The old woman pondered. "I try to keep this a quiet home, without a lot of noise and goings-on. There are eleven people living here and they're all decent, respectable people. All radios are expected to be off by ten o'clock in the evening. No baths are to be taken after nine."
"Swell," Mary Anne sighed.
"I have one vacant room. I'm not certain if I can rent it to you or not ... I'll show it to you, though. Do you care to step inside and see it?"
"Sure," Mary Anne said, stepping past the old woman and into the hall. "Let's have a look."
At nine-thirty she arrived at the redwood apartment that Joseph Schilling had acquired for her.
With her key she unlocked the door, but she did not go inside. The smell of new paint drifted around her, a bright, sickening smell. Cold morning sunlight filled the apartment; bands of pale illumination spread over the crumpled, paint-smeared newspapers scattered across the floor. The apartment was utterly lonely. Her possessions, still in pasteboard cartons, were stacked in the center of each room. Cartons, newspapers, sodden rollers still oozing from the night before ...
Going downstairs to the companion apartment, she rapped sharply on the door. When the owner-a middle-aged man, balding-appeared, she asked: "Can I use your phone? I'm from upstairs."
She called the Yellow Cab people and then went outdoors to wait.
While she was supervising the loading of the cab, the landlady showed up. The meter ticked merrily as she and the driver carried the pasteboard cartons downstairs and piled them in the luggage compartment; both of them were perspiring and gasping, glad to get the job finished.
"Good grief," the landlady said. "What does this mean?"
Mary Anne halted. "I'm moving."
"So I see. Well, what's the story? I think I have a right to be informed."
"I've changed my mind; I'm not renting it." It seemed obvious.
"I suppose you want your deposit back."
"No," Mary Anne said. "I'm realistic."
"What about all that trash upstairs? All those newspapers and paint; and it's half-painted. I can't rent it in that condition. Are you going to finish?" She followed after Mary Anne as the girl took an armload of clothes from the cab driver and stuffed it among the cartons. "Miss, you can't leave under these circumstances; it isn't done. You have a responsibility to leave a place in the same condition you rented it."
"What are you complaining about?" The woman annoyed her. "You're getting a free fifty bucks."
"I've got a good mind to call your father," the landlady said.
"My what?" Then she understood, and at first it seemed funny. After that it didn't seem so funny, but she had already begun to laugh. "Did he tell you that? Yes, my father. Father Joseph, the best father I could hope for. The best goddamn old father in the world." The landlady was astonished at her outburst. "Go jump in the creek," Mary Anne said. "Rent your apartment-get busy."
Sliding into the front of the cab, she slammed the door. The driver, having loaded the last carton in the back, got in behind the wheel and started up the motor.
"You ought to be ashamed of yourself," the landlady said.
Mary Anne didn't answer. As the cab pulled away from the curb she leaned back and lit a cigarette; she had too much on her mind to pay attention to the landlady's complaints.
When the cab driver saw the room she was moving into, he shook his head and said: "Girlie, you're nuts."
"I am, am I?" She put down her armload and started back out of the room into the dusty, water-stained hall.
"You sure are." He plodded alongside her, down the hall and down the stairs to the sidewalk. "That was a swell apartment you left-all those redwood panels. And in a classy neighborhood."
"You go rent it, then."
"Are you really going to live here?" He picked up two cartons and began lugging them up the steps. "This job is going to cost you plenty, girlie. What's on the meter is only the down payment."
"Fine," Mary Anne said, struggling after him. "Lay it on as heavy as you can."
"It's the custom. We're not in the moving business, you know. This comes under the heading of a favor."
"Nobody's in any business," Mary Anne said. From her doorway, the tiny dried-up old colored woman-her name was Mrs. Lessley-watched with suspicion. "I guess I'm lucky; you're so kind."
When the last carton had been carried upstairs she paid him. It wasn't as tough as she had expected; the meter read a dollar seventy and the tip-when he finally named it-was two dollars more. Three seventy wasn't so much to get herself moved. And, of course, the twenty dollars for the room: a month's rent in advance.
Maybe the driver was right. With growing horror she surveyed her room; it was clean, dark, and smelled of mold. There was one small window over the iron, high-posted bed and one larger window on the far wall over the dresser. The carpet was frayed. A mended rocking chair occupied one corner. There was a tiny closet, a sort of upright drawer constructed of plywood by some amateur handyman long since gone.
