The Landlord. Kristin Hunter

in. I don’t have any lines. As it happens, I don’t have a hat, either.”

      The chair swiveled. A thick tome was lowered with awful deliberateness to reveal ruddy-brown, warpath features topped by angry, upstanding black hair.

      “Who dares to contradict me in my own house? In my castle which he has invaded?”

      “As it happens it’s my house,” Elgar replied. “I’m the new landlord.”

      “And as it happens this sector of it is my castle. Within which I am king. You are here only on my forbearance.”

      “I am here on my business,” Elgar corrected. “Which is to request your wife to remove her commercial advertising sign from my residential window.”

      The king rose from his throne to menace Elgar. Unfortunately his height, about five-four, and his bandy legs did not go with the imposing attitude. Elgar judged he could easily take him in a fight if necessary. Which might prove to be the case.

      “So,” Charlie intoned, “you would deny this poor woman the livelihood which she must earn to pay your unconstitutional rentals. Oh, I know you, mister. I don’t need to know your name. Whoever you are, you are the exploiter, the Enemy.”

      He was beginning a kind of rain dance, hopping around slowly on one foot. Hop, turn, and point a skinny finger at Elgar’s nose.

      “What is more,” he accused, “you have probably been coveting my wife and plotting to seduce her behind my back. It is not enough to be an exploiter, you have to be a seducer too. Like others of your breed. Oh, I know your kind.”

      “Charlie, please,” Fanny interrupted. “He’s not so bad really.”

      “They’re all bad, squaw. See to your papooses. Make sure they are asleep. Some things are about to happen which I do not intend for tender young ears.”

      —My howls while he scalps me? Elgar wondered.

      Fanny, leaving the room, gave him an eloquent eye-roll and a shrug which seemed to pooh-pooh his fears.

      Clearing his throat for courage, Elgar said, “What were you reading when I came in, Mr. Copee?”—expressing, he hoped, the proper amount of polite interest.

      The title “Mister” must have helped. Charlie growled almost civilly, “The History of the Choctaw Nation. Are you familiar with it? You should be. Three times your people made my people false promises. Three times you robbed them of their lands and forced them to move. Three times, yet not a hand of my tribe was raised against you.”

      He had the effective trick of all successful politicians, Elgar noticed, repetition for emphasis. Three times was the rule. Especially effective when the phrase repeated was also “three times.”

      “Bravo, Mr. Copee!” he applauded. “Ever think of going into the speechwriting game? You’ve got a real knack for it. Washington could use you.”

      “Laugh while you can!” retorted Charlie. “Your laugh sounds hollow, white man. Your short hour is almost up. You cannot delay vengeance forever. Soon we will ride the plains and reclaim our lands.”

      “You don’t look like much of a rider to me,” Elgar said. “Too bent over. You got to get that old back straight as a ramrod.”

      Charlie unconsciously corrected his posture, Elgar assisting with a slap on the back.

      “Better,” Elgar approved. “More like it. Don’t let the shoulders sag, now.”

      “So history repeats itself,” Copee said with bulging eyes. “First you rob me of my land, and then you come onto my reservation and dictate to me.”

      “Only about the signs, Chief,” Elgar said. “This is not a commercial reservation.”

      “Well, that’s good. Because I’ve just decided to pay no more of your commercial rentals. You stole my ancestors’ lands. By rights you owe me and my descendants three hundred rent-free years.”

      “Well, you can’t have them, Chief,” Elgar said, facing up to him, glaring, their noses almost touching in a dangerously intimate powwow. “So you just better get on that horse and ride West. Hit that long dusty trail into the sunset, if you don’t intend to pay rent, or if your wife intends to operate a business here. Either or both. That’s all I came to say. Thank you.”

      Copee said, “Our tribe is slow to anger. But you have taken advantage of our patience too long. This time you have gone too far.”

      Everybody around here was sensitive to advantage taken, Elgar noted. Must try to avoid giving that impression in future.

      “Charlie! No!” shrieked Fanny, back in the room in enchanting deshabille. Elgar barely had time to notice the interesting new item she was wearing, or rather not wearing. He was too busy watching her crazy husband remove something from the cushions of his chair.

      A tomahawk. Which he waved over his head as he resumed his rain dance.

      “The tribal wrath is aroused!” he chanted. “The ancestors must be appeased! The tyrant must leave the reservation! This is war!”

      With a cute little side-arm windup, he suddenly hurled the tomahawk. Just missing Elgar’s head, it dug deeply into the wall, jarring loose a shower of plaster, and hung there trembling.

      “I’ll bill you for the plaster job,” Elgar said evenly. But he was moving fast.

      Fanny, holding the door open for him with one hand and keeping up a wisp of pink froth with the other, whispered, “You lucky. This ain’t nothin.’ Last month he was a Black Muslim. Next time, come around in the daytime, Landlord.”

      Wheezing and puffing, Elgar tore up the street, remembering with shame that nothing had been accomplished yet in the way of measuring windows for weatherstripping. And not one “Paid” entry in any rent book, either. Worse, he felt an attack of gas coming on, and wanted badly to slow down for a burp or two. But seemed to hear moccasined feet slipping and slushing behind him.

      “Borden!” he screamed as he whizzed around the corner, “Borden, there will be no cute phone calls tonight, you understand? Cancel all your other patients and prepare to see me in person. Man to man, face to face, Borden. This is war!”

       3

      Lankily Lincolnesque, faintly skeptical, Borden spoke with pencil poised.

      “And in just what ways does this Negress remind you of your mother, Elgar?”

      Even a crease in his goddamned pajama trousers. Over them a natty plaid flannel dressing gown. Though the consulting room was as seedy as ever, and floured with circa-1890 dust. On Elgar’s fees, couldn’t he at least afford a cleaning woman once a week?

      “Every way,” Elgar replied. “Very massive. Very dominating. Very dangerous.”

      “Yes, and very black, if I recall your description. Your mother is a large woman, yes? But she is also white, no?”

      That comma yes, comma no at the end of key sentences. Suggestion of Vienna. When it was palpably clear Borden had never studied under Old Papa Whiskers in Vienna. If, indeed, under any of his disciples anywhere.

      “Hey, Borden, how come I never see any of your diplomas hanging around here? Could it be you don’t have any?”

      “I see I am arousing your hostility, Elgar,” Borden said, tossing a dark, damp, Gregory Peck lock back from his forehead. He did not quite make it. It hung there limply, like the little girl’s who was sometimes horrid.

      “—Else why at this particular moment in our relationship would you be questioning my professional credentials?”

      “Had to come up sometime,” Elgar answered. “For twenty-five bucks a session, I don’t want to be taken apart by an amateur. Destruction at the hands of a professional, or nothing. It’s my right. I demand it.”

      A