THE RICHES OF EMBARRASSMENT

by H. L. GOLD

The Costellos, two great little people well under five feet tall, had moved out of the one-bedroom apartment to the left of mine, and my neighbors and I wondered apprehensively who would move in. I know it’s true that you can live in a Manhattan apartment house all your life and never know your neighbors, but the tenth floor of our building was lively proof that this needn’t be so, and we wanted it to continue.

Dick and Charlotte Fort (two bedrooms, to right of my apartment) were airily positive that we would assimilate whoever it might be. The Masons (three bedrooms, across the hall) could use another cheery sitter for their manic kids, for the Costellos had always been happy to oblige. Betty Snowden (one bedroom, left of the Masons) hoped the new tenant(s?) would like Maxwell, her big, but big, cat. Being closest to the vacant apartment, I wished for somebody quiet who wouldn’t mind my typing late and might welcome an occasional visit, as everybody on the tenth floor did.

After the painters were finished, two men put down green wall-to-wall carpeting. Furniture was brought in. On the door under the peephole appeared an inscrutable nameplate: J. McGivney. Bachelor? Divorcee? Couple? The name gave us no clue.

It happened to be my lot to find out. And the way I found out was this: I had just come up with the mail and was about to close the door when I noticed that the damnable top screw of my lock had worked its way loose again. So I was standing with the door half open and turning the screw with my thumbnail and the elevator came up to the tenth floor. A perfectly ordinary-seeming woman in her forties emerged and headed toward me, key in hand.

“Hello,” I said brightly, introducing myself. “And you’re Mrs. McGivney?”

“Miss,” she said flatly, looking at what I was doing.

It did look pretty silly, and I found myself babbling, “The top screw keeps coming out, and I keep having to screw it back in. Doesn’t yours?”

“I don’t know what you mean,” she said and unlocked her door and went in, followed by the sound of doublelocking and chaining it.

When I reported this to the Forts, they laughed me out of my embarrassment and said they would thaw her out. They put a couple of bottles of wine and some glasses on a tray and invited me to come along and see. Out in the hall, they rang Miss McGivney’s bell. The peephole open and an eye stared at us.

“We’re the Welcome Wagon cried Charlotte Fort gaily.

“I didn’t order any,” said M McGivney, closing the peephole.

The Forts stood there for long moment before soberly going back to their apartment, and I went into mine. We didn’t think of drinking the wine ourselves.

So far, this doesn’t sound like the start of a remarkable scientific discovery, but it was, requiring only time and more data. It was Charlotte’s destiny to add the next item.

“I never go out to the incinerator,” she chattered later. “That’s Dick’s job. But we had the people from the office over, and went to bed feeling sick, and couldn’t face all the empty bottles that had accumulated.” Sly shuddered. “So there I was in the middle of the night, clutching liquor bottles, and guess who came out.”

“Miss McGivney?” I supplied.

She nodded. “I was pretty high myself, but not after she watched me struggle to put the empty down the incinerator. I crept in to bed, positively ill with embarrassment, and tried to wake Dick but no soap.”

“That’s ridiculous,” said Dick heartily. “What’s more natural than dumping a few bottles down the incinerator at two in the morning?

“Fifteen, said Charlotte. “And it was four-thirty.

Dick, the Masons and I laughed her out of it, of course. Only I knew how she felt; the others hadn’t met Miss McGivney yet.

Sometime that summer, the Masons boys came home from camp for the weekend on their way to a dude ranch. Let Mrs. Mason tell it:

“Mike had brought back a snake from camp. It was a pretty little one; but he couldnt keep it, obviously, and I told him to take it to the ranch and let it go. A few hours after they left, the police and firemen charged out of the elevators and made for Miss McGivney’s apartment, clubs and axes at the ready. When they came out, I asked what had happened. A snake, they told me, had wound up in her bathtub!”

“And for that she called the police and fire department? asked Dick Fort, stunned.

“Not only that,” said Mrs. Mason, “she scrubbed every inch of the place on her hands and knees!”

“But why?” asked Mr. Mason.

“To kill any eggs it may have laid. I know it’s biological nonsense, but the poor woman was hysterical.”

The Masons were visited by executives from the management office, who made it clear that Mrs. Mason should not have confessed so readily, and the item made the local newspaper. We laughed them out of their embarrassment, but we noticed that it was getting harder and harder to do and also that we never seemed to meet Miss McGivney except under embarrassing conditions. Only Dick Fort and Betty Snowden disagreed. They said we were getting a bit paranoid.

