Everything Must Go. Elizabeth Flock
Mr. Beardsley favors. But the wind carries the sound out, away from them. Henry notes the flank steak marinating in a long Pyrex baking dish, grateful it’s not the bratwurst his boss had served last year. An abnormally huge black fly circles the bowl of coleslaw, landing on the edge then rappelling down to test it with a stick leg.
“Yeah, it’s great,” Henry says. “Great view.”
“I’ll tell you,” Mr. Beardsley says, “I was so lucky to get this place. I’m not sure I told you about that. Did I?”
He had, but Henry feigned ignorance and interest, figuring the story, however boring he knew it to be, would require little in the way of response and would fill the time until Ramon arrived.
“Oooh, it’s incredible,” Mr. Beardsley says. “I didn’t tell you? I could’ve sworn I did. A lady comes up to me in the store one day, this really funny look on her face. I’m telling you, I couldn’t read it. You know me—I can usually tell in five seconds what they’re after but with this customer, nothing. So I waited. I let her come to me in her own way. That’s something that’s always good to try to do, by the way. Let them come to you. Anyway, she comes right up to me, doesn’t even try to look for something on her own, looks me square in the eye and says she has a strange request and hopes I won’t be too offended by it. Of course I won’t, I told her. I’d be happy to help with anything she might need, I said. She clears her throat and says she has to buy a sport coat for a dead man. Just like that. She looks at me and squints a little, like she’s not sure how I’ll take this news.”
Though Henry has heard this story multiple times and could even recite parts of it by heart, he politely raises his eyebrows and nods to his host.
“I tell her I am not in the least offended, that we have seen to the clothing at funerals in the past and that we’d be happy to help her. Then she asks me if I could come up to the apartment and measure him for it. Asks me to come measure him because he’s never had a sport coat or something like that. Or maybe he had one and he lost a lot of weight or something, I can’t remember that part but the bottom line is I agree to go over to his apartment, which I think is strange but who am I to question another’s culture, I think to myself. She seemed a bit exotic, if you know what I mean. So I assumed at the time that this was an ethnic thing where they don’t like funeral homes. This is what I’m thinking at the time.” He taps the side of his head, a visual aid now built in to the fabric of the story, it’s been told so many times.
“Anyway, I agree to meet her at the front of her apartment building and I go there right after I close up for the day. Remember I’m thinking it’s their religion or something. Maybe he’s laid out at their apartment instead of a funeral home for religious reasons. To each his own, I tell myself. We shouldn’t judge.”
Henry nods, shrugs and takes a gulp of his beer.
“So, I get there—you want another beer? Let me get you another one,” he says, eager for his audience to be totally focused on his story, not waiting patiently for it to be over in order to get another beer. He’s pleased at his own attentiveness.
“There you go. Anyway, I get there and she’s right out front, like she said she’d be. Everything’s going just as she said it would. Except that I notice her key chain is huge. One of those rings like jailors have in the movies, you know? I think it’s strange but I follow her in through the main door to the lobby. We go over to the elevator and while we’re waiting for it she thanks me again for doing this. She’s very grateful and so on. We get in the elevator and then we’re on the top floor of the building, walking down the hall to the apartment. That’s when I realize it’s not her apartment at all, she’s the superintendent of the building. She’s fishing through the keys on her ring, she doesn’t know for sure which key it is. That’s how I know.”
He explains his detective work to Henry as an aside. Many of his listeners must have wondered about this part so he has worked the explanation into the story.
“Anyway, she gets the door open and that’s when it hits me. The smell. I’m telling you, Henry, it almost knocked me over, the smell was so bad. I look over at her and she’s acting like she doesn’t notice a thing. So I take a gulp of air before I go in and try to hold it as long as I can. But how long can you hold your breath, you know? You’ve got to exhale sooner or later. So I try to breath in and out of my mouth. It works for a few steps but then I’m tasting the smell. Tasting it. Can you imagine? It was so strong it actually tasted. And there she is, motioning me to come over to this chair, where I can see the back of a man’s head. This isn’t right, I’m thinking. He’s not laid out all official-like. I get around to the front of the chair and I see what’s going on. She’s his landlord and he’s passed and she hasn’t called anyone about it! He’s sitting upright, his eyes are still open! For a second I think this might be a sick prank—like he might reach out and grab me or something. Like a Candid Camera thing. If it weren’t for the smell I would’ve thought that for sure.”
Henry senses this is where he should interject something verbal.
“So what’d you do?”
“I’ll tell you what I did.” Mr. Beardsley beams at the question, listlessly executed though it was. “I excused myself and practically ran out to the hallway. She followed me out. You’ve got to call someone about this, I told her. I’m ashamed to say I may have raised my voice. The police. The coroner. Someone. And she just looked at me like I was speaking a language she didn’t understand. Does he have any family? I asked her. She said no. Are you his landlord? I asked her. She said yes. That’s all. Just ‘yes.’ Like it’s twenty questions and I’m supposed to piece it all together. What about friends? Are there any friends of his you could call? None, she said. As it turns out he was a loner, stuck to himself mostly. He was old. Ninety, I believe.”
Mr. Beardsley takes a sip of his beer and luxuriates in his wonderful tale, so sure is he of Henry’s complete fascination.
“Wow,” Henry says.
“Wow is right,” Mr. Beardsley says. “I talked her into calling the police and we went back inside, where I figured I’d just stand by her for moral support—maybe she’s in shock or something, I think to myself at the time—but the way she looked at me … I couldn’t believe it, she still wanted me to measure him. She was standing by the phone, not saying a word, but standing there looking at me like it’s a bribe—she’ll call the police if I take his measurements. I’m sorry but if you’ve got an unreported dead man in one of your units—I think you’ve got bigger things to worry about than whether he’ll be dressed right in his casket. I don’t say that, I just think it. Of course I don’t say it out loud.”
“There he is!” Henry says with an emphasis that reveals he’s been wondering about Ramon’s arrival for some time now. He practically hugs Ramon when he sees him emerging from the stairwell onto the rooftop. The metal door clanks back in place next to the gray brick doorstopper. “He-ey, man!”
Ramon squints at Henry, who has never seemed so happy to see him.
“Mr. Rodriguez.” Mr. Beardsley’s demeanor shifts back into that of a host, jovial formality. But Henry knows he is slightly annoyed by the interruption so close to the story’s climax. “Good to see you, good to see you. What can I get you? I was just telling Henry here how I came to live here.”
Ramon’s eyes crinkle in a stifled smile of recognition—he now understands Henry’s false enthusiasm. Henry nods back with a miserable gulp of his beer.
“I know I’ve told Ramon this story,” Mr. Beardsley says with a clap on his guest’s back.
“Yeah,” Ramon clears his throat. “Yes.” He accepts the beer.
“So, to make a long story short—” he directs this back at Henry along with a pointed finger uncurled from the bottle neck “—turns out she’s crazy. Certifiable. She called the police to report him dead—I had to make a show with the measuring tape and let me tell you I almost lost my lunch doing it. The police