The Trouble With Eden - Lawrence Block [1]
She shook her head, thinking of Tanya Leopold. Why read something that’s gonna depress you? Tanya would no more read Sylvia Plath than she would permit herself to be depressed for any other reason. The little actress, who Marc had assured her was as utterly untalented as any he had met, had an unquestionable talent for life. She ate, slept, acted, had her hair done, and made love, approaching all these activities with healthy enthusiasm. She was always in good spirits and generally improved the spirits of those who knew her.
Whereas Linda Robshaw, who read depressing books, was in turn depressing—
Spring had come late this year and had not brought her the sense of rebirth she usually associated with the season’s arrival. It was her first spring in New Hope, and she had been looking forward to it through the cold wet deadening winter. Springtime in Manhattan had meant little more than a change in weather—you had to go to the parks for any visible sign of nature returning to life—yet here, with the spring bulbs flowering, with trees leafing out and flowering shrubs showing color, with massive banks of forsythia a golden fire along the Towpath, she still felt no corresponding rush of sap in her own veins.
She turned right at Mechanic Street and walked a few hundred yards to the large squat buildings where she and Marc were living. The three-story brick structure had been built in 1887 by one Cecil Crofter, who had intended it as a factory for the manufacture of wigs and other human hair goods. The business failed almost before it had begun, and the brick structure ultimately emerged as an apartment house, with two apartments on each floor. Each apartment had since been further subdivided, so that there were now six rental units on the first floor and five on each of the two upper stories.
An owner during the twenties had named it the Coryell Arms, and that inscription could still be made out, carved into oaken timbers over the doorway. But no one ever called it by this name. Instead it was universally known as the Shithouse.
Local history had it that someone had commented that the building was built like a brick shithouse and that the adjective had gradually disappeared from usage over the years. But Shithouse residents were inclined to believe that it would have acquired its name whatever materials had been used in its construction. The drabness of its exterior was more than matched by the squalor within. Neither the rooms nor the hallways had been painted within anyone’s memory. Chunks of plaster periodically dropped from the ceilings and were never replaced. The plumbing was noisy and unreliable, and the building abounded in violations that would have appalled a Harlem slumlord.
The Shithouse was, year in and year out, the most profitable piece of rental property in Bucks County.
The secret of the Shithouse’s commercial success was simple enough. Sully Jaeger rented his apartments by the week, and he would rent to anyone with a week’s rent in his hand. There was no credit investigation because no credit was ever extended. There were no leases to sign, no security deposit to pay. All tenants paid by the week, in advance, and any tenant who could not come up with the rent the day it was demanded was out on the street, bag and baggage, by nightfall. A landlord renting by the week was not hamstrung by eviction procedures, but could operate on the same basis as a hotel. Sully’s eviction proceedings consisted of advising a rentless tenant he had an hour to come up with the rent or remove his belongings. At the end of the hour Sully would return, change the lock cylinder on the apartment door, and throw whatever remained in the apartment out the window. It was widely rumored that on one occasion the tenant himself had been present in the apartment at end of the standard hour, and that Sully had unceremoniously heaved him out the window after his luggage.
Linda climbed the Shithouse stairs. The air in the stairwell was stale, flavored with old cooking smells. They ought to get out of the place, she thought. She