Balance Sheet

The night I got all mixed up in this was a spring night. Norma, my wife, was home, like always. Norma, my gentle young blonde wife with those smoky blue eyes and her cool arms dusted lightly with freckles. I'll tell you how much I love her after six years. When I wake in the morning and she's asleep, I just stand there sometimes looking at her and wonder why she ever wanted to marry me. Me: a balding accountant with a shape like a water tank. I stand there with a churned-up feeling and the idea comes to me complete with handles that I'm the luckiest guy in the world and all my troubles become very unimportant at that moment. I never figured I had a due bill on the world. All I wanted was what I had. But I could never tell Norma that. I could never tell her she was what kept my world in balance.

That night when we were in bed and the lights were out, Norma said to me, "Al, I want to tell you something ----"

I kind of chuckled. "How much does it cost, honey?"

She didn't joke back playfully. "A man's been bothering me, Al," she said.

I sat up, suddenly awake, my heart pounding. "What man?" I asked her. I was surprised to hear my voice so quiet because I thought it would have to be a cry of rage.

"Al, please don't get excited. Don't lose your temper."

"Just tell me who it is, Norma. He won't bother you again, not if he wants to stay eligible for life insurance."

"Al, you're getting excited."

"Just tell me who it is. Don't tell me I'm getting excited, baby."

And that's how this crazy ride down hill without brakes started. Lover Boy's name was Nicholas Tenny. He worked in one of the department stores in town and he got Norma's name and address when he made out the sales slip for the new kitchen cabinet she'd ordered. He was very friendly. He even called at the house after the cabinet was delivered to see how everything was. I could see it all right. A nice, friendly-talking college boy type and Norma wouldn't even know how to be suspicious of anybody. She couldn't help being that way. The world was just a big neighborhood to Norma. And it turned out he was a neighbor. He lived in that apartment house on Willis Avenue, about six blocks away. How cozy could it get? There was the pretty blonde wife and (continued on page 69)Balance Sheet(continued from page 23) the husband who might be out of town for a day or two weeks. Why, his clean cut college boy mind probably had the parlay all worked out.

"Honey," Norma said. She reached across and took my hand. Her fingers were very cool and still. "What're you going to do? He probably doesn't mean any harm. I don't want you to get excited. You know what kind of temper you've got, honey."

I looked at Norma. I couldn't see her eyes, but I knew she was looking at me. "You're taking it pretty calmly," I said.

"He hasn't done anything except call me on the phone," Norma said. "All I want you to do is tell him you don't like men phoning your wife. But that's all. Promise me?"

"OK," I said.

Lover Boy was having cocktails in the afternoon when I rang his bell. It must have been his day off from the kitchen cabinet department. Beyond the open door I could see a lush blonde arranged in very ornamental fashion against one of those modern sling chairs. One long nylon leg loafed back and forth. Lover Boy liked blondes.

"Tenny?" I asked, just to be sure. He was fairly tall -- just an inch or so shorter than me, properly muscled for the summer beach, with the required haircut, the white teeth and the cool sneering eyes. I remembered I had promised Norma not to hit him. Just talk to him. So I talked. "I'm Albert Jantz."

"That's fun," he said. I let him look me over. I let him taste the Martini. I let the blonde beyond the door snicker a little.

"You sold my wife a kitchen cabinet."

"It's possible. We do a lot of dull things for a buck. So?"

He smiled at me very lightly. You could tell I was a hard-working square with no time for afternoon Martinis with blondes.

"So She didn't figure on you coming with it for the price."

"I beg your pardon."

"So don't call her any more."

He leaned a little closer, looked at me again, and laughed throatily. "Now what could she have said to you, Al-boy, to upset you so?" He looked in at the blonde. "Dig the irate husband, honey bun," he said, and the blonde laughed. I was the square with the custard pie dripping off my face. I tapped him on the shoulder.

"Nick-boy," I said.

"Shove off, for crying out loud," he said in his brave, swagger-stick voice.

So I forgot my promise to Norma. I hit him. I could feel the sleeve of my coat split as he buckled against the door and the blonde shouted something. He held onto the Martini glass. Then I hit him again. I knew my hand was going to be sore for a week. This time he grunted loudly and wasted the Martini. The olive rolled to the floor and stopped at my feet. He was mumbling and trying to get up. I picked up the olive and dropped it into his fancy vest pocket. I went down in the self-service elevator, got in my car, and returned to the office.

