(LB2) Shakespeare's Landlord Read Online Free PDF Page B

it all to?”
    I just kept tossing clothes into the plastic wash basket. When I finally looked up, Beanie had gone, and a moment later I heard splashing noises from Beanie’s big bathroom off the master bedroom.
    After I heard the slam of the door to the garage, I said out loud, “I best start being nice to the mistress, else she sell me down the river.” I really shouldn’t be rude to her, I told myself seriously. Since they pay for me twice a week.
    I go to Mrs. Hofstettler twice a week, too, but I charge her less—a lot less—because it takes me far less time and effort to straighten a two-bedroom apartment than it does the large Winthrop home, and also because the Winthrop children don’t do the slightest thing to help themselves, at least as far as I can tell. If only they would put their own dirty clothes in the hamper and pick up their own rooms, they could save their parents quite a bit of my salary.
    Normally, I am able to maintain my indifference to the Winthrops’ personal habits, but this morning I was thrown off balance by what Beanie had said. Had Marshall and Pardon Albee really been in business together? Marshall had never mentioned a partner in the business he’d built up from scratch. Though Marshall and I knew each other’s bodies with an odd, impersonal intimacy from working out at the same time and taking karate together, I realized we really knew little about each other’s daily lives.
    I wondered uneasily why I would worry about Marshall Sedaka, anyway. What difference would a partnership between Pardon and Marshall make? No matter how dim the light, I knew I’d have recognized Marshall if he’d been the person wheeling Pardon Albee’s body into the park.
    That realization made me feel even more uneasy.
    Bending my mind ferociously to the job at hand, I found Bobo’s errant checkbook and propped it on his mother’s dressing table, where she’d be sure to spot it. Thinking was slowing me down; I still had to do Howell Three’s room, and though he isn’t the pig Bobo is, he isn’t neat, either.
    On my Tuesday at the Winthrops’, I pick up, do the wash and put it away, and clean the bathrooms. On my Friday visit, I dust, vacuum, and mop. The Winthrops also have a cook, who takes care of the kitchen, or they’d have to hire me for a third time slot. Of course, on Fridays, too, I have to do a certain amount of picking up just to reach the surfaces of things I need to dust, and I get aggravated all over again at the people who are lazy enough to pay me to clean up their mess.
    I soothed myself with a few deep breaths. Finally, I realized I was upset not because of the unthrifty Winthrops—their habits are to my benefit—or even because of Marshall Sedaka’s possible involvement with Pardon Albee, but because right after I’d finished here, I had to meet with Claude Friedrich.

Chapter 3

    HE WAS EXACTLY ON TIME.
    As I stepped back to let him in, I was again impressed by his size and presence.
    The big thing about fear, I reminded myself, is not to show it. Having braced myself with that piece of personal junk philosophy, I found myself unable to show the policeman much of anything, besides a still face that could be construed as simply sullen.
    I watched him scanning my sparse furniture, pieces that were on sale at the most expensive local stores, pieces I’d carefully selected and placed exactly where I wanted. It is a small living room, and I’d chosen with its size in mind: a reclining love seat with a footrest, rather than a sofa; a wing chair; small occasional tables; small pictures. I have a television set, but it, too, is not large. There are no photographs. There are library books, a large stack, on the bottom level of the table by my chair.
    The prevailing colors in both upholstery and pictures are dark blue and tan.
    “How long have you lived in this house?” Friedrich asked when he’d finished looking.
    “I bought it four years ago.”
    “From Pardon