The Landlord. Kristin Hunter

they keep office hours. In nice, air-conditioned, downtown offices. Not in festering rat-holes in the Trejour Apartments, convenient to patients and to nothing else.”

      Elgar felt remorse. With weak, watery eyes, long, knobby limbs, and catarrh due to chronic sinusitis, Borden was a poor second to Gregory Peck. A poor second to everybody, really, including plump, professional shnooks in plushy downtown offices. And, sniffling over there behind the owl-rimmed specs, he did look a bit rumpled and sleepy.

      “Your questions are of course legitimate. I will answer them at another time. But why do you question my background and my competence now? Why now, Elgar?”

      The bastard’s instincts were sharp as a coonhound’s, even when he was full of sleep. Elgar, blank, felt his teeth clamp together. Blocking. Stubborn.

      “I will tell you. You are trying to involve me in an argument, a sideline. Because you do not want to hear that this woman who upset you today is not the same person as your mother.”

      Elgar banged his fist into Borden’s cruddy old black leather couch, raising a puff of elderly dust. Real doctors had Danish modern, imported, the best, didn’t need ratty antiques as symbols. But real doctors had office hours and professional patience strictly limited to fifty minutes an hour. Elgar needed a lifetime of patience. His fist went through the cracked headrest, landed in a nightmare of sleazy sawdust.

      “It’s hopeless, Borden!” he screamed. “Every time I try to do something, it involves people! And people are all impossible!”

      “You mean,” Borden said, “they have motives and wishes of their own. They will not gratify your every need instantly, the way your parents did when you were a baby.”

      “Like hell they did,” Elgar said. “Like hell. They did no such thing.”

      “Of course not, or you would not be here with me tonight,” Borden answered smoothly. “But you wished they would. And you still wish it. A happy babyhood. It is the point in life at which you are arrested, Elgar.”

      “I tell you,” Elgar howled, “it’s not just me, Borden! People are all sick out there! It’s a jungle.”

      “Nevertheless, everyone out there is not your mother or your father, Elgar. And most of them are probably not as sick as you.”

      The growl began deep in Elgar’s throat. “Ohhh, you imitation Viennese quack,” he raged. “Ohhh, you sniffling Hollywood understudy, will you never listen to me? I tell you, today I was chased by raving Indians with tomahawks and frothing Amazons with revolvers. And they weren’t even real Indians and Amazons, they were crazy phonies! Now how can you sit there like a badly designed effigy of Lincoln and tell me that is normal?”

      “It is certainly,” Borden admitted, “very odd behavior. At least by our standards.”

      “By any standards in any sane world, Borden! But the world is crazy, that’s what it is. Crazy full of maniacs!”

      He sat up on the edge of the couch and leaned forward, palms up, straining to communicate.

      “Borden, this morning I was so happy. The sun was shining, I had a purpose, I loved everybody.”

      “You did not,” Borden interrupted. “You have never loved anybody, Elgar. Not even yourself.”

      Elgar decided not to get caught on the horns of that old dilemma. He let it pass.

      “Well, I had that good feeling. You know. The Best of Show feeling.”

      Borden nodded. Taking Best of Show with his champion Great Dane had been the brightest event of Elgar’s childhood. Though even on that day of shining accomplishment the only identification under his picture in the papers had been “Owner.”

      “I was actually singing. Out loud. I was going to do useful work in the world. Keep busy. Be a landlord.”

      Elgar felt his face screw up grotesquely and grow inflamed. Thank God he was no longer ashamed to cry in front of Borden.

      “Now I see there’s nothing for me to do but join a Trappist monastery! And even there I’d have to get along with the other crazy monks.”

      “You would, Elgar,” Borden agreed sadly.

      “So what’s the use, Borden?” Elgar wailed, tears gushing down his twisting face.

      “The use of what, Elgar?”

      “The use of all this talking and analyzing. What’s the use of getting well if I have to live in a sick world?”

      “Maybe then it will not seem so sick to you.”

      “Oh no?” Elgar retorted. “You mean, when we’re finished, imitation Indians out to scalp me in broad daylight will seem perfectly normal? In that case, Borden, I’m quitting right now.”

      “Your privilege,” Borden said. “If you are not interested in being happier and functioning more effectively.”

      “You don’t hear me, Borden!” Elgar screamed. “Man, you don’t hear, see, or read me at all. Oh, you are so dumb, Borden. Dumb, deaf, and blind.” He pounded the couch for three-time emphasis. “Why should I be interested in functioning? How in hell can I be happy? If everybody else is crazy?”

      “Perhaps you can help them to be less so,” Borden said.

      “Help those crazy, man-eating cannibals? Why should I? So they can eat me alive? Get away from me with that sick, social-worker jazz, Borden. All I want is to enjoy my life. Fast cars and sweet music and fast, sweet women. I can afford them. Why can’t I enjoy them?”

      “Yes, why can’t you?” Borden’s mocking flute note echoed.

      “That’s all I want,” Elgar said defiantly. “Is it so much to ask? Why the hell do you want to complicate things by having me help people, for God’s sake?”

      “Elgar,” Borden said, “perhaps you imagine I put up with crazy, man-eating cannibals like you for the money and the things it buys. But I assure you, no amount of money could pay me to be eaten alive like this.”

      Elgar sank back on the uncomfortable couch. “You great, big, sentimental fraud. If I ever find out you’ve been lying to me I’ll murder you, you hear? And then I’ll go out and commit atrocities on sweet old ladies.” His gusty sigh was followed by a sour belch. “What’s the first step, Borden?”

      “First,” Borden said, “we learn to distinguish between this very interesting and unusual Negress and your mother. So you can deal with each in appropriate fashion. Your mother is white, yes?”

      “Borden, as I have said many times before, you are a genius of the obvious. Of course my mother is white, you dimwit! But take a picture of her and print up the negative, and you’ve got Madam Margarita.”

      “Madam Margarita?”

      “Alias Marge Perkins. Second floor rear. Fifty dollars a month, which I have not been paid.”

      Borden raised a long, knobby, significant finger. “Just a thought, Elgar. Does the second floor rear have any special associations for you? A particular part of the house in which you grew up, perhaps?”

      “It was the bathroom,” Elgar said. “Oh, Christ, Borden, you’re way off base. And we’ve been at it two hours.”

      “I am not at my best under such conditions, Elgar,” Borden admitted stiffly. “Especially when my sleep has been interrupted. I too am human.”

      “Well, rest up then, baby,” Elgar said. “You’ll need it tomorrow. See you then. Usual time, same station.”

      “See you, Elgar,” Borden sighed. “Sleep well, now.” With a feeble Gregory Peck grin and a limply Lincolnesque wave of benediction.

      Always the second-rate, Elgar thought gloomily, kicking the leprous paint on the stairs as he descended to what he laughingly