Free Sophie's Choice by William Styron

fellow roomer thumbed through the mail, and for my pains, got the sound of steady adenoidal breathing. I felt a hot flash at the back of my neck, went numb around the lips, and wheeled about toward my room. Then I heard him say, "This yours?" And as I turned he was holding up a letter. I could tell from the handwriting that it was from my father. "Thanks," I murmured in rage, grabbing the letter. "You mind savin' me the stamp?' he said. "I collect commemoratives." He essayed something in the nature of a grin, not expansive but recognizably human. I made a humming noise and gave him a vaguely positive look. "I'm Fink," he said, "Morris Fink. I more or less take care of this place, especially when Yetta's away, like she is this weekend. She went to visit her daughter in Canarsie." He nodded in the direction of my door. "I see you got to live in the crater." "The crater?" I said. "I lived there up until a week ago. When I moved out that's how you got to move in. I called it the crater because it was like livin' in a bomb crater with all that humpin' they were doin' in that room up above." There had been suddenly established a bond between Morris and me, and I relaxed, filled with inquisitive zeal. "How did you put up with it, for God's sake? And tell me--who the hell are they?" "It's not so bad if you get them to move the bed. They do that--move it over toward the wall--and you can barely hear them humpin'. Then it's over the bathroom. I got them to do that. Or him, that is. I got him to move it even though it's her room. I insisted. I said Yetta would throw them both out if he didn't, so he finally agreed. Now I guess he's moved it back toward the window. He said something about it bein' cooler there." He paused to accept one of the cigarettes I had offered him. "What you should do is ask him to move the bed back toward the wall again." "I can't do that," I put in, "I just can't go up to some guy, some stranger, and say--well, you know what I'd have to say to him. It would be terribly embarrassing. I just couldn't. And which ones are they, anyway?" "I'll tell him if you'd like," said Morris, with an air of assurance that I found appealing. "I'll make him do it. Yetta can't stand it around here if people annoy each other. That Landau is a weird one, all right, and he might give me some trouble, but he'll move the bed, don't you worry. He doesn't want to get thrown out on his ass." So it was Nathan Landau, the first name on my list, who I realized was the master of this setup; then who was his partner in all that din, sin and confusion? "And the gal?" I inquired. "Miss Grossman?" "No. Grossman's a pig. It's the Polish broad, Sophie. Sophie Z., I call her. Her last name, it's impossible to pronounce. But she's some dish, that Sophie." I was aware once more of the silence of the house, the eerie impression I was to get from time to time that summer of a dwelling far removed from the city streets, of a place remote, isolated, almost bucolic. Children called from the park across the way and I heard a single car pass by slowly, its sound unhurried, inoffensive. I simply could not believe I was living in Brooklyn. "Where is everybody?" I asked. "Well, let me tell you something," said Morris. "Except maybe for Nathan, nobody in this joint has enough money to really do anything. Like go to New York and dance at the Rainbow Room or anything fancy like that. But on Saturday afternoon they all clear out of here. They all go somewhere. For instance, the Grossman pig--boy, is she some fuckin' yenta--Grossman goes to visit her mother out in Islip. Ditto Astrid. That's Astrid Weinstein, lives right there across the hall from you. She's a nurse at Kings County Hospital like Grossman, only she's no pig. A nice kid, but I would say not exactly a knockout. Plain. A dog, really. But not a pig." My heart sank. "And she goes to see her mother, too?" I said with scant interest. "Yeah, she goes to see her mother, only in New York. I can somehow tell