Rented Space, Chapters 1-7
1.
“This was Mr. Edward’s room,” she said. “He lived here only a couple years…then he retired from the University. I don’t know where he went after that, or where he came from before he lived with us.”
Gauzy, yellow curtains flutter about the open window. Through the curtains and across the street a dimly identical line of three-story, Washington, D.C., row houses can be seen as if through breathed-on glass.
“He left some things behind.”
She picks up a souvenir tin ashtray. Across the bottom, where one would stub a cigarette, is a picture of a barren-looking, red desert landscape with the slogan “Come to Sunny Santa Fe!”
“He used this for spare change, I think. You don’t smoke, do you, Mr. Crabbe?”
“Of course not. It causes birth defects in pregnant women,” Mr. Crabbe responded.
The joke, if it was a joke, was lost on Mrs. Poole.
“Good. We have a baby, you know. In summer, we turn the air conditioning on, and you know how that smell just permeates a house.”
“How many children do you have?” Mr. Crabbe said, fingering the embroidery on the quilt on the bed under the window.
“Three counting the baby. Our oldest is a boy, Timmy, he’s in second grade. Our middle daughter Sarah is in first. The baby is Liza…er, Elizabeth. We call her Liza. She’s just nine months. Are children going to be a problem for you?”
Mr. Crabbe thought a moment. A problem. A problem. It could well be a problem, but right now his biggest problem was the pinch he felt in his wallet every time he looked at a prospective room for rent in Washington.
He sighed in a way that did not set Mrs. Poole at ease. He did not even realize he had sighed, or that he had disconcerted her. “No. No problem.”
“I hope not. There’s nothing we can do about the children. They make noise.”
You can beat them until they lapse into unconsciousness, Mr. Crabbe thought. Works for me.
After a pause, Mrs. Poole said, “You seem like an ideal tenant for us, I hope we will be the ideal landlord for you.”
“I need a room, you see,” Mr. Crabbe said abruptly. “And right now I’m willing to take just about anything that is not in a high rise in Arlington, as long as it costs me something less than $1500.00 a month.”
Not sure if she had just been insulted, Mrs. Poole said, “Is that the reason you’re not looking for an apartment of your own? The price?”
“Yes,” Mr. Crabbe said. “I’ve felt more than a little sticker shocked lately. Just before coming to see you, I went to look at a room advertised as a bedroom in a condominium for $600.00 a month. Turned out, this Black woman was renting a dingy bedroom with no window in an equally dingy, rather nefarious-looking high-rise building. I had to buzz her apartment to be allowed in. I knew right then I didn’t want to live there; probably inhabited by a bunch of drug pushers and who knows what else. The bathtub had a hole in the wall where the faucet should have been. She had other roomers, too, all of them Black college students. It’s been a depressing day, Mrs. Poole. Your face has been the first ray of sunshine in an otherwise bleak day.”
Mrs. Poole brightened, “Well, it would indeed be an honor to have you here. I mean, you can imagine how unexpected…the Poet Laureate of the United States. I’d have thought the government would put you up, or else pay you more so you could live on your own.”
Mr. Crabbe smiled gently, “Come now, Mrs. Poole, the Republicans are in charge of things. I’m a Republican myself. It wouldn’t do to expect the Government to contribute anything to the support of a poet.”
“Oh, I guess not,” Mrs. Poole replied, uncertain whether this was a good turn in the conversation. Everything about Mr. Crabbe left her uncertain. She could never tell if he was serious.
After a too-long silence, Mr. Crabbe changed the subject.
“What are the terms again?”
“Oh,” Mrs. Poole said. “Five hundred a month. You have your own…what-do-you-call-it…water closet,” with a toilet and a sink. You”ll have to share the shower with the rest of the family, I’m afraid. You’re also welcome to share meals with us. Since I don’t work, I am able to cook dinner for us every evening. Dinner is at five-thirty. Breakfast at seven in the morning. Lunch is ‘fend for yourself,’ however.”
“I’ll be looking forward to dining with you. My things are in my car, and if you don’t mind, I’ll write you a check for the first month’s rent right now and begin moving in immediately.”
Mrs. Poole seemed shocked, “Well, O.K. Gee, you don’t waste any time…”
“I am sixty years old, Mrs. Poole. I have no time to waste, unlike the youthful, such as yourself.”
