The Tenants Read Online Free PDF Page B

more white than brown. Standing, he was about five ten, taller than Lesser had imagined.
    “Could I park this gadget here till the morning? I would hate to have it stolen out of my office. I been hiding it in the closet but that ain’t hiding, if you dig.”
    Lesser, after hesitation, dug. “Are you through for the day?”
    “What’s it to you?”
    “Nothing, I only thought—”
    “I go on from eight to twelve or thereabouts,” said the black, “full four hours’ work and then goof off—visit friends and such. Writing down words is like hitting paper with a one-ton hammer. How long do you stay on it?”
    Lesser told him about six hours a day, sometimes more.
    Willie uneasily said nothing.
    Harry asked about his manuscript. “Wouldn’t you like to leave that too? Needless to say I’d respect its privacy.”

    “No siree, man. That stays with papa. I have my briefcase for that.”
    A bulky zippered briefcase was squeezed under his left arm.
    Lesser understood how he felt. The safety of your manuscript was a constant worry. He kept a copy of his in a metal box in a nearby bank.
    “About what time will you be coming for the machine?”
    “Make it like eight or around that if it’s no skin off you. If I miss a day don’t fret on it.”
    This man’s making me a daily chore. But on consideration Lesser said, “I’m up then except on Sundays.”
    “Sundays I ball my sweet bitch.”
    “Well, I envy you that.”
    “No need to, man, there’s meat all around.”
    “The women I meet generally want to get married.”
    “Stay away from that type,” advised Willie.
    He lugged his typewriter into Lesser’s flat and after surveying the living room laid it with a grunt under a small round table near the window, with a potted geranium in a saucer on it.
    “It’ll be handy here.”
    The writer offered no objection.
    “Man, oh man.” Willie gazed around in envious pleasure at the shelves crammed with books, books on
their backs, magazines, some small objects of art. He inspected Lesser’s hi-fi, then slowly shuffled through a stack of records, reading aloud titles and artists, mocking some of the names he couldn’t pronounce. A Bessie Smith surprised him.
    “What’s this girl to you?”
    “She’s real, she talks to me.”
    “Talking ain’t telling.”
    Lesser wouldn’t argue.
    “Are you an expert of black experience?” Willie slyly asked.
    “I am an expert of writing.”
    “I hate all that shit when whites tell you about black.”
    Willie roamed into Lesser’s study. He sat at his desk, fingered his typewriter, tested the daybed mattress, opened the closet, peered in, shut the door. He stood at the wall examining some small prints the writer had collected.
    Lesser explained about his movie money. “I made forty thousand dollars on a film sale about eight years ago and took it all in deferred payments. Less my agent’s commission and living on roughly four thousand a year, I’ve done fine until now.”
    “Man, if I had that amount of bread I’d be king of Shit Mountain. What are you going to do after it’s gone?”
    “It’s almost gone. But I expect to finish my book by
summer, or maybe before if my luck holds out. The advance on it should carry me into the next book another two or three years. That’ll be a shorter one than this.”
    “Takes you that long, I mean like three years?”
    “Longer, I’m a slow writer.”
    “Raise up your speed.”
    Willie took a last look around. “This is a roomy pad. Why don’t we party here some night real soon? Not this week but maybe next. I’m full up this.”
    Lesser was willing. Though he didn’t say so, he hoped Willie would bring along a lady friend or two. He had never slept with a black girl.
     
     
    Willie Spearmint usually knocked on Harry Lesser’s door at a quarter to eight. The end-of-year weather was bad and now, as he wrote, the black kept his orange shoes on and wore a thick blood-red woolen hat against the cold. He pulled it down