In the lobby of the girls’ dorm!” he exclaimed. “Why do you do that?”

      “Why? Because it’s free and it’s cold out here. That’s why.”

      “You mean you want to go on . . . living like that?”

      “Of course not. What do you think, I like it there and wouldn’t want to be in a house or apartment or someplace where the campus police wouldn’t chase me out? Things are tough now, Pigass. No work . . . and some of the girls bring me food back from the cafeteria.”

      “Look,” he said, wondering how long he had spent inside, outside of this normal flow of things, away from the streets. “Take . . . well, I haven’t any more money. You see that car over there? The blue one? Well, here are the keys. Drive it down to 718 Jefferson and in the basement there’s an apartment that’s paid for up until next month. If the landlady says anything, tell her that I told you to go there. And then sell the car—and