“Well, I understand. You can make the check out to me, Carolyn Poole.”
“What’s your husband’s name. I’d like his name on the check, too,” Mr. Crabbe said, taking a checkbook out of the back pocket of his trousers.
“Oh, Thomas Poole.”
Mr. Crabbe scribbled quickly in a fluid hand practiced at signing illegible autographs. He handed Mrs. Poole a check made out to Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Poole. The personal information on the check listed the Poet Laureate’s name as Mr. Eugene Crabbe and his address as the publishing house Farrar Strauss and Giroux. Carolyn looked at the check, briefly perplexed, then folded it and tucked it in her jeans pocket.
“Well, then, do you need help moving your stuff in? Thomas should be home soon.”
“Yes, that would be nice,” Crabbe said. “I may just lie down and take a nap on my fusty bed until he comes home.”
“Fusty bed? Do the linens need changing?”
“Just a poetic expression,” Crabbe said.
“Oh,” Carolyn said, fidgeting for how to take her good-byes from her sudden new tenant. “Well, I’ve got to finish dinner. We’re having a roast beef tonight. Do you like roast beef, Mr. Crabbe?”
“Yes, if the cut of beef is tender. It should fall apart at barely the touch of the fork.”
“Oh my, I confess I don’t pay that much attention to the cut of the beef when I buy it. This might be a rump roast we’re eating tonight,” she said. “But I do hope you’ll join us. Maybe the salad will interest you.”
“Maybe,” Mr. Crabbe said.
“Well, good-bye then. Let me know if you need anything,” Mrs. Poole said.
“Yes, I will,” Mr. Crabbe said.
As she shut the door, he turned to the room and looked around at bed and night table, dresser, TV, and wing chair. He went over to the window and parted the curtains, looking down at the street. A passerby below would have seen a tall, broody sixty-year old man, bald-headed and wearing thick, dark glasses peering out the half-shut window. Eugene Crabbe frowned.
This was Mr. Edward’s room, he thought.
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Wow. I really liked this.
The internal dialogue of the bitter poet. The vague taunting. Fabulous. And the woman as she goes to sleep.
Comment by Mel B. — Thursday, 28 April 2005 @ 1:45 am
I’m glad you liked it. I’m really enjoying it quite a bit myself. I feel guilty that I have abandoned the World War II story, even if temporarily. I don’t know if that is frustrating to people, or if no one is reading and so no one really cares. Or maybe trying to read fiction on-line and in blog format, no less, is just such a bad experience, people give up after a brief bit of trying to read.
Comment by Matthew — Saturday, 30 April 2005 @ 3:31 pm
This is very good. The crabby old sob is well-drawn. I don’t think I could read a novel full of him and no positive characters. But he is a wonderful character sketch. The woman and the Joycean monologue at the end is nice, too. I bet you have been wanting to do such a monologue for a very long time now, too….She might be your positive character. Or maybe the sob changes? Something interesting could happen between them that’s for sure. Poetry, yes. Maybe its good, too. Or, maybe, they end up in bed. I can see that happening as well. Or maybe I just want to be titillated (rather than tot-illated, of you follow me)
Again, I think you set the stage for something that I do want to continue reading. But will you add onto this? How far will you go….?
Comment by Todd — Monday, 2 May 2005 @ 6:17 pm
What, you don’t think Crabbe’s a positive character? I think he has a lot of redeeming characteristics.
You’ve hit on the direction I’m heading, I think, in at least one of your predictions. As far as I can tell at this point, they don’t end up in bed, however. Sorry to disappoint. You want titillation, go read Nin’s “Delta of Venus.”
Comment by Matthew — Tuesday, 3 May 2005 @ 6:57 am
FINALLY I sit still long enough to read your fiction (E’s sleeping on my left arm) and I’m not disappointed.
Crabbe makes me feel awkward and uncomfortable in the same way he does Mrs. Poole. He’s a cramped character, trapped within himself. That you don’t mention he’s Poet Laureate until later on is great, setting me up to see him as this nobody there’s no reason for me to like and then letting me have this sudden sense of him as an exalted individual allows for quite a laugh. Lots of subtle humor in this piece with opportunities for more.
What I most want to see? Interactions with the children. Maybe he could be asked to read them a bedtime story, given his literary status and all.
