Tales of the Black Widowers

There was a knock at the door.
"Use the peephole," said Avalon.
Halsted did, and said, "It's Tom." He opened the door to let Thomas Trumbull in.
Avalon said, "How come you weren't announced?"
Trumbull shrugged. "They know me here. I've visited Manny before."
"Besides," said Drake, "an important government operative like you is above suspicion."
Trumbull snorted and his lined face twisted into a scowl, but he didn't rise to the bait. That he was a code expert all the Black Widowers knew. What he did with it, none of the Black Widowers knew, though all had the same suspicion.
Trumbull said, "Any of you counted the bulls yet?"
Gonzalo laughed. "It does seem a herd."
The bookcases that lined the wall were littered with bulls in wood and ceramic and in all sizes and colors. There were several on the end tables, others on the television set.
"There are more in the bathroom," said Drake, emerging.
"I'll bet you," said Trumbull, "that if we each count all the bulls in the place, we'll each come out with a different answer and every one of them will be wrong."
"I'll bet you," said Halsted, "that Manny doesn't know how many there are himself."
"Hey, Manny," shouted Gonzalo, "how many bulls have you got?"
"Counting me?" called back Rubin, amid the clatter of pottery. He put his head out of the kitchen door. "One thing about eating here is you know damn well you don't get any liver in the appetizer. You're getting an eggplant dish with all kinds of ingredients in it and don't ask the details because it's my recipe. I invented it… And, Mario, that bull will chip if you drop it and Jane knows them all by heart and she'll inspect each one when she comes back."
Avalon said, "Did you hear about the robbery here, Tom?"
Trumbull nodded. "He didn't get much, I understand."
Rubin hustled out, carrying dishes. "Don't help, Henry. Say, Jeff, put down the drink a minute and help me put out the cutlery… It's roast turkey, so all of you get ready to tell me if you want light meat or dark and don't change your mind once you've made it up. And you're all getting stuffing whether you want it or not because that's what makes or-"
Avalon put out the last of the knives with a flourish and said, "What did they get, Rubin?"
"You mean the guy who broke in? Nothing. Jane must have come back just as he started. He messed up some of the items in the medicine chest; looking for drugs, I suppose. I think he picked up some loose change, and my recording equipment was knocked about. He may have been trying to carry off my portable stereo to hock it, but he just had a chance to move it a bit… Who wants music, by the way?"
"No one," shouted Trumbull indignantly. "You start making your damned noise, and I'll steal the stereo and kick every one of your tapes intd the incinerator."
Gonzalo said, "You know, Manny, I hate to say it, but the stuffing is even better than the eggplant was."
Rubin grunted. "If I had a bigger kitchen-" The wail of a siren sounded from outside. Drake jerked a thumb over his shoulder toward the open window. "The lullaby of Broadway."
Rubin waved his hand negligently. "You get used to it. If it isn't a fire engine, it's an ambulance; if it isn't an ambulance, it's a police car; if it isn't… The traffic doesn't bother me."
For a moment he seemed lost in thought. Then a look of the deepest malignancy crossed his small face. "It's the neighbors who bother me. Do you know how many pianos there are on this floor alone? And how many record players?"
"You have one," said Trumbull.
"I don't play it at two a.m. at top volume," said Rubin. "It wouldn't be so bad if this were an old apartment house with walls as thick as the length of your arm. The trouble is, this place is only eight years old and they make the walls out of coated aluminum foil. Hell, the walls carry sound. Put your ear to the wall and you can hear noise from any apartment on any floor, three up and three down.
"And it's not as though you can really hear the music and enjoy it," he went on. "You just hear that damned bass, thump, thump, thump, at a subsonic level that turns your bones to water."
Halsted said, "I know. In my place, we've got a couple who have fights and my wife and I listen, but we can never hear the words, just the tone of voice. Infuriating. Sometimes it's an interesting tone of voice, though."
"How many families do you have here in this apartment house?" asked Avalon.
Rubin spent a few moments computing with moving lips. "About six hundred fifty," he said.
"Well, if you insist on living in a beehive," said Avalon, "you have to take the consequences." His neat and graying beard seemed to bristle with high morality.
"That's a real fat hunk of comfort," said Rubin. "Henry, you're going to have another helping of turkey."
"No, really, Mr. Rubin," said Henry, with a kind of helpless despair. "I just can't-" And he stopped with a sigh, since-his plate was heaped high.
He said, "You seem very put out, Mr. Rubin; and somehow I feel there is more to it than someone's piano playing."
Rubin nodded and, for a moment, his lips actually trembled, as though in passion. "You bet it is, Henry. It's that Goddamn carpenter. You might be able to hear him now."
He tilted his head in an attitude of listening and, automatically, all conversation stopped and all listened. Except for the steady whine of traffic outside, there was nothing.
Rubin said, "Well, we're lucky. He isn't doing it now; hasn't for a while, in fact. Listen, everyone, dessert was a kind of disaster and I had to improvise. If anyone doesn't want to eat it, I've got cake from the bakery, which I wouldn't ordinarily recommend, you understand-"
"Let me help this course," said Gonzalo.
"Okay. Anyone but Henry."
"That," said Trumbull, "is a kind of reverse snobbery. Henry, this guy Rubin is putting you in your place. If he weren't so damned conscious that you're a waiter, he'd let you help wait on us."
Henry looked at his plate, still piled high, and said, "My frustration is not so much at being unable to help wait on table, as at being unable to understand."
"Unable to understand what?" asked Rubin, coming in with desserts on a tray. They looked very much like chocolate mousse.
"Are you having a carpenter working in this apartment house?" asked Henry.
"What carpenter?… Oh, you mean what I said. No, I don't know what the hell he is. I just call him a carpenter. He's forever banging. Three in the afternoon. Five in the morning. He's forever banging. And always when I'm writing and want it particularly quiet… How's the Bavarian cream?"
"Is that what this is?" asked Drake, staring at it suspiciously.
"That's what it started out to be," said Rubin, "but the gelatin wouldn't set properly and I had to improvise."
"Tastes great to me, Manny," said Gonzalo.
"Little too sweet," said Avalon, "but I'm not much of a dessert man."
"It is a little too sweet," said Rubin magnanimously. "Coffee coming up in a minute; and not instant, either."
"Banging what, Mr. Rubin?" asked Henry.
Rubin had bustled away, and it wasn't till five minutes afterward, with the coffee poured, that Henry could ask again, "Banging what, Mr. Rubin?"
"What?" asked Rubin.
Henry pushed his chair back from the table. His mild face seemed to set into a harder outline. "Mr. Rubin," he said, "you are the host; and I am the guest of the club at this dinner. I would like to ask a privilege which, as host, you can grant."
"Well, ask," said Rubin.
"As guest, it is traditional that I be quizzed. Frankly, I do not wish to be, since, unlike other guests, I will be at next month's banquet and at the one after that, in my ordinary capacity as waiter, of course, and I prefer-" Henry hesitated.