The Landlord. Kristin Hunter

that he existed. And, this time, to an enraged hippopotamus who probably couldn’t read.

      Sure enough, she said, “Papers don’t mean nothin.’ I can’t read.”

      “I thought you went to the tenth grade in school,” Elgar said.

      Fanny said, “Ha ha, Miss Marge, that’s a good joke on you!”

      Marge tossed her a death-ray and muttered, “Dumb teachers didn’t know the right way to teach me. It was their fault, not mine. You better not get smart with me, you loiterer. Not in my vestibule.”

      “It’s my vestibule, I think,” Elgar insisted weakly.

      The large, shadowy menace moved toward him, blotting out what little light remained, and touched the point of the gun to the third silver fleur-de-lis on his blue tie.

      “You tryin’ to take advantage of me because I’m a woman?”

      “Believe me, Madam,” he assured her warmly, “it is the farthest thought from my mind.”

      “Well, don’t try it. I’ve counted to ten three times. By rights you’re dead already. You’re a ghost. You hear?”

      It was far too close to Elgar’s actual feelings about himself. He was fading fast when rage, the only strong and dependable emotion he knew, saved him.

      “I am no ghost and no loiterer, either. I am the legal owner of this property. And right now I am planning legal steps to evict you, if you don’t immediately put away that illegal weapon.”

      “Take more than a dozen little boys like you to evict me,” was the serene answer. “I been here fourteen years. I expect to be here another fourteen. And without no constant doorbell ringing to disturb my concentrations, neither. This is my house. You’d better be on your way out of it right now.”

      “It’s my house, I own it,” he half sobbed. As, once, into Mothaw’s ironclad lap. “I paid money for it. Lots of money. That’s why I own it. That’s why it’s mine.”

      “Oh yeah?” she said with amused tolerance. “What else do you own?”

      “Three cars, two motor scooters, five horses, a stable, and five hundred shares of General Motors.” Oops, time to call Levin.

      “I have to call my stockbroker right now,” he said, and lunged towards the hall, where there must surely be a phone.

      Marge braced herself and blocked him, screwing the gun into his ribs.

      Elgar’s jellied knees liquefied completely. He was looking up at her from the cold, hard tiles of the vestibule floor that had seemed so quaint and friendly on the first visit. But calmly, without surprise, because his life up till now had been one long pratfall anyway.

      Behind the lenses, Marge squeezed her eyes together in a vain effort to hold back two enormous tears. Apparently he had failed her by not being a proper loiterer after all. She stood over him, pointing the gun with an accusing quiver.

      “My, that’s sure a lot for one little man to own. Now tell me something else. What did you have for breakfast this morning?”

      She’d probably never heard of Librium; better not mention it. “A Coke,” he said sheepishly.

      “I knew it,” Marge said. “You rich people are all alike. Starvin’. I know all about it. I used to cook for people like you. All them artichokes and anchovies and grape leaves. No nourishment in any of it anywhere.—Fanny Copee, stand out of my way. I got to get this poor little landlord upstairs and inject some nutrition in him.”

      While Fanny cried, “Don’t hurt him!” and he pleaded, “I can manage by myself, let me, Mothaw,” Marge got Elgar from behind in a lifesaver’s grip and, using her knees and the barrel of the gun as pistons, propelled him upstairs.

      Decorating one of Marge’s kitchen chairs, he felt insubstantial as a pillow loosely stuffed with feathers, for that was how she had treated him, first dumping him there, then plumping him briskly all over to make sure of no broken bones.

      In addition to Elgar, the small dark room had other interesting points of decor. Its four walls were a kind of master composition in collage and découpage by a member of the Fauve school. Plastered over every inch of wall space were hundreds of aging magazine pictures, recipes, newspaper clippings, post cards, record covers, sheet music folders, and photographs. Not a space showed between these products of fourteen years of gleeful scissorswork, which were cleverly layered and relayered over each other so that most were tantalizingly only half visible. But he recognized “A Tisket A Tasket” by Ella; John Barrymore and Jackie Robinson in black and white; Pecan Pie and Glazed Ham in full color; Christ’s Agony in the Garden, ditto; “A Guide to Canadian Birds,” rotogravure; and one startling newsprint item that held his attention for some time: “Ten Steps to a Dream Figure.”

      She who dreamed of a dream figure waddled through this decorator’s fantasy, ponderous and menacing as a hydrogen bomb, briskly stirring and turning things that bubbled and sizzled and steamed. As she worked she sang, in an incongruously sweet little-girlish voice, accompanied by rhythmic slamming of lids and doors,

      I was out all night, my revolver in my hand.

      Out all night, my revolver in my hand.

      Lookin’ for that woman who ran off with my man.

      Finally, with angry emphasis in each plop, she set in front of him:

      A bowl of grits,

      Four slices of toast,

      Six strips of bacon,

      A piece of fried ham,

      Four fried eggs,

      A plate of three-inch biscuits,

      A pot of coffee,

      And a tureen of cunning little dark sausages frolicking in rich brown gravy.

      Oh, he’d pay for this, Elgar thought, swabbing up gravy with a biscuit in each hand, gobbling down three eggs. Most assuredly, most royally he would pay for the crisp sweetness of the fat on this ham. His stomach, tender as the insides of a baby’s thighs, would soon make him groan, and scream, and twist up in knots like a demented pretzel. All that grease. Ugh. Elgar licked his fingers and dipped another biscuit in gravy.

      What else could he do, with her standing there waving that weapon at him?

      “Eat that other biscuit. Don’t waste it. When my old man said he was tired of my biscuits last week, I knew it was all over with him and me. Next day he was gone.”

      Elgar hoped he was not destined to be her next old man.

      “Don’t waste that gravy, neither. Sop it all up.”

      “I might get sick,” he pleaded.

      Fire sparkled behind the rimless bifocals. “Why you puny little thing, you got a nerve. Insulting the first good meal you ever had in your life.”

      “Oh, but ish excellens,” he said, and hastily restuffed his mouth.

      “Men,” Marge said heavily, and sat down in the chair opposite Elgar. “The more you try and please ’em, the more they mistreat you.

      “Fourteen men,” she keened. “Fourteen men in fourteen years. I treated each one a little bit better than the last. And each one left me a little bit sooner.”

      It could almost be set to music. It had a lilt and a beat. And the features buried in the swollen dough of her face had once been small and neat and pretty.

      “I’m sorry,” Elgar said, and reached out to console her hand.

      She jerked it away from him. Her wiry gray hair, bursting its pins and springing loose from its braids, stuck out in angry spikes.

      “I’ve had a hard life, mister,” she said as she caressed the butt of the gun. “I’m