The Little Men (3 page)

“Dear,” Mr. Flant said, “would you like a little
helper?”

He held out his palm, pale and moist. In
the center, a white pill shone.

That night she slept impossibly deeply. So
deeply she could barely move, her neck
twisted and locked, her body hunched inside
itself.

Upon waking, she threw up in the waste
basket.

That evening, after work, she waited in the
courtyard for Mrs. Stahl.

Smoking cigarette after cigarette, Penny
noticed things she hadn't before. Some of the
tiles in the courtyard were cracked, some
missing. She hadn't noticed that before. Or the
chips and gouges on the sculpted lions on the
center fountain, their mouths spouting only a
trickle of acid green. The drain at the bottom
of the fountain, clogged with crushed cigarette
packs, a used contraceptive.

Finally, she saw Mrs. Stahl saunter into
view, a large picture hat wilting across her tiny
head.

“Mrs. Stahl,” she said, “have you ever had
an exterminator come?”

The woman stopped, her entire body still
for a moment, her left hand finally rising to
her face, brushing her hair back under her
mustard-colored scarf.

“I run a clean residence,” she said, voice
low in the empty, sunlit courtyard. That
courtyard, oleander and wisteria everywhere,
bright and poisonous, like everything in this
town.

“I can hear something behind the wainscoting,”
Penny replied. “Maybe mice, or
maybe it's baby possums caught in the wall
between the bedroom and kitchen.”

Mrs. Stahl looked at her. “Is it after you
bake? It might be the dampers popping
again.”

“I'm not much of a cook. I haven't even
turned on the oven yet.”

“That's not true,” Mrs. Stahl said, lifting her
chin triumphantly. “You had it on the other
night.”

“What?” Then Penny remembered. It had
rained sheets and she'd used it to dry her
dress. But it had been very late and she didn't
see how Mrs. Stahl could know. “Are you
peeking in my windows?” she asked, voice
tightening.

“I saw the light. The oven door was open.
You shouldn't do that,” Mrs. Stahl said, shaking
her head. “It's very dangerous.”

“You're not the first landlord I caught
peeping. I guess I need to close my curtains,”
Penny said coolly. “But it's not the oven
damper I'm hearing each and every night. I'm
telling you: there's something inside my walls.
Something in the kitchen.”

Mrs. Stahl's mouth seemed to quiver
slightly, which emboldened Penny.

“Do I need to get out the ball peen I found
under the sink and tear a hole in the kitchen
wall, Mrs. Stahl?”

“Don't you dare!” she said, clutching
Penny's wrist, her costume rings digging in.
“Don't you dare!”

Penny felt the panic on her, the woman's
breaths coming in sputters. She insisted they
both sit on the fountain edge.

For a moment, they both just breathed, the
apricot-perfumed air thick in Penny's lungs.

“Mrs. Stahl, I'm sorry. It's just—I need to
sleep.”

Mrs. Stahl took a long breath, then her eyes
narrowed again. “It's those chinwags next
door, isn't it? They've been filling your ear
with bile.”

“What? Not about this, I—”

“I had the kitchen cleaned thoroughly after
it happened. I had it cleaned, the linoleum
stripped out. I put up fresh wallpaper over
every square inch after it happened. I covered
everything with wallpaper.”

“Is that where it happened?” Penny asked.
“That poor man who died in Number Four?
Larry?”

But Mrs. Stahl couldn't speak, or wouldn't,
breathing into her handkerchief, lilac silk, the
small square over her mouth suctioning open
and closed, open and closed.

“He was very beautiful,” she finally whispered.
“When they pulled him out of the
oven, his face was the most exquisite red. Like
a ripe, ripe cherry.”

Knowing how it happened changed things.
Penny had always imagined handsome,
melancholy Larry walking around the apartment,
turning gas jets on. Settling into that
club chair in the living room. Or maybe settling
in bed and slowly drifting from earth's
fine tethers.

She wondered how she could ever use the
oven now, or even look at it.

