“Hello. Anything I can do for you?” I say.
“Yes you can, a lot. Which one are you?”
“Which one what?”
“I bet you’re Taub. You have to be, for yours is the only mailbox with no matchbook in the slit, which is why I’ve been ringing your bell the most. I thought the rest were out.”
“I’ve been out all day too.”
“Well I thought you picked up your matchbook on your way in before, went out again for a brief errand we’ll say and were only now coming back.”
“No.” I look at the mailbox. All of them have matchbooks in the slits but mine. I take one of the matchbooks out of another tenant’s slit and see it’s an ad for a new hair clinic on Broadway. Afros, facials, pedicures, hair straightening, hairpieces and unisex permanents and haircuts.
“Want this? That tenant’s away and I don’t smoke.”
“Very nice of you, thanks. I can always use an extra pack.” “And the reason nobody answered your rings before is none of the bells work.”
“So that’s why. But you sure you didn’t take your matchbook from your mailbox and then go out? Usually I’m right on things like that.”
“I haven’t even taken my mail yet.” I open my mailbox. Three return manila envelopes and a circular and the telephone bill from the day before.
“That’s a lot more mail than I get in a day. You must do all right or have loads of friends. But now let me tell you what I was doing all my bell ringing and hanging around here for and how you can vote for me today.”
She points to a photograph on the folder’s first page. “That’s me and these are my credentials, so you know nothing’s funny and I’m not here to clean out your home.”
“If this has anything to do with a magazine subscription, you’ve the wrong guy. I’m dead broke.”
“No, what I got for you is even worse than that. You see, that’s my name, Denise Waters. My photo, like a passport photo, though it’s not a good likeness, as passport photos never are. And my age, height and eye color, just so nobody exchanges photos on me and goes around with my binder doing my business what I’m about to describe to you. Do you recognize me?”
“Yes, the photo’s you.”
“I’m supposed to ask you that, which is why it might sound stupid to you. And the height, five-three, and blue eyes, or are, under these shades. Okay. I’m from N-A-B.”
“For the National Association of Booklovers or something I think I recall.”
“So you know us. Then you know all us students and the organization we’re doing this for are honest and straight.”
“One of your members was around about a year ago. Same thing.
The subscriber votes a certain amount of votes for you through the number of subscriptions he buys, and in the end the student who sells the most subscriptions gets the most votes and wins thousands of dollars.”
“One thousand, and not for the most subscriptions. Some are worth seven and eight times as many votes as others, like one to Vogue over a slim comic book. Though if you take a comic book subscription for ten years we’ll say, fat or slim, that’s good too and maybe better than two years to Playboy or Vogue. But that’s not even the worst part of what I’m here to do to you.”
“What else?”
“You see, I want that thousand dollars. I need it. And I’m going to get it, so I’m sure you can afford to put down at least a few hundred votes for me.”
“I can’t. Nothing.”
“Let me explain. I have nineteen thousand so far. That’s a lot of votes but not even enough to make the semifinals. I need a thousand more and only then I’m in the running for the grand prize. Twenty thousand votes gets me the chance to sell subscriptions for another week against what could be the other thousand semifinalists. And if I get more votes than the rest of them, which I will, the thousand dollars is mine. So you’ll help me, won’t you? I worked this hard, you don’t want to see me suddenly fail. Take any magazine here for a year — the cheapest is worth at least fifty votes for me.” She opens the folder and shows me two pages filled with the names of magazines and how many votes a subscription to each of them is worth for one, two, five and ten years.
“I wish I could, Denise. Honestly, I wish I could.”
“What’s your first name?”
“Will.”
“That’s a nice name — Will. What do you do?”
“A waiter.”
“You don’t look like one. You’re too nice. But I bet you make lots of tips being that way.”
“I only started Monday. I owe two months rent and will probably have to borrow to pay it and some other bills. Lights, gas. This phone bill here.”
“Please, something says you’re fooling me, Will. You’re no waiter. You’re not the type to let yourself get that far behind. What do you really work as?”
“I’m a waiter. Other times I’m a writer. Waiter, writer. When I save enough, just a writer. And sometimes when I’m waiting and not too tired, I do both, but not as much writing as waiting. Now I can’t do any writing I’m so bushed. The first week or two of going back to waiting does that.”
“I believe you now. What’s in the box, books? They look like them.”
“Five hardcovers, five soft, of an anthology I’m in. My. first book. Arrived yesterday but the box was too big to stick in my mailbox so I had to pick it up at the post office,”
“Well if you’re someone famous who makes piles of money from writing in books and all, then I know you can help me with a hundred votes.”
“I didn’t get any money for this. Just the books.”
“They got to be worth money if you sell them.”
“I’ll probably just give them away to friends and my library and keep two.”
“Can I see?” She sticks her hand in the box, pulls out a hardcover. “Let me try and find you.” She reads my name off the mailbox nameplate, turns the book over a few times and says “The cover’s black except for a sprinkling of white dots running through the middle of it on both sides. What is it, a photograph of a string of pearls like on a necklace strung out but shot in the dark or so?”
“Night lights from a bridge I think. I’m not absolutely sure.”
“This is a book about bridges? I love bridges. The symbol of them, connecting. Going over things, making traveling easier.”
“It’s fiction. An anthology of. Like a story collection of one person though in here of different writers, but not all the stories about bridges of course. Maybe none of them. I haven’t read any of the stories yet but mine.”
“Don’t play with me, Will. If it’s an anthology of stories, I know they can’t all be about bridges. I read. I like reading. But I like famous people more. To me anybody who has something in any book is famous. Even if he didn’t write the book but just has his name in it for something he did, no matter how bad. But let me see if I can find you.”
“My name’s inside with the others.”
“If it isn’t and you’re also not in the index, then you’re not in the book, right? But I’m sure you weren’t lying.” She opens the book to the first two blank pages and stares at them.
“Go further.”
“No, I was only looking. Still all black but now no lights. Bridge in the night with no stars or cars or lights on it it could be. Just guessing.” She turns the page. “The Black Book. That’s the title. And black page with red lettering this time. Very devilish. I think I’m getting the gist of your book now. Edited by Ralph and Ernestine von Blake. That’s not you.”