Hungry Men by Edward Anderson

Author:Edward Anderson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Phocion Publishing
Published: 2019-10-31T00:00:00+00:00

16. Mr. and Mrs. Stecker

Acel had lettered the slip above the brass mailbox himself: Mr. and Mrs. Acel E. Stecker. He looked at it now as he opened the empty box. Shifting the bundle and the small cardboard box back under his right arm, he went down the hallway and turned and started up the stairway.

The apartment of the Steckers overlooked the alley. There were two rooms, one which contained a cook range, a dining table, and a curtained kitchen table which concealed the bathtub; the other, a bed and a mirror. Clothing hung on the walls of the smaller room. In the larger, too, there was a small table on which some day they expected to place a radio. On it now lay the book by Bernard Shaw.

Acel unwrapped the bundle on the kitchen table.

It was a bottle of gin. If she squawks about this, I’ll tell her that she didn’t say anything when I bought two bottles over in Jersey. It isn’t going to hurt anything with Boats coming to eat with us tonight.

It was only a little after five o’clock, and Acel had an hour to wait for Corinne. She worked afternoons at the newspaper office, soliciting classified advertisements over the telephone. She got ten per cent commission.

Acel raised the window and looked down into the alley. A bunch of kids were playing with a rubber ball. A woman on the roof across the alley was taking clothes down from a line. A truck honked, and the children took their time getting out of its path.

Acel turned back and looked around the room. He could go out and get the steak, but Corinne had warned him about that. There was no icebox, and the thing to do was to wait until the last minute. He could peel the potatoes, though, and put them in cool water so they would stay crisp.

After he peeled the potatoes he went over and counted the packets of razor blades in the cardboard box. There were fourteen. That was what he had thought. That made twenty-two packs he had sold that day. One dollar and ten cents clear.

He looked out the window again. The kids were gone. The trouble about living in the back of a joint was that you couldn’t see if anybody was coming. You didn’t know they were here until the knob turned in the door. Seven flights of stairs was too much for a girl to have to climb. It made a man puff.

Corinne came in with the meat and lettuce and a jar of strawberry preserves. She showed Acel the runner in her stocking. “Can you beat that?” she said.

Acel scraped the grease out of the can into the potato pot. “I sold twenty-two packs today.”

“That’s good,” Corinne said. “I did not do so bad today. I sold twelve dollars’ worth of ads.”

“What I got to do is get a side line,” Acel said. “Abe was showing me some cards today I believe I can sell. And some booklets.

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