Flowers for Algernon

Before I could answer, she screeched and started over to the piano in the corner. “I used to play the piano. I heard you fooling around with it a few times, and I said to myself that guy’s goddamned good. That’s how I know I wanted to meet you even before I saw you. I haven’t played in such a goddamned long time.” She was picking away at the piano as I went into the kitchen to make coffee.

“You’re welcome to practice on it any time,” I said I don’t know why I suddenly became so free with my place, but there was something about her that demanded complete unselfishness. “I don’t leave the front door open yet, but the window isn’t locked, and if I’m not here all 124 you’ve got to do is climb in through the fire escape. Cream and sugar in your coffee?”

When she didn’t answer, I looked back into the living room. She wasn’t there, and as I started towards the window, I heard her voice from Algernon’s room.

“Hey, what’s this?” She was examining the three dimensional plastic maze I had built. She studied it and then let out another squeal. “Modern sculpturel All boxes and straight lines!”

“It’s a special maze,” I explained. “A complex learning device for Algernon.”

But she was circling around it, excited. “They’ll go mad for it at the Museum of Modern Art.”

“It’s not sculpture,” I insisted. I opened the door to Algernon’s living-cage attached to the maze, and let him into the maze opening. “My God!” she whispered. “Sculpture with a living element. Charlie, it’s the greatest thing since junkmobiles and tincannia.” I tried to explain, but she insisted that the living element would make sculpture history. Only when I saw the laughter in her wild eyes did I realize she was teasing me. “It could be self-perpetuating art,” she went on, “a creative experience for the art lover. You get another mouse and when they have babies, you always keep one to reproduce the living element. Your work of art attains immortality, and all the fashionable people buy copies for conversation pieces. What are you going to call it?”

“All right,” I sighed. “I surrender....”

“No,” she snorted, tapping the plastic dome where Algernon had found his way into the goal-box. `7 surrender is too much of a cliche. How about: Life is just a box of mazes?”

“You’re a nut!” I said.

“Naturally!” She spun around and curtsied. “I was wondering when you’d notice.”

About then the coffee boiled over.

Halfway through the cup of coffee, she gasped and said she had to run because she had a date a half-hour earlier with someone she met at an art exhibit.

“You wanted some money,” I said. She reached into my half open wallet and pulled out a five-dollar bill. “Till next week,” she said, “when the check comes. Thanks a mill.” She crumpled the money, blew Algernon a kiss, and before I could say anything she was out the window onto the fire escape, and out of sight. I stood there foolishly looking after her.

So damned attractive. So full of life and excitement. Her voice, her eyes-everything about her was an invitation. And she lived out the window and just a fire escape away.

June 20-Perhaps I should have waited before going to see Matt; or not gone to see him at all. I don’t know. Nothing turns out the way I expect it to. With the clue that Matt had opened a barbershop somewhere in the Bronx, it was a simple matter to find him. I remembered he had sold for a barber supply company in New York. That led me to Metro Barber Shop Supplies who had a barbershop account under the name of Gordons Barber Shop on Wentworth Street in the Bronx.

Matt had often talked about a barbershop of his own. How he hated selling! What battles they had about it! Rose screaming that a salesman was at least a dignified occupation, but she would never have a barber for a husband. And oh, wouldn’t Margaret Phinney snicker at the “barber’s wife.” And what about Lois Meiner whose husband was a claims examiner for the Alarm Casualty Company? Wouldn’t she stick her nose up in the air! During the years he worked as a salesman, hating every day of it (especially after he saw the movie version of Death of a Salesman) Matt dreamed that he would someday become his own boss. That must have been in his mind in those days when he talked about saving money and gave me my haircuts down in the basement. They were good haircuts too, he boasted, a lot better than I’d get in that cheap barbershop on Scales Avenue. When he walked out on Rose, he walked out on selling too, and I admired him for that.

I was excited at the thought of seeing him. Memories were warm ones. Matt had been willing to take me as I was. Before Norma: the arguments that weren’t about money or impressing the neighbors were about me-that I should be let alone instead of being pushed to do what other kids did. And after Norma: that I had a right to a life of my own even though I wasn’t like other children. Always defending me. I couldn’t wait to see the expression on his face. He was someone I’d be able to share this with.