I called Norma. "Lover Boy won't bother you any more, baby."

"You did something to him, Al," she said. "I can tell by your voice."

"Only after due provocation," I said. I was acting like a tough kid and I knew I should be a little ashamed of it; but I wasn't. "I'll be home about eight tonight."

"Al, he won't call the police or anything, will he?"

"I doubt it."

You'd have thought I'd solved all my problems by clobbering Lover Boy. Back at the office, I sat at my desk daydreaming. The cheerful cricket sound of typewriters filtered in from the outer office. The spring sun was very bright on the windows and my right hand began to hurt. I could hardly move the fingers.

I knew a doctor in the Medical Arts Building about a block down the street and I decided I better let him look at my hand. When I got over there, he touched it experimentally and whistled softly. It was broken and when I came out I had it in a splint. Norma would be all upset, I thought. I could see her eyes opening wide with sympathy and hear her voice. A broken hand was a cheap price to pay for protecting the woman I loved. But I couldn't drive now so I'd have to take the train up to Feltonville that afternoon.

I looked forward to a late dinner and Norma's solicitude and anger about my hand. She was going to give me hell and worry about my hand at the same time. I had long thoughts, but they weren't long enough.

It was a beautiful spring evening on our street. Night was just coming on, moving like a dancer, and the air was scented with lilac, and inside the house Norma was waiting for me.

She wasn't waiting alone though. A quiet looking, pale-eyed man was sitting right in the middle of the couch as if he were embarrassed and didn't want to make himself at home. Norma was crying very intensely and rubbing her fingers over her face like a little girl. The man was a cop. He looked at my hand, then at me. Then he got up and introduced himself. His name was Sergeant Creel.

"Expected you'd be driving a car, Mr. Jantz," he said.

"I couldn't drive with this hand. What're you doing here?"

Norma raised her face and stared at me with glazed eyes. "Oh, Al honey," she moaned. I went over to her and put my arm around her. She was trembling.

"Listen, what's wrong, for crying out loud?"

The cop looked at both of us. Norma couldn't talk. He took something out of his pocket and held it out.

"Yours, Mr. Jantz?"

It was a Smith and Wesson .38. It looked like mine. "I guess so."

"I checked. It's yours. A man was killed with it today," he said softly. "A man named Tenny. Know him?"

"Oh, Al," Norma cried. She was trembling again.

"I know him. He was bothering my wife. I hit him. That's how I got this." I held up my hand.

He stared at me for a long time, chewing his lip and making little sucking noises. I looked back at him. I guess I looked like the village idiot. Nothing was making any sense.

"You could have fired with your left hand," he said finally and scratched his jaw.

"I didn't kill anybody."

"Al, Al," Norma said in a moaning helpless voice.

"Norma, I didn't kill him," I said. "My God, don't you believe me?"

"Somebody killed him," the cop said. "About 4:30 this afternoon. He opened the door and somebody shot him while he was standing there. Close enough for powder burns. You can shoot a gun left handed, can't you, Mr. Jantz?"

I was practically numb. Holy God, I thought, the man's sitting there telling me I killed somebody.

"It was this gun," he said.

"I didn't kill anybody," I answered in a hoarse voice.

"I'll buy that," the cop said softly. "But we've got a dead man, so somebody did, Mr. Jantz. Your wife, maybe. Didn't you kill him, Mrs. Jantz?" he asked in that soft voice.

Norma kept shaking her head.

"My wife couldn't kill anybody. Listen, mister, you're crazy."

He smiled at me and scratched his jaw again. "I think I mentioned that he was killed while he was standing in the doorway. If you'd killed him, the bullet would have entered his body at a higher point. But Mrs. Jantz is just the right height to be the one that did it. You were going to be the patsy, Mr. Jantz. But she didn't figure you'd break your hand."

"Norma," I said, as if I had lost her in a dark woods and was calling her.

"Leave me alone," she cried.

That's probably the way it is when you sit in a padded cell and hear soft voices. But I was sitting in my own living room.

"He had a new blonde, Mrs. Jantz," the cop said. "Wasn't that the reason?" He looked full of bad news. "Tenny saved letters and Mrs. Jantz apparently liked to write them."

Norma couldn't stop crying. I looked at her. I was afraid to touch her. Then I looked at the cop. He smiled unhappily. "It's a good thing you're a tall man, Mr. Jantz," he said.

"Quit bothering my wife!" I told him.