“Yes,” Mary said. “It sure is. It’s that way with me.”
After he left, I asked Mary why she hates him so much. He’s been a regular as long as I have—five years now, though he’s never spoken to me and just looks away when I nod hello. The Old Jew eats at the IHOP every night, sometimes alone and sometimes in the company of a nurse. He’s been through dozens of them, and I always figured either he doesn’t pay well or they get bored. He’s got to be in his late eighties, hunched over, the top of his bald head speckled with liver spots.
Mary told me that he used to come in for lunch back when she worked the day shift. One afternoon he told her that his wife had just died and that he wanted to get rid of some of her old jewelry and would love it if Mary would take some.
“I agreed because I know how hard that can be, getting rid of things after someone you love dies,” she told me.
That night she went to his apartment and noticed in the living room half a dozen candy dishes, some glass and some silver, all filled with condoms. The Old Jew told her then that actually his wife had died more than eight years ago and that he didn’t have many of her belongings left. “Maybe a pair of earrings,” he said, but he’d have to get in the right mood before he started looking for them.
Mary said she didn’t feel threatened. “I could have beaten him to death with one hand tied behind my back,” she assured me. “But ever since then I’ve really hated him, because sometimes that’s the way it is.”
I was in front of the Sheridan L stop when I passed a woman cursing at oncoming cars. I’d seen her before. She looks like W. C. Fields would if he wore a red wig. Her nose is bulbous, like his, and she doesn’t have any noticeable eyebrows or lashes. When a couple walked past, she said that they were going home to fuck, just like all the other shitheads.
I’m guessing she has Tourette’s or something.
I’d taught and was wearing a tie and carrying my briefcase. When I was a student, I always felt better when the teacher dressed up. It suggested that his or her job was a real one. As for the briefcase, I look at it like a safe. Students see me putting their papers into it, and it makes them feel that their stories are valuable, though it is a drag to carry.
As I passed the woman in front of the L station, she said, “Oh, look at him. The little man. Thinks he’s a big fucking deal because he’s carrying an attaché case.” I crossed the street with my head down, shattered because she could see right through me.
February 10, 1989
Chicago
Jackie Disler is a fountain of information. This morning she told me that Hungarians have the filthiest mouths in Europe and are known to say, “Get that cock out of my face that is covered with shit that you used to fuck Jesus.”
According to her, fucking Jesus is a popular insult in that part of the world.
February 13, 1989
Chicago
Tonight at Barbara’s Bookstore, Tobias Wolff read from his new memoir, This Boy’s Life. All the seats were taken, so I sat on the floor in the front and tried to act normal. I was too shy to say anything when I got my book signed, afraid that if I started talking, everything inside me would just spill out. He seemed like a kind person and wore a turtleneck, a plaid shirt, a tweed jacket, and jeans with black socks and running shoes. I have to be his biggest fan.
February 14, 1989
Chicago
Barbara has begun speaking to me. She’s from Tennessee, maybe forty-five years old, and has worked at the IHOP the entire time that I’ve been hanging out there. Tonight she told me that the new waitress, the black woman who started a few weeks back, has been fired for refusing to wear panty hose. Barbara said, “And of course we have to wear panty hose. We all do!”
March 4, 1989
Chicago
I read an interview with an obsessive-compulsive woman who said that before she went on medication, she spent eighteen hours a day cleaning her house. After vacuuming, she would go over the carpet with tape in order to pick up dirt she might have missed. When guests visited, she’d make a mental note of everything they touched and wipe it down the moment they left. She said she’d miss important events in order to stay home and clean her keys or her checkbook, which, how do you even do? As for keys, it would never occur to me that mine were dirty, though they probably are. Filthy, actually.
March 13, 1989
Chicago
A man approached me on the Wilson L platform this morning to ask me what I thought of the neighborhood. He said a woman he knew had just moved in and he was worried about her. I didn’t want to be the voice of doom and told him that nothing terrible has ever happened to me here, which is true. Then I said that I fully expected something terrible to happen, which is also the truth.
Why live in a place where you expect trouble? He could have asked me that, but he didn’t. I’m surprised he approached me in the first place. I look terrible lately. I reek. A few days ago I was behind my desk at school and caught a whiff of urine. Then I realized it was me I smelled—my pants. My students must have noticed it. How could they have not? I’ll have to concoct some sort of a story. I could say that I take care of a baby every Wednesday morning and that last week it peed on me.
March 20, 1989
Chicago
I read a story by a Chinese woman whose main character curses her husband by calling him a turtle and a salted egg.
March 21, 1989
Chicago
Last week a manhole cover disappeared from the alley behind my building. I guess people sell them for scrap or something. The city covered the open hole with plywood and put up a sawhorse with blinking lights, but overnight both those things were stolen as well. When I got home from work today, someone rang, and I buzzed in a guy from the sewer department. He asked if I was the manager of the building, and I said no. Then he asked about the missing manhole cover, and I offered to take him out back. It was bitterly cold, and the guy seemed happy to be in my warm apartment. He looked to be in his sixties, about my size, wearing a brown coat and a ski cap pulled low on his forehead.
I went to put on my shoes and jacket and he said, “No rush. Take your time.”
We walked through the kitchen, and he stopped and looked at the radiator. “You know how to keep that from hissing? You need to take yourself a skinny nail and unclog that hole right there. That’s your problem. But don’t do it now because you might burn yourself.”
“OK,” I said. “Thanks.”
“What you want to do is wait until later, then take a nail, a long, skinny one, and ream out that hole. That’ll solve your problem.”