It had to be the same one. That Magic Chef,
which looked like the one from childhood,
white porcelain and cast iron. Not like those
new slabs, buttercup or mint green.

The last tenant, Mr. Flant told her later,
smelled gas all the time.

“She said it gave her headaches,” he said.
“Then one night she came here, her face white
as snow. She said she'd just seen St. Agatha in
the kitchen, with her bloody breasts.”

“I … I don't see anything like that,” Penny
said.

Back in the bungalow, trying to sleep, she
began picturing herself the week before. How
she'd left that oven door open, her fine, rainslicked
dress draped over the rack. The truth
was, she'd forgotten about it, only returning
for it hours later.

Walking to the closet now, she slid the dress
from its hanger pressing it to her face. But she
couldn't smell anything.

Mr. D. still had not returned her calls. The
bank had charged her for the bounced check
so she'd have to return the hat she'd bought,
and rent was due again in two days.

When all the other crew members were
making their way to the commissary for
lunch, Penny slipped away and splurged on
cab fare to the studio.

As she opened the door to his outer office,
the receptionist was already on her feet and
walking purposefully toward Penny.

“Miss,” she said, nearly blocking Penny,
“you're going to have to leave. Mac shouldn't
have let you in downstairs.”

“Why not? I've been here dozens of—”

“You're not on the appointment list, and
that's our system now, Miss.”

“Does he have an appointment list now for
that squeaking starlet sofa in there?” Penny
asked, jerking her arm and pointing at the
leather-padded door. A man with a thin
moustache and a woman in a feathered hat
looked up from their magazines.

The receptionist was already on the phone.
“Mac, I need you … Yes, that one.”

“If he thinks he can just toss me out like
street trade,” she said, marching over and
thumping on Mr. D.'s door, “he'll be very, very
sorry.”

Her knuckles made no noise in the soft
leather. Nor did her fist.

“Miss,” someone said. It was the security
guard striding toward her.

“I'm allowed to be here,” she insisted, her
voice tight and high. “I did my time. I earned
the right.”

But the guard had his hand on her arm.

Desperate, she looked down at the man
and the woman waiting. Maybe she thought
they would help. But why would they?

The woman pretended to be absorbed in
her
Cinestar
magazine.

But the man smiled at her, hair oil gleaming.
And winked.

The next morning she woke bleary but determined.
She would forget about Mr. D. She
didn't need his money. After all, she had a job,
a good one.

It was hot on the lot that afternoon, and
none of the makeup crew could keep the dust
off the faces. There were so many lines and
creases on every face—you never think about
it until you're trying to make everything
smooth.

“Penny,” Gordon, the makeup supervisor
said. She had the feeling he'd been watching
her for several moments as she pressed the
powder into the actor's face, holding it still.

“It's so dusty,” she said, “so it's taking a
while.”

He waited until she finished then, as the
actor walked away, he leaned forward.

“Everything all right, Pen?”

He was looking at something—her neck,
her chest.

“What do you mean?” she said, setting the
powder down.

But he just kept looking at her.

“Working on your carburetor, beautiful?”
one of the grips said, as he walked by.

“What? I …”

Peggy turned to the makeup mirror. That
was when she saw the long grease smear on
her collarbone. And the line of black soot
across her hairline too.

“I don't know,” Penny said, her voice
sounding slow and sleepy. “I don't have a car.”

Then, it came to her: the dream she'd had
in the early morning hours. That she was in
the kitchen, checking on the oven damper.
The squeak of the door on its hinges, and Mrs.
Stahl outside the window, her eyes glowing
like a wolf's.

“It was a dream,” she said, now. Or was it?
Had she been sleepwalking the night before?

Had she been in the kitchen … at the oven
… in her sleep?

“Penny,” Gordon said, looking at her squintily.
“Penny, maybe you should go home.”

It was so early, and Penny didn't want to go
back to Canyon Arms. She didn't want to go
inside Number Four, or walk past the kitchen, its cherry wallpaper lately giving her the feeling
of blood spatters.

