14 Stories by Stephen Dixon Page B

blood—”
    â€œYou thought, you thought. Did you also think that if he knocked you cold with that cigarette thing he then might have grabbed your club and come after us? You thought. Well Mr. T. and us think you’re not right for this work, I’m sorry. I even think I convinced him we got to have a guard with a gun the way things are going here. He wants you to call your Mr. Gibner.”
    I phone Gibner and he says “Tom, what am I going to do with you? Because you do such good work, even great. You stop thieves like nobody I’ve seen and you look strong and presentable and you’ve proven yourself no thief. But you don’t use your club. That made us look very unprofessional again, very. Look, finish out the day. It’s okay with your boss, and then Monday a little before midnight be at this building address I’ll give you to work as a guard there. You won’t have to use a club but will have to carry one. You’ll be mostly show, because just a guard in the lobby is enough to keep potential troublemakers away.”
    â€œI thought you said I’d only work days.”
    â€œFor a few weeks work evenings. Then, in that time, you think you can swing a club again but at someone’s arm or head when it’s warranted, I’ll put you back in a store. You think you can’t, then it’s apartment buildings and nursing homes from now on. Pay’s a bit less there, despite the occasional midnight-to-eight shift, but that’s because there’s none of what we call ‘possible battle pay.’”
    I say “All right, but only because I need the money,” and Monday night I’m at the apartment building a half-hour before my shift’s to begin to learn what I’m supposed to do.
    The head of the tenants’ association shows me around and says the tenants are paying my entire salary. “The landlord’s a cheap S.O.B. He doesn’t live here, that’s why he can act like that. We were getting a burglary a month and mugging every other before we started patrolling the place days and hiring a guard for after midnight. What they did to break in was ring a number of names on the intercom till someone without asking who’s there let them in. When the tenants stopped letting in people this way, the intruders broke the door panes or locks to get in or just waited in the vestibule for someone to rob or followed them in from the street. What happens now is anyone in the vestibule who doesn’t have a lobby door key has to get past the guard. You ring the tenant the visitor wants and the tenant has to personally give you the okay. The tenant doesn’t or isn’t in, the visitor has to leave. If a tenant doesn’t have a key, ask for his ID. We issued everybody one with his picture on it. If a tenant says he forgot his ID and nobody in his apartment is home, or you have trouble with someone that you can’t handle alone, call me in 7 B no matter what time at night and I’ll be down in a minute. If I’m not in, here’s another tenant’s name to ring. One or the other of us will always be home, and if we’re not, you’ll be given the name of a third.”
    Except for the bad hours and little periods of boredom, it’s a very easy job. I sit in a comfortable lobby chair facing the vestibule door and read or listen to a radio that man in 7 B loaned me. When I have to go to the bathroom I put a sign he gave me on the lobby door that says “Be back in 30 seconds. Premises also patrolled by attack dogs,” which isn’t true. For lunch the tenants’ association left me a thermos each of coffee and milk and two very thick meat sandwiches on good bread and an apple.
    The people who enter the vestibule are mostly tenants with lobby door keys who stop to introduce themselves and ask my name and say how glad they are to see I’m not asleep like the last two guards usually were. One tenant