Free Invasion of Privacy - Jeremiah Healy by Jeremiah Healy

hiring the Hendrix company to run
their complex, and I'm just checking on how well people who live here
think Hendrix performs for them."
    "Well, I don't know much about it, but come in
anyway."
    I'm not sure what I expected after the Stepanians'
place. In terms of structural layout, the Elmendorf unit had exactly
the same design, but mirror-imaged, so the kitchen was on the left
and the staircase to the catwalk on the right. While the Stepanians
had overstuffed furniture and carefully selected knickknacks, this
place seemed more cluttered than decorated. Magazines covered all the
horizontal planes. Teen, Outdoor Life, Elle, Popular Mechanics. Some
technical photographic journals were sprinkled into the general mess.
The couch, chairs, and table in the living room looked twenty years
old, used pizza boxes and Chinese food cartons stacked on the counter
separating kitchen from dining area. No sign of Norman Elmendorf. But
some sound of him.
    A gravelly male voice called out from the upstairs.
    "Kira, who is it?"
    "No problem, Dad. Just a man wanting to know
about the condo management."
    Kira said the words sweetly, no condescension toward
him or me in her manner.
    "Well, send him up.”
    She looked at me, spoke very quietly. "If you
don't go up to see him I'll, like, hear about it for a week. Do me a
favor, though?"
    "What?"
    Kira bit her lip once and let out a breath. "Be
gentle and patient with him, okay?"
    Watching her, I said, "Okay."
    She sat down on the old print couch, putting the
headpiece to the Walkman back on and picking up a magazine. Climbing
the stairs, I noticed only two chairs at the dining room table.
Looking down at the staircase itself, I saw a number of indentations
on the wooden steps. The marks were round and roughly the
circumference of a half-dollar. As though somebody on crutches had
been making this journey for a while.
    When I arrived at the threshold to what I predicted
would be the master bedroom, the door was half open, but I knocked
anyway. The gravelly voice said, "Come on in."
    Entering the room, I saw a man of six feet or so
lying in bed, propped up by two pillows behind him, a pair of metal
braces like polio victims might use leaning against the night table
next to him. The bedclothes covered his body up to the waist, but on
top he wore a hooded, navy-blue sweatshirt which I would have thought
too warm for the mild temperature on the second floor. Elmendorfs
smiling face was cheery, but the rosy cheeks, bulbous nose, and
crooked teeth caricatured him like an engraved portrait out of
Dickens. He was about my age with homecut hair, the rosy color of his
cheeks extending in blotches down his neck and onto his chest along
the zipper of the sweatshirt. I could see why Kira had asked me to be
gentle with him.
    A liter bottle of Jim Beam was nearly dead on the
night table, two fingers of the bourbon in a glass next to the
bottle. Probably why his daughter had asked me to be patient as well.
    "Pull up that chair. Kira uses it to watch over
me when I have nightmares, but they're hours away yet."
    I tugged over a wooden armchair that might once have
stood at the head of the dining table downstairs. A print on its seat
cushion matched the one on the living room couch.
    "Nightmares from what?” I said.
    A tolerant laugh, though it came out more a grunt,
like he had phlegm in his throat. "The war, what else? Desert
Storm." Taking a swig of his booze, Elmendorf squinted at me.
"You?"
    "Vietnam."
    "Army?"
    "Yes."
    "Where?"
    "I was MP, so mostly Saigon, occasionally the
bush."
    "The 'bush.' God, what we would have given for
some 'bush' where old Bushie sent us. Even a branch or a twig,
anything to throw a little shade."
    "How did you get sent over?"
    "My own stupid fault." Another gulp of
bourbon. "I went into the Reserves after college. Make a little
extra money, you know? Then I got married and Kira came along, and
the extra money looked even better, so I reupped each time. Never
thought I'd ever go