You might say it was Betty’s turn next, though not in person. Her sixteen-year-old niece from Ohio was visiting her — sleeping on the sofa because Betty, if you remember, had only one bedroom — and the girl got up early and, in her shortie nightgown, went out into the hall to get the Sunday Times that Betty had delivered to her, when the door blew shut behind the girl. She rang the bell and banged on the door, but Betty had the bedroom door closed and Flents in her ears, a longtime practice. So her niece philosophically sat down on the welcome mat and started looking at the ads. That was when Miss McGivney came out on her way to early Mass.

The girl smiled up at her as she waited for the elevator and tried to explain what had happened to her.

“I don’t recall asking,” said Miss McGivney, and took the elevator.

Damn it,” I said when Betty finished, “is it us or what? These are the kind of things that happen once in years to anybody, yet she walks right into them every time!”

“It’s your own fault,” said Dick. “If you’d used a screwdriver instead of your thumbnail, or you, Charlotte, could have waited for me to get rid of the bottles the next day, or your niece, Betty, might have turned the lock before going after the paper —”

“But why does Miss McGivney always come along at just the wrong moment?” argued Mrs. Mason.

“Pure happenstance,” said Dick. “And not thinking ahead.”

That’s because you haven’t had her walk in on you like we have,” said Charlotte, too annoyed to watch her English.

“And she never will,” Dick said. “I think before I act.”

If life were dramatically logical, he should have been the next victim, but he wasn’t. I was. The Forts had invited me to dinner, but let me finish my day’s work instead of joining their company for cocktails. Finished, I phoned to beg off, being so tired that I needed a nap. As always, Charlotte was gracious about it, and I lay down with a good conscience.

It was dark when I awoke, long past the Forts’ dinnertime. I took a shower, dressed and went toward the kitchen to open some cans and eat standing up. But a slip of paper on the floor near the front door seemed to have Charlotte’s handwriting on it. I picked it up and read : “Look outside before you ha-ha make dinner for yourself. Then come on in and join us.”

I opened the door. Out in the hall, directly in front of my door, was a collection of plates containing uncooked spaghetti, Charlotte’s famous meat balls and meat sauce, salad and dressing, Italian bread, and shrimp cocktail and dessert. Just as I bent over to take them in, Miss McGivney’s door opened. I straightened and said hello, determined not to offer any explanation.

Looking at the things on the floor, she said, “Some sort of ritual?”

My nerve broke, and I was blathering away when the elevator saved me from further embarrassment. After morosely eating, I went next door, downed two highballs, and told Dick and Charlotte what had transpired.

Dick shouted, “Listen to this, people!” and uproariously repeated my story. It took me a long time to forgive him. As a matter of fact, it wasn’t until he met Miss McGivney face to face for the first time; he left for work before she did and came home earlier, so they just hadn’t crossed paths.

This fateful morning, Dick had overslept. He threw on his clothes, yelling to Charlotte that he didn’t have time for breakfast, and was waiting for the elevator when he noticed that his zipper was open. He gave it a yank — and snagged his boxer shorts.

Need I tell you who appeared at that very instant?

Much stuff has flowed under the thing since then, including Miss McGivney and the Masons and me moving away, and Bettys cat died, so she took a sabbatical without feeling guilty, and though I still correspond with the Forts, we’ve stopped debating Miss McGivney and our awful moments. It’s all very clear, at least to me.

As I said earlier, she led to a remarkable scientific discovery, and so she did. In years of ceaseless research, I have never found any discussion, much less theory, concerning the power that Miss McGivney clearly possessed. This can therefore be counted a First. Here it is:

Using a previously unknown and unsuspected ESP faculty of the mind, Miss McGivney unconsciously manufactured embarrassing incidents.

We on the tenth floor weren’t so much victims as puppets. That was bad enough — but can you imagine what life would be like if you had her power? Wherever you entered or exited, somebody would inevitably be doing something that you much preferred not to witness, let alone have explained unconvincingly to you. If you were devout, like her, thoughts in the form of prayers like these might race through your mind as you steel yourself to go out each morning: “Dear Lord, dont let me see anything upsetting today! Save me from disgusting sights! Make people act like people instead of animals!”

And, naturally, these thoughts would create what you are praying not to occur, and the harder you pray, the more inevitable they become.

Poor Miss McGivney! Poor world of Miss McGivney!

— H. L. GOLD

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