Also, lately, she kept thinking she saw Mrs.
Stahl peering at her between the wooden
blinds as she watered the banana trees.

Instead, she took the bus downtown to the
big library on South Fifth. She had an idea.

The librarian, a boy with a bowtie, helped
her find the obituaries.

She found three about Larry, but none had
photos, which was disappointing.

The one in the
Mirror
was the only with
any detail, any texture.

It mentioned that the body had been found
by the “handsome proprietress, one Mrs. Herman
Stahl,” who “fell to wailing” so loud it was
heard all through the canyons, up the
promontories and likely high into the mossed
eaves of the Hollywood sign.

“So what happened to Mrs. Stahl's husband?”
Penny asked when she saw Mr. Flant and
Benny that night.

“He died just a few months before Larry,”
Benny said. “Bad heart, they say.”

Mr. Flant raised one pale eyebrow. “She
never spoke of him. Only of Larry.”

“He told me once she watched him, Larry
did,” Benny said. “She watched him through
his bedroom blinds. While he made love.”

Instantly, Penny knew this was true.
She thought of herself in that same bed
each night, the mattress so soft, its posts
sometimes seeming to curl inward.

Mrs. Stahl had insisted Penny move it back
against the wall. Penny refused, but the next
day she came home to find the woman moving
it herself, her short arms spanning the
mattress, her face pressed into its applique.

Watching, Penny had felt like the Peeping
Tom. It was so intimate.

“Sometimes I wonder,” Mr. Flant said now.
“There were rumors. Black Widow, or Old
Maid.”

“You can't make someone put his head in
the oven,” Benny said. “At least not for long.
The gas'd get at you, too.”

“True,” Mr. Flant said.

“Maybe it didn't happen at the oven,”
Penny blurted. “She found the body. What if
she just turned on the gas while he was sleeping?”

“And dragged him in there, for the cops?”

Mr. Flant and Benny looked at each other.

“She's very strong,” Penny said.

Back in her bungalow, Penny sat just inside
her bedroom window, waiting.

Peering through the blinds, long after midnight,
she finally saw her. Mrs. Stahl, walking
along the edges of the courtyard.

She was singing softly and her steps were
uneven and Penny thought she might be tight,
but it was hard to know.

Penny was developing a theory.

Picking up a book, she made herself stay
awake until two.

Then, slipping from bed, she tried to follow
the flashes of light, the shadows.

Bending down, she put her hand on the
baseboards, as if she could touch those funny
shapes, like mice on their haunches. Or tiny
men, marching.

“Something's there!” she said out loud, her
voice surprising her. “It's in the walls.”

In the morning, it would all be blurry, but
in that moment, clues were coming together
in her head, something to do with gas jets and
Mrs. Stahl and love gone awry and poison in
the walls, and she had figured it out before
anything bad had happened.

It made so much sense in the moment, and
when the sounds came too, the little
tap-tap
s
behind the plaster, she nearly cheered.

Mr. Flant poured her glass after glass of
amaro. Benny waxed his moustache and
showed Penny his soft shoe.

They were trying to make her feel better
about losing her job.

“I never came in late except two or three
times. I always did my job,” Penny said, biting
her lip so hard it bled. “I think I know who's
responsible. He kited me for seven hundred
and forty dollars and now he's out to ruin
me.”

Then she told them how, a few days ago,
she had written him a letter.

Mr. D.—

I don't write to cause you any trouble.
What's mine is mine and I never knew
you for an indian giver.

I bought fine dresses to go to Hollywood
Park with you, to be on your arm at
Villa Capri. I had to buy three stockings a
week, your clumsy hands pawing at them.
I had to turn down jobs and do two cycles
of penicillin because of you. Also because
of you, I got the heave-ho from my roommate
Pauline who said you fondled her by
the dumbwaiter. So that money is the least
a gentleman could offer a lady. The least,
Mr.D.

Let me ask you: those books you kept
behind the false bottom in your desk
drawer on the lot—did you buy those
from Mr. Stanley Rose, or his handsome
assistant Larry?