Cheapskate in Love

chapter 12





Dinner was not followed by dessert or anything sweet. Saying few words and receiving only silent gestures in return, Helen collected the food tray from Bill and carried it to the kitchen, where she left it on the counter. He could wash the dirty dishes when she was gone, she mused ironically, since he claimed to feel all right, and she had made dinner. Taking a more pragmatic view of the situation, she was sure he would let the dirty dishes pile up again as they had before, so what did it matter if she started the pile. Cockroaches would be feasting there soon enough. She packed her bags with the items she had brought, including the soup she had made, and walked with them to the door. There, a generous, spontaneous urge got hold of her once more, and she turned toward Bill, saying, “If you need anything, you can ask the front desk to call me. I’ll be glad to come back. It’s no problem.”

“That won’t be necessary,” he replied, breaking his surly wordlessness.

“There’s not much codeine in that bottle, but I don’t have any more. Regular aspirin is all that I have in my apartment.”

“It’ll be enough,” he said, nodding at the bottle on his dresser.

“I’ll let the front desk know that they should check on you.”

“That’s not necessary. I don’t need any help. I’m fine,” he assured her, although signs of pain were clearly visible in his face.

She opened the door, and then turned back to him with a new thought. “Let me give you my number in case there’s an emergency.”

“No, I don’t need it,” he replied.

“Are you sure you don’t want my number? Your sister doesn’t live close by. I can be here in minutes.”

“No. I don’t need your number. I’ll be all right. With a little more sleep, I’ll feel like myself again. I just had a slight fall, when I lost my footing on a trail,” he explained. He was becoming quite a talker.

“OK, then. Goodnight.” She opened the door again.

“Bye,” he said. Something like sadness or gratitude, or maybe it was only perfunctory politeness, seized him, and he added, “Thanks for cleaning the place. It looks better.”

She smiled, turning toward him. She had some friendly advice to share. “You should have someone clean your apartment every week. You’re too old to live like a college student. It doesn’t cost much. The woman who comes to my apartment every other week would probably charge you fifty dollars. She asks more from me, but I have a two bedroom. Your place is small. Do you want her number?”

The momentary improvement in Bill’s disposition disappeared. He felt insulted. It was more than he could stand, because she seemed to him entirely unconscious of her triple attack upon him. First—and most importantly—he was not old. Second, the maid was too expensive. Third, his apartment was large enough, more than large enough. His face froze into a mask of glaring granite, like the twisted grimace of an angry god carved by ancient Mayan sculptors. “No,” he rebuked her in a thundering voice with flashing eyes. “You can go now.” He motioned her out of his apartment, as if he were commanding a victim to ascend the steps of an Aztec temple to be sacrificed.

“OK. It was just a suggestion,” she replied, unawed by his imperious manner and unsurprised by his response, since what she had suggested would be an expense, and she knew how he felt about spending. “I hope you feel better soon,” she said cheerfully. Those words placated the minor deity a little, but he was still glad to see her exit his apartment, taking all of her advice with her.

Just before the door closed, Helen stuck her head back inside. “Are you sure you can lock up?” she asked. “I can ask the front desk to do it.”

“I’ll be there, as soon as you close the door,” he answered impatiently.

“OK. Just thought I should check. It’s a long way from the bed to the door,” she pointed out.

“I can make it,” he said curtly.

Helen was unconvinced, but she stepped back into the hallway, firmly pulling his door closed. She wanted to see how long it would take him to lock it, if he could. “I’ll give him five minutes,” she said to herself. “Then I’ll get Jonathan. I ought to call an ambulance for that sick puppy.” She put her bags on the floor, while she waited.

From where she stood, his moans and groans, as he forced himself to stand, were clearly audible. She thought about calling out to him, insisting on his staying where he was, because she was going to have Jonathan lock the door, but she kept quiet. Next she heard an extended bellowing, somewhat similar to the sound of a moose in mating season, as Bill hobbled the length of the apartment toward the door, as fast as he could. When he slammed into the door, pressing his whole body against it to support himself, the thud made Helen jump. When she heard the lock turn, she said to herself, “I can scarcely believe it. That big puppy dog has more strength and willpower than it seems, although he can’t take much care of himself.” She wasn’t sure what he was doing, when she heard him moaning and groaning again. She listened closely, trying to make sense of his noises. At that time, he was turning his body around until his back was against the door, in an attempt to return to the bed. When he slid to the floor, whimpering, too weak from pain to make the journey back from where he came, she realized what situation his stubbornness had put him in.

“Men,” she said to herself, with a feeling of superiority. “They’re all the same. He’s just like George was.” Picking up her bags, which she had set down to listen, she walked proudly to her apartment, leaving Bill to contemplate his femaleless condition from the vantage point of his sparkling-clean parquet floor.

The next morning at the office, Katie was busy updating her friends with all of her likes and dislikes from the weekend, which were numerous and more of a priority than any work-related task, when her desk phone rang. She checked the phone’s screen and recognized Bill’s number. He usually was one of the first people to come into the office, arriving nearly an hour before she did, so she expected that he was calling in sick. Claire, Debbie, and Matt had been wondering where he might be, so Katie thought she might as well satisfy all of their curiosity at once. Otherwise, they would be bothering her until they found out everything that she learned from talking with Bill. She wanted to be able to focus on her personal matters again as soon as possible, without further interruption. She didn’t understand why her coworkers were so interested in what Bill did or where he was, but she was not going to discourage them or try to analyze them. She had better things to do.

“Shhhh,” Katie hissed, before picking up her phone. “It’s loverboy.” Claire, Debbie, and Matt immediately perked up and stopped chatting among themselves to listen. After Katie answered her phone and traded greetings with Bill, she put her phone on speaker, so everyone could hear. Bill did not perceive the switch to speakerphone from her use of the handset.

“I won’t be coming in today. I had a little accident on Saturday,” Bill explained to Katie, which the others all heard. “Don’t tell anyone.”

“I won’t say anything to anyone,” Katie truthfully promised.

“The others will think I’m old,” Bill said.

“He is old,” Claire whispered.

“And in denial,” Debbie added.

“But young at heart,” Matt cracked. The women looked at him with straight faces, as if he were Bill. “Joke,” Matt said to them. “It was a joke. Ha ha.”

“I can move, but it won’t be until tomorrow or later this week that I can make it in,” Bill continued.

Bill’s coworkers looked at each other with quizzical looks, unable to guess what had happened to him.

“OK, Bill,” Katie replied. “Take it easy. Did you see a doctor?”

“I was with a doctor when it happened,” he answered grimly.

Raucous bursts of laughter came from Claire, Debbie, and Matt in unison. They all had some insight now into what might have occurred on Saturday, and they remembered how Bill had said on Friday that he was never going to see Linda again. Katie tried to stifle their boisterous sounds with hand gestures. “You mean Linda?” she asked Bill.

“What’s that noise?” he wanted to know.

“Oh, nothing,” Katie said vaguely. “I think it’s about a client email. Everyone’s at Claire’s desk, reading her computer screen.” Claire, Debbie, and Matt were still shaking with uncontrollable laughs, although the violence of their outbursts was diminishing. More emphatically than before, Katie motioned them to be quiet, rapidly waving her hands up and down.

“I hope they can handle whatever it is,” Bill said. “I’m in too much pain to do any work from home today.”

“They can handle it. I know they can handle it,” Katie stated. “They will soon have everything under control, I’m sure.” She glared at her coworkers, and the laughter died away completely. “Are you taking anything for your pain?” she asked Bill.

“Just some codeine,” he said. “Linda gave me a bottle of ginseng or something like that, which I threw in the drawer with all the other bottles she’s given me. That stuff doesn’t work. She wanted to poke some needles in me, too, but I’m not her voodoo doll.”

“You should get some rest,” Katie told him. “That’s the best thing. I hope you feel better.”

“I do feel better,” he asserted. “I’m not talking to Linda anymore.”

The others erupted into laughter again, and Katie took her phone off the speaker, talking through the receiver to wrap up the call with Bill.

Little work was accomplished in the office that morning, because Claire, Debbie, and Matt were busy envisioning different scenarios under which Bill was injured and Linda victorious, each possibility becoming more preposterous than the last. With such a fertile topic, their jokes and conversation flowed in a torrent of nonstop hilarity.

Meanwhile, Katie, who appeared to be working, continued to communicate all the momentous details of her weekend to her friends, with far greater precision and thoroughness than she ever exerted on duties that she was officially paid to do. She considered her morning quite productive and just as enjoyable as that of the others. Although she was the youngest employee in the office, she judged herself to be the most mature. “They’ve been laughing about the old guy all morning,” she wrote to a friend. “They think they’re better than him, but I don’t see it. They obviously can’t find anything better to do than talk about him.”