Comment by Dawn — Tuesday, 3 May 2005 @ 7:50 am
Oh, and who Edwards is. I’m curious about that too.
Comment by Dawn — Tuesday, 3 May 2005 @ 7:51 am
He reads them a bedtime story in chapter four/page four. That’s a particularly favorite scene of mine. I think there will be more interaction with the children, but especially with Mrs. Poole. She has become the “positive character,” as Todd says. I am introducing another character in the chapters I’m working on now who I think people will find likable as well. Crabbe is going to have lunch with the Librarian of Congress.
Edwards is my Macintosh, viz. the “Hades” chapter of Ulysses. Just a hint
Comment by Matthew — Tuesday, 3 May 2005 @ 8:03 am
Well, at last I recognized (with Todd’s prompting) the subsequent chapters. Sorry about that.
The book reading scene is probably my favorite. And I must say that, while Blueberries for Sal has always been a personal favorite, your poking fun at it through Crabbe’s perspective is quite nice. Crabbe’s pinching the little girl is also a nice touch.
I have a couple thoughts about areas that struck me as a bit inconsistent, but think I should hold off until I read more. Seems too soon to suggest revisions when you’re probably still feeling your way through your approach to this piece.
I will say that Crabbe is unremittingly awful, especially when you present his internal thoughts (reminds me in some ways of my Uncle Norman who has a penchant for writing mean verse about people he doesn’t like). Just a flat-out nasty human being.
Comment by Dawn — Tuesday, 3 May 2005 @ 10:04 pm
Good chapter 6….I’m waiting for more, MORE PLEASE
Comment by Todd — Wednesday, 4 May 2005 @ 9:04 pm
Not only am I behind in reading your blog, but you snuck a chapter of your fiction in there without warning.
Gotta say I never made it all the way through Ulysses and have no interest in trying again. So I won’t get all the Ulysses hints.
Anyway, Crabbe is such an unpleasant character, and despite that, I keep reading and want more. I like his nasty, internal dialogue. I almost hope that something unpleasant happens to him to make him deserve his misery. My favorite Doctor Who character, Tom Baker, wrote a book called The Boy Who Kicked Pigs. It starts off by saying something about it being a lovely day, about Robert Cagliari being a horrid child, and this is the day that he would die.
And you learn that he would deserve it.
I like his email, with a wink to the reader, that says that if he were in a terrible sitcom, he’d be the old curmudgeon who has been softened by a love interest.
Comment by Mel B. — Thursday, 12 May 2005 @ 1:00 am
The bad guys are always easier to write. And I wonder, too, is he really so terrible? He lies, he would steal a croissant from a Starbucks, he thinks bad thoughts of small children…I don’t know that he is really so different from the rest of humanity. Maybe it’s that he is consistently bad that separates him from most of us. I really, really enjoy writing about him, though.
That Tom Baker book sounds interesting, but a little odd for a children’s book. Is a child ever so “horrid” that he deserves death?
There aren’t a lot of Ulysses references in this story, at least I don’t think so. Maybe I’ve unconsciously inserted a few, however. Ulysses has been the most influential book I’ve ever read.
Comment by Matthew — Thursday, 12 May 2005 @ 7:11 am
The children’s book is a bit odd, and it is uncomfortable to read at first. You don’t think a child would deserve to die… But then, you never thought little Anakin Skywalker of Episode I would ever turn into Darth Vader, either.
I haven’t read the Lemony Snickett (sp?) A Series of Unfortunate Events series, but those sound to be downers too.
Maybe it’s important to have a few downers. And I think Tom Baker intended his book to be a play on an old morality tale, much the same way the Lemony Snickett series is intended, or so I understand.
Anyway, your guy is pretty darned unpleasant. I don’t wish for humanity at this point for him. That would be giving in, too out of character, anyway.
Yes, we all do think bad thoughts. I have a few of them myself, but I’d like to think that I’m not consistently the most miserable person on the planet like Crabbe. (Though I suppose to be a poet laureate, and of the sort that got him chosen by the librarian, you have to have lots of pain. Unlike Mrs. Bush’s suggestion.)
But I’m interested to see where your imagination takes him.
Comment by Mel B. — Saturday, 14 May 2005 @ 